quadtractor

[john swenson]

was just watching the videos off the quadtractor machine.. talk about ground clearance ! if a guy could incorporate those extended vertical gear driven shaft axles on to a aatv somehow, well... they would have to be plenty strong. i,ve thought about the same type of component that would bolt to each axle hub. they would need to be connected horizontally so they would all stay vertical and horizontal connecting bars across under the tub for side stability. just take off the wheels, bolt the side pieces to the hubs on each side..bolt the three cross connecting braces..put on the wheels and your 30'' off the ground. so .. what am i missing as to why it would'nt work if it was built correctly . johnboy va.

[allwheeldrive]

You’d need to fashion an extra 90 degree gear box at the top of the portal axles shafts so as to run with the standard chain set up. Otherwise converting a chain driven machine to run with horizontal belts as the Quadractor does would be.. dare I say unfeasible. The Quadractor was designed from scratch to run such a belt set up and it takes up all available room within the body. Not ideal under the seat of a 6x6. The more ideal design would be to drive it like the Coot-2. That just uses 6 hydrostatic motors on the end of steering pipes sort of like the Quadractor without all the complexity.

[john swenson]

good point allwheel.... yes it would have to be a gearbox at top and at the bottom . shaft would be enclosed in a tube with bearings each end and then matching flanges to match the wheel hubs. always buildable with the time and money, right . j.b.

[Noel Woods]

Thinking out of the box:

https://youtu.be/mv6cjURbBaw

Hydraulic was my first thought, and then I found an even better concept.

[allwheeldrive]

I’ve toyed with the idea of electric hub motors for some time. Sadly for our application it would end up being a very costly custom avenue. Hub motors are great for a lot of applications. REALLY simplify the drive train. However ungeared hub motors have a limited RPM range (due to direct drive). One that works great with burshed and brushless motors on tires 21-29” Between 20 and 50 mph. However there is no realistic way to get the torque we need for slow off road applications. You’d either need a planetary gear drive (more on that later) or a VERY large and heavy motor that makes excess power so as to offset the low torque at slow speed. IE a 40+ HP motor per wheel… not cost or weight effective. A geared drive would have to be completely custom. I have found no production units in the correct wattage range. I have contacted 3-D printing workshops to build a prototype and they wanted $3,300 a wheel.. just for the hub assembly no motor included.

The 2nd biggest problem is even if one wanted to settle for the lack luster performance of current production hub motors there are no true water proof options, the best I could find with certified testing and enthusiast feed back where splash proof at best.

This falls into the dilemma of: Possible? Yes, Expensive? Way beyond the garage tinkerer budget.
The best I could come up with a few months ago was an external chain drive that mated the wheel to a 1.25 HP electric motor set up at the top of a portal assembly. The 1.25 HP Chinese motor came with a built in 12:1 gear reduction and further gear reduction was provided by the chain drive. The entire drive train and motor (6) + speed controllers came in at about $3,000. No battery included. Top speed was about 3-4 mph. But toque would have been completely satisfactory.

[marauder]

You could get away with just two electric motors, one per side, if you had a track system and had either the rear or front corners power the track with the other wheels serving as bogies, similar to what Hydratrek does with their largest hydraulic driven AATV the D2448B. Tracks make the most sense off road anyway so might as well bite the bullet and design it to use them from the get go. What I like about electric drive is that max torque is at 0 speed, so slow speed maneuving is very good, and you can use re-gen for braking, pretty much insuring that your brakes will last the life of the vehicle if you even need them at all with all the friction of a track vehicle bringing you to a stop when getting off the power. The big nut would be determining how big a battery you would need and how big of an engine you would need if you were making it a hybrid instead of just an electric drive. And of course you could go the plug-in hybrid route for the ultimate electric drive AATV, big money and probably big weight too. But hey, we've got on-road vehicles running around with that set-up right now, so someone will eventually go there with an AATV if there is a market for it.

[john swenson]

great ideas guys ..... i agree the ticket for simplicity is tracks with one spoked drive wheel on each side. lots of homebuilt russian machines like that on videos. i know the 48 volt golf carts we use at the church retreat will climb a good hill with 2 adults in them. wonder how one of those motors on each side would perform ? may need more than 6 batteries, but ? johnboy va.

