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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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Lookin' good man! I can hear your grinder from my place...guess it's about time I walked across the street and offered a hand.:navajo:
 






YAHHH MANN!!! haha...we're always havin fun over here ya know...hopefully I can get the other shock mounted tommorrow but it's supposed to rain!

I get the feeling that I should have put the phrase SAS in the title to my thread, maybe it would get more hits! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

:frustrate :mad: :thumbdwn: :exporange :hammer: :burnout: :fart: :mattmoon: :afro: :shifty_ey :wavey:

sorry had to try out the new smileys :D
 


















Lookin' good Josh...you gonna make it down for the big run in Feb?
 






Thanks Dave! Not sure man, I guess I'll have to see what the Section525 household is up to...sounds like fun tho! I'm always up for floppin the rig over again:D
 






Snagged these from a local friend for a good deal...I guess this project truly has no end.:confused:
IMGP1005.jpg


I will resume work on the exploder Saturday, might be a rough day tho after my department's bar crawl on friday night!:eek: :roll:
 






ooooooooohh nice!


You gonna put them on top of the beam, in front of the beam, or on the radius arm?
 






Those look just like mine minus the Eibach coils...what's the spec's on those, 14" or 16" travel? Coil rates?
 






The c/o's will mount off the front of the beams...I picked up these 1.5" widened beams from my buddy up here(same guy as the c/o's) cuz he is converting his exploder to 2wd equal length. The mounts were already on there so I figure why change em??

The c/o's are 12" travel. I'm not sure on the spring rates, I just have the tags which say only the valving. I'll hafta ask him. I hear they worked pretty nicely on his truck when it was operational, so I'm looking forward to having em on there someday...

Today I got the frame notched out for the bump cans and took measurements for those and also the height of the strike plates. I am going to have to make them kinda tall off of the axle unfortunately, but it should work ok. Took measurements for limiting straps also so hopefully I can order those tommorrow.

Put the leaf packs back together with new centerpins, and am getting everything ready to head over to Section525's place to weld everything up. My little welder just can't handle this thicker stuff and I want to make sure it turns out good;)

future coilover mount...
IMGP1023.jpg


shackles painted flat black...
IMGP1022.jpg


reassembling the leafpacks. centerpins still need to be cut off to length...
IMGP1017.jpg


mocked up bumpstop can...
IMGP1015.jpg
 






sweet. very jealouss. i just bent my rear axle tube and seperated it from the third member about an inch. shoulda got bumps. but i guess thats what happens when your dooin 65-70 mph thru a woop section over and over on 35s and your rear cant keep up.....hahhahahhahha keep it up man
 






For those of you that live in socal, be thankful!!! The weather basically = RAIN for the next two weekends......hopefully Johnny can make some room in his garage so we can do a lil welding during all of this crappy weather:confused:
 






Update

Sup!
IMGP1187.jpg


Well the rear end is pretty much finished, just working some kinks out now. Took her over to Section525 Fabshop and got it all welded up, then finished up a couple minor things like limit strap tabs with my cute lil welder. Took it out and smashed on it pretty good and it was handling great! Caught a lil air and had some fun for sure.

When I decided to step out and take a look it turns out that the rear bumps had slid up in their cans. One of the schrader valves got busted off after it slid up into the frame. The other one is currently wedged in there, snap ring and all. The front rubber bumpstop split apart...couldn't hang. You can see the wedged-in rear one in this pic...
IMGP1188.jpg


I picked up a new schrader valve and some snaprings today so that should help. Yesterday we dove in and repaired my leaking front diff. Tore the whole front end up and got the pumpkin out. A few of the bolts had stripped out the threads in the aluminum housing (note: don't use an impact wrench on these guys!:rolleyes: ) so we replaced all 10 of them with 1/2" Grade 8 bolts and washers. B2dude was a huge help in yesterday's project, thanks buddy! The thing should be a lot stronger now too! Here's a pic of that...
IMGP1182.jpg


While we were tearing apart the front end we found a few loose things like the lower radius arm bolt (as usual), the outer bearing adjuster nut (also as usual) and a brake pad!! haha this thing had come out of its home and was resting/grinding onto the rotor's hub...sooo we threw some new brake pads in too.:D
IMGP1177.jpg


This coming weekend we are heading down to the desert to wheel the Mojave Road Trail with some guys from ORR and others.. It should be a fun 140mi dirt trip from Laughlin to Barstow. I think the truck should be pretty good to go after all this work and I'll post some pics!
 






IMGP0901.jpg


I don't know why but the song from Deliverence started up in my mind.

Not sure if you explained or not but why did you mount the shock down low on the rear axle and not on top??

Oh and cool thread and progress reports!
 






nice! i really like the whole setup, front and back. your truck is the exact same as i want for my truck. so someday i will build my truck the same way as yours and we will have to have a head to head battle or something haha. how much do you pull in the rear?
 






Thanks guys! The setup works pretty well, but this past weekend on the Mojave Road trail I accidentally launched it 5' in the air and broke a bunch of ****...Pics and vid should be posted by next weekend when i get back up north.

PV - the shocks are mounted pretty much as high as they can easily be in the rear on the tops, and in order to keep a semi-decent shock angle this is where the lower mounts had to be. We even thought about making them lower. i don't do a whole lot of rockcrawling anymore, and as long as they don't hang down lower than the leafpack plates I don't see a problem.

RJ - I'm not sure on the exact travel in the rear but I would guess around 14 or 15". i never bothered to measure when I was cycling the suspension.

And yes we are pretty hillbilly up in Chico man, don't be hatin! haha...and that Deliverance song is bomb so I don't know what you're talkin about :D

Oh and just to get an idea about the carnage on saturday:
1) 2 broken front fiberglass fenders
2) 2 wasted poly bumps in the front
3) 1 extremely sodomized radius arm bracket
4) 1 front shock reservoir hose blown off
5) 1 rear hydro bump blown out and both shot up into frame
6) 1 front wheel bent and bead blown, had to put on spare
7) 1 door panel busted off (lol)
8) and center console ripped off by passenger

still drove it home!
 






Holy ****. Which radius arm bracket bent? The Camburg or the Section525? :p:

Sounds like I need more gas for the welder.
 









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