Thanks for the advice :) i have new uni joints to go in so i'll switch it when i fit those, for the moment it's helping to hold the diff in place while it has no lower control arms in
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so today i finished making the control arms zapped the ends up Ready to bolt in, popped them in and ran through the arc's of travel to make sure clearances are sweet. Right down to standard bump stops, and nothing hit - perfect :)
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welded the body mounts in, again paying attention to not welding on the curve of the chassis, and zapped in some tube to fill the holes down the bottom
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the overall length of the arms is 1100mm. the factory arms were 680mm, plus the 410mm i moved the mounts, plus 10mm to shuffle the axle back when i put a 4" lift in :)
Now i was having a look at this coil tower brace and i noticed a slight problem.....
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The rear shocks can't be fitted/changed with the brace fitted - that's slightly less than ideal!!
for a start i plan on getting this on the road with a 2 inch lift to start and i'll be changing to a 4 inch lift in the near future. also i know this thing is likely to have a fairly hard life and i don't want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere struggling to change a destroyed shock, so with the brace sitting in position i traced around the coil towers on the under side. my original plan was to run through with a holesaw and put a half section of pipe in to replace the section i cut out but the cutout was way to close to the coil tower for this to work... damn
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had to resort making it look pretty horrible but hopefully i haven't robbed to much strength, i think it'll be alright and i didn't have much choice but to compromise looks for functionality. now at least the shocks will be able to be changed without disassembling half of the vehicle!! hopefully will look a little better with a coat of paint and covering it up when i put the body back on!
also got a set of these to go in :cool:
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After seeing how much crap accumulated in the front tower and the rust that followed i wasn't too keen on putting them in with no way for dirt and water to drain out so out came the holesaw again, then a quick coat of "nothing to see here officer" black. I've read on countless posts on here that POR-15 is the paint to use but it's pretty hard to find. i'm using a KBC version of the same stuff and it's awesome. self priming, self leveling, rust proofing, hard wearing, urethane coating.
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i'm off to work again tomorrow so there won't be any progress for a fortnight now, but the idea's will definitely keep flowing
looking the goods man :bigthumbup:
Ok Guys, it's been a while since i have given any updates. I haven't got too much achieved, most of it is as it was left. I did give a mate a bit of a hand to convert his RB30 GQ to a diesel and the donor car he used was a leaf sprung Ute so we needed the Gearbox Cross member, Drive shafts, and diff flanges out of my white one as i'll be using whats in the diesel chassis. So I pulled the engine Gearbox out
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This should make it a little easier when i go to lift the body off having these out of the way. I sold the engine as it won't be needed and the more cash i get back for unused parts will help fund the project
also picked up a duel Battery tray, not quite up to this stage yet but for $30 it can sit up in the shed for later
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what a big job you have undertaken there mate. love the read and pics that you have posted so far. Keep up the good work mate. Will you be getting the rig engineered or just taking it over the pits.
i managed to grab a second hand bull bar the other day for $60 bargain
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it's a solid base and not to twisted and busted up, i plan on modifying it a bit then having it sandblasted and powder coated black but i'm not quite up to that stage yet so it can just be set aside with some of the other parts.
so yesterday i was pretty much just procrastinating over having to actually do anything so i was just playing around with some fiddly little bits, i removed the Grill and horrible looking alloy bull bar, it kind of sucks that it has bent up into the front guards at some stage in the past and bent all of the lower part of the front, i think i might just try to find some new ones with the corner lights in them to make it look a little better
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for no real reason other than i had one there and there was a hole for it in the the radiator support and a wiring plug already there for it i decided to put the horn disc off the diesel cab onto the white cab and run twin horn discs, i doubt i'll ever notice it but it did fill in 5 minutes :) then i ripped out some of the bit's i'll no longer need like the LPG converter and the carbon canister
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after this i decided to get a little productive and removed the dash from the diesel cab so i can get to the wiring loom, i disconnected everything from the front and started feeding it through the firewall, i'll get some masking tape and label where most parts go to make it a little easier to hook it all back up when i transfer it to the white cab
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so today i slowly plodded around the shed i whipped off the rear bumper ends and unfortunately 2 bolts had snapped so i'll have to drill them out. I took off the rear alloy panel, took off the tow bar and pulled out the fuel tank. i gave it all a bit of a clean ready for some chassis paint
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I coated it all with some adhesion primer and mixed some penetrol in with the urethane chassis black, i hope it does what it claims. I've read a few threads on here with guys swearing by it and it isn't very expensive so i don't mind giving it a bit of a whirl
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i did actually brush a coat on the rear section of chassis but i didn't take a photo of it, i'll get one tomorrow. i plan on using two coats on the chassis to hopefully stop any chance of rust and with the two coats it should give me at least 3mm coating thickness.