Dune Buggy GPS Sun Shade Project

Three weeks ago or so I finished a project of mounting a GPS into my dune buggy.  I know this will be a nice addition to the car while I am driving and I also know that most of the time I will have the top off of the car.  With this of course brings the sun and along with it some difficulty in trying to see the GPS properly.  So a sun shade was what was needed for the GPS and I am happy to report that I put the finishing touches on it a few days ago.

Here is a good shot of the GPS (without the sun shade) and it's mount on the steering column.  Since all of the gauges for the car are located in the center of the dash the location for the GPS worked out rather nicely.  

I had worked out the design for the sun shade that I wanted for the GPS using Fusion 360 software. The first attempt I had come up with was very similar to the finished design pictured above but ended up being to large and bulky to make it work properly.  This new design has a visor that is only a couple of inches long and 1/8th of an inch thick overall.  

Again using Fusion 360 I was able to model the GPS to scale along with the sun shade to get a good idea of how it would look. The sun shade would be slid over the top of the GPS to secure it in place. A nice look that should serve me very well. 

Once I was satisfied with my design I 3D printed it. Then sanded it smooth to prep it for priming and  finally painting it a nice glossy black.  

The inside of the sun shade where it touches the GPS was lined with felt to get a nice soft/firm grip on the GPS.  This also eliminated the chance that the sun shade would rattle around on top of the GPS while being used. The new sun shade can also be installed or removed from the GPS in less than a second so I am very happy with the fit and finish of it. 

The original design I came up with for the sun shade had a visor that was three inches long.  This ended up being way to close to the steering wheel for my liking.  With this new version and it's shorter visor length I think I finally have it dialed in to where it looks good and should shield the GPS rather nicely when I am out and about driving in the sun. Plus the fact that it can all be easily removed and stored away when I am not using it in the car.  A win-win for sure.  

I have to finish the glove compartment project next. Things with that project are also going smoothly so I should have that wrapped up in the next week or so.  (Keeping my fingers crossed.)   Then I have one more large project for the dune buggy that will be coming up. Once I have more details ironed out I will start posting about it. That project looks to be another nice addition to the car that will bring some challenges as well as some nice rewards. Something that will make driving the dune buggy even more enjoyable!  So check back again as hopefully you will find that project very interesting as well.  Have a good one!

Hiding Dune Buggy Brake Hydraulics With A Shiny New Housing!

I have finally put the finishing touches on another project for my dune buggy today.  One of the features that was built into this fabulous little vehicle was a set of independent rear brakes.  In order to operate these brakes a set of levers were installed between the seats to activate either a left or right rear brake when driving the dune buggy in the sand.  Dune buggies don't steer very well in the sand and so the independent brakes are needed.  Since I never plan on driving my dune buggy off road these levers and of course the independent brakes serve no real purpose other than to look nice. So this project was born.

Here you can see the two levers between the seats that look nice and all but serve no purpose when driving the car on the street.  So these had to go.

Here's another reason to get rid of the levers and cover up the hydraulics that are between the seats. The original builder of the car lived in Arizona and so the brakes for driving in the desert are what is needed but this car never saw the sand much less even rain.  Everything else in the car is near perfection but I could not stand the look of the hydraulics between the seats.  It threw the look of the interior right out the window.

With a closer look you can see how badly this all looks. The guy that built the car did an excellent job but gave up I think when he got to this point in the build. I did not want to actually remove the hydraulic setup as the next owner after me may want to drive the dune buggy in the sand.  So the actual hydraulics will stay.

I simply removed the levers which in itself cleaned up the interior of the car quite a bit. To remove the levers took me only a couple of minutes and I've stashed them away with a pile of other things that I will save when I decide to sell the car some time in the distant future. 

To figure out how big the new housings to cover up the hydraulics needed to be I simply took some basic measurements and made a couple of foam core boxes. In the top photo you can see both foam core covers that I had worked on.  The smaller cover would be used to just cover up the brake hydraulics and still use the brake levers.  The larger cover is the one I will use to cover the all of the hardware after the brake levers have been removed. I slid this larger foam core cover over the hydraulics and hardware that was left after I removed the levers to make sure that everything would fit properly.

The real puzzle I needed to solve to mount the new housing was how to secure it to the hydraulic cylinders so that it would not come loose after driving the car for some period of time.  In the photo above you can see two bolts that extend upward between the two cylinders.  These are known as "T" bolts and I was able to slide them between the cylinders and then rotate them 90 degrees so that they would not come out. 

With most all of my projects I do some testing of parts to make sure everything will go together smoothly during the final assembly. This project was no different.  Pictured above are six test parts that I needed to lock down the final center mount for the new housings.  As you can see a lot of changes were made to finally come up with the finished part pictured below.

  
 This is an image of the final design for the center mount that slides down over the two bolts that hold the housing in place and over top of the two hydraulic cylinders.  This took me a while to figure out but is the key to the puzzle of how to mount the housings.

In the photo above you can see the "T" bolts placed on the driver's seat along with a 3D printed center mount that I designed and 3D printed. 

