@@creamwobbly 🤣...nah, summer is only ~4 months. It's AMAZING here the majority of the year. That's one major reason why we came here...the wife and I LOATH snow, cold, ice, etc. It gets crazy hot for a few months but hey...you don't have to shovel sunshine!!
I did a lot of off roading in southern California in the 80's and 90's with friends. One of the guys drove an unmodified , Volkswagen Variant which was a compact, rear engined, 2 wheel drive, 2 door wagon with a short wheel base of about 95"L X 62" W; he liked it because he could sleep in it with the rear seat folded flat. Everyone else had 4WD Jeeps or Toyota trucks , but the guy with the VW wagon had zero problems keeping up with the other "REAL" off road vehicles!
The guy who drove the squareback had exceptional off-road driving skills. He took me up to the top of Saddleback in that vehicle using trails that no vehicle should have been using. He also owned an old Landcruiser, rarely used 4WD, said it was only needed for crawling over boulders and getting real stuck in soft sand. He didn't drive it much, he said it was because he couldn't sleep in it. He said the key to successful off-roading was having a vehicle, any vehicle, with a short wheel base.
@@doctorspooger5966 hey, dunno if it wuz the same guy; Jim Heaton. The reason that we did so much off roading in those days wuz to get to good, new places to launch our hang gliders. It's funny that you mention Saddleback peak as there was once an off road park on the west side called "escape country" and a legendary, early hang gliding meet took place there in the late 70's. I think that it was sponsored partly by "Annie Green Springs?" a cut rate wine of the time. We mostly use paved roads to get to the tops of mountains these days and flying is still a gas.
In my youth (about 30 years ago) I read in a German off road camping unimog etc magazine a nice article of a guy that built himself a huge unimog Saharan crossing car… and then in the farest possible Sahara oasis he met a group of French guys.. they were there with 2 or 3 2CV 😂😂😂
@@964cuplove Old Citroens, 2CV included, are amazing offroad vehicles. The type of suspension set-ups the french did on them were very capable and the cars were light AF. If by a miracle the 2CV broke in the middle of the desert you could butcher it up and make a motorcycle if you understood mechanics...I'm not even joking, there is a french electrician that took one in the Moroccan deser and when he wrecked he made the 2CV into a motorcycle and got to safety on it.
If you're using solid works, you can model those parts as sheet metal instead of regular solid bodys and automatically add tabs and slots using that tab and slot feature so you don't forget any in the future
The joint you are talking about @12:16 is called a corner to corner joint and the other would be more like a butt joint and yes the corner to corner looks much nicer after welding and I think you'll find it'll be a stronger joint. By the way your welding is getting much neater and uniform. When I weld T.I.G Aluminium i usually get a block of wood to rest my wrist on so I'm not free handing it and if you do the same you will find that your welds will turn out much nicer and more uniform. Just remember "ABC" in welding "Always Be Comfortable". I hope this helps you with your welding endeavours. Good luck Matt.👍 I do all the tube welding for turbo charger plumbing applications at PLAZMAMAN in Australia
In "the biz" it was standard practice for us to give 1/4 to 1/2 material thickness overlap on corner to corner type joints in plate. Easier to index the parts, and if we needed more beef we would call out a 2nd bead on the inside too. Good inside fillets really resist extension of the joint (wall flexing out).
Matt promoting send-cut-send so much by just doing what he does on a regular basis is making me want to try to find an excuse to use their services myself. This whole project could be an elaborate ad campaign for all I know. It's a good one if it is. lol
Once upon a time, in a previous life, I had a log crawling, stump jumping off-road 1947 Willys Jeep. I loved that thing. With blazing 40 hp, it would do "maybe" 45 mph, down a steep hill, tops. But it would almost climb a tree, I had an avid off-roader tell me once that Jeep with locked rear axle in 2WD could go anywhere a 4WD could go. So I benchmarked some difficult terrain in 4WD, then removed the front drive shaft and tested that theory (after welding in the rear spider gears). Although it turned out that wasn't EXACTLY true, I was really surprised at how well the Jeep did perform, and how many places it could get. So your approach to a 2WD Viper (locked rear end, posi?), is reasonably sound, and I'll bet it will surprise you also how many places you will get it to go.
I had a friend back in the '70s that would buy surplus CJ2As and recondition them, then plop a Ford Pinto motor under the hood. I did some welding and all of his painting for him, they looked quite nice. His would hit 60 MPH, but that was scary as hell since the kingpins were always uncooperative and they'd shimmy over 50.
@@d00dEEE HAhaha! Yessiree. I remember driving mine down the highway, and trying to shift lanes, once the leading front tire crossed the crown of the road, it would take off towards that side of the ditch. You had to be prepared for counter measures.
The viper might still struggle in soft terrain at low speed. The reason Jeeps (especially older 2 doors) did well in 2wd with a locker is because they have a lot of weight on the rear axle. Same as how a Vw bug does so well offroad.
