340i

I've been working on a few other projects lately, so there's unfortunately no progress on the truck. I thought I'd share this though, I've decided to sell the airbagged trailers I've designed and built. Here's a quick video, I'd be keen to get people's thoughts on it: http://youtu.be/Ikzm_4Adz3U

Hi Chris, yeah i've got a few plans, but the cad thing is more about just testing the waters at the moment, as well as just doing more designs to get my skills up. i'm still fairly amateur with it haha. i'm learning though and can do everything i need to at the moment.

yeah not much progress on it at the moment due to lack of funds and motivation. i'm going to be displaying at speedshow in a month and a bit, so will probably pull finger in the coming weeks so that there's some progress to show for that. i hadn't actually given too much thought on the radiator cap height, but that's a good point and i'm going to have to look into it. when i fitted it i just made sure it fit under the bonnet and that was my main consideration.

I'm doing a giveaway, open to anyone with any project (not just minitruckers) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4iMMi59l1I Also, cheers for having me at the recent Wellington meet at the Parrot and Jigger. Was good to meet some of you, and a nice night out.

haha trust me it is not sweet making piping.... there's so much cutting and measuring and welding, waaay too much work to hook a radiator up lol. and then there's the 8 silicon joiners, 16 hose clamps, and five chassis brackets. on the upside, i think it was a good project to do to practice my stainless tig, so i can do the rest of the exhaust myself (i had Bam do the 4" pipe. partly due to time rush before the nats. partly cos he's a bawss at tig). regarding finned pipes, this would help, but would make under the car hotter. good in winter but not so much in summer (i'm talking as-if wellington has a summer... lol). on trials 4wd's i know there are guys that just run the coolant through the rollcage, which has the same effect. as long as its water tight and you don't touch it right near the motor, its a pretty cool idea.

update 34:

thanks man. for the foreseeable future i'll just be doing small things on my own as i have time, but i'll let you know if i need a hand at some point haha yeah after that video i needed the space in the garage and didn't want to leave it outside with all the expensive parts on it, so stripped it right back and just left the bare chassis/body outside. not the most ideal scenario, but i'd rather that than wake up one day and find parts missing lol. i need a workshop asap haha

yeah that's true. for the cab, that's how it'll stay for the foreseeable future. i like the contrast of old/rusty/shitty oem and new/shiny custom stuff. one day it might get painted though, probably a satin colour.

soooo far away from finished still haha. mostly comes down to money availability now, but it still needs a stupid amount of hours thrown at it too. haha i'm gonna try buy a more reliable vehicle next time, but similarly this normally gets killed by me not having enough money... haha standard car-guy dilemma

i did a quick show video

did a bit of a video for the nats prep and trip... *featuring a certain oldschool member's hat... haha

nothing says pimping like solid marble haha

thanks. yip, thats correct. i cut them in back when i initially built the chassis, and have since started the stainless piping but didn't bother putting it in for the video. i now also need space for the piping for the water-air intercooler, so need to make some more holes somewhere the only requirement for air tanks that i know of is that they must be mounted securely so they don't break off and become a projectile in the event of a crash, so i should be all good. it'll never see more than 200psi and from memory i built the whole chassis from 5mm thick steel, so its nicely overkill in the strength department yeah this is true. my plan is to add drain bungs under the chassis and also once all the chassis welding (there's still more to do...) is finished, I'll coat the inside of the rails that hold the air, so that it doesn't rust. I've spoken to a guy that built hotrods and bagged rides for years and his professional opinion was that i didn't need to do anything because any "rusting" will be incredibly slow and not cause any issues in the life of the minitruck. The internal coating is just a peace-of-mind-thing for me. I imagine that if there was surface rust inside the tank and moisture, that you might get a dirty water or sludge out of it, but i also figure my valves being on the top would not see any of this anyway. haha true! I'm already loving the benefits of bags, like when needing to jack the car up i can just air it up first and easily slide the jack under. this was a nightmare before, when the chassis was sitting on the ground and wasn't easy to lift True - even though I wouldn't call 150psi low pressure - 150psi being let loose in a hurry could cause some damage - but I get your point that they are not exactly "high" pressure - in saying this tanks are not normally a stressed member either. regarding air tanks as a stressed member, as long as its designed to take both load types simultaneously, there's no reason anything should go wrong. i have heard of situations where air tanks have been done before and failed, but it is when someone adds a dive tank to the system and all of a sudden instead of 200psi you've got 10,000psi or something like that and kaboom good bye chassis! haha. The cert requirements for hotrod/minitruck chassis is 50x70x3 and my 100x100x5 is quite a bit more hefty spot on here, if an lpg tank leaks you've got flammable gas leaking, usually into a car, which is deadly. for cert the minitruck won't be able to lay out on the ground, so absolute worst case scenario to cause an issue is the air tank would need to fail/leak at the same time as the airbags (or valves) AND the tyres, and the chassis still won't hit the ground (when set up to be road legal, instead of the 'show' setup option i've also got, which will lay on the ground). Other than pressurising too high and exploding the chassis (impossible to do with the compressors and feed lines i have), there really isn't anything dangerous that could possibly happen (touch wood... lol). na, i ditched the wooden floor. the wooden thing was purely so that i could combine the floor and seat base with the sub box (being one structure), and i was going to run an external fuel tank behind the cab somewhere. i've since decided to hide the fuel tank and also all the valves etc under the cabin and so bye-bye to the subs idea. I can live without bass (and have done my whole life in cars haha), and they were just for the show judges anyway tbh. at the end of the day, everything is a compromise, and if i take it to the nats and a judge says "nice minitruck but you've got no bass", I'm not going to lose any sleep about that haha. In saying that, there are still options for me to run small or low-profile subs, which i may or may not explore later in the build. I've got something special planned for the floor/interior, it sadly isn't matai, but i think people will like it thanks

Update 33:

thanks guys! yeah i'm stoked to get it to this stage, and that the airbag system is working out. the frame was only tacked before and actually broke in half when i cut some of the welds to tweak it flat (it had bent a little from all the welding in the back for the rear bag mounts) haha so i got it on my new chassis table and flattened/straightened it out again, then welded it up good and tight to hold the air. it looks like a fairly complete vehicle but tbh there is still a tonne of work to finish it, and many parts that i'm going to replace before driving it, so maybe another six months if i can keep finding money and time to throw at it it'll get there eventually.. haha