71K5 - BP71K5's Just for fun build

[ChefBear]

I see new seats in your future!

Ants have got to be hating that bedliner it would almost double their travel time.

 

[bp71k5]

I see new seats in your future!

Yea, the quaintness of old springs, ripped vinyl, and goofy bracketry is getting old. Plus, the style of the old seats gets kinda lost once you add all the other fun junk in there. It'll be a while though.

Ants have got to be hating that bedliner it would almost double their travel time.

I've got those guys beat finally.

 

[Yukon Jack]

It is looking great - such a nice cage!

 

[bp71k5]

Thanks, hopefully I don't need to test it anytime soon.

 

[bp71k5]

Update: Caution overhead cargo may have shifted during the flight.

Here's a neat pic someone took where I actually got some rear fender rubbing at Hollister Hills OHV park:



I have one big takeaway from my trip there this last week: Keep ALL cargo firmly secured at all times.

While I normally am super diligent about wearing seat belts, I didn't fasten the belt one time while moving the truck and got a little too aggressive with the accelerator. As I hit a pretty small bump in the dirt, the 40 year old seat properly compressed and then ejected me up in the air pretty hard until the top of my head contacted the roll bar above me. I am very lucky I added padding above my head the day before because it would have been a very bad injury.

So I will never even start the motor again without everyone wearing the belts.

The other thing was the spare tire, recovery equipment, and other various stuff sitting in the back would tend to launch around on even the smallest bumps. In the videos I posted, you can see my passengers and the spare tire fly into the air several inches over some of the log bumps.

So I think my next round of stuff to work on is seat belts, cargo tie-downs, etc.

I'd really like to find a way to get a 4-point harness safely installed. My immediate problem is that there's no spot to mount the shoulder straps. I've got a few options:

1. I could mount the shoulder straps to the cage tiedown behind each seat but that's bad in an accident if the seats are still attached to the floor.

2. I could add some bars to the cage on the floor that the seats could mount to. This looks like the most common solution, but kinda impedes rear seat accessibility.

Here's a couple pictures of another option I am considering and could use some opinions on.




I'd like to tie the A-pillar and B-Pillar cage plates together, but have the tube run underneath the floor inside the rocker boxes. The seat mounts would be on that hidden tube, but poke up through the floor in the right spots.

The other related idea is to have the shoulder straps to be attached to a rigid tube structure that the seat bolts onto and that can pivot up similar to the stock seats to give rear seat access. Obviously I'd need to find a way to keep the seat from pivoting forward in an accident if the seat belts are no longer attached to the body.

Thoughts?

 

[ChefBear]

Seat Bridge

The kids become very adept at scrambling from front to back and back again between the front seats... I've been super happy with the set up and love the PRP seats.

doh, you have littler ones... I see now why you need the acess.

Well when they get a little bigger the seat bridge with the 2 hoops like I did seems to work really well.

 

[bp71k5]

Yea I should have asked how yours got back there. It'll be a few years before I can trust mine to buckle up properly. My wife also likes to sit back there sometimes to give friends with better "spotting" abilities a chance to sit up front on complicated trails.

I can ponder this for a while so I'm open to ideas.

 

[BGKYK5]

I like the seat-cage idea, but it would take carefull planning and design to pull it off safely. I have small kids too (well two medium sized ones and a small one), and am pondering the same problem.

I always figured I'd have to go with the horizontal bar between the b-pillar tubes for the upper harness connection and tubes for the seat mounts, but now you have me thinking.

Look at the back seat. I don't know if it changed over the years, but the back seat in my '91 can pivot forward like that and is already designed to hold together in a crash.

 

[bp71k5]

Yea, the back seat is a whole other issue. I'd like to be able to somehow throw a sleeping bag down and stretch out for overnight road trips. Having that seat pivot forward, or even using a new seat that lays flat might be an option.

