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hydraulic rock crawler?????

M

mikereid350

NAXJA Forum User
Location
sudbury,ontario,canada
i had a bit of a brain fart today... ok i am a heavy equipment mechanc and know a good bit about hydraulics.. i was thinking of making a rock crawler.. i know everybody has hydrolauc steering but whats about hydraulic drives.. that would mean no transmission, no t case just a small diesel engine, 2 pumps, 2 motors, and hyd tanks and mess of hoses...??? am i going insane or so i have a good idea...?? lets hear your thoughts.. hrmmm... you can operate each axle independalnty heck you can turn on axle forward and one back ward>..
 
Hell man if you've got the know how, tooling, and budget go for it!

My concerns would be, in this order:

WEIGHT - Not sure how much all that is gonna weigh but light is good.
RELIABLITY - Route strong hoses in smart locations. You don't want a leak leaving you stuck.
COST - Duh...

Edit I don't know squat about hydrolic drive - How smooth is it? Fine throttle control is a good thing to have...
 
I have thought about that too you could also do 4 motors one at each tire and have it kinda like the patroit sprayers you would have massive ground clearence kinda like this but down graded
443.jpg

only 45,000
 
well i for costs... i could probally ("borrow") the some of the parts on a long term thing...
for smoothness... the speed are 100% adjustable form 0 mph to full speed.. alot of equipment in hydroclic drive..
 
Back in the 80s there was a Monster Truck on the traveling circuit that was hydraulic drive. It seemed like it was just a great big skid steer. But it would flat out boogie. I think it was called Santanimal...

Suddenly, I feel a bit older...
 
Yup! Thats it indeed!!! It could do wheelstands easily because there was a sliding weight that could be moved fore and aft in the bed... Kinda puts the shizzle in your fizzle...
 
ok why not cut some hoses and posible some weight out of the picture and run 2 hydrolic drive motors one to each axel at the drive shaft so your lines would only need to be short. also just one pump would be needed. pump pressure to the morors would be controlled by control valves in place of the normal shifter t-case levers. use a factory 2.5 to run the pump with a small gear reduction unit and you could keep from incuring the expense of new cooling, fuel system etc....... since you can run full hydro steering you can even stretch your wheel base out further without steering bind
 
yeah, i had this same idea when I was working with CALTRANS last year. they had me operating one of theos big man lifts, and it had 4 hydro motors (one on each wheel) and I was like "DANG! that would be sweet on a rig" wouldnt even need that big of an engine to turn it all from what one of the guys was saying.

just need an engine, a hydrostatic tranny, motors, and associated hoses from what he said it shouldnt be THAT hard to do...

i would love to see some one finally do this
 
GSequoia said:
WEIGHT - Not sure how much all that is gonna weigh but light is good.
Click to expand...
Light weight is overrated :D
 
I have been toying with this idea myself for some time now. Being a dirt poor student, building it is waaaay off in the future. Hydrolics are just silmply awesome! You can do whatever you want with them, and once you learn the basics of tuning its pretty easy to set up....I have seen the AG sprayers in person, even driven a few. There drive sytem is super smooth and very torqy feeling. The one i drove only had a 30hp diesle engine and would run 50mph down the road.

If it were me i would run a hydro motor for each wheel with a small reduction box. A 100hp engine would be plenty depending on the hydro motor size. I would set the steering up normally and have skidsteer assist..... Could be made pretty damn light i believe...... Im waiting for someone to make a hydro comp moonbuggy.....

Hydro motors and pumps are getting pretty cheap out of old heavy equipment.... I just like the smoothness of hydro and being always in the right "gear"

Hats off to the person that does it!
 
personally, I would nix driving the axles and fab fully independent arms with offset drives on each arm. Use a flow divider and 4 control valves (one for each corner).

You will also need a sizable res and a cooling system of some sort.
 
lostNdallas said:
personally, I would nix driving the axles and fab fully independent arms with offset drives on each arm. Use a flow divider and 4 control valves (one for each corner).

You will also need a sizable res and a cooling system of some sort.
Click to expand...
I agree on the res and cooling system. For the cooling you would have to use some sort of heat exchanger. We use these for keeping our hyd cool. Only problem is we have cold water going in the heat exchanger.
 
The easiest way would be to run all the returns back to a common manifold then pass through a radiator with electric fans then to the res. It wouldn't take up any more space than a standard radiator.
 
I just saw today some sort of drilling rig. it had a tractor like cab and I was looking at it it looked like an x with the cab in the middle, the tires on that thing were humongous and the ground clearance was crazy, also the cab slides side to side for balance and each arm can move up and down hydraulicly to keep it balanced. that thing would be awesome to wheel, props to whoever makes one to wheel!
 
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