[WIP] 63 Chevrolet Impala

[Graydingo]

EDIT:___________________________________________________________

Here's where I'm currently at:

Modeled after this Impala.

and some current build pics

Well I'm off to a fresh start on a new MOC.

I learned so much during the process of my last build that I thought I would dive right into another car with similar properties. It will likely be another air ride model with a more competent power train and taking all the things I learned on my truck and incorporating them into a lighter, smaller and more functional MOC.

The 63 has a lot of really great body lines and it should be fun to take a sort of street rod approach to a version of the Impala.

Right now I'm sorting out what wheels I want to scale the model to.

I was thinking these; off the MKII

With those tires I'm looking at about 27 studs wide and 64 or so long.

I'm also thinking about ordering some of the 8448 super street sensation wheels since they are already sort of chrome and have an extremely low profile tire. The problem (as I found out in my 66 custom moc) is the wide tires make adding air ride harder, since it gives you less distance between tires to achieve your steering and suspension setup. Plus if I go with those, it'll be up to 80 studs long!

Lastly, I was perusing Effermans custom parts page. Someone posted some American Racing style rims, but I don't see them on his shapeways account. Anyone know how I might achieve the style as shown in the first photo for the rim?

Edited July 19, 2015 by Graydingo

[LeocornoProductions]

Great, will it use some concepts from your TC6 model?

[Graydingo]

Yes definitely!

These are the following improvements:

Fake v8 (hahah I swear it will happen)

2 XL motors, and servo motor

Shocks, with a single pneumatic cylinder per axle for the air ride.

Possibly a way to control the pneumatic ride more precisely.

air tank with auto regulator style setup/ and two pumps.

Better air switch design

More compact / lighter

Better interior

-----------------------

I found these wheels and rims.

http://www.bricklink....asp?P=44772c01

They are a low profile tire and yet a rather large rim that looks pretty cool. It's a 6 star rim, that I might end up getting Chromed. (anyone know a good US chrome lego plater?)

Here's snapshot of some basic measurements:

thanks to Sariel for his tools. They are SO useful. He's probably checking his web visitors log and seeing Vegas USA all over it.

also what do you guys think for color? I was thinking blue body and white hard top. (the 63 is a hard top - ie you can roll all the windows down and there are no B pillars)

There seem to be 3 shades of blue. The new baby blue (less parts avail), the blue off the Cargo plane and wind up dragster (dark blue) and that electric blue they use for seats all the time.

Edited February 24, 2015 by Graydingo

[Graydingo]

Quick update.

The above dimensions were off if anyone has an eagle eye. The rim width is 8.6 studs, not the 9.2 seen there.

I've been working on the rear end. I decided it might be fun to incorporate mechanical lowering system. All my air stuff is tied up in my other MOC and not quite ready to take it apart. However

Sorry Lucio...I had to take apart your lovely 4X4. Great build if anyone is interested.

Gotta break some eggs to make an omelet And I needed my XL and servo motors back.

Not to mention all those lovely black beams.

Here's my current build.

Don't worry, those are temp wheels that are pretty close in size to the ones I bricklinked.

It uses a worm drive lowering system. The drive has to be stiff enough to still allow the shocks to function.

This presents a problem, you want the drive gear to hold the pressure when using the shocks, but you also want to use a clutch gear so that you don't twist the axle that moves the lowering mechanism.

I've tried a variety of setups and leaning more toward an ingenious linear clutch that I got from Sariel's book. (Buy it! it's awesome!)

Here's a vid of the linear clutch in motion.

This is just a mockup really as i need to somehow incorporate a motor on each wheel for the lowering/raising each corner. This way I can do some really fun gangsta style hydraulic action (3 wheeling)

Yes yes I know. I was supposed to be making this a street rod - but playability means 4 way "hydraulics" Maybe...

[DamonMM2000]

The lower system is nice, quite quicker than the pneumatics one on your Chevy truck. Good progress!

[Lipko]

You are using perspective images (front and rear) for measurements? The proportions will be very off.

[darksheep]

I am looking forward to this, I love this car and always think it looks so cool in the supernatural series.

[Graydingo]

You are using perspective images (front and rear) for measurements? The proportions will be very off.

Yeah the measurements on the perspective stuff was a brain fart. I totally realized it when I went to measure the windshield and hood and I saw it was clearly a perspective drawing. I had forgotten about it though and I'm super glad you pointed it out.

The side drawing and the 'end' of the front and rear should be enough for now. The only measurement I've used so far is rear axle to the back bumper. Speaking of which...guess what came in the post last night!!!

