A little story about my favorite piece of engineering/fabrication on this project.
None of my vehicles have a cupholder. Living in AZ, this is an issue as operating without liquids in summer means quick death. Since my boy has been around, I have been scamming his cupholder in his car seats then and booster seats now. It worked out great in my S10 p/u as it is small and *basically* a two person vehicle. I was using the same technique in the Suburban and it worked well when it is just me and him, but when my wife comes with, he goes in the back seat along with MY cup holder. This makes the consumption of liquids a potentially dangerous event. I finally gave up and figured if I can fab a huge-ass diesel motor into this thing, I should be able to make a friggin' cup holder. Simple, right?? Well, it must have certain design features of course and must hold vessels of various capacities and configurations, be easy to reach, and can not be too ugly as it must go inside the vehicle--not hidden under the hood.
Ok, so where to start. I guess I should figure out what size vessels and what configurations to start with. I decided it must me able to hold a can with the foam sleeve around it. I also figured it needed to be able to hold the two most common size cups from the local Kwik-E-Mart as I have a bunch of these cups in inventory and I do stop and buy a soda once in a while.
So here they are:
You can see that the difference in diameter is fairly substantial. I started with the can/foam sleeve. The foam sleeve measures 3.25" o.d.. The cups are obviously smaller diameter at the base but taper to a larger diameter as you go up toward the top. Ok, 3.25, 3.25, 3.25. Ah, I got it!! 3.5" o.d. exhaust pipe. Perfect fit on the can!! Ok, now to figure out how to make the cups that are going to be VERY top heavy remain seated in the pipe without assistance from the driver. With some water in the cups and some EXTREMELY scientific shaking and leaning of the pipe, I found the perfect depth that will keep both upright.
I welded a piece of 1 x .187 flat stock to the inside of the pipe at the bottom to make a place for the cup/can to sit on while also providing drainage for the inevitable drip/leak etc. Now what to do with this piece of pipe. Ah, I can mount it to the side of the seat frame. Ok, it must be spaced out so much to clear the side of the seat bottom. Ok, what to use. Well, heavy wall exhaust pipe seems a bit excessive, so I should probably go with something more reasonable. 5/8" grade 8 round bar--perfect!! Nice and light, not overkill, excellent. Now to mount it. Another chunk of the .187, 1" flat stock welded to the end of the round stock, drill two holes, add a couple grade 8 bolts to the seat frame mount it about an inch above the floor and BOOM!! There it is, one perfect, lightweight (haha), cupholder.
