69 Bus Cow catcher

At first I thought you were kidding:-)

Whatever you build is going to be massive in terms of steel. Maybe a VEE shape that would deflect her/him to either side. What you gotta watch is that the device doesn't wind up deflecting the beast *upward*, even a little, because then it will promptly go thru the windshield and wind up in your lap...

Speedy Jim

Just drive slower and get really good lights.............There really isn't a whole lot of VW there to deal with the MASS of a fully grown cow..............The link below is pretty funny, but would be totally useless in the event you hit anything larger than, say,..............a Poodle.

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MUADIB®

I'm not sure what you could anchor a cow catcher to on a VW bus that wouldn't be totally destroyed by the impact. Between the cow and the bus you're talking about a lot of mass.

...Hmm....

You can attempt to do one of two things with that much energy; absorb it or deflect it. Deflection doesn't sound hopeful to me. First of all, an impact between a cow and a bus that has an angled deflector on the front is probably going to deflect the bus rather than the cow. Second, there's no guarantee that you're going to hit the cow correctly for the deflector to work. If it's angled, it has to have a point or apex of some kind, and if you hit the cow on the point instead of the angled surface, you now have the cow *plus* the cow catcher collapsing onto your legs (you could make the point sharp enough to cut the cow in two....making your bus look like something out of a Mad Max movie ).

Perhaps some sort of energy absorbing structure, designed to collapse and sacrifice itself in an impact. The front ends of modern cars do this by design. You still have the problem of what to anchor it to that's stouter than the structure itself--so it's the structure that collapses and not the bus. Also keeping in mind that if you do hit a cow and whatever you've built doesn't do it's job, it's all gonna end up in your lap.

Wild idea:

Build yourself a mounting system on the front of the bus that's as stout as you can make it. Anchor it underneath, as well as on either side just in front of the doors. Get two chunks of plate, maybe 3/16" thick, 24" high and curved to match the front of the bus. Mount one to the anchor points, just like you were trying to armor-plate the lower front of the bus. Now get some expanded steel, and cut it into 12" wide strips, but curved to match the steel plates so you can weld them on in horizontal rows sticking straight out forward. Finally, weld the second plate to the outer edges of the expanded steel to form the front face of the "bumper". Now you have a structure that kind of resembles corrugated cardboard, with the expanded steel sandwiched between the plates. The expanded steel will collapse on impact (just like the steeling column safeties on the bugs), absorbing the energy. The outer plates will keep it all together so it doesn't deform too badly and send something sharp through the front of the bus.

I'd still be willing to bet that when the numbers were crunched, it would still be the front of the bus that failed, but with the 'cowcatcher' curved to conform to the shape of the bus, it just might spread the energy of the impact over enough area to keep your legs from becoming too familiar with the cow. Maybe.

Even wilder idea: Get a minivan side airbag unit and mount it just above the front bumper. On second thought. get several of them. They're designed to absorb the energy of a human, not a cow.

Now we're *really* getting silly idea: Outward-exploding panels like they use on some armored military vehicles to counter a shell hit. Cleanup would be unpleasant...

Ok, one more and I'm done. What you'd really rather do, of course, is not hit the cow at all. So get yourself an infrared video camera and point it forward. Hook it to a video screen from one of those mobile DVD players. Set it up so that when there's no heat source ahead, the screen is basically dark, and you won't see anything at night. When there's a warm body out there, you'll get a visible splash of red on the screen. If you really want to get sophisticated, hook it up to a laptop computer that's programmed to sound an alert when it sees too much heat. I'm not sure how much extra warning you could get, but I bet the infrared setup could "see" a lot farther than your headlights.

Cheers, Walt

Not Kidding! Really

I was thinking that if you had something that attached to the front frame; an extension or extrusionthat would go to a crossbar in the front.

I GOT IT ! It won't stop the damage to the van and I thought that if it were done right you could transfer most of the impact to the frame.

It wouldn't be the first time I was accused of thinking outside the box!

You may be able to build a protection device to withstand the impact from a cow, but in my opinion a little impractical. The weight & size would be too much for the Kombi.

"Down under" we have "roo" bars to help deflect the 'Kangaroos' from the vehicles on our country roads.

But a direct hit on a large roo will still damaged the kombi. However it would possibly save the driver by spreading the load across the front of the vehicle. Here is an example of a "roo" bar with a spare wheel mounted on it, one of my Club member's camper.

Grahame

from Australia

Maybe you could just add a gas grill to the front and ...... nevermind. Andy

check out this site..... might give you some ideas.

Well, a .50 caliber chaingun pod on the roof would make it too top-heavy...

Heck, there's a reason Safari windows were invented.

I have seen one localy. If i see it again I will try to get a pic.

How about you buid the equivilant of a roll / crash cage inside the cab. sort of put yourself in a steel tube bubble !

They use somthing similar on F1. The car falls apart all around you but you have your cage intact at the end.

Rich

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote:

Damnnnn! I should have know to ask an Aussie anyway! You got it ! I guess what I want is a "roo"bar any pics? or are the available downunder?

I'm a TDI guy who lurks here on occasion.

But damn...............I NEED a Baja Bus.............

D. Dub

Having seen the result of a 35MPH collision between a steer and a 1-ton Dodge diesel pickup (with a _very_ heavy-duty "cattle catcher" bolted securely to the frame) I'd say that there is no way to protect a VW bus from an impact with a cow. There just isn't anything sturdy enough to tie to. In the above collision, the steer pushed the entire steel "catcher" back into the front end of the truck, bending the heavy steel frame of the truck in the process. The truck was fixable, but not without a lot of $$$.

My solution to this problem is to simply not drive at night. Too many critters that could ruin your whole trip. In Mexico, this is doubly true.

George

Had another Idea whilst sleeping last night..............I think that's when it was............Who knows? I was asleep.

Anyhow, I thought maybe if you built a large frame with blades on fron of it and shape a sub frame to "drain" the parts off the sides or bottom, You'd just cut the cow in small enough pieces to maybe avoid the direction change that would likely happen without it..................

Nah,..............I'm too tired to remember just how that was gonna work when I first thought about it.................I swear it was a good idea at first................really.

Cut it on two at least............one large blade down the middle???

Hit it head on and you could stop and pick up some steaks for later...............

Something's wrong with this whole idea, .............

ZZZZZZzzzzzzz

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MUADIB®

On Sat, 08 Jan 2005 03:55:45 GMT, MUADIB® scribbled this interesting note:

You have got to get some real sleep!:~)

-- John Willis (Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)

There's a splittie around my town. Remember the scoops on the front of trains? Pointed in the middle, with a grate like appearance? It has one of those on the front. On the sides someone took spray paint and wrote "Shittie Splittie".

How's *THAT* for a cow catcher, eh?

K. John C's proof:

MUADIB® wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

What you need is a Cow Punch (tm).

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