I've been looking at racing harness conversions for convertible sports cars like the s2000, dodge viper, and old camaros and mustangs for ideas. There's different issues when you have a unibody vehicle, but the old mustangs appear to tie a third point belt onto the body right behind the door latch when there's no b-pillar. I don't think the k5 is high enough in that area to have a shoulder belt attach there.

 

[BGKYK5]

I meant you could use the stock back seat mechanism for your front seats.

 

[bp71k5]

I meant you could use the stock back seat mechanism for your front seats.

In my case, the only mechanism on the stock seats are the 6 bolts holding it onto the floor. Tilt and folding seats didn't come until much later.

 

[BGKYK5]

Well then, look at a newer one.

 

[jimbug]

I had considered using a Wrongler fold and tumble style of seat..... it would work for your sleeping issue and for extra cargo space too!

 

[bp71k5]

Update: Storage Solutions

On my theme of organizing my junk better, I got to work figuring out what tools I wanted to be able to carry on trips.

Since everyone seems to like the army surplus ammo cases, I picked up a couple of those in a size that seemed likely to fit most of the tools.

Using some scrap plywood, I cut, drilled, and sanded these down so they carry everything you see here. A full set of socket, extensions, and adaptors, a full set of combination wrenches from 1/4" to 7/8", a set of flare wrenches, a set of ratchet wrenches, front and rear hub sockets, screw drivers, and a radiator hose pry tool.


I used a few lengths of velcro to use as lifting handles and to keep the stuff in the little pockets I machined for them to fit in. The holes were made with spade bits so they'd be flat on the bottom and the slots for the wrenches were made with a miter saw.


And here's it all tucked inside of a single water proof ammo can.


I'll also need to do something similar for supplies like u-joints, RTV, etc.

 

[bp71k5]

Also on the theme of storage, I decided to tackle the glove box (or the "jockey box" as the north westerners call it) If you remember, the roll cage riser at the A-pillar was blocking the corner of the door from dropping down.

I really did not want to cut a notch out since it would look funny and would even be tough to finish off nicely. So I found another option that seems to have worked better.

Notch marked to move the top corner over 1/2".



First pass at welding up the seam.


Door reattached for test fitting. It opens easily with 1/8" of clearance to the roll bar now.

 

[bp71k5]

And finally, the spare tire storage has never been great.

I'm considering moving the back seat forward about 6" to allow a 35" spare to fit flat in the back. I had a tall friend come by and test out the legroom and it looks like it'll work fine. You certainly can't stretch you're legs out quite so far, but it still seems reasonably comfortable even for someone as tall as he is.

I will be fabricating some kind of fold and tumble rear seat for both sleeping and extra cargo hauling, but I'm still looking at different options.

 

[BGKYK5]

Wow, I LOVE the plywood tool holders in the ammo can.

I have been scratching my head trying to figure out a way to carry tools so they would stay organized and not rattle around. Problem solved.

Nice work on the glovebox too.

 

[Jason4x4]

http://www.cheaperthandirt.com/ZAA074-1.html

 

[onetonbb74]

Good idea on the glove box. I remember that being a problem, came out nice.

 

[bp71k5]

Update: Storage planning

I realized that before I go building some kind of rack or framing to help me store all the stuff I want to carry, I need to first figure out what I really want to haul around in different situations. I don't need a bunch of tools or even the spare tire for around town wheeling, but I do need it for long hauls.

So I just started collecting everything into one spot to see what I had and where it might be able to fit. My problem is I keep finding more stuff every day so I thought I'd load as much back there now and see how it evolves over a few weeks before deciding anything.

Here's where it's at now:


That's my tools, extra fluids, jack, spare and some gas. Not much room left for luggage, tents, or sleeping bags for the rest of the family. I also don't really like keeping gas in the truck bed with passengers in the event it leaks or tips over. I'm starting to think some kind of external carrier might be useful which also may help find a reason to get the tire out of the bed. Maybe some kind of hitch mounted carrier.