This episode was... suspenseful. Getting your tab-2-slot sizing right and allowing a 1/2 material thickness overlap on outside corners will make you popular with the welders when you order 100 or 1,000 parts. To keep them grumpy and adjust your cost simply throw in a random "+/- 0.0015" on center-2-center dims, use wide slot gaps, and maybe toss in a really specific fillet callout on tight internal welds they can't reach. Always worked for me! [EDIT] Ohh! I almost forgot a bonus move. Be sure to laser out holes almost to the size the guys will be tapping. The hardening of the steel will make drilling and tapping a real adventure! Everybody likes adventures, right?
I'm so pleased that this off road viper is actually going to exist. Way more fun to see the progress in real time than to just come across a finished video, too.
Hi Matt, Looking at your fusion360 workflow i think when creating the tabs it would help you to use the "combine" tool after creating the first tab and substract the first wall off of the second, make sure to check "keep Tools". Follow this by the "push/pull" Feature (shortcut "Q" on your keyboard) and add tolerances to the newly created slots. This method can also be helpful at the very end when you're ready to export your design to make sure that you didn't forget any notches and that the parts have no interference. Sincerely yours, a fellow ME who has to do this shit all day every day
You should probably heat treat the finished control arms and spindles. Another subject that, yes, a lot of us understand how tempering and annealing works, but is in actuality a complex subject that people go to school for and spend entire careers perfecting. If someone can't advise you on heat treatment, there are plenty of companies that offer case hardening and fancy treatments.
I'm fairly sure if the springs are soft enough, when you accelerate hard it'll squat so far the huge bonnet will completely obscure your vision. I absolutely love it.
you're right..could do both actually and even weld a valve to be able to squirt some heavy duty grease inside once in awhile..,especially if the suspension gets submerged crossing muddy waters sometimes or hits snowy salty roads..!!..with the time & care he takes to build those parts ,it won't be overkill..!!
Let's see if the algorithm checked any of my boxes: Favorite car ever built? Dodge Viper ✅ Favourite thing to do after a rainy day? Off-Road ✅ Favorite videos to watch on TH-cam? The ones that are so complicated that I feel like a fuxkin mental patient watching them, but get so mad at how much smarter the host is than me that I force myself to learn how to do what they do. ✅ This will easily be my favorite series TH-cam has ever offered. Subscribed.
A grinder and paint makes a welder what he ain't. Keep up the good work and engineering! Makes me want to try my hand at designing and learning to weld things up
It was straining every fiber of my existence not to post that first line above! On prototypes I have gone as far as using Bondo to make my outside welds look presentable. Matt misses a step by not welding the _inside_ of the outer walls of the box structure. No "I told you so" when it fails on the first rock hit. That will make a good video on its own.
Great choice with the Wildpeaks Mat! I've had them on my Trail Boss for around 18k miles with zero complaints about the grip, and I can confirm the road noise is basically zero compared to the mud terrains I used to run.
Fusion has a feature called "joint" and it has an option where instead of jointing two solid bodies, you can use one body as tool body to cut another, and keep the tool body. That means when making tabs, you really could have just made tabs on one part and used joint to cut the corresponding slots on the other parts, saving half of your tab CAD work.
Thanks Matt! What a great video! I feel like you’ve detailed exactly how to replicate your workflow. You must have put a lot of work into it! And I’m sure those suspension arms will be bombproof!
As a sheet metal design engineer, Solidworks Sheet Metal Add-In becomes your best friend.. Tab and Slot for castleations in like 2 clicks. Definately maybe something to look into if you're using a subcon sheet metal/laser cutting company loads. Also, if they press brake or you ever need to have it done, Solidworks will autocalc your flat patterns with the right starting perameters!
Love your videos. I'm surprised you didn't go into why heavy suspension is not awesome, hence why you cut speed holes in it. Some modeling software has collision detection that can help show where parts are in other parts, alternatively you could have someone double check it. The engineer at the company I work for doesn't use either and it has caused some hilarious/costly reworks. I love seeing parts "magicked" into other parts when I go back to check the model.
I love how matt just hits you with the logical step by step of how/why he did what he did and I'm just like "Yup makes sense to me that's real smart". Then the next scene is him being wrong and having to fix it 😂
Yellow dot should align with valve stem. Pains me to see tires mounted incorrectly. That said, I am ALWAYS happy when a video drops from this channel. This one and Bad Obsession Motorsports gets immediate watching, every time.
As a previous suspension design engineer, I'm a little disappointed you didn't dive into the world of suspension design, but I completely understand your reasoning.
"The best thing to do when designing suspension is to just find a car that does what you want your car to do and copy the suspension." So programming tactics, got it.