[Delduck]

I’ve often thought of using the drive wheels and motors on a irrigation pivot. You get hight and tremendous power, but no speed. Years ago a pivot walked right threw the side of a guys house, he had the pivot installed and never put the stops on. I’ve seen them walk right over vehicles also. Wish I could post a picture of one but not real good at posting pics. Tomorrow I’ll take a picture of the one in our field so you can see.

[allwheeldrive]

Slow down for a second there is nothing to invent if you’re going to go track driven…that’s just called track driven lol
Go buy a coleman trackster etc. Or one of any dedicated track machines. There are no portal axels / elevated drive wheels such as we are discussing since all they do is have the drive sprocket set higher than the bogies wheels. Just like that you get your ground clearance increase problem solved.

As for as electric power, I’ve racked my brain for more hours than I care to admit to try and figure this out. There is simply no way to make a feasible electric ATV or AATV. Youtube can be misleading as videos only have to be 5min long lol.
It’s just not possible with current battery tech unless you REALLY want to limit top speed and suffer very short range.

The problems:
-AATV and ATVs have to be light, by the time you attain any sort of usable range vehicle weight will increase to 4x4 truck levels / passenger car levels.
-Electric cars accomplish such great range due to the fact they use so little power with low rolling resistance. The Nissan Leaf for example uses JUST 11.21 HP to maintain 40 MPH and attain its maximum range of over 100 miles.
Our machines may not have many HP, but they use most of it. Or at least half of it nearly constantly. I have been attempting to design an electric conversion for my Quadractor. It’s 8 HP engine is just sufficient in 2nd gear (6mph top speed) with two adults going uphill no mud, rocks, just regular incline.
I can assume its maximum range will be attained at top speed of 6mph under max load. If I could magically transplant the Nissan Leafs 700 pound Lithium Battery (which has one of the best energy densities of any battery tech on the market (More than twice that of the best SLA cells) The quadractor would only manage 23 miles of range. Now it is obviously impossible to find room or survive the weight of that battery. Say you had 1/4th the Nissian’s battery. 175 pounds. Equal to nearly 400 pounds of lead acid cells. With no passenger to maintain same weight and power draw you end up with a 5.75 mile range. Mind you this is flat dirt. Switch into low range for mud, rocks, actual off road. Half that range again.

Granted this is a very simplified overview of what amounts to over 7 pages of notes and configurations I’ve tried. But in the end. It’s not hard to do an electric conversion; it’s not even very expensive. The above design was about $1,400
But there is a difference between functional in your drive way and backyard for show and tell and actually getting out in the woods and expecting to go for a trail ride.

[John8x8hdi]

Those quadractors are pretty cool! I think it would be great if it was 8x8 or 6x6 configuration. It would definitely take some work and money though.

[allwheeldrive]

Those quadractors are pretty cool! I think it would be great if it was 8x8 or 6x6 configuration. It would definitely take some work and money though.

I was thinking the same thing. It would be quiet feasible to take two Quadractors and cut 4 foot sections from their frames (2 feet front 2 feet back) weld them back together and use shorter belts. You’d end up with a two very stubby machines only just long enough to give tire clearance. Than simply weld the two machines end to end! You’d have a compact 8 wheel drive Quadractor. Powered by two motors. Steering would be the only thing to set up as well as a gear selector that mated between the two shifters.
This machine would somehow be even better on mud since there would be no extra cross section to get hung up on, but 2x the traction. However I am not sure how much more effective overall it be. There ARE some benefits to 4wheels over 6,8, and tracks.
Such as break over angle on hills and logs. With 4 wheels you can crest the peak of a hill or log and get the machine back to level quickly. With a tracked or 6x6, 8x8 all the wheels must clear the log or hill obstacle before the machine will pivot and begin its decent. 4wheels are superior in this regard assuming it has the ground clearance not to get hung up (which obviously the Quadractor does) Likewise I will have to see how well the machine performance in deep mud and snow, I find it unlikely that if the machine can not push its 4 portal tubes through snow and mud that a machine with more wheels could.