My Grandpa's got a new project.

[brian]

Hello,

I am building my nearly three year old Grandson a Toylander 2.  I have previously built my son and daughter a roadgoing kitcar each and now that they are finnished, I felt the need to occupy myself once again and the Toylander took my eye.

I have posted a few current pictures of the model with my grandson trying it out in the gallery.



Brian.

[multisync]

Hi brian
I've just got started, see my post! You are quite a bit further ahead than me as I havnt got windscreen or tailgate in yet. Did you buy the bonnet in ready done? Or bend it yourself? Are you buying in the axle parts or making them? I've made a start on the axles and hubs, but making them is taking longer than i thought. I'll try to get some pics posted if I can get away from the woodwork for 5 minutes! Best Wishes

[brian]

Hello Multisync [a real name would be nice],

Yes, I bought the bonnet ready rolled from Richard, I looked at the cost of the aluminium I would have to buy and the 1200X600 piece was going to cost me nearly as much as the part ready made. 

The axle parts I have made myself, I have made a swing axle version and I have added Ackerman steering geometry and added King Pin inclination to aid Castor to help with self centering.

I could see no point in the front independant route for two reasons:-
  A) I did not know where I could get suitable springs from and,
  B) Without the rear being sprung, there did not seem to be any point.

The swing axle works on the three legged stool principle so the rear wheels will always be on the ground under reasonable terrain conditions.

I hope that helps.

Regards,

Brian.

[multisync]

Hi Brian
Yes thats interesting, I havnt had a go at the bonnet yet, I do have a suitable piece of alluminium, but its a bit thick and quite hard, I think if I try to bend it, I'll end up with creases not nice curves!
I too am on the route of building my own axles. Front will be a swing axle, king pins are threaded rod, from Screwfix, I have turned up some stub axles and will have Ackerman type steering, about 10 degree angle on steering arms.
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[brian]

The Toylander 2 is for my 2 years and 364 days year old Grandson, yes, it's his birthday tomorrow.

We have him for the day every Thursday, and any other days we can tear him away from his parents.

Upon arrival of the build manual and drawings, the materials were bought and build commenced on the Thursday of that week and Travis was on hand to help.

He was allowed to hold the battery drill for me and pretended to drill one of the many holes.

[brian]

The build quickly progressed to this stage following the excellent instructions and full size drawings.

[brian]

I decided to use precut MDF for the curved sections of the front wings.  This is MDF sheet available as a 1200x600x6mm sheet, from B&Q with pre scored/cut lines across the sheet at approx. 6m intervals to allow the sheet to be curved.

In this way, the wings could be made in one piece.  It will require the inner wing and side bearer blocks to be adjusted to nearer the edge contour of the sides as the MDF sheet is only 6mm thick.  When the glue holding the wingtops in place had set, I turned the body upside down and poures PVA glue onto the underside of the wingtops and using a flat scraper and pushed the glue into all the saw cuts, leaving it to set.  I then poured a second coat of PVA on and when that had set, the result was an extremely strong structure.

The attached photo shows the finnished wingtops and bonnet in place.



I had originally intended to make the bonnet myself but when I checked on the cost of the smallest piece of aluminium I could buy, it was not much different to the price of the pre made bonnet supplied by Anthony, so I purchased the complete bonnet pre-made, and here, No1 grandson demonstrates the piece

[brian]

I have built full size kitcars in the past for my Son and Daughter and this has left me with several full size car parts lying around so I thought I would use one or two in travis's car, the steering wheel being a case in point.

I was able to fix this to the 12mm threaded rod I was using as the steering shaft, which at this point, I had not cut to size, so here we have a special arrangement for "back street drivers".  Travis was not impressed, , quickly pointing out that "he should be sat in the front Grandpa".

Subsequently, I exchanged this 350mm wheel  which was too close to the sides of the Toylander when being turned, for a 275mm wheel that I bought for my son's kitcar which proved in his case to be too small as the steering effort required was too great.

Both wheels have a central horn push which will be used on the Toylander by clamping an earth strap onto the shaft tube and just taking one wire to the central wheel boss of the steering wheel. As the Toylander steering wheel does not do a full revolution, lock to lock, there will be sufficient slack in the wire for this not to be a problem.

I might have to have a rethink on that now that I have decided to gear down the steering, because the wheel will now do slightly over one revolution lock to lock,[See later posts in this thread. ]. I am hopeing that with a coil around the steeing shaft under the dummy shaft cover, I will get away with it, we will see.





The wire itself will be hidden at the wheel end by the simple expedient of using a piece of plastic waste pipe between the bulkhead and the underside of the wheel around the steering column proper.

[brian]

The new, smaller wheel can be seen in this photo along with a Rover 100/Metro handbrake lever and a homemade gearlever topped with a Landrover gearknob.

The gearlever has a metal gate undernieth giving a simple push forward  and side for forwards, and pull back and side for reverse when the electrics are installed.

The windscreen in this photo is not yet finished and was only fitted to show Travis what it was going to look like.  His comment on seeing it for the first time was "That's nice Grandpa, but there's no windscreen wipers".  The observations of a soon to be three year old.

Needless to say, the wipers went on my shopping list and you will see them in subsequent photo's.

[brian]

A bit more work done on the front suspension, the swing axle is fitted to the tub now, the axle beam pivots on a kitcar wishbone pivot and to take the torsional strain, I have used roll bar droplinks from a Renault[I think, can't remember, they were advertised on EBay from a company that sells many droplinks, I simply asked them to supply me the longest they had available].

I used them to brace the beam back to the tub.



The King Pins are again the kitcar suspension chassis pivots with the stub axles welded on, the steering arms I bent into a "V" to give the ackerman angles and then they were welded to the stub axles.  This gave forward and rear facing steering arms as I needed the abillity to have the track rod in front or behind the axle beam and a choice of positions for the steering draglink because the end of the steering column was very close to the beam and I want to gear the steering to do away with the toy like steering action.

[brian]

The track rod is fully adjustable for toe in  , and uses left and right hand threaded ball joints.  I decided to use the front position for the track rod, and the drag link will attach to the rear of one.  The unused rear facing steering arm I may cut off when all is complete.

[brian]

The steering column shaft end was very close to the axle beam, and as I wanted to gear the steering down to get away from the very direct action of the toy steering, I fitted a universal joint to direct the steering drive away from the axle beam to finnish at right angles to the tub bottom so that I can have a chain drive across to a larger sprocket, to which the steering idler arm will be attached to operate the wheel steering arms via the draglink.

[brian]

The end of the universal joint is supported by a bearing and the small sprocket will be attached to that.

Unfortuanately, the supplier of the two sprockets and chain rather mixed things up a bit, I ordered a 9X3/8" and a 30X3/8" sprocket with 3/8" pitch chain, but I got sent a 9x3/8" and a 30x1/2" by mistake, so I am waiting for the correct 30x3/8" sprocket coming to complete the steering reduction drive.

[brian]

To protect tiny fingers, the whole of the shaft and chain drive will be boxed in, here, the two battens are part of the universal joint protective cover, I will fabricate a chain drive cover when I have finaly fitted the second sprocket and seen how the whole thing works out.

[brian]

A bit more progress.

Further work on the steering, the replacement 30 tooth sprocket arrived and was fitted to the idler shaft and the chain attached linking 9 tooth drive to 30 tooth idler sprocket and the idler arm attached to the 30 tooth sprocket.




As you can see, there is far too much slack in the chain, so I need a tensioning device, possibly an idler sprocket that I can tension, as I have said elsewhere, alter/improve the original design, and you are quite likely to create another problem, this is supposed to be fun.