As far as load cases, for off-road "worst case scenario" we used a "3-2-1" load case: 3G vertical load, 2G longitudinal, 1G tractive effort Steering loads when your tire is up against a rock can also be very high, but that's a different load case based on your max steering loads you can create.
Should have used 3-spoke wheels. They are the elite wheel spoke option. Also, the suspension design is very KibbeTech-style. Look them up, if you haven't already. They make street-able trophy-truck suspension and full-builds. Hit them up, I'm sure they would be happy to be involved in the build. Would help their exposure as well. Do a Collab. What you're doing is essentially what they would do if a customer brought them a Viper to make a trophy-truck out-of.
Can’t wait to see this rolling! Camburg uniballs are fantastic and will serve you well. I know this is a just for fun project but a single shear UCA is a wee bit concerning. Built a couple long travel desert vehicles over the years. Lowers mounted to a drop down X braced mount welded to the bottom of the frame has always worked well. Built a jig to assemble left and right full suspension as per the model (UCA, LCA, Spindle) “in space” off the vehicle to tack everything static with some scrap 1” tube. The suspension was then transferred to the chassis lower mounts and set in place. From there, the UCA mounts were easy to locate and fab. Don’t know much about Vipers but if the motor is pulled from the top of the car who cares if the lower x braced mounts are fixed. Oil changes or dropping the pan will be a future Matt problem. Make the engine cage removable. Yes engine cage, the thing that prevents your chassis rails from going twisty twisty. Adjustable King or Fox 2.5” coil overs are a great choice. ASSuming you mean adjustable as in threaded body, a must to dial in ride height and play with different springs. Don’t forget to limit travel with bumps and straps. As for the rear, that’s…..ok, I’ll stop. Guh, enough rambling. Why the hell am I writing such a long winded comment on a TH-cam video that will just be scrutinized and/or overlooked? Dunno, mechanical brain made me do it.
FYI, solidworks added tab and slot to their sheet metal function a few years ago. You can set up your tab and slot geometry, spacing, clearance, etc. Works quite well. I also used to do the full T but weld on my corners, and agree a partial is easier, However now with the SW tab creation being pretty easy I have really pulled those corners back and do several small tabs and only overlap by maybe 10%. Not quite open root, but very close to it. I also have the tabs only protrude to half way. Set my tig to "spot" which lets me dial in a quick blast for tac's (just one less thing to think about) and go about quickly setting everything up, and then for these type of components I usually whip out the mig and go to town.
Man o man, as an off road race car fabricator and a street car enthusiast it’s definitely hard to watch a perfectly good viper get modified for off road, but other than that, good job
You should look into a sponsorship with send-bend-send so you can use some tubing. That would help with the weight problem. Still wondering how you get substantial bending loads in the UCA rod ends when they've got ball joints at all connections.
As the proud owner of a Gen 1 Dodge Durango that I got to personally drive through the Chrysler HQ when I was doing a mechanical engineering internship there years ago, I can personally confirm you're overqualified. I spent the summer "reverse engineering" "innovation." I did not accept their offer to return the following year.
When this project is done, Matt should take the car out and put it through its paces. Then, take it to an offroad shock tuner to get all of the valving dialed in. Then, test the car in the same location and compare the difference in handling.
Love you videos. I design my own hotrod suspensions. You are making this way to complicated. Use the spindle from a truck of your choice. Design the suspension with Performance Trends "Suspension Analyzer". It's free for a trial period. I recommend you build in a lot of anti-dive. Order the upper and lower control arms to your specs from UB Machine with screw in ball joints. Last time I did this they charged me $140 for both sides. Their products are made for circle track guys, but they will jig up anything. I ordered thick wall tubing. No problem. Parts came powder coated. BTW, when you break are part, they will make you another. I have never broken anything they made for me. You will have to modify the Viper steering rack to prevent bump steer. The steering rack joints should be placed anywhere on a line drawn between the upper and lower suspension mounts. Shock length should be set to have 2/3 travel in bump and 1/3 travel in extension. Good luck.
ORI struts would probably be a good fit for this, seeing as how it won't be doing any serious offroading. The ability to adjust ride height just by airing them up means it wouldn't take any time at all to get them set up right. Plus they're aluminum and shiny.
I very much appreciate how you show what you learn as its happening, and showing us what didn't work and not just the final solution. if you think about it that's how "learning by doing" works... I think that's what's called teaching? 🤔
It's still hard to believe what one guy with the right drive and skillset can achieve in current year. There are just so many tools available to translate ideas into tangible real world things, what used to take entire design departments take hundreds of detailed drawings one engineer with CAD and a 3D printer can do in 30 minutes.
One thing that could be handy for tabs is to use all the tab pieces to cut into the other sides where they intersect. Just keep the tool body. Have to remember to do that though.
You may be overqualified for dodge but the it’s good enough attitude qualifies you for a job a JLR :) Also the half (or even no overlap) design for welded structures is the first thing I was taught when making stuff in cad for welding.
Here we go again. Help future Matt with his all go rythme . I tried to autofil with whatever was on the clipboard but it turned out there was no actual editing functions since last startup. So I figured just write some long winded irrelevant sentences to outwit an Algo looking for very short responses to remove from the rythme thus defeating my attempt to give Matt more revenue to use on these remarkable projects which still defy the understanding of why these videos are so attractive and gripping yet contain really just brief progress. Al hail.
Box because tensegrity design. when you bind two surfaces together with a sufficiently rigid perpendicular surface, then the two outer surfaces will experience opposing force loading until one of the surfaces fails, but this is typically still stronger than a solid bar of equivalent mass. Hence I and H beams instead of solid bar for building construction.
I feel with Mat's sense of humour, he may make a book showcasing 'Oh The Places You'll Go...In an off road dodge viper' Be a hell of a video idea, chum
I have the same 3d scanner as you… the best thing ever was adding a pistol grip that screws into the tripod mount ubder that silicone cover. Sooo much easier.
Used to be a tech at a performance offroad shop, king shocks, and anything made by Carli is the way to go it’s expensive but with the sponsers kings are for sure worth never had any problems with their shocks
I have a theory to keep the frame from breaking - if your suspension parts are seriously heavy duty and can take offroad loads, but their mounting points to the chassis might not be able to, what you want is to reduce the impact load on the chassis - which means fitting really, really soft suspension. Like Citroen DS soft. Go full 1960's kinematics (without having the car bottom out and die on everything). Can you fit longer than 8 inch travel coilovers?
While you're in there, might be an idea to try and draw up some plexiglass headlight shaped covers and put some aftermarket LED's behind them. You'll get better light output than the candles the Viper comes with and the headlights rule are asking ~$5k PER HEADLIGHT for good condition Gen 2 headlights... That money will probably go a long way on this build.
7:28 I can explain. When you are bending something, you are basically streching some areas and compresing other. The areas where there is the most displacement have highest tension and will fail first. Those areas are at the outter surface so you should reinforce the surface and care less about inside of the part.
"You make one change and all of the sudden your center is in Phoenix." That got a large guffaw out of me.
I started coughing, the snort of laughter took me by surprise and something went down the wrong tube XD
Worth it though lol
Being in Phoenix, this was extra funny. 😂
@@rmp5s Who calls a city after a creepy bird on fire?
@@Cloxxki Come visit in the summer some time and you'll understand.
@@creamwobbly 🤣...nah, summer is only ~4 months. It's AMAZING here the majority of the year. That's one major reason why we came here...the wife and I LOATH snow, cold, ice, etc. It gets crazy hot for a few months but hey...you don't have to shovel sunshine!!
Glad you're not keeping us in suspense about this project
best comment
Bravo !
Ha...haha...AHHHHAHAHAHAHA[wheeeze][COUGH] HAHAHAHA
Don’t jinx it
I see what you did there
I did a lot of off roading in southern California in the 80's and 90's with friends.
One of the guys drove an unmodified , Volkswagen Variant which was a compact, rear engined, 2 wheel drive, 2 door wagon with a short wheel base of about 95"L X 62" W; he liked it because he could sleep in it with the rear seat folded flat.
Everyone else had 4WD Jeeps or Toyota trucks , but the guy with the VW wagon had zero problems keeping up with the other "REAL" off road vehicles!
The guy who drove the squareback had exceptional off-road driving skills. He took me up to the top of Saddleback in that vehicle using trails that no vehicle should have been using. He also owned an old Landcruiser, rarely used 4WD, said it was only needed for crawling over boulders and getting real stuck in soft sand. He didn't drive it much, he said it was because he couldn't sleep in it. He said the key to successful off-roading was having a vehicle, any vehicle, with a short wheel base.
@@doctorspooger5966 hey, dunno if it wuz the same guy; Jim Heaton.
The reason that we did so much off roading in those days wuz to get to good, new places to launch our hang gliders.
It's funny that you mention Saddleback peak as there was once an off road park on the west side called "escape country" and a legendary, early hang gliding meet took place there in the late 70's.
I think that it was sponsored partly by "Annie Green Springs?" a cut rate wine of the time.
We mostly use paved roads to get to the tops of mountains these days and flying is still a gas.
In my youth (about 30 years ago) I read in a German off road camping unimog etc magazine a nice article of a guy that built himself a huge unimog Saharan crossing car… and then in the farest possible Sahara oasis he met a group of French guys.. they were there with 2 or 3 2CV 😂😂😂
@@964cuplove Old Citroens, 2CV included, are amazing offroad vehicles. The type of suspension set-ups the french did on them were very capable and the cars were light AF. If by a miracle the 2CV broke in the middle of the desert you could butcher it up and make a motorcycle if you understood mechanics...I'm not even joking, there is a french electrician that took one in the Moroccan deser and when he wrecked he made the 2CV into a motorcycle and got to safety on it.