Just a heads up, if any US customers are looking to order, expect it to take about 5-6 weeks

My package was pretty rough looking having come all the way from Budapest! The stickers all got mangled, but the Sbrick and box was perfect.

in a matter of minutes it was up and running and it's such a joy to be able to control speed of a motor!

Here's the rear axle so far. Shocks work great at any angle. The hydraulics are really fun and so far my clutch system works under the current weight. I have a feeling that they may not be able to lift the weight of the car with the added weight of the body. In that case, if anyone can think of a good clutch solution I'd be grateful.

The current clutch is a linear clutch that has two blue (1/2 axle - 1/2 pin) pins in either side. Works great for light applications. I was able to shorten the clutch to just 3 studs beyond the motor. This allowed me to mount both motors in the back in the same line so that the gear ratio's to raise that corresponding side would be simple and the same.

I'll see about getting another video up. soon, It's fun to see them in motion.

Here's the video

Edited February 26, 2015 by Graydingo

[__________________________]

The "hydraulics" are impressive. The design seems robust.

I was thinking about building one of these a while ago, since they are common in rap songs. I recommend you make it look like the Impala in this:

[VKTechnic]

Looks good so far. One thing I personally didn't really like about your TC6 model was the plain bodywork (too many 3x11 curved panels for my taste), maybe with a smaller model this won't look as bad. On a brighter note, functions are top notch, especially the bagged suspension. Looking forward to more updates

[Graydingo]

Well I hope everyone is having a great weekend. I've made some progress on the chassis of my 63.

It started with a mock up of the front end.

These A-arms really make the front end easier to put together. It almost feels like cheating.

I have a lot less space up front, and I also had to account for the servo motor going in there somewhere.

My first plan was to mount one lowering mechanism on the bumper side of the axle and one on the cab side.

The front one went in after a few hours and worked OK. The problem was that I forgot about the servo motor and I wanted to keep the design simple. Mounting the second one in the same manner would have blocked the servo motor. Also the whole thing just didn't have as slick a mechanical function as I liked. The frame was too low and there was some funky things going on. So I took the whole thing apart.

It's useful to go through these types of processes. You just start building. Stuff works or it doesn't and you tear down and begin again.

My big plan was to get the front end tech all squared away before my wheels arrived on monday from Bricklink.

They surprised me and arrived today and luckily I had spent the morning and late last night getting the new front end lowering / raising system implemented.

The servo just happen to mount nicely in the front end and should fit within the allotted space to make the scale right. I've only got 9 studs beyond the front axle for the front end.

The servo had to be offset by one stud, but no problem for the 8 tooth gears.

Here's the approximate length axle to axle - 41 studs.

The XL motors will be mounted up higher by 2 studs.

as for controlling it. I have one S brick for drive, steering and possibly 2 other functions.

And for now, I'll be using two additional IR receivers to run the hydraulics. If I want, I can tie the front / rear hydraulics into the S brick but I think 4 way action is more fun.

[Nalyd997]

This is going to be mental!

[Coola1]

You might want to rethink the servo placement, if you are using 8 tooth gears there's probably gonna be some backlash in the steering.

Other than that, things are looking really good, cant wait to see the finished model!

[Graydingo]

You might want to rethink the servo placement, if you are using 8 tooth gears there's probably gonna be some backlash in the steering.

Other than that, things are looking really good, cant wait to see the finished model!

Thanks. The servo setup is like this: (pretend that its a servo motor and that the two 8t gears are aligned)

It's not ideal, but it fits. i think it might be a moot point, since I've decided to go a different direction...but first:

Here's a video of the prototype chassis

It's too heavy already and too pointlessly complex. I think the better route is to try to manage either 1 motor for each axle, or one motor for all 4 that is centrally mounted.

back to the drawing board...

[Graydingo]

I wasn't happy with the dual motors on each axle. The original idea was that I could do some crazy 3 wheelin' like you see in some vids with hydraulics. The lift height of the wheels and the chassis stifness just wasn't there to achieve this. Although I was satisfied with how my final engineering worked, it was just pointless to continue on one M motor per wheel for raising lowering action.

So I rebuilt the front and rear end nearly from scratch.

Here's the new front end.

It's incredibly compact. Considering I can't go beyond the bottom of the frame, and I wanted to stay lower than the top of the liftarms that raise and lower the wheels. I also only had some 9 studs or so from the front axle to achieve all this.

I would prefer to use a smaller drive gear, but with the S brick, control is pretty accurate. I can choose specific ride heights. I'd show you video, but ...my only vid is on my phone, where the s brick app is, so I can't control and vid at the same time lol. Is the s brick app on the ipad? hmmmm

The two 24t gears actually work very nicely. The motor can lift the heavy chassis without the clutch engaging.

here's the rear-end.

The red 2's are the stops that engage the clutch.

Top o' the hydraulics:

Gettin' LOW baby.

Here's a VIDEO of the shocks. They function nicely in all positions. This was something I wanted to do on my TC6 truck, but just didn't pull it off. The entire chassis is really designed around the ability for the shocks to work at any ride height.

Might be an odd question, but is anyone a good coder/app designer and interested in making me a custom profile for the S brick?

I would like a gray lego steering wheel on the left, two vertical sliders labled "front" and "rear" hydraulics - in the middle for my front/ rear raising / lowering and a gas pedal on the right - and maybe one headlights button

I'm satisfied with the axles. Now its on to the drive train.

I'm really struggling with this part. I can't seem to get decent performance out of my rudimentary gear box. I'm not looking for anything complicated.

I just want it to freewheel a bit after the motor shuts off. And I want it to be a bit faster.

If anyone has a good 2 XL motor used together for RWD only robust gearbox, or ideas I'd love to hear them.

Edited March 11, 2015 by Graydingo

[Graydingo]

Hello everyone.

Update on the ......Impala, if we can still call it that. Not sure I can pull of the wild angles of the Impala now that I've delved into some bodywork. My white pieces are quite limited as far as small white pieces. I mostly have beams and panels. We'll see.

I spent a lot of time building out a pretty detailed front seat. The Impala that we have in the family has the half bench. It's a bench on the bottom and has the two flip down passenger and driver sides, this allows passengers to climb in the back seat.

It's really quite a stunning design as far as how the doors function in real life. Those long glorious 1960's doors allow for passengers to step into the back seat more easily. The windows go down and you have this massive open air tub inside. Ah nostalgia.

I think one issue I'm still struggling with in my builds, is embracing Technic as a representation of a model, and not a complete realistic model. You know, the whole HOLES thing. I start to build all these crazy solid items out of technic beams. Then I look at it and I've got too many beams. It's lost some of the aesthetic that makes it a technic model.

Anyway, that's the story on these seats. They were solid beams and weighing my ride down. It's low enough! They reclined via a friction gear which was kinda cool. But ultimately I ripped them all out.

I also had this idea I could lift the body off the top, so I built these ugly rails for the body to sit on (White). Those got tossed too.

The reclining system when it was still in:

Moving onto bodywork before going back and ripping out the seats:

And...countless fender iterations later...I'm at this design

Finally when I was satisfied with my 100th rear fender version, I moved on and spent a long long time working on a door.

I really wanted to use the dampener shocks to make the doors pop open in smooth motion. I also wanted to put them in the door itself, instead of somewhere in the body. I've got limited space with the lowering mechanisms of course.

I'm pretty happy with the doors. They have a few bugs, but the dampener works awesome. Might be cool to remote control pop open the doors when you slam it down on the pavement.

You can see a video of the door and latch system here

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Graydingo/Impala63/img_9054.mov

next up I'll reinforce the door, then work on the front fender. Once I get that where I want it, I'll match the other side then work on the front and rear-end. I test fit some red large fairing panels for the top and it looks really killer. It starts to look much more like an impala with even a rudimentary roof in place. Cheers

Edited March 11, 2015 by Graydingo

[dougstar]

that rear fender looks spot on! and much better to have the damper in the door

[__________________________]

This looks excellent so far.

[DamonMM2000]

Nice! I like the door function, kinda like the one on Sariel's new Audi

[erix]

Nice work so far! Excellent suspension!

How did you know I used to have one of these too? It was an SS, 283-2V, ridiculously low without air or hydraulics, about 1985 or so. Jeez I'm old....

[Graydingo]

Nice work so far! Excellent suspension!

How did you know I used to have one of these too? It was an SS, 283-2V, ridiculously low without air or hydraulics, about 1985 or so. Jeez I'm old....

2/2 on the cars Erix! Got any pics? Would love to see it. Have you heard of the Impala z-11? We were thinking of making our 63 a replica of this car. It has an aluminum front end.

Yes, in real life I would never put hydraulics on a car. But in Lego...why not? The new air ride tech is legit. A lot of the uber cars at SEMA are on bags.

[erix]

As much fun as I had in that car there are no pictures of it.

Probably a good thing. I had a *LOT* of fun in that car!

[darksheep]

Starting to look really good dude !!!

[Graydingo]

Starting to look really good dude !!!

Thank you!

Roofline mock-ups (ignore the 4X4 Sticker, that will be gone )

Front raised:

Rear raised:

Weeds:

Get on up:

[filsawgood]

shape and form of the future are impressive body!