Rarely have I ever wanted a thing as much as I want this. As silly as it might look at first glance, it's a pretty elegant & solution to a fairly complex problem.
#cars #carstr #trucks
Discussion
Yup.
Are you joking? This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. I thought you said you weren't a city slicker.
I'll explain. The frame rails need to be strong, especially in the center line between the axles where the joint is. To have that joint in that spot would need some seriously heavy steel in the hardware, especially when you consider twisting on uneven terrain. Also, the drive shaft runs through there. Furthermore, how does the bed slide forward with a load on it?
This joint just adds needless complexity. Ramps stowed in the back end of the truck bed are best.
exactly my thought. the drive should go to a set of wheels in the center before the trailer. the tray would still be heavy enough to tilt the whole thing down for the loading. it's just gonna be simpler this way, the rear part is then just a trailer with a slider that tips the whole thing down.
it is quite elegant but merging the drive with the tilting hinge at the centre is too far.
I just envisioned some sort of lap joint with a heavy equipment like greased metal bushing or axel like joint at the bottom of the lap & an almost equally beefy lock pin in the top part of the lap. The driveshaft would need to hinge with a universal joint in the same plane as the frame hinge, possibly at the end of a remote mounted transfer case. A winch or hydraulics would slide the bed, but having the bed move on a single plane seems like less complication & a better failure mode when compaired to modern rollbacks.
Needing a shorter area to fit a truck in front of or behind a car & having a shallower slope when putting the car on the truck are valuable things, ramps are generally bad for both.
It's possible that it wouldn't work as well as I think, but it's definitely creative & interesting. Maybe just a solid frame with a properly designed air suspension that could drop the back & raise the front, squatting the truck on command, plus a sliding bed or ramps would work & be simpler ๐ค idk
While the bed on a rollback has multiple fail points because it has all that movementโฆ.you can still drive the truck if the ramp fails (unless it fails on the ground of course). If your hydraulics failed on this thing, would it still be able to drive? I donโt know. Itโs definitely different, but having driven a rollback, Iโll stick with a rollback lol
the only thing I don't like about it is the drive should really be on the rear of the forward part just before the hinge.
front wheel drive, as it must be, is putting the torque way too far from the load, it would be more prone to slipping with high torque because the weight is so far away from it, if the load is too high it would not be able to get moving without traction assistance like throwing gravel under the front wheels, and once it gets going it would be very prone to slipping unless you move the drive to the hinge.
the giant tray back would still lift the whole body even if there was a trannie and extra set of wheels there.
Thatโs actually pretty cool, and Iโve never seen this before. Much simpler than the Jerrdan roll-off rigs running around these days.