2-door rear engined wagon sounds absolutely ridiculous in the modern context. It's incredible what cars used to be.
If you're using solid works, you can model those parts as sheet metal instead of regular solid bodys and automatically add tabs and slots using that tab and slot feature so you don't forget any in the future
only if his solidworks is new enough! believe that wasn't added until 2019/20
The joint you are talking about @12:16 is called a corner to corner joint and the other would be more like a butt joint and yes the corner to corner looks much nicer after welding and I think you'll find it'll be a stronger joint.
By the way your welding is getting much neater and uniform.
When I weld T.I.G Aluminium i usually get a block of wood to rest my wrist on so I'm not free handing it and if you do the same you will find that your welds will turn out much nicer and more uniform. Just remember "ABC" in welding "Always Be Comfortable".
I hope this helps you with your welding endeavours. Good luck Matt.👍
I do all the tube welding for turbo charger plumbing applications at PLAZMAMAN in Australia
In "the biz" it was standard practice for us to give 1/4 to 1/2 material thickness overlap on corner to corner type joints in plate. Easier to index the parts, and if we needed more beef we would call out a 2nd bead on the inside too. Good inside fillets really resist extension of the joint (wall flexing out).
7:33 well this is how my machine elements professor described this effect anyways so you still got that undergraduate swag matt
Congratulations on the sponsorship! This is all making me absolutely giddy.
Matt promoting send-cut-send so much by just doing what he does on a regular basis is making me want to try to find an excuse to use their services myself. This whole project could be an elaborate ad campaign for all I know. It's a good one if it is. lol
Once upon a time, in a previous life, I had a log crawling, stump jumping off-road 1947 Willys Jeep. I loved that thing. With blazing 40 hp, it would do "maybe" 45 mph, down a steep hill, tops. But it would almost climb a tree, I had an avid off-roader tell me once that Jeep with locked rear axle in 2WD could go anywhere a 4WD could go. So I benchmarked some difficult terrain in 4WD, then removed the front drive shaft and tested that theory (after welding in the rear spider gears). Although it turned out that wasn't EXACTLY true, I was really surprised at how well the Jeep did perform, and how many places it could get. So your approach to a 2WD Viper (locked rear end, posi?), is reasonably sound, and I'll bet it will surprise you also how many places you will get it to go.
LSD.
I had a friend back in the '70s that would buy surplus CJ2As and recondition them, then plop a Ford Pinto motor under the hood. I did some welding and all of his painting for him, they looked quite nice. His would hit 60 MPH, but that was scary as hell since the kingpins were always uncooperative and they'd shimmy over 50.
@@AlfaRomeo156SWGTA That's where the project ideas come from.
@@d00dEEE HAhaha! Yessiree. I remember driving mine down the highway, and trying to shift lanes, once the leading front tire crossed the crown of the road, it would take off towards that side of the ditch. You had to be prepared for counter measures.
The viper might still struggle in soft terrain at low speed. The reason Jeeps (especially older 2 doors) did well in 2wd with a locker is because they have a lot of weight on the rear axle. Same as how a Vw bug does so well offroad.
This episode was... suspenseful.
Getting your tab-2-slot sizing right and allowing a 1/2 material thickness overlap on outside corners will make you popular with the welders when you order 100 or 1,000 parts. To keep them grumpy and adjust your cost simply throw in a random "+/- 0.0015" on center-2-center dims, use wide slot gaps, and maybe toss in a really specific fillet callout on tight internal welds they can't reach. Always worked for me!
[EDIT] Ohh! I almost forgot a bonus move. Be sure to laser out holes almost to the size the guys will be tapping. The hardening of the steel will make drilling and tapping a real adventure! Everybody likes adventures, right?
So glad to see an explanation for how you design in CAD for SCS, I tried but could never figure it out!
I understand about two tenths of this, but I am blown away by your enthusiasm, drive and most of all your humour.
The suspension and the wait to see the final suspension is killing me
What happens next will shock you.
I'm so pleased that this off road viper is actually going to exist. Way more fun to see the progress in real time than to just come across a finished video, too.
Hi Matt,
Looking at your fusion360 workflow i think when creating the tabs it would help you to use the "combine" tool after creating the first tab and substract the first wall off of the second, make sure to check "keep Tools". Follow this by the "push/pull" Feature (shortcut "Q" on your keyboard) and add tolerances to the newly created slots.
This method can also be helpful at the very end when you're ready to export your design to make sure that you didn't forget any notches and that the parts have no interference.
Sincerely yours,
a fellow ME who has to do this shit all day every day
You should probably heat treat the finished control arms and spindles. Another subject that, yes, a lot of us understand how tempering and annealing works, but is in actuality a complex subject that people go to school for and spend entire careers perfecting.
