Something w/ rabbits. 72.5 pages of BS | Page 68 | Ford Explorer Forums - Serious Explorations

  • Register Today It's free!

Something w/ rabbits. 72.5 pages of BS

So seeing as spring is just around the corner, I thought I'd start a thread on the future undertaking of swapping in the Dana 60.

The axle is from a 1986 "Fawwd" F-threee "fitty", sporting some kingpins and a whole lot of rust. I took this axle apart a few months ago (except stupid me didnt remove the pinion nut before breakdown :rolleyes:) and had it hot tanked. I wanted it sandblasted, but the machine shop owner smirked and said "naaah yo, that junx is too big for my blasting cabinet" .. okay except he didn't really say that cauz he's old and a really cool guy. ANyways *twirls blonde hair*, this is my plaannn:

- WMS-WMS this axle is just a bit over 69" wide so I'm going to cut the passenger's side down a few inches to match 'ye ol General Motors 14-bolt axle. So this is going to require custom axle shafts and I think I'm going to go Chromos and 35-spline outers off the bat from the most awesome guys at Complete Off Road.

- Drive flange or lockouts? They are about the same in price and its a dedicated trail rig so I'm leaning towards the drive flanges. Right now, the cheapest flanges I found are the Teraflexes at $180 for a pair. If anyone knows of a better deal, please let me know :D !!

- High-steer arms and a double-ended hydroponics goodness ("cylinder").

- Opposite-ended panhard bar! The idea is to mount the chassis end of the panhard on the passenger's side frame rail and the axle end on the driver's side. Doing so should allow a more simple and cleaner design since the axle-mount can be mounted on top of or near the differential housing, instead of a tower on the passenger's side (like in my current D44 setup). I also plan to boost the panhard as far up as possible to increase the roll center of the front suspension. Yeah the concept is a little strange but I'm hoping it'll work and won't have any issues (no drag-link to factor into the design). But if anyone knows of any problem running this config, please chime in!

*EDIT*
- Detoit Locker for the carrier. I'm please with how the Detroit in the 14-bolt has performed so I figured I'd run the same in the front. Of course 5.13s to match the 14-bolt.


So here's the little guy, he's been in this position for the past few months just collecting dust:

DSC000871.jpg
 



Join the Elite Explorers for $20 each year.
Elite Explorer members see no advertisements, no banner ads, no double underlined links,.
Add an avatar, upload photo attachments, and more!
.





HAHAHA, sorry but that is pretty funny. Electricity + water = a hair raising experience.

IZ that looks very good on the aluminum. One problem I have run into is the weld pool at the end will cool too quickly and crack. I think you can slowly relax your foot toward the end of the weld and help to prevent any such problems. Keep up the good work!

That helps, but the best thing to do on aluminum is back off the pedal a little and add a dab of filler once you've backed off a little so the crater gets filled up.

Dips are spaced a little to far apart, they may look nice but having them spaced so far apart makes the joint underfilled as a whole and can lead to individual little stress risers at the dips.

Its also not clean enough, see the little specks in the bead? That is either grit from sand/emery paper or grinding wheels or oxides from not brushing off the alu. Grinding aluminum is fine with the right wheels, but you need to either go back over it with a carbide burr or a SS wire brush (NOT wire wheel) to get the embedded grit out of the material. Also even brand new aluminum needs to be brushed to remove the oxides.

Clean it, tighten it up and you should be golden.
 



Join the Elite Explorers for $20 each year.
Elite Explorer members see no advertisements, no banner ads, no double underlined links,.
Add an avatar, upload photo attachments, and more!
.





Thanks for the tips - yeah those pieces weren't cleaned. I basically bought it from home depot, chopped into small pieces, clamped it down, and then started welding them w/o any prep.
Posted via Mobile Device
 












Dude, I hope you win some kind of award for this.
I hope that award is a cool glass of lemonade.. mmmm.


What I got done this week: the bars for the boat side thingy, and mounting tabs for the two front seats.

Driver's side:
sidebars3b.jpg


Passenger's side:
sidebars2b.jpg


The bars under the driver and passenger are a little bit reinforced (they have the greatest change of seeing some vertical forces)
sidebars1.jpg


And then a friend came over and I had to build a chain guard for his motorcycle:
chainguard.jpg
 






Passenger's side:
sidebars2b.jpg



my 19 month old would see this as a very fun jungle gym...so whens the jungle gym going to be finished iz?
 






I need to attend IZ's school of Fab.



Looking Good Z



The bars under the driver and passenger

So will they be the sliders or just part of the underbody of the truck
 






boatsides are the sliders in majority of cases. Adding sliders would defeat the purpose of boatsides.
 






Iz....lets talk about weight for a second. I don't feel your exsactly lowering the original weight. Mite as well add plate to the outside and call it a tank;)
 






Thanks guys.

I know its adding weight but its knd of necessary or else I'll get a rock up my legs. And those square tubes are only 1/8ths inch wall.
Posted via Mobile Device
 












A friend gave me this manual transmission from a Nissan 240 today - I think some of its internals might be a good candidate for a rear driveshaft disconnect.

240_trans.jpg
 


















What the beep make you look at a nissan tranny and go "oooh, rear driveshaft disconnect"?
 












AHah yeah thats pretty much it. And most manual transmissions work the same way so really any manual transmission would work.

Mounted the rear seat:
rearseat.jpg


Replaced the oil pump (still had the original one), installed the ladder frame, oil pan, and starter:
ladderbar.jpg


Finally got around to making some shock mounts on the axle end.
Rear driver's side:
shockaxle_driv3.jpg


Rear passenger's side:
shockaxle_pass3.jpg


Front driver's side. These shocks are the old ones (for mockup) and have 16" of stroke. The real ones are 14" so there will be 2 more inches of exposed shaft when the 14"s are installed.
shockaxle_driv1.jpg

shockaxle_driv2.jpg


Front passenger's side. The small orange line on the shock represents where the 14" shock body would end:
shockaxle_pass1.jpg

shockaxle_pass2.jpg


And I knocked in the D60's inner knuckles (as you can see) but havent welded them in yet - caster is set to about 3 degrees.

overall.jpg
 












hmmm it kinda starting to look like a truck again :D
 






you should rent out that back seat for your runs, Im sure there would be a few takers :D
 



Join the Elite Explorers for $20 each year.
Elite Explorer members see no advertisements, no banner ads, no double underlined links,.
Add an avatar, upload photo attachments, and more!
.





How are you planning on going about painting the tube? Your too fancy to just spray can it.
 






Back
Top