When you look at a purpose-built rock crawler or rock bouncer, the interior probably isn't the first thing you notice. The suspension, axles, tires, and drivetrain usually get most of the attention. But when we started refining the interior of the Wide Open Design Rocketship tube chassis, it became one of the harder packaging challenges we've worked through.
The Rocketship is designed to sit extremely low. That's a big part of what makes the chassis work, but it also means there isn't much wasted space. The seats, Atlas transfer case, driveshaft, pedals, steering, wiring, plumbing, and driver all have to fit into a very compact area.
We didn't just want to make everything fit. We wanted an interior that was comfortable, easy to get in and out of, serviceable, and realistic for another builder to assemble. That took some serious work.
Why Getting the Driver Low Matters
One of the goals with the Rocketship was getting the driver as low as we reasonably could in the chassis. The seat is essentially down against the skid plate. That helps keep weight low in the vehicle and puts the driver down inside the chassis rather than sitting high above it. In a rock crawler working through steep climbs, sidehills, and uneven terrain, that low center of gravity is worth fighting for.
The problem is that there's nowhere left to hide anything underneath the seat. On the driver's side, we also have the transfer case and driveshaft competing for space. That meant we had to think differently about the driver's leg position, footwell, protection, and how everything else would be routed through the chassis.
In this video, Adam walks through how we refined the Rocketship rock bouncer tube chassis interior around real-world use—from getting the driver as low as possible to improving leg position, adding storage, routing wiring and plumbing, and making the buggy easier to get in and out of.
Sometimes the Driver Tells You What CAD Can't
The driver's leg comes up and over the drivetrain area before dropping into the footwell. We built the protection around that area from approximately .100-inch steel rather than aluminum because of the driveshaft and driver-side transfer-case drop nearby.
Then we put the customer in the buggy. He's a bigger guy who needed an extra-wide seat, but his leg position wasn't quite right. We temporarily put a block underneath his foot to see if raising it would help. It made a huge difference.
That simple test became a raised floor section, which improved the driver's leg position and gave us an opportunity to solve another problem: storage. There aren't many good places to put small items inside a compact rock bouncer, so we turned the space underneath the floor riser into a storage compartment.
We also stopped the raised section short of the seat so the lower area could act as a step and heel rest when getting in and out. One change solved three problems: comfort, storage, and easier entry and exit.
Making a Low Tube Chassis Serviceable
Packaging the wiring and plumbing was another challenge. Because the seat is so low, we can't simply run everything underneath it. Instead, we redesigned the center section to create dedicated routing areas for wiring, fuel lines, cooler plumbing, rear-steer hydraulic lines, and other systems.
Removable panels provide access to those areas instead of permanently burying everything inside the interior. A clean interior is nice when the buggy leaves the shop, but serviceability matters years later. If you have to repair a wire, change a hose, or get to a fitting, you shouldn't have to tear half the interior apart.
Good tube chassis design isn't just about finding enough room to install everything. It's about making sure you can still get to it later.
A Seat Mount That Doesn't Lock You Into One Seat
We also wanted to solve something that's frustrated us with tube chassis interiors for years. Once you fabricate seat mounts around a particular seat and powder coat the chassis, you're usually married to that seat. So we developed a universal Rocketship seat mounting system.
The chassis-side mount stays the same, while different seat-side brackets adapt supported PRP seats to it. We've already designed mounts for the GTSE, GTSE Extra Wide, Alpha, Bravo, and Contour.
That means you can change seats without cutting mounts out of a finished chassis. It also makes removing the seats for cleaning, maintenance, or interior service much easier. For a buggy that's hopefully going to evolve over years of use, that flexibility makes a lot of sense.
Designing It for the Next Builder
This is really what the entire interior project became about. We knew we could figure out how to build one Rocketship interior here at Wide Open Design. The bigger challenge was turning what we learned into something another builder could actually assemble.
Instead of shipping a tube chassis and leaving the customer to figure out the difficult parts, we're working through the seat placement, legroom, storage, wiring, plumbing, service access, and mounting systems now. That's how a fabrication problem eventually becomes a builder solution.
WOD Builder Take
Building this interior reinforced something we've learned over years of building off-road vehicles: good design usually comes from solving a bunch of small problems instead of one big one. We weren't willing to raise the seat just because it would make everything easier to package. Keeping the driver low is one of the advantages of the Rocketship chassis, so we designed around it.
The result is better leg placement, useful storage, cleaner wiring and plumbing routes, easier service access, simpler entry and exit, and a seat mounting system that can change with the buggy. The video above walks through the interior and shows how all of these pieces actually fit together.
And that's really the goal with the Rocketship: solve more of the hard problems here so the next builder doesn't have to start from scratch.
Questions or Comments?
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