Once this center mount was securely fastened to the hydraulic cylinders with washers and nuts I could move on to the next step in making the new housings.

I was able to easily slide the housing to cover up the hydraulics over top of the inner mount.  The center mount was the exact width of the inside of the housing. Once this was in place I only needed to use a hot glue gun to lock the inner mount to the outer housing. In the photos above is pictured a smaller housing that I had built that would allow use of the brake levers and still cover up the ugly hydraulics that make the brakes work. 

This is how the short cover looked before the cover was smoothed and painted glossy black. Even without it being smoothed out the look is a big improvement over what was there from the start.

Here is what the short cover looked like after it had been smoothed out and painted.  The cutout on the left side of the cover so to allow the hydraulic lines to come out from under the cover and still be hooked up for use.  The opening on the right side of the photo is where the levers would extend out for the brakes. 

In the photos above you can see how much better the interior of the car looks after I put the short cover into place over the brake hydraulics.  A vast improvement.  Again I will set this short housing aside for the next owner as I will not be using it while I own the car.  

But getting back to the setup that I needed, here is the larger housing that will cover up everything that was left over after removing the brake levers.  The new housing already smoothed out and spray painted with primer is shown above.  Again the large opening on the right side of the picture of the housing is where the hydraulics will come out from under the housing. On the left side it is set up a bit differently than the smaller housing.  The openings here were needed to allow the cover to clear the mounts for the seat belts. 

Here is what the cover looked like once it had been painted a nice glossy black. I used a simple little carboard cover on top of the house at this point just to keep paint out of the holes where the nuts are installed for the mounting bolts for the top cover. 

This new top cover for the housing also needed to have six small bolts to hold it in place rather than four bolts with the smaller cover.  Here once again it was sanded smooth and several coats of primer were sprayed on the part to make it ready for more glossy black paint. 

Here finally are the two housings that will be used to cover up either a portion of the brake hydraulics or all of the assembly.  The smaller housing has it's cover already mounted but I did not want to add the hardware to the larger housing when this photo was taken as I was immediately going to install it into the dune buggy and did not want to put it together and then take it apart and put it back together again. 

Just like the smaller housing the larger one slid into place perfectly and was bolted down using the two "T" bolts that were placed between the brake hydraulic cylinders.  It was a perfect fit. Very secure all I needed to do at this point was to tighten the nuts for the bolts and then mount the top cover plate with the six smaller bolts.

A very nice clean installation.

I am very happy with how the interior of the dune buggy now looks. No more brake levers that would never be used. This also makes it easier to operate the emergency brake and no ugly hydraulic brake cylinders to stick out like a sore thumb in the middle of everything else that looks like perfection.  

Scratch another project off for the new dune buggy!

A New Glovebox For My Dune Buggy..... Part One

As most of you already know I purchased a rather flashy looking little dune buggy shortly before Christmas.  I have been getting all of the paperwork done to get it licensed, registered, and insured so I am happy that all of that work is done.  I still have a couple more projects planned for the dune buggy and one of them is to add a glove compartment to it.  Currently it does not have one so I thought it would be a good thing to add to the car just to store my registration papers along with sun glasses and maybe some sun tan lotion for the summer sun.  

Here's another chance for me to show off my little beauty once again so that if you have not already seen it on my blog before now's your chance.

Here's a good shot of the interior of the buggy and as you can see there is a rather large looking void in the right side of the dash where a glove compartment would normally be in any other car.  In this photo the space for the glove compartment looks huge but in reality it is about average size. The big trick to getting a glove compartment made was trying to figure out the exact shape needed to fill this void in the dash as closely as possible so it would look right in the car. 

Here you can see the nice rounded shape of the dash that is just ahead of the passenger. The roll cage cross member that is horizontally mounted and is under the gauges in the dash looks just a bit out of place with no glove compartment so I started scratching my head to try and figure out the best plan of attack to make a glove compartment fit into this odd shape.

I started with a piece of foam core that I had in my work room and cut out a shape the I thought would fit nicely as the base for the compartment and line up fairly well with the lower shape of the dash. I taped this piece in place with masking tape to hold it where I needed it while again trying to figure out the rest of the compartment. On the right side of the roll cage is a mounting plate with a bolt running through it and this had to be cleared when inserting the base plate made of foam core.  Another obstacle to get around for the glove compartment.

I next added 1/4" Styrofoam strips to the rear edge of the base plate foam core.  I hot glued these in place to one another as I did not want to get any hot glue on the dash itself. Next I taped down an upper foam strip where I wanted the glove compartment to be at it's highest.  Then I started adding more foam strips between the upper and lower horizontal strips and hot glued these together.  The reason for the strips was so that I could get an accurate profile of the original dash to make a mold for the new fiber glass glove compartment later on in the project.

Here all of the vertical Styrofoam strips have been installed and hot glued to each other. Again no gluing was done directly on to the original dash as I did not want to cause any damage to the anything and this entire assembly needed to be removed in one piece. 

