North Rockies Design - Project: Hummer » Hood

Hood Design or Hummer Meets Tumbler

admin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:50:09 +0000

With fall in full force and winter coming soon, my attention is turning again to “Things I can actually do in the shop.” I might be able to get some steel in this fall/winter and get started on a table first, then some jigs, and maybe even the cage. While I’m working on those funds—and socking away for hospital bills for the upcoming new baby—I’ve gone back to my ideas of hood designs.

First, a point. I have been looking all over for a hood. I can’t find any near Idaho for a price I’m willing to pay. Next, I don’t know how keen I am on building the whole truck myself and getting a used hood. I may change my mind again down the road, but right now, I’m leaning towards building my own hood. Finally, I think there are some aspects of the HMMWV and H1 hood design that are just ugly. Besides, I don’t know yet if I want a fiberglass hood.

Another thought that has crossed my mind is the desire to not have the truck look TOO much like a Hummer. Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous…build a Hummer replica that doesn’t look like a replica. But, I look at it this way: I can build this truck to look any way I want. There’s no rule book that says I have to make it look like anything at all. I can use some aspects of the Hummer that I like, and mix them up with something else that I like….say the Tumbler from the new Christopher Nolan directed Batman movies.

In fact, that’s just what I have been doing.

Start with a nice Hummer hood as a base (like this nicely modified NOPI winner from Shawn Smith of AngryIron.com):

Add pinch of the Tumbler:

These should blend naturally. Think of it. The Tumbler is supposed to be a shelved military vehicle produced by Wayne Enterprises. The Hummer is both the civilian version of and generic term for The High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV or Humvee). Best of both cool superhero combat and real-life military vehicle design.

Now, there is a particular part of the Tumbler than lends itself quite well to transmission to the hummer hood. That is the flat part just above the cockpit for the caped crusader:

So, I first drew out a few ideas on tracing paper over the photo of the Berserker above. It took about four or five times to get that top part just right:

The really difficult part was the front. How do I keep the grill and headlight placement just right, and still incorporate the aggressive look from the Tumbler? What to do now that I’ve essentially eliminated the Hummer turn signals and corresponding fiberglass shape? I can’t just slap this on a Hummer hood and expect it to look ok. This was the most difficult part of the entire design. I finally came up with this:

Obviously, it’s still fairly rough in design. But, I think I like it. Don’t you?

If you do, maybe you could help me save up enough to keep the project moving along…

Boyz in the Hood II

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 12:43:58 +0000

I started out today with a workspace problem. My shop was a mess. It took me nearly an hour to clean up assorted lawn tools, spilled potting soil, hanging baskets, etc. before I could even set up anything to build the hood on. Once it was clean—for the most part—I put an old door on cinder blocks as a table to about the right height for a finished hood.

Here’s a rough framework so I can keep everything straight.

Here’s what’s under the hood.

My working buddy decided to take ten…or twenty.

After getting him back in the house, I was able to get a very, very rough layup together.

I just hope it holds up with all the wind we have today, as my shop is a little drafty.

Boyz in the Hood

admin — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:08:33 +0000

Well, as we all know, Idaho doesn’t exactly get very warm. We lost all of our snow two days before spring, but it snowed again two days after the Vernal Equinox. So I’m not ready to pull the chassis out into the elements. Also, I started scraping off the junk/gunk/funk/nastiness, but its slow going and I got bored with it very quickly.

So I decided to do something else. Something free and fun. I had a large piece of cardboard from our recent bathroom remodel that the bathtub came in. It was just about the perfect size for a HMMWV hood mockup. I took it inside—without too many protests from my wife—and drew out an outline of the hood dimensions. Then returned to the shop this morning with it to test it out.

I had help from my son…

As you can see, it’s a little wide:

But, I found something that runs on renewable energy to put under the hood!

You may be asking if I seriously think I can use a cardboard hood on a truck…No, I don’t. I’m going to be building a fiberglass molding plug/modeling buck/whatever-you-want-to-call-it and molding my own hood. Three reasons I don’t want to buy one. First, I’m trying to save money. Second, I want to be able to make another one if I decide I like the first Hummer. Third, I want to learn how to use fiberglass!

So in the saving money department, let me tell you how I gathered up some styrofoam for the mockup. I piled my two little kids in the car, and rolled around town to Sears, and WalMart, KMart, etc. looking for styrofoam from furniture and electronics packaging. It’s cool because not only is it free, but it helps reuse a little bit that might otherwise go to the landfill. I got the idea from Andrew Junge—check out his recent work for a styrofoam hummer.

Anyway, when the box stores were not very helpful—many thanks to recent trend away from styrofoam packaging to more use of cardboard—we headed around town to some apartment housing. We found just a few pieces we could use. We found some long and flat pieces from furniture boxes like I would have expected, and laying around near a construction site we found some thick pink Owens Corning Foamular250. Realizing the connection, I pulled in and asked if the workers had any more scraps. No luck there, but I remembered that the guy at the landfill let me salvage steel in the past for making knives. Maybe he would let me salvage some construction foam.

After work yesterday, I headed to the landfill. In the 20 minutes I was there before they had to close the gate, I got a nice pile. If it’s not enough for the hood, it will definitely be a good start. Here’s a photo: