Anyone seen an electric rock crawler?

skyeg3

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Nov 20, 2015
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What if somebody were to make a badass version of these

AXLE.jpg

And put them on under a buggy like this

ROCK CRAWLER.jpg

Wouldn't that be cool?? Wouldn't it??
 
Actually that would crawl for shit,, since its a straight axle. But an electric rock crawler would be cool.

I'm actually thinking like 4 individual motors, but not hub motors. 4 of what you see in that picture, but with just one reduction gear and motor per wheel. 4 throttles,, and 4 hydros to control the height of the suspension on each wheel individually. And of course,, with no drive lines in the way, cantilevered in the middle.

Maybe I'm out of date, but I've never seen a crawler cantilevered in the middle, except in the main rock crawl places on earth, quarries. There you see loaders with the cantilevered middle all the time.
 
Solid axles are what you want for rock crawling. Independent axles are weak and break too easily.

What comes to mind are Icelandic Jeeps - nitro's scandavia hill climbers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaYUY2YM7vI
All custom straight axle. Also a quick image search of just rock crawlers, shows they are all solid axles.

The thing is with the OP's idea is that there is little expense in fuel when playing around in the bush offroading and rock crawling. So its not economical to spend that kind of money on electric. The only pro is the instant power curve. A more realistic approach is to go electric dirt bike and swap out the battery because those guys all stick around base camp anyways.

Maybe you got a good point because as I am typing this out, it came to my mind that you could build a quad atv electric which is more pratical in many respects. There is no need to go custom axle for electric, just buy a Dana 30, Ford 8.8 or 9" which are a dime a dozen and ultra cheap at the junk yard. Conform to that and save your money. The axle would need to be shortened which can be done, not sure if you'd want to upgrade the parts or not. Perhaps another idea is to use a hub motor on each wheel, like a QS or something, less moving parts in the axle and/or transfer case. You wouldnt even need an vehicle axle, just use steel fabbing something up.

Gotta go, later.
 
Dogman Dan, Are you a troll or something? All rock crawlers are solid axle. "Cantilevered in the middle"? It's called 4 link suspension. Try googling rock crawler.

markz, the reason it could be good is because it puts the weight in a good spot - in the axle. Also you lose the weight of the engine, transmission, transfer case and driveshafts. The whole thing could be super lightweight.

One day...
 
skyeg3 its a simple mistake dan made. If you look at Baja style racing those are mostly all independent front suspension 2 wheel drives with some funky 4 link in the back, solids of course.
Random Pic

Lower weight is needed for rock crawling, again look at what I like to call "Icelandic Jeeps" those are super low, not made for rocks, but gives you an idea of customization. I like full tube buggies, not necessarily exoskeleton.
Heres a Pic
100% custom rig obviously, can place the weight wherever you want.

Now if you want something more stock, Suzuki's are a great choice even in the electric vehicles world. The gearing in them are so low plus lots of parts available. You could do up a nice one, make it a wide track if you wanted.

Take a look here
http://www.evwest.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=8
prices vary from a couple grand to 10k for the motor. All you'd need to do is place the motor connected to the transfer case, but I'd bet you'd need to beef the TC up and go gears rather then chain, like a New Process 205, and split it. Making it 2 stick is a common practice.
 
Troll,, I suppose to some. Dumbass? always. I thought the best rock crawlers now used suspension similar to military Humvees. So you get the drive line higher than the wheel hub center.

I never said you could not rock crawl with ordinary 4x4 trucks, with big tires. I just thought the competition winners these days were different.

Hard to keep up. I've seen film of crawlers stopping, jacking wheels up and down with hydros or air or something individually, and assumed there were swing arms under there, using some kind of very strong CV joint axle. All the crawling I personally did was in old school 4x4's,, jacked up power wagons, military ammo trucks. etc. This was years ago, before they locked up the good crawling places locally. Broke axles out there,, check.

In the pic you posted,, no body on the truck makes it easier to see that yup,, straight axles.

I still like the idea of 4 electric motors on 4 wheels, with individual controls though. No axles, or at least very short ones.
 
I'm pretty sure a specially designed 4WD quad motor rock crawler would kick the ass off anything with solid axles. That kind of control is not possible with differentials of any kind, and with todays battery performance it would probably have a better power/weight ratio, not to mention a lower COG.

Would they let it compete though? I doubt it.
 
Well rock crawling in an atv is different then a suv or truck. But I see your point in having the center of gravity low because quads are high centered, well atleast the 4x4 I see are. They can be easily manipulated with your body weight, like what the snow sleds do.

ATV's are light and nimble that is why they got ifs but again they do have solid rears.
I don't think I have ever seen a atv with a solid front. Nor have I seen one with IRS (Independent Rear Suspension)

Its a great application for electric because an atv with a blown engine is dirt cheap and you just stuff a Warp or forklift motor in there, same goes for motorcycles, dirt bikes or any other pleasure craft for that mattet.

I personally think a 2wd motorcycle/dirtbike would really rock!
 
It does look like some sort of early prototype for them, but really reminds me more of the Fuego from RideBack.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Fuchikoma&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiY7sPzjp7SAhWKllQKHZDABb0QsAQIKQ&biw=1529&bih=925#tbm=isch&q=rideback+fuego

(no, you're not the only anime fan around here ;) But I grew up with Star Blazers and Speed Racer, and didn't discover their originals or their source until a couple decades ago. A good anime forum is at http://themanime.org/ as is a good review site.)
 
Anime is one thing...... I guess *shrugs*
do you laugh or cry when a grown adult reads a grocery store comic book. Yes its odd to see but whatever.
I'd say the same thing about Anime, but its a "thing" and I dont know why....... yet. From the handful of random shit I've seen, looks like animation sexualization.
 
It's like any other media form; it gets used for all sorts of stuff by all sorts of people. There's brilliant stuff, and sleazy crappy stuff, and everything in between. ;)
 
dustNbone said:
I'm pretty sure a specially designed 4WD quad motor rock crawler would kick the ass off anything with solid axles. That kind of control is not possible with differentials of any kind, and with todays battery performance it would probably have a better power/weight ratio, not to mention a lower COG.

Would they let it compete though? I doubt it.

I love rock crawlers, and this is my build of a "crawler-ispired-trail-atv" with 4 hubmotors, i got it running this week and looks promising, will do a update in my thread as soon as i tested it. here is a little video of first test in the garage. remember this is the absolut first test with no tweeking of electronics, i tried to go as slow as possible to test the feeling and throttlecontrol and its very promising :) https://youtu.be/PLkf2F9RZQQ
 
Wow ! Mattias,
Thats impressive. I never thought it was possible to get that kind of low speed performance from Hub motors.
What type of hub and controller are you using ? DD or Geared ?
Any significant heat generated in the motors ?
 
Electric rock crawler is a great idea! Im planning a electric quad soon using a 300ex frame/suspension
 
Hillhater said:
Wow ! Mattias,
Thats impressive. I never thought it was possible to get that kind of low speed performance from Hub motors.
What type of hub and controller are you using ? DD or Geared ?
Any significant heat generated in the motors ?

It's geared motors, you can read more in this thread

Quad /

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