Rock Dawg

Hey Everyone.

For those of you that don't know, I started working on a new project in May of 2010 and I call it Rock Dawg. It was rushed together for winter testing in the southwest. It is a 4-wheel drive rock crawler with each wheel independent in both vertical and lateral plus length movement. This gives Rock Dawg a wheelbase from 94 inches to 170 inches and from 5 feet wide to 14 feet wide. I built it with Electric drive motors and ran a generator to charge the batteries.

I am now back from the southwest so I'll give you the rundown on Rock Dawg, but first, I have a question? Why do the suppliers of products have to lie about what they are selling? Do they thrive on pissing people off? . . . Or maybe they somehow think that if they put something in writing it will miraculously perform as written. The 4 AC-20 motors I bought from Thunderstruck Motors, LLC claim on the sales receipt to deliver 100 ft lbs of torque @ 50 hp. On their website it is 110 ft lbs.! After fighting a low torque-starting problem, I finally got a chance to talk to the manufacturer and was told that 60 lbs. was maximum. That little lie cost me thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of labor.

With that being said, Rock Dawg was disappointing in the rocks, but very very cool to drive around. It did provided lots of experience as to what needs to be improved. ELECTRIC MOTORS "NEED TO GO AWAY". Along with the power numbers being pathetically misleading, the high input power requirements were right on the mark. In the real world and until the price and weight of batteries are about 10% of what they are now, electric cars and equipment will only be practical on short-range vehicles in my opinion. Like driving on very hard surfaces with little rolling resistance, i.e. Railroads! Also, if you have to use hydrocarbons at 4 plus $ a gallon to charge the batteries, just put the motor in the car! If your going very short distances and have excess solar to charge the batteries, then the much over priced, over-rated novelty electric motors are fun to play with. With thousands of dollars spent on tuition. I am getting up to speed on learning what does not work! Rock Dawg the TEST.

The hardest part was getting the rear steering aligned properly, but once it was right, it actually drove quite well at the top speed of 35 mph. I had thrown the suspension together in just a few minutes one morning simply because I knew I needed some sort of cushion to make it ride-able. It actually worked quite well. It still needs a shock built into the system to slow the bounce, but the limited amount of travel keeps the car very stable on the road. I may also try to incorporate a single hydraulic cylinder to do the steering. I bounced it around and used the hydraulics a lot to see how they held up. So far the high tech plastic slides work well and I did not see any bends or cracks. Always a good thing!

Although I did not get to do the hard-core rock crawling I was hoping for, I did get into the rocks enough to see that being able to move the wheels wherever I wanted "FLAT OUT WORKS"! Driving it for several months was the best way to see what might improve things. I am going to remove the very heavy batteries and electrical system and replace them with the much more proven and lighter hydraulics. When finished, I may weigh close to the same, but will have unlimited range and the creepy-crawly torque I need for Rock Crawling. I am sure the top end will suffer! The math tells me around 25 mph top speed. I was watching very carefully this winter while riding with friends on the trails and very seldom did we exceed that, even between trails.

A friend put together a DVD about 15 minutes long showing Rock Dawg playing at his best, considering the lack of creepy-crawly. If you would like to help see Rock Dawg finished, please consider buying one of the DVD's for $24.⁹⁵. I'll keep you on a list and send out a much improved, longer and detailed DVD when Rock Dawg is on the rocks where he belongs! It's been a very fun and challenging project that has attracted more attention than I could have ever imagined.