If someone can't advise you on heat treatment, there are plenty of companies that offer case hardening and fancy treatments.
Oooo those welds are looking great. Stacking dimes. Training paid off!
"A grinder and paint, makes a welder, what he ain't"
I'm fairly sure if the springs are soft enough, when you accelerate hard it'll squat so far the huge bonnet will completely obscure your vision. I absolutely love it.
Thank you Matt!
Just like Pixar….Entertainment and education for the kids……extra humor for the Adults😎
10:00 lathe bragging rights are priceless.
Those welds look much better! And remember: if it didn't break, it was too heavy. Lightening holes are easy to add. Keep a-goin'!
You have to spray paint or oil coat inside the component because the hollow component has a high corrosion probability, especially car bottom parts.
you're right..could do both actually and even weld a valve to be able to squirt some heavy duty grease inside once in awhile..,especially if the suspension gets submerged crossing muddy waters sometimes or hits snowy salty roads..!!..with the time & care he takes to build those parts ,it won't be overkill..!!
I just replaced all the box section on my boat trailer for this exact reason
He's in California. Probably not going to be a problem. Or if it is, one for future Matt
Love these videos. So curious about the average amount of hours of work on the car per minute of video. This one seems insane. Thanks and good luck!
Have to say your scan results with Einstar are really good. Do a tutorial about it!
Let's see if the algorithm checked any of my boxes:
Favorite car ever built?
Dodge Viper ✅
Favourite thing to do after a rainy day?
Off-Road ✅
Favorite videos to watch on TH-cam?
The ones that are so complicated that I feel like a fuxkin mental patient watching them, but get so mad at how much smarter the host is than me that I force myself to learn how to do what they do. ✅
This will easily be my favorite series TH-cam has ever offered.
Subscribed.
A grinder and paint makes a welder what he ain't. Keep up the good work and engineering! Makes me want to try my hand at designing and learning to weld things up
It was straining every fiber of my existence not to post that first line above! On prototypes I have gone as far as using Bondo to make my outside welds look presentable. Matt misses a step by not welding the _inside_ of the outer walls of the box structure. No "I told you so" when it fails on the first rock hit. That will make a good video on its own.
Great choice with the Wildpeaks Mat!
I've had them on my Trail Boss for around 18k miles with zero complaints about the grip, and I can confirm the road noise is basically zero compared to the mud terrains I used to run.
I had the same exact experience!
Loved it, Matt - you're one-of-a-kind!
I'm already excited for offroad viper season 2: AWD
That dodge engineer dig was 👌
Love the visual "a grinder and paint makes me the welder I ain't" at the end
These engineering drawings converted into reality are so satisfying. I'm no welder but those welds look great!
Sweet, 2nd Superfast Matturday in a row. Good work man, keep ‘em coming
All hail the algorithm!
I didn't understand a single bit of this video. I love it.
Fusion has a feature called "joint" and it has an option where instead of jointing two solid bodies, you can use one body as tool body to cut another, and keep the tool body. That means when making tabs, you really could have just made tabs on one part and used joint to cut the corresponding slots on the other parts, saving half of your tab CAD work.
Thanks Matt! What a great video! I feel like you’ve detailed exactly how to replicate your workflow. You must have put a lot of work into it! And I’m sure those suspension arms will be bombproof!
As a sheet metal design engineer, Solidworks Sheet Metal Add-In becomes your best friend.. Tab and Slot for castleations in like 2 clicks. Definately maybe something to look into if you're using a subcon sheet metal/laser cutting company loads.
Also, if they press brake or you ever need to have it done, Solidworks will autocalc your flat patterns with the right starting perameters!
Nice to see that the Sandwich project has continuing utility!
Love your videos. I'm surprised you didn't go into why heavy suspension is not awesome, hence why you cut speed holes in it. Some modeling software has collision detection that can help show where parts are in other parts, alternatively you could have someone double check it. The engineer at the company I work for doesn't use either and it has caused some hilarious/costly reworks. I love seeing parts "magicked" into other parts when I go back to check the model.
I love how matt just hits you with the logical step by step of how/why he did what he did and I'm just like "Yup makes sense to me that's real smart". Then the next scene is him being wrong and having to fix it 😂
10:07 - Impressed that you lathed on the lathe! 🙂
good, liked the vid. didnt understane fancy words, but suspension satisfying
Yellow dot should align with valve stem. Pains me to see tires mounted incorrectly. That said, I am ALWAYS happy when a video drops from this channel. This one and Bad Obsession Motorsports gets immediate watching, every time.
As a previous suspension design engineer, I'm a little disappointed you didn't dive into the world of suspension design, but I completely understand your reasoning.
Thank you for explaining the wheels. I thought they were ugly at first but now they make sense.
Grinding and paint makes me the welder I ain't.
Well played, Sprfst!