To complete the shape of the glove compartment I added several triangular foam core pieces on both ends of the enclosure.  These pieces took me a little time to get correct as the back surface of the triangles needed to be curved to match the shape of the new compartment. Again as before I hot glued these in place. 

With all of the foam pieces and foam core hot glued together I was able to pull the entire assembly for the glove compartment out in under a second.  So I was happy that it came out so easily and fit perfectly into the cavity in the dash.  As you can see the shape of the glove compartment is at this point looking rather small and very odd shaped.  But at least I have the general shape at this point so I can proceed to figure out the next steps in the project.

Here I've added a piece of foam core just to get and idea of how the door would be attached to the glove compartment. You can see a cut out in the lower right corner of the compartment and this as I said earlier is needed to avoid hitting the mounting hardware that is used in the roll cage assembly.

At this point in the project I knew that I wanted to have a lock for the glove compartment.  I tracked down an original compartment lock for an original 60's era VW.  This only cost me $17 with free shipping and was the perfect lock for the project.  Very small and brand new at that. 

I knew that I did not want the door striker plate for the lock to be made out of plastic as this much sooner or later would wear out and have to be replaced.  So I came up with this little striker made out of a small piece of aluminum that was in my supply of parts in the shop.  As you can see it is not very large. This I mounted to an adjustable bracket for the striker assembly.

This was the first design I came up with for the face of the glove compartment.  As you can see I did not have the correct lock at this point and have the cutout for the roll cage mount. This caused several issue with the glove compartment as it made the door smaller and you could see hardware on the face of the door frame. On top of all of this the shape of the Styrofoam and foam core (plug?) came to a rather tight angle at the top of the compartment which left very little room for the lock to work at all.  Something had to change. 

The only choice I had to keep the project moving forward was to extend the glove compartment out one inch to make room for the lock and the striker.  This gave me a roomier glove compartment and the needed space to make the lock and door striker work properly.  I also was able to eliminate a bunch of bolts for the door frame.  This cleaned up things nicely for the look of the compartment as well as giving me a larger door opening.  The recessed bolts that hold the hinge mounting hardware will be bonded into the door when it comes time to do the finishing work on the project. This will make the glove compartment more secure as well. 

Here's a good look at the door and door frame assembly with the door lock and striker installed.  The blue pieces mounted to the inside of door are retaining clips that hold 1/4" aluminum pins that are used as hinges for the door. The tabs that stick out of these clips on both sides of the door are there to keep the door from opening to far when it is unlocked for use.  The door will only rotate from vertical to horizontal a total of 90 degrees.  A simple and effective way to hold the door in place and in position. 

Here's a nice look at what the door assembly will look like from the outside.  Again the recessed bolts will be bonded into the door which will make them more secure, better looking and become permanent studs for the hinge pin retaining clips.

Here's a good look at the hinge pins that will be mounted in the door frame.  These pins as I said earlier will hold the door in place with the help of the hinge pin retaining clips.  This setup also makes it easier to install the door or remove it if it becomes necessary in the future. 

With the design finally sorted out I went ahead and added the addition one inch of Styrofoam to the Styrofoam and foamcore plug.  Then I sanded it into shape, rechecked that it still fit into the dune buggy properly, wrapped it in clear packaging tape and then fiber glassed only the top surfaces as shown in the photos above.  I wanted to be able to get the foam plug out of the fiber glass so I left the bottom open for easier access in this portion of the build. With the clear packaging tape on the outer surface of the plug it would give me a nice smooth finish on the inside of the fiber glass part and also make it easier to remove the new compartment from the plug. 

After I let the fiber glass cure overnight I was able pop the new fiber glass compartment off of the plug in less than five minutes.  I used some popsicle sticks to pry the fiber glass loose from the plug and tapped it with a rubber mallet to release the upper portion of the new part.  I now had a new fiber glass housing for the glove compartment that fits perfectly into the dune buggy and was nice and smooth on the inside as well. 

I took a Dremel tool and cut out the front area of the housing where the door frame for the compartment would be mounted. I did not need to add any additional fiber glass to the interior of the compartment as it was plenty stiff enough at this point.

To make the bottom of the compartment I took a piece of one inch Styrofoam and fiber glassed the top surface with six or seven layers of 8 oz. fiber glass cloth.  This gave me a nice stiff section to work with for the base of the compartment.  I removed the Styrofoam and then sanded the new panel smooth. I then took fiber glass resin and micro-balloons to make a putty mixture to join these two pieces together.  

To finish of the compartment I next added the door frame that I 3D printed a couple of days earlier. This slid into place very nicely. I bonded this to the fiber glass compartment after having marked and trimmed the front lower fiber glass surface.  It was simpler to remove this portion of the fiber glass before I added the door frame.  I did not want to mess up the door frame after it was installed.  

That's about it for this post.  Once I get the door 3D printed I will be able to put all of the rest of the parts together for the compartment and work on the mounting hardware that will need to be created to install it into the dune buggy.  When I get all of that figured out then I will take the compartment out of the car, tear it apart and prep it for primer and paint. So lots to do yet.  I'll fill you in when I get farther along.  Have a good day in your shop!