Project Rear Bar

Well, pretty much 5 years in the planning, one unit built about 4 years ago for Engineers testing and some pretty shoddy drawings saw this project parked till technology could catch up.

Now, what with plasma and laser cutters that can extrude up to 2 inch thick steel plate and software that can create all your sheets metal templates and export the design, cut and bend all to near mm precision has now seen this project reborn from the ashes.

Project Rear Bar is back on the drawing board and in CAD design phase.

Here is a sample of the partial design concept:





This is the stress analysis with results at point of material fatigue and failure. Pretty impressive stuff.


I've come up with my own rear recovery system that allows for D-shackles to be attached on either side of the rear bar. I've designed it such that they are located in the same alignment as the point of contact with the chassis. If need be, you can also have a D-shackle hitch.

For now, this is where I'm at. A massive way to go, but being able now to do the design and design analysis/testing in my own time rather than having a model built and physically testing is a major saving.

So now all I need to do is finalise the design of the sheet metal for the external panelling, design the wheel carrier arms, design the tail light locations and carrier arm couplings and then I can go into production

Oh and also upgrade the wiring to the garage to take the welding kit

 

[spinners]

Is that yours?...

It's no ones. This is just a picture I found of a rear bar that had the Warex pads on it.

 

[NachaLuva]

It's no ones.

But it must be someone's lol haha

Is yours gonna be like that?

 

[d_generate]

Bread boards are usually made of that stuff, go hit Woolies.

 

[spinners]

Here are the pics of the parts I've received to date.

Stub axle, bearings and hub:

LED Tail lights:

Indicator​

Tail light​

Stop light​

Reverse light​

LED Working light:

Still doing some final redesign of various components prior to sending it all off for fabrication.

 

[spinners]

Bread boards are usually made of that stuff, go hit Woolies.

Good idea.

 

[NachaLuva]

Those axles/hubs look pretty solid, reckon they'l handle it fine :biggrin:

The LEDS look pretty good too. Do you know if you'l have to get a different flasher unit?

 

[taza]

Whats the status on your bar?

 

[spinners]

Been pretty busy the last few months so have not been active on finalising the design. Been designing the extensions to my house. Damn my wife for not being able to think look at drawings and formulate a 3D image in her head!

I've been procuring bits and pieces along the way also. REPCO were having a sale a few weeks back and I managed to score a 4 piece reversing sensor kit for $60.

I did however geet some CAD images from Subaru Japan and have been using them to obtain a 3D trial fit without having to do a rough fit. I'll try and post up the images this evening.

 

[spinners]

Here are some of those images of the model superimposed onto the CAD. Iwas hoping to obtain an actual 3D, but alas.

As you can see, I still have a little bit of work to get the profile correct.

I am starting to think that the curved profile will be a little complicated to fabricate. I will think about this a bit more.

 

[taza]

Nice, how did you get the pic of the Foz in there?

 

[spinners]

They are a series of cad elevations. I can import the into Solidworks and reference them the planes in there.

Almost as good as having a real 3d model to work on

 

[MY07Foz]

Hey Spinners,

This is a seriously fantastic project! Nice one mate.

I'm a week away from driving to Goulburn to have my bullbar and rear bar (with swing away wheel carrier) fitted and have been looking at this and drooling! lol

I'd be interested in your total costs of the project when complete...

Also, how much will it weigh in the end? What sort of consideration have you had to give toward the weight of the two wheels on the back, the other features as well as the bar itself? Any compensations for this?

Looking forward to seeing the end product when you're done!!

 

[Fly]

Did you have a look at the various model libraries for 3DSMAX and the like? There a probably a couple Foresters available for a decent price (or free, if you've got the necessary Google-fu skills... but shhhh I didn't say that!). They are usually available as 3D DXF, or exportable to 3D DXF, o you should be able to get it in Solidworks quite easily (although sometimes the axis gets inversed).

I've myself found a '99 that I'll use to make a rough draft of the lightbar I want. Although mine is an '02, it's really just to have a better idea (not for CAM) so it'll do the job.