Outer Limits 4x4 Board

Been perusing ih8mud.com for the um tech advice, not the 40-porn and I've noticed a lot of these soft half-doors on the Septic machines.



What's the go, are these legal here in Aus? I'd normally answer my own question and say no, but Toyota released canvas soft tops for a 40 back in the day and some came with 2-piece soft doors - just a tube frame with canvas over it.

I'm not overly worried about the safety aspects, having driven a 1942 GPW Jeep from Sydney to Cairns with no doors and just a webbing safety strap. No roll bar either - but in MOST instances you have to actually have some speed up on the open road to flip it, something that's not really an issue in a stock WWII jeep.

You can run no doors under the right conditions.

Also soft doors are fine and can meet current ADRs but you need to have the correct latch type and side intrusion protection from the latch point to the hinge, so I think it would be possible.

Thanks for the advice BJ.

Here's the basic design -

Shell material: green canvas or black vinyl (green canvas shown in diagram for clarity - colour sucks)

Window material: clear marine vinyl with zipper closure (window is more rounded than in diagram)

Hinge: Stock 40-series door hinge - each attaches with three bolts that go through the shell and into captive nuts welded to the hinge mounts.

Latch: stock 40 series door latch

Door Handle: not specified - need to see what works.

Top closure: prickly side velcro stitched to shell - just to stop it flapping around at the top. Fluffy side velcro is stitched to soft top.

Frame: 10mm round bar welded (shown as grey in diagram)

Anti-intrustion and hinge/latch mounts: welded flat bar (shown as black in diagram) - thickness and materials depends on ADRs

Top of lower half of door frame: flat aluminium bar (not shown). This is bolted to door frame and holes are drilled for tabs of upper half of door. Depending on how it works, might add short sections of 10 or 10.5mm ID tube to receive tabs.

Tabs: 10mm round bar with holes drilled for locking pins.

Weather seal: (not shown) from Clark rubber and glued on with sikaflex or maybe seamgrip - need to see what works.

Diagrams:

Exterior:



Interior - showing frame and internals



And a quick photochop showing the doors and a notional canvas soft top



Possible design adjustments - add an aluminium or sheet metal skin with canvas or vinyl covering.

Can anyone see any major issues with the design apart from flapping from the shell material?

looks good to me mate. will look even better if you want to make up another set and send south