Hi, this is my current WIP project, a jeep renegade.  The goal is to make a mid size MOC which will use 62.4mm tires.

The setup will be:

Driven by 2L motors;

Steering by servo motors;

AWD;

McPherson front suspension and multi-link rear suspension;

 

I have been working on it for 2 months and here is the progress so far:

Front axle:

The whole car is supposed to be 19 studs wide and the lower arm ball joint distance needs to be 13 studs wide. The narrow width constraint makes it hard to put a normal differential in. So I chose to drive each side of wheels with one motor.  I don't want hard coupe the two motors so a pair of 12:20 gears are used between motor and wheel. I have a little concern of the increased gear ratio as the weight of the whole car keeps increasing everyday...

A compact built McPherson front suspension is used, the custom hub is small enough to be put most of it into the wheel. Combining with the king pin inclination,  the suspension setup has a small scrub radius and can be fit in a compact wheel arc like real cars. There is no caster angle, no Ackermann steering. Also  I failed to put the steering link behind the wheel hub since there is the 20 teeth driving gear. What's more, there is no room to put a typical inline 4 cylinder engine. I think I may use some fake cover in front of the servo motor to represent to engine bay in the end.

 

Rear axle:

The rear wheel hub has a very similar setup with the front.

 

Uni-body:

Like my previous MINI countryman MOC, the car has a uni-body setup like the real one. This time, thanks to the smaller size, the body is more stronger that the MINI's. It will have structural A pillar and C pillar. They are probably the most difficult things for me to build in the whole car.

 

Front end:

In fact, the motivation of the MOC is the idea of the face building. I tried to build a 75th anniversary edition here.

 

All the things that I have so far:

 

The size of tail light is little too big and it won't light up as the head light.

 

Last but not least:

As part of the iteration building process, another version is being built at the same time:

The color scheme will be like this, of course, I need some more orange pieces...

 

More pics are at:

http://bricksafe.com/pages/falconluan/jeep-renegade

Hope you like it and looking forward to your feedback.

Thanks for watching

Edited May 21, 20177 yr by falconluan

very nice

Wow, I'm waiting for the continuation of the topic.

Looks really good. I'm waiting for more progres

 

Really nice, I like how the rear lights are done, even if so large, as they are very distinctive.

Looking good indeed. I really like the use of the bionicle tooth to lock the angle of the spring, I might want to use that someday
A couple of questions:
Does the axle above it touch the spring? Or is it still hitting the yellow shaft of the shock?
Shouldn't the upper rotation point of the front McPherson suspension not be slightly angled to point to the lower towball in the wheel bearing? Or does the lego has enough play to cope with this?

Nice multilink setup in the rear as well

Looking forward to next updates

4 hours ago, Jeroen Ottens said:

Looking good indeed. I really like the use of the bionicle tooth to lock the angle of the spring, I might want to use that someday
A couple of questions:
Does the axle above it touch the spring? Or is it still hitting the yellow shaft of the shock?
Shouldn't the upper rotation point of the front McPherson suspension not be slightly angled to point to the lower towball in the wheel bearing? Or does the lego has enough play to cope with this?

Nice multilink setup in the rear as well

Looking forward to next updates

Hi, Jeroen,

Thanks for all the good questions! 

The axle above has some contact with the lowest 3 rounds of spring. It has little impact to the compression of the spring I think.

For the upper rotation point of front suspension, yes, they should have aligned to the lower ball joint. It works thanks to the play of the part. The upper part of the suspension has some back and forth move during turning, I'll try to find a better pivot point if possible.

Words 'Jeep' and 'independent suspension' will always blow my mind) I like how multilink is done, using bionicle tooth is very clever. Waiting for more progress.

Looks pretty good and close to original allready.

35 minutes ago, Victor Imaginator said:

Words 'Jeep' and 'independent suspension' will always blow my mind) 

Thanks, and blame that on Jeep! 

There is some very clever engineering going on with this moc and I certainly look forward to seeing more updates please 

 

Very nice MOC. I thing white one is cooler 

I like it so far, instantly recognisable. Keep up the good work!

I am in love with that suspension!  It's really nice to see a close reassembly of the real setup in such a modest scale. I wonder, how many iterations did the front took?

The rear lights are spot on. They are such a distinctive feature of the Renegade, try to keep them even if they are slightly out of scale. I can't see a way to make them smaller.

Thanks everyone for your comments.

9 hours ago, proran said:

I wonder, how many iterations did the front took?

The McPherson strut and the whole front suspension each took about 5 times to end like what it looks like in the photos. The rear end where connects to the body still needs some reinforcement now. 

9 hours ago, proran said:

The rear lights are spot on. They are such a distinctive feature of the Renegade, try to keep them even if they are slightly out of scale. I can't see a way to make them smaller.

Thanks and advice taken!

Do you have the most recent pictures of your Jeep renegade?

I have stared my own renegade Project two weeks ago.

 

8 hours ago, avasquezv said:

Do you have the most recent pictures of your Jeep renegade?

I have stared my own renegade Project two weeks ago.

 

Hi, yes, I have and will show them here soon. The progress is very slow recently, since I had little time to build it. Anyway, please stay tuned.

Also, looking forward to see your version.

Very well done! I love the two colour schemes. 

Hi, all, long time no update. Lost the idea and passion when building the rear end of the car for a while.

These are some pic taken about one month ago.  There are many updates recently and I'll put more pics soon.

Still, tail gate, roof, seats, dashboard are things left to be done. Also, front bumper, rear bumper, rear wheel arc need some more iterations...

 

 

Edited July 19, 20177 yr by falconluan

Now I wonder how you would make the taillights 

Some more updates:

The rear end still needs to be improved, it's  too bulky right now.

 

 

I enlarged the head lights. Don't have the 3x3 dish in black yet, do you think it will look better with black dishes?

 

Another round of checking the fidelity:

 

 

 

Hope you like them.

 

Edited July 24, 20177 yr by falconluan

Good to see some more progress on this one.

I would make the 3x3 dishes behind the headlights in the same colour as the grille, that way the front will become more one whole.

I think the B-pillars do slant a bit too much inwards. That is a consequence of using the #3 connector, so maybe you can replace them with 2 smooth connectors an adjust the angle.

very nice Jeep. My fave is the white one. Great progress and nice pictures!!

Hi, @Jeroen Ottens,

Thanks for your advice as always

10 hours ago, Jeroen Ottens said:

I would make the 3x3 dishes behind the headlights in the same colour as the grille, that way the front will become more one whole.

I think so. OK, now, I need to BL some more 3x3 dishes

 

10 hours ago, Jeroen Ottens said:

I think the B-pillars do slant a bit too much inwards. That is a consequence of using the #3 connector, so maybe you can replace them with 2 smooth connectors an adjust the angle.

#3 connector is used to keep the structure strong. But yes, you are right, they do look a bit too much inwards. I'll try to use some beams to form a triangle structure with less inwards instead. Of course, some room for seats will be sacrificed though.

 

10 hours ago, AFOLegofan66 said:

very nice Jeep. My fave is the white one. Great progress and nice pictures!!

Thank you!

Edited July 25, 20177 yr by falconluan

Nice progress sofar! Funny to see I'm not the only one building two versions of a moc at the same time. General shape is really good, but those b-pillars are always a nightmare to build in LEGO. You could mix in some system parts though, like this or this, and put them on a vertical beam with some halfpins. The vertical beam can help in keeping the structure solid and the curve will be less slanted.