Project: Spare Parts

[RClippa]

this is the body placed roughly on the frame from earlier. The frame still needs a few pieces here and there. I want to work out the leaf spring mounts before I finish it up. I am CADing up body mounts, bed mounts, and the spring hangers right now. Hopefully I can run home in a few minutes and cut them all out.

 

[RClippa]

It was a busy weekend, but I didn't get as far as I had hoped. I got side tracked with a little hiking and goofing off.

It turns out that notching on the mill is pretty sweet, but that the hole saws don't stand a chance when things bind up.

The bridgeport has way more torque than the saw can handle. I snapped 2 HF saw arbors, ripped the threads out of 2 Rigid hole saws, and destroyed this one. All of the problems except the arbors were my fault. The two arbors were HF so I didn't expect much.

That got me to where the frame is 90% finished. So I moved on to the leaf springs. I must admit that I have never had a leaf sprung rig so I am totally baffeled with the idea of a leaf spring. But I forge ahead and designed some mounts.

I love cardboard, and it was super easy to convert into a CAD file to cut out.


The end results look good, but won't work due to the leaf springs change in length. I need to leaf spring to mount about 2.5 inches close to the frame kickdown. Not a big deal, a quick redesign and they should be good to go.

I also worked on some body mounts. The CNC table worked wonders, but I had to build a break for my press so I could put the bend in.


With this I was able to move the frame around and see where I stood.

 

[RClippa]

I can personally move the frame, but I don't know if I ever want to do it again. It currently has 70 feet of tube plus the plate work so it isn't light. Even so I muscled it outside to see how everything fit. I even broke down and wheeled the 35's over.



I think it is going to look killer. The current wheelbase is 112" with a 20" belly, but I expect the belly to go up and the wheelbase to come to about 108" once I fix the spring mounts. The approach and departure angles are also really good. Probably close to 60 degrees so for mild expedition style stuff it will work great. I had expected the waggy axles to really push the tires out, but they don't stick out much. I will build the fenders to cover the majority of the tires. Luckily they won't have to be to big.

 

[Steve97tj]

Hell ya looks good as hell, keep it up. Ive always been a fan of the work you do.

 

[RClippa]

Thanks,

I am still cranking away at it, but slowly. My defense got scheduled for the 5th so I am scrambling trying to be ready to take a beating in my final exam ever!!! I will be working on it this weekend however. The motor is in place, the bed frame is there. I just need to finish up the mounts and trim the body a little more to clear the trans. Then I will tear it back down to fix the spring mounts and weld up the frame.

 

[RClippa]

I am trying to be better about updating. I got a new camera last week, but I forgot the batteries so once I get some the picture quality will improve. In the meantime I have been working on it.



I got the 4.0L, ax15, and NP231 installed over the weekend. I went to a you pull junkyard and found a 23 spline 231 on the ground that was already pulled so I picked it up. I also managed to find some monster lift shackles that I will be cutting down to work with my setup. The are 6" now and I will probably shorten them to around 4.5".



you can see that the hood will have to be stretched a couple inches. Shouldn't be able to notice once it is finished since the fenders will be custom built to match.



Here it is with the bed tilted up. I still need to build the mechanism to lift the bed. I am inbetween a hydraulic dump and a manual dump right now. The manual dump will be much cheaper, but not nearly as cool. The body is also on body mounts and bolted down. I have to pick up some more square tube for the fenders and sheetmetal for the floors. Then I should be ready to wrap up the metal work and get it to paint.

 

[RClippa]

I had to torch off the old spring mounts because my shackle angle sucked. I built some new mounts up to help with the angle. You can see in the above picture that the angle is vertical, but once I shorten the shackel and add the rest of the rig on top it should be pretty good.



I will have to get a picture of them on the rig, but these moved the spring location in 3 inches and down just over an inch. They shortened the wheelbase to 105" which is a little shorter than I want. I am hoping that once the weight gets on it and the shackles are fixed it will stretch out to 107-108.

The stock waggy rear axle is sprung over, so I built some new spring mounting plates for the rear to convert it to sprung under to match the front. This keeps everything level. While not great from a ground clearance prospective, it made the frame construction a lot easier.

 

[RClippa]

Progress slowed a little bit, but I got my defense done and I will be graduating so now I can pick up the pace a little. I have been having a good run at the junkyard. This weekend I picked up quite a few parts that I needed.

Scored a hood for the buggy, 12V hydraulic power pack for the dump bed, the rams for the dump bed, driveshaft parts, warn premium hubs, and a few more misc. parts that I have been hunting. I also started on the sheetmetal work.



The hope is that I will just leave the spot welds in place. This is the corner on the bed. The rust repairs on the body will be done the same way. To do this I bought a punch/flange tool from HF. It was worth every penny. $40 and I have already punched around 700 holes. It puts a 3/8" hole and will flange almost perfectly for 18 gauge sheetmetal lap joints.

 

[97TJGUZZY]

i like that tool, makes sheetmetal work look easy. is it a wear item or can you sharpen it or something?

 

[RClippa]

Pretty sure it is a wear item. Only the punch would wear out and it appears to be replaceable. I am making a new head for the tool that allows it to punch deeper on the metal and also to make a deeper flange. For normal sheetmetal work it doesn't need it, but I always end up doing something different so a deeper punch would be nice. I will say that I used it to punch holes every inch around a 54x17 panel and it only took about 3 minutes. Right there it payed for itself. There are a few places that I have to drill the holes because they are in the middle of panels. Just drilling 15 holes takes longer than flanging and punch the entire boarder of the panel.

edit: I just checked and HF will sell the replacement parts for the punch system when they wear out.