Nice to have you join the discussion member whipper-ag and thank you for the interest and questions. I would think it nice to be asking the questions rather than answering them for a change.Originally Posted by whipper-ag
There are members out there that have commented that I should have been sharing more about my suspension for the good of the hobby.Been wondering since you started this project why aren't you sharing your build with it's own thread? Is this your project or a Mudd Ox/ Max project? Mudd Ox / Max can talk about it.
When I did my 1st springer in 2007, I didn't know if it would work, but I still posted a step by step build to help people understand what I was doing & why. That said, I have a question. The pics in Shock & Awe say the front has 3" travel & the rear will have 5". How's that going to work & why did you decide to make it that way.?
R & D isn't easy, but it's always nice to see someone else's build & ideas. Still wanting to see more on Bugeyed 99's Hustler build, too.
Whipper
My members album "Shock & Awe" contains pictures I have collected of suspension ideas along with concepts I have put together for use on production AATVs. I consider the projects my own and not Mudd-Ox/Max projects. Matt of Mudd-Ox was kind enough to allow me to test my individual tower concept on one of his demo Mudd-Ox XLs.
Well, demos don't seem to last long at Mudd-Ox but Matt was in the process of building a XL to use as a test bed for a number of possible upgrades. I guess you could say the timing was right so I put my design into Solid Works and had a friends shop lazer and weld parts for me to assemble into 8 complete suspension tower assemblies. (I'm an idea guy, way to lazy to do production)
What I find interesting is people look at the red Mudd-Ox with the suspension towers and that's all they see. They do not see the 1.6 liter ford 60hp EFI engine or prototype control panel or the fancy ultra bright LED headlights or number of other things the machine is testing.
The way I look at it Matt is testing a design for free using time I don't really have on a machine I don't need to purchase and am not even really sure I would care to own personally.
There are no build thread for a couple of reasons, but the main one is I like to use my gallery to draw pictures from when I start a thread. Sort of like I am doing now. Think of it like sitting down after a vacation and putting all your pictures together to show friends and family rather than sending them every picture as you take it. I find I jump around on projects and some don't get finished right away so just building an album first seems to make better sense for me. (look at the Coot or Coot2 albums as an examples, their going on right now also).
With that said the Max II "box" design is just spin off of the "tower". A Mudd-Ox is a big heavy commercial sort of pricey piece of equipment to me. The tower idea worked but dimensionally and component price is sort of limited to that application. I knew it worked so how small, light and inexpensive can I go? That is what you will see if you look at my latest Shock and Awe album pictures.
Matt was kind enough to loan me a roller Max II so I can fit my concept "Suspension Boxes" to it. The front left box (also works as the right rear) only has 3 inches of travel because initially the shock I was going to use sort of limited it to that amount of travel and I was worried about how much angle the u-joint assemblies would take with the offset.
The left rear box has an 1.5" offset and 5" of total travel and is fitted with a different shock now.
Next you will see a center box that has centered axle and 5" of travel. The idea is to be able to alter the wheel base to run 26x16 Vendettas on wheels offset inwards 3". My experience reforming my Max IV body has me pretty convinced I can devise a method to heat form the body with arches to clear the tires keeping the machine pretty narrow. The suspension boxes should also be able to be fit to all sorts of other machines with very little effort, but this is assuming it all works.
Hope this answers your questions and sorry if I broke some sort of forum "build thread etiquette".
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