Hats off to you on that CAD. Solid bodies would be one thing, but all those tabs is soo much work
"The best thing to do when designing suspension is to just find a car that does what you want your car to do and copy the suspension."
So programming tactics, got it.
As someone who loves vipers and has always wanted to build an off road car this is like a dream come true.
You'll finish before project binky, no worries! Thanks for the content
Whole new levels of "making s**t up as I go along". You both infuriate and impress in equal measure 😁
Entertaining as always : Glad you managed to get the rim and tyres as sponsorship. All hail.
As far as load cases, for off-road "worst case scenario" we used a "3-2-1" load case: 3G vertical load, 2G longitudinal, 1G tractive effort
Steering loads when your tire is up against a rock can also be very high, but that's a different load case based on your max steering loads you can create.
14:02 grinder & paint makes me the welder I ain't :D
Should have used 3-spoke wheels. They are the elite wheel spoke option. Also, the suspension design is very KibbeTech-style. Look them up, if you haven't already. They make street-able trophy-truck suspension and full-builds. Hit them up, I'm sure they would be happy to be involved in the build. Would help their exposure as well. Do a Collab. What you're doing is essentially what they would do if a customer brought them a Viper to make a trophy-truck out-of.
Can’t wait to see this rolling! Camburg uniballs are fantastic and will serve you well. I know this is a just for fun project but a single shear UCA is a wee bit concerning. Built a couple long travel desert vehicles over the years. Lowers mounted to a drop down X braced mount welded to the bottom of the frame has always worked well. Built a jig to assemble left and right full suspension as per the model (UCA, LCA, Spindle) “in space” off the vehicle to tack everything static with some scrap 1” tube. The suspension was then transferred to the chassis lower mounts and set in place. From there, the UCA mounts were easy to locate and fab. Don’t know much about Vipers but if the motor is pulled from the top of the car who cares if the lower x braced mounts are fixed. Oil changes or dropping the pan will be a future Matt problem. Make the engine cage removable. Yes engine cage, the thing that prevents your chassis rails from going twisty twisty. Adjustable King or Fox 2.5” coil overs are a great choice. ASSuming you mean adjustable as in threaded body, a must to dial in ride height and play with different springs. Don’t forget to limit travel with bumps and straps. As for the rear, that’s…..ok, I’ll stop. Guh, enough rambling. Why the hell am I writing such a long winded comment on a TH-cam video that will just be scrutinized and/or overlooked? Dunno, mechanical brain made me do it.
FYI, solidworks added tab and slot to their sheet metal function a few years ago.
You can set up your tab and slot geometry, spacing, clearance, etc.
Works quite well.
I also used to do the full T but weld on my corners, and agree a partial is easier,
However now with the SW tab creation being pretty easy I have really pulled those corners back and do several small tabs and only overlap by maybe 10%. Not quite open root, but very close to it.
I also have the tabs only protrude to half way.
Set my tig to "spot" which lets me dial in a quick blast for tac's (just one less thing to think about) and go about quickly setting everything up, and then for these type of components I usually whip out the mig and go to town.
Good old grinder and paint trick at the end.
Rod ends in bending. Wouldn't expect anything less from an FSAE veteran :D
all of these videos feel like I just sat through a semester of mechanical engineering 440, I love them and hate them at the same time.
“…You make one change and all of a sudden your role center is in Phoenix.” 😂 Truer words have never been said regarding suspension kinematics.
Man o man, as an off road race car fabricator and a street car enthusiast it’s definitely hard to watch a perfectly good viper get modified for off road, but other than that, good job
You should look into a sponsorship with send-bend-send so you can use some tubing. That would help with the weight problem. Still wondering how you get substantial bending loads in the UCA rod ends when they've got ball joints at all connections.
As the proud owner of a Gen 1 Dodge Durango that I got to personally drive through the Chrysler HQ when I was doing a mechanical engineering internship there years ago, I can personally confirm you're overqualified. I spent the summer "reverse engineering" "innovation." I did not accept their offer to return the following year.
Good idea about welding into a valley making the two parts slightly shorter.
When this project is done, Matt should take the car out and put it through its paces. Then, take it to an offroad shock tuner to get all of the valving dialed in. Then, test the car in the same location and compare the difference in handling.
Your welding has really improved!
I heard someone once say: "Grinder and paint make me the welder I aint" thought it was pretty insightful.
12:35 Like hell I'm gonna take some of my own time to be of service of future me!
Love your videos, Matt. Thanks for sharing your process and intelligence. Makes me feel smarter than I am.
