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The rig gets some much needed TLC

Josh S - rear glass, suspension, manual tcase

Hey guys I'm back! Well it's been a while since I've done anything major to my truck and it's high time! For starters, I've been running off of one shock in the rear forever and the shock will bottom out if I hit too hard. It was just a thrown together setup cuz I got some free 5150's so I slapped em on.

Anyways, it now has 1.5" per side widened beams up front with rigid bumpstops, kings, eibach coils still. The front end hangs pretty good right now minus the jacked alignment, but that's alright for now cuz I haven't been driving much.

The imminent plans include:
1) Cleaning up the rear fender hackage, round the corners and trim up the body straight so it looks cleaner, then maybe wrap the edges into the wheelwell.

2) mount the rear fiberglass quarter panels. These will be ordered in the next few days from Fiberwerx. I have the mounts already for the fenders, courtesy of Camburg. These are preferable and less of a PITA that dzus fasteners, and I like the look too.
Fenderwasherkit.jpg


3)finish rear suspension. This will involve the most work. after a lot of thought over the past year or two(while not having any spare $$), I have decided to keep the shocks under the bed instead of coming up through the floor. I have been in Sirhk100's old X that was set up this way and it hung hard enough for what I plan on doing. I just would like to bomb around the desert mildly(not fullon race speeds) with a bit of jumping in the mix, with also doing trails of course.

Having Kings up front I would like to stick with em, and also match them with 2.5s. I'm having trouble finding some used right now so they may have to be ordered new :( I'm estimating that I will need around a 10" stroke, but cycling will tell the truth.

I will disassemble the Deaver leaf pack that is on there currently, and just have the main leaf to cycle the suspension, and get some rough measurements off of an "imaginary" upper mount, then I will know the right length to get. A crossmember will need to be fabbed for the shocks to mount to, as well as some of the stock spare tire mount cut off. gooood, my sawzall is getting a bit of dust settling on it :D

in this same time I will mount my Radflo 2" stroke hydro bumps in the cans I just picked up from Camburg. These will be nice for the harder hits in the whoops or on dropoffs or mild jumps. The short stroke and bodies of these custom bumps work great for mounting under our explorers and fitting underneath the floor. After this is complete I will measure for and order some limit straps to keep my leaf pack and shocks together at droop.

While this doesn't sound like a whole lot, it's going to be a lot of work for me but I know it is going to be awesome!

One more current event lol...I ordered a manual t-case from a guy that will be waiting for me when I get back to Chico. Just need to track down some linkage and a shifter and I'll toss that baby in to get rid of these darn shift motor blues :rolleyes:

I'm down in OC right now and won't be back up home to the truck in chico for another week or so, so not really any pics of the stuff...but you can count on this thread having mad amounts of pics once the work starts!!!
 
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I got a new sawz-all for xmas I really want to try out. :D
 






Alright let's tub your wheelwells.....if you're man enough :smoke:
 






subscribing so i can see how the rear glass turns out. looking to do the same with my sport soon. good luck with the rest of the project. :thumbsup:

oh and as far as the rear shocks go, im sure as soon as you get it all done you ll want to go bigger: thru the floor. haha :p :D
 






Haha yah man I hear ya. It's just that the sport is pretty short and would never really be an awesome prerunner, so having something that can hang through mildish stuff is fine for me. I aint trying to reach race speeds, although I used to act like it down in glamis and stuff haha...yaaaah this thing is being designed to be an all around rig that is multipurpose. The biggest thing was the loss of cargo space in the back. I carry tons of crap usually when I go wheeling...spare parts, fluids, toooooools, spare tire in the back, people etc.

I plan on cagin it eventually, but when I want to go towards a prerunner more I'll just buy a ranger :D

HappyGilmore I dig your **** man, looks like a ton of fun! :thumbsup:
 






hey whatsup man. those washers are sick. i ended up using those for my rear fiberglass on my merc and i loveeeeee the look. it gives it that race look. they're also alot easier and cheaper then the zeus fittings.
 






Josh S. said:
It's just that the sport is pretty short and would never really be an awesome prerunner,

:fire: :fire: well see about that!!

:p haha jk i know what your sayin. but my dad once said "if its all ya got, you put all ya got into it" haha. :D

Josh S. said:
HappyGilmore I dig your **** man, looks like a ton of fun! :thumbsup:

thanks man. way to redeem yourself from the first quote. haha. im just messing with ya ;) :p i do like the multi purpse idea since you are 4x4.
 






Cool project, but where's the pics :D ;)
 












yeah lets see some pics!!

for that DA explorer it would probably just be better to make a hoop in the back because i heard it was like $3000-3500 just for the rear end :eek: but for what it is i bet its really smooth and you do still have all that room back there :D :thumbsup:
 






Happy Gilmore-LOL yes I don't know why I've taken the "prerunner" theme so far when I have a sport and everyone's doin SAS but hey whatev...Oh yes and Travis's ex is veeerrry nice, but I don't have that kind of bread to blow on a canti-setup for the rear!!! :D

Thanks guys, pics will come soon as parts arrive. T-case should be here on the 6th, window hopefully coming soon, planning on ordering the rear fiber tommorrow, and hopefully starting disassembling the leafpack soon and cycling to figure out the shocks.

My brother and I just got back to Chico...we were on a roadtrip up the coast from OC but the crazy rains shut down the 101!! We backtracked all over the place and finally made it back here exhausted and luckily safe despite me driving at high speeds on the highways in pouring rain haha...thank God. I'm not used to driving a WRX, just my slow truck!!! :confused:

Clarkent, got any pics of your rear glass? what color washers didja go with?

