Bedford Rascal Improved stability??

[<Type desired username here>]

Is it just me or does anyone else have a picture of a Rascal motorhome with 'caterham' style arches sticking out the sides in their head?

I think the project needs a better focus. If you want to build a bike engined space frame thing do you really want to use one of these vans?

If you want to build something unique, fast and king of the kerb do you really want it sounding like a bike?

I think if you are gonna build something like this a car engine would be a better choice. I am not a big fan of bike engines, they don't sound the same. I have made company/hire cars rev up to 13000 and they all sound pretty much the same. Wheras if you stand next to a big throbbing V8 the tarmac shakes below your feet and it sounds like a lion being poked in the ribs thru a megaphone when revved!
The extra weight of a car engine would help you stay upright far cheaper and quicker than chopping the roof too.

[BiAS]

Oct 17, 2008 20:27:17 GMT street said:

Thought i'd tow this thread out rather than starting a new thread to ask this:
Do these Rascal van body shells unbolt from the chassis? Or are they monocoque? I've seen the pickup beds unbolt from the chassis but i'd like to know if the whole van version's shell can be hoisted off to reveal the bare chassis?

No the vans are definitely monocoque and I think the pickups have a monocoque cab with separate chassis under the bed.

[street]

Thanks for that! Thought that might be the case but wasn't sure

[<Type desired username here>]

Can verify what BiAS said. I worked at Suzuki for a while and even the earliest vans are monocoque. SJ410, Jimny and all but the latest Vitara 4x4s have a seperate chassis, just for the record.

When driving these vans although they do feel very unstable they are more likely to slide before they fall over. We had a massive workshop and it used to be fun to powerslide them round to face the ramp if the boss wasnt about!

[impossiblydaft]

Aug 18, 2008 17:15:38 GMT popuptoaster said:

Aug 18, 2008 16:53:57 GMT bigginger said:

I thinkthis is a very valid point, despite all the 'wide tyres' advice

I think you need to have driven these things on a regular basis to understand really, wider wheels will stick out further I guess, but I don't think the extra track will outweigh the extra grip which is gonna cause it to possibly fall over, I think i'd fit a large car engine and box as low as possible and fit sme fat wheels if I was trying to get one to corner well, otherwise you'll just have to take it easy, as I said earlier you quite often don't know its on two wheels. there used to be a pick up truck that ran at the pod with a bimmer 6 pot in it, that went pretty well.

Our family has lots of experiance of these things, the current crop is two campers in the garden, and two out on the road along with the mini people carrier, not in the pics are the ex council van or the hi jet we also have.

Flashbaaack! My Mum had a G-reg one of those when I was a lad - it had the window on the front, white bumper and bullbars, brown stripes and the lift-up window, plus the roof vent broke in about '95 and was taped down for the next seven years. It ended up getting sold in '02-ish after 130k-ish miles and a decade of being parked at the end of the road took its toll - it had rust-holes everywhere, including the floor. It was awesome and even more awesomely, it seems someone has brought it back to life!

It was the first thing I checked on the DVLA site when someone showed me it a couple of years ago and it hadn't been taxed since 2004, but this thread made me think to look again and it seems someone has managed to get it going! Blimey!

[alecw35]

heres a video.
shows the underside of the Van

uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PTl-JcX5eMY

pity Clarkson wasnt in it at the time

[carmad]

Sept 30, 2008 6:44:26 GMT rtlkyuubi said:

uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KBKfHCbpA60
lolz

ha ha brilliant never saw that

[niterida]

I had to bring this thread back to life !!

I was looking for pics of a roof chopped Kombi when I came across this page and I had to register to share my wacky ideas.

I wanted to do something similar to a Daihatsu hi-jet 4WD van, except Iwas going to mid mount the bike engine longitudinally so that I could just run a prop shaft directly from the front sprocket output shaft to the rear diff.

But then I was going to mount ANOTHER engine along side but facing the opposite way and take a prop shaft to the front diff - twin engined AWD - woohoo.

I bought the van and had engines lined up when I discovered a slight snag - the rotation of the drive shafts meant that the rear wheels would be going forward and the front ones backward :-( It wasn't until after I scrapped the idea and sold the van that I found out it is easy enough to rotate the CROWN wheel and pinion inside the diff housing to reverse the rotation of the diff. Never bothered revisiting the idea though.

I also had a full sized Bedford van - factory black, SWB and windowless - shoved a small block chev and Turbo 700 box between the seats - AEWSOME :-) Not quite as good as the twin V8s in the Mitsubishi L300 though - and I thought some of my ideas were crazy - like putting another turbo Subaru engine in the back of an Impreza WRX - instant 600bhp ........

So did the Rascal in this post ever get built ?

[popuptoaster]

i dunno about that, but the red one in my pics has just failed its MOT, i'm trying to persuade my dad to give it to me to play with.

[Ads 19]

In all honesty i think the best thing would be to forget the rascal.
I had one for few years on the farm. we used it for blatting hay around. in the end it caught the turf and over she went, i was 10 at the time.
Replaced it with a Subaru Sumo, 4wd. Engine is in the back and very nice low center of gravity. i later used this as a 17yro and no matter how hard i tried i would not go over, you can get it on two wheels but it would always come back down.

4wd is brilliant, and the engine is the same a justy, but layed flat so the possibility of wacking a turbo is there.

of course you could just make a little bit more space in rear and put in another subaru turbo lump, EJ20 bolted up to a geabox of the aircooled t25!

[Ratdat]

I've just bought an '81 Honda TN Acty pickup and in those the engine (horizontal 550cc twin) is under the bed just forward of the rear axle. You can chuck it round corners and it feels pretty stable. The rear end is a de dion setup but the axle tube runs under the leaf springs which makes lowering it pretty tricky. I'll find a way though

[Littlepixel]

Suby sounds fun!
Always loved these Kei vans - I always thought a racing series for them would be a lot of fun.
Here's a Zuki shop I did inspired by this thread - bit of 80s rally styling going on with M3/Quattro arches and Swift Rally alloys. 10% roof chop for stability, coilovers.

Hayabusa or STi Boxer? Decisions... decisions!