Love you videos. I design my own hotrod suspensions. You are making this way to complicated. Use the spindle from a truck of your choice. Design the suspension with Performance Trends "Suspension Analyzer". It's free for a trial period. I recommend you build in a lot of anti-dive. Order the upper and lower control arms to your specs from UB Machine with screw in ball joints. Last time I did this they charged me $140 for both sides. Their products are made for circle track guys, but they will jig up anything. I ordered thick wall tubing. No problem. Parts came powder coated. BTW, when you break are part, they will make you another. I have never broken anything they made for me. You will have to modify the Viper steering rack to prevent bump steer. The steering rack joints should be placed anywhere on a line drawn between the upper and lower suspension mounts. Shock length should be set to have 2/3 travel in bump and 1/3 travel in extension. Good luck.
>You are making this way to complicated.
You do realise the channel you're on, right?
sorry for the typos you-your, to-too, are-a. I blame the keyboord.
Loving the fast progress on this build.
ORI struts would probably be a good fit for this, seeing as how it won't be doing any serious offroading. The ability to adjust ride height just by airing them up means it wouldn't take any time at all to get them set up right. Plus they're aluminum and shiny.
I'm becoming more and more a believer in the idea of building things in squarish sections out of flat stuff.
I very much appreciate how you show what you learn as its happening, and showing us what didn't work and not just the final solution. if you think about it that's how "learning by doing" works... I think that's what's called teaching? 🤔
Just love the way you explain / describe you process, has me laughing every time.
"Hey, leave us out of this madness!" - Phoenix
It's still hard to believe what one guy with the right drive and skillset can achieve in current year. There are just so many tools available to translate ideas into tangible real world things, what used to take entire design departments take hundreds of detailed drawings one engineer with CAD and a 3D printer can do in 30 minutes.
Great welds , droping dime after dime.
Great job on the video Matt! Thanks for making it.
Glad to see the project I voted for is going forward! Great job Matt, keep us entertained.
One thing that could be handy for tabs is to use all the tab pieces to cut into the other sides where they intersect. Just keep the tool body. Have to remember to do that though.
You may be overqualified for dodge but the it’s good enough attitude qualifies you for a job a JLR :)
Also the half (or even no overlap) design for welded structures is the first thing I was taught when making stuff in cad for welding.
At the very end - as AvE says "A grinder and paint makes me the welder I aint!"
wow first time hearing about KMC wheels, they're damn lucky you advertised them
Me wishing it was a half hour video... Can't wait for part 3!
j'ai jamais vue un triangle comme ca , c'est magnifique
The AT3W are great long lasting tires. The hard compound sucks on wet pavement so be careful!
Here we go again. Help future Matt with his all go rythme . I tried to autofil with whatever was on the clipboard but it turned out there was no actual editing functions since last startup. So I figured just write some long winded irrelevant sentences to outwit an Algo looking for very short responses to remove from the rythme thus defeating my attempt to give Matt more revenue to use on these remarkable projects which still defy the understanding of why these videos are so attractive and gripping yet contain really just brief progress. Al hail.
Box because tensegrity design. when you bind two surfaces together with a sufficiently rigid perpendicular surface, then the two outer surfaces will experience opposing force loading until one of the surfaces fails, but this is typically still stronger than a solid bar of equivalent mass. Hence I and H beams instead of solid bar for building construction.
I feel with Mat's sense of humour, he may make a book showcasing 'Oh The Places You'll Go...In an off road dodge viper'
Be a hell of a video idea, chum
I have the same 3d scanner as you… the best thing ever was adding a pistol grip that screws into the tripod mount ubder that silicone cover. Sooo much easier.
Used to be a tech at a performance offroad shop, king shocks, and anything made by Carli is the way to go it’s expensive but with the sponsers kings are for sure worth never had any problems with their shocks
Cant wait to see the land speed car in action!
I love how in the model the top strut mount has unlimited degrees of freedom. When solidsworks refuses to model a bush…
I run the Wildpeaks on my Mustang, they do pretty well in dirt... Not great, but not bad.
I have a theory to keep the frame from breaking -
if your suspension parts are seriously heavy duty and can take offroad loads, but their mounting points to the chassis might not be able to, what you want is to reduce the impact load on the chassis - which means fitting really, really soft suspension. Like Citroen DS soft. Go full 1960's kinematics (without having the car bottom out and die on everything).
Can you fit longer than 8 inch travel coilovers?
While you're in there, might be an idea to try and draw up some plexiglass headlight shaped covers and put some aftermarket LED's behind them. You'll get better light output than the candles the Viper comes with and the headlights rule are asking ~$5k PER HEADLIGHT for good condition Gen 2 headlights... That money will probably go a long way on this build.
I have these same tires on my rav4. Best all-round tire out there
Highly recommend looking at Afco shocks, they’re super configurable for this kind of stuff, and a tend to be cheaper than fox shocks
7:28 I can explain. When you are bending something, you are basically streching some areas and compresing other. The areas where there is the most displacement have highest tension and will fail first. Those areas are at the outter surface so you should reinforce the surface and care less about inside of the part.
Inner braces for avoiding torsion?