Anyways, I'll post pics ASAP and please don't anyone post the TTIWWOP smiley unless necessary :D
 






alright here is the best that I can do right now for updates and parts and what not...these are the bump cans for the rear and the fasteners for the rear glass...can't wait to put em on.

Tommorrow I will order the rear glass and I also plan to go down to the local welding shop and pick up a regulator setup and bottle of gas for my Lincoln Weldpack 100. I have been able to get some pretty good looking welds out of it lately but I'm tired of the flux spatter!!!

Also ordered the 1354 shifter from Joe Dietz on here tonight...seems as though I need to fab up the plate that mounts to the t-case...we shall see.
 

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You should sleeve the bump cans with the Bud cans...wouldn't that be hillbilly huh :p

Sounds like you got your work cut out for ya but should be real nice all purpose rig when it's all said and done ;)
 






Wow, were you that much of a neck Dead Link Removed when you lived in Orange? Bud tall can, that bandana Dead Link Removed and car parts on your desk. I think Chico does that to people. My buddy that was born and raised in Huntington Beach like me, came back from going to college up there wearing tight ass wranglers, Brooks and Dunn shirts, **** kickers and a 2 gallon hat. WTF?! :p

Haha, get that thing done so you can caravan with section to Truck Haven! Dead Link Removed
 






FROADER said:
Wow, were you that much of a neck Dead Link Removed when you lived in Orange? Bud tall can, that bandana Dead Link Removed and car parts on your desk. I think Chico does that to people. My buddy that was born and raised in Huntington Beach like me, came back from going to college up there wearing tight ass wranglers, Brooks and Dunn shirts, **** kickers and a 2 gallon hat. WTF?! :p

Haha, get that thing done so you can caravan with section to Truck Haven! Dead Link Removed

No kiddin'...only thing missing is the Skoal lol
 






Haha you guys are funny...yah chico has a lot of hillbillies and wierd people for sure lol...anyhow, my shifter came for the t-case, but now t-case!! It was supposed to come a day or two ago so I don't know what's goin on. :(

I've been workin on the truck the past couple days doing what I can without more parts. Basically I trimmed up the wheelwell edges to make everything straight and cleaner looking, then riveted the side body panel to the inner lip(pics will help) The body had pulled away a bit from the inner body, leaving a nice sized gap letting water basically flow in, so the rivets helped pull it together. That Dang flop on it's side was the cause of this, but it's ok now. Went out to Home depot agaaaain today and picked up some more caulking to finish sealing(I know it's redneck :confused: ) so I will get that done tommorrow.

I placed the order for the fiberglass, so they will call me soon when it ships out hopefully.

We also tore off my conferr roofrack and lights and everything on the roof so it fits nicely under the tarp-covered carport now(chico style haha). The general consensus of all my buddies was the rack has gotta stay off, looks better...so there ya have it.

And yes yes yes I know i need to post pics, but check this out...my freakin buddy left my nice digicam out in the rain last night!!!!! :fire: :fire: :eek: :confused: :rolleyes: :mad:

I'm pretty bummed about it, but I will borrow his cam soon to retake all the pics I had.

Well here's the last pic i have before the others were lost :rolleyes:

Crappy chinese drill press, mig conversion kit for my little welder, a set of the biggest jackstands i could find at HF, and a riveter. And a CL for you guys :chug:
 

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Ok well today me and my buddy put in some hard hours on the truck. We have the conferr roofrack off, and all the brackets pulled from the roof. There were a total of twleve rather sizeable holes left over from the rack, which we worked on. We got the MIG setup running, cut up some 22ga steel fillers and welded em in, then ground em down. Tommorrow will be bondo day to smooth over any roughness and to get it ready for painting.

The fiberglass shipped out either today or tommorrow, so Jason @ fiberwerx said it'll be here before the weekend!!! :bounce: :D :chug: I am very excited for this and can't wait to get em on!!

Here's a couple crappy pics we snapped today. Nothing to interesting, but it sure did take forever :confused:
 

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I am coming over tomorrow. With my sawz-all.
 






We got the passenger-side rear glass on today. Looks clean! We had to do some modification to the glass to get it to work out good...clipped the rear part to make some room for the wraparound bumper, then trimmed out the inner fat lip to make room for the tires.

I trimmed the driver's side glass, then we held it up and it doesn't really match my "custom" bodylines from the little ole' flop on her side. It was dark so we quit until tommorrow. I plan on shaving the glass a bit to make it suck up to the body a little more, then just forcing it the rest of the way into place.

The manual tcase showed up the other morning too! I have the shifter for it, and the front half of the linkage that attaches to the shifter. The case is bare, so I need the part that bolts to the case and the bushing the fork goes to.

Anyone know where I could get ahold of one of these, besides stealing it from Section525 :) Would one from a 1350 work? I'm pretty sure that I'm outta luck from what I've read, maybe pulling Section's off and making a copy of it real quick in the "shop" would work, then use some sort of bushing, or taking one off of a 1350 would work. That would be nice because there are quite a few of them in the local JY.

Pictures of everything coming tonight, when my roommate that broke my camera gets out of his lame counterstrike game :fire:
 



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I know I know, this thread is worthless without pics!!! :rolleyes:

MIG setup and some trimmage from the glass...
welder.jpg


before...
before.jpg


upper tabs...
tab1.jpg


mounted...
glass1.jpg


glass2.jpg


glass3.jpg


more tommorrow :cool:
 






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