2025.11.25 - UPDATE! - TWO AND A HALF YEARS LATER....
Hey everyone! It's been a while since I posted on this thread... been doing some lurking over the last few years but haven't really been very visible to most of you.
As you might predict, there's been a lot of forward progress on the MightAsWellK5 build during that time. Literally THOUSANDS of photos, videos and lots of other social media work as well... and of course, just living our regular lives with a teenage son who has an incredibly busy school / sports life.
It also seems impossible to believe that we are just about 1 month away from the 25TH ANNIVERSARY of the day I dragged this truck home from Oregon to California. Originally purchased at the beginning of 2001, it has been in a state of perpetual repair, upgrade, modify and improvement ever since.... and effectively represents the efforts of almost half of my life.
There is really a tremendous amount of work that I'd like to share with you here, but there's no way I am going to have the number of hours it will take to do it all in a single sitting... so here is the result of several hours of effort to move this story forward from where we all left off. There are probably another 9 or 10 equally long updates that will need to happen to fully explain and document everything new but let's just start with this... and see where it takes us....
The fabricated frame rails needed to be fully assembled with all of the internal bracing which was a huge learning curve for TIG welding and this project alone burned a couple hundred hours just to get all the welding completed.
This is the exploded view of the passenger side framerail showing the aggressive "upsweep" of the new design vs. the original factory framerails.
One of the key priorities was to use small tacks to lock down the internal bracing, and the hold all the external corner-to-corner joints in position as strongly as possible to prevent warping once the full-length welding passes at nearly 200A started to get laid down....
This is the driver's side rail.... you can tell the difference due to the extra material and internal bracing on the left side of the rail where the steering box ultimately gets installed (on the inside of the framerail)
Chopping off the original rail was a bit of a stressful thing since it removed even MORE of the indexes and reference points needed to eventually reinstall this vehicle... everything was squared up as much as possible with the rest of the vehicle and lots of measurements were taken in advance.
As the new framerail was assembled it went through several rounds of test fitting to confirm that everything was lining up properly. Then the rail was removed and more welding was completed.
The learning curve on TIG was probably one of the hardest single skills I've had to learn since starting this project. Learned a lot from YouTube and from a small handful of really talented pro-builders that I've met on Instagram. All of the welding is a 2-pass process. The root pass lays down the important structural connection, then the welds are blended to a uniform size and shape and then a hot, fast cover pass adds the final amount of material and allows for the more beautiful stacking of filler to give the part that coveted motorsports, professional look.
This takes literal HOURS of time.... welding, waiting for it to cool.... using up miles of filler rod and countless tanks of Argon sheilding gas as well.
Finally.... the new rails were completely finish-welded and ready to install to replace the "original" (albeit wildly modified) green rails that have been part of this build for more than a decade.
A number of horizontal datums were carefully measured out and installed to help maintain the locations for things like the panhard bar mount and idler steering pivot mount locations. Since those were being lost when the driver's side rail got cut off, I needed a way to accurately establish them again on the new fabricated framerail.
A slightly different shot from above. Basically, the drop brackets were drilled to show the original location for the heim bolts for both the PHB and Idler.. so that new mounts could be templated to hold the heims in those exact spots again.. even though the framerail was relocated and the mounts would need to be built from scratch...
On the far left here you can see those dropped steel straps holding the heims in place... this marked the end of this important phase of the framerail build.
Here's a video clip of the progress at the end of this build phase.....
Next up was the fabrication of the forwardmost crossmember that would need to hold the WARN 12K winch. This started out as a simple 1/4" thick plate.
The biggest objective here was to do enough test fitting to insure that the winch was 100% hidden behind the factory bumper. This required a number of installations (and removals) of the front fenders, as well as the core support and factory grille to confirm that everything was correct and that adequate clearance existed.
As usual, there were all sorts of surprises along the way... and the core support needed heavy modifications along the bottom to get into proper alignment with the winch and fenders....
Over time, things were starting to look really good... but the final test would still be to put the grille and bumper in place to confirm that the whole "Sleeper K5" effect had been pulled off successfully!!!
So here's the video walkaround showing the bumper installed and a peek-a-boo shot of the winch hiding behind it.
Next up: Create a new frame-side mount for the upper 3-Link bar on the passenger side rail. The orange ratched straps are holding the axle in place so it doesn't flop around with that link removed, but obviously a proper, strong mount was needed.
This is the final result. There was really very little room ultimately to fit the upper link in place.... especially once the engine was reinstalled, as that side of the engine is where the starter motor lives, and getting the upper link to swing up and down through it's travel without hitting anything is nearly impossible.
Here's the walkaround video that shows the final result of that upper link mount....
The last big part of the fabricated framerail project was to finally rebuild the PHB and Idler Arm mounts onto the driver's side rail.
The PHB mount was relatively simple, since the datums from those horizontal square tubes showed the exact location needed for the heim bolt. It was just a matter of creating some cardboard templates with the necessary shape, cutting them out with a few speed holes (for style points) and welding it into place.
The original idler arm (pictured here) was a good starting point but the design that actually worked for this new setup was going to require a much different shape overall.
To get the desired swing and throw of the pitman arm the idler needed a much more exaggerated "boomerang" shape than before, so a bunch of prototypes were cut out to experiment and find out how to get the clearance AND the proper motion for full lock-to-lock steering.
Once the cardboard templates were perfected, they were used to transfer everything into 1/8" plate.
Once again, a few speed holes were added to the outer plate wrapper... giving it a nice purposeful look and pulling out a decent amount of unnecessary weight and visual bulk.
It was a bit trickly getting a tight fitup with those curved end sections (all bent with a simple 20-ton press) but with patience they came out very professional looking.
After some 2-pass TIG welding they looked great and the idler was ready to install.
Here's the final video clip of that installation and walkaround of the area with the final idler and PHB mount installed.
So there you go.... probably a 10-15% update to start catching you up on this build.... I've already spent WAY too much time trying to get all of this uploaded, written, proofread and documented with good photos / YouTube clips.... so for now I'll end conclude by saying thanks for checking in, and I look forward to catching up with all of you in the comments section. Enjoy your Thanksgiving Holidays....
-G
Hey everyone! It's been a while since I posted on this thread... been doing some lurking over the last few years but haven't really been very visible to most of you.
As you might predict, there's been a lot of forward progress on the MightAsWellK5 build during that time. Literally THOUSANDS of photos, videos and lots of other social media work as well... and of course, just living our regular lives with a teenage son who has an incredibly busy school / sports life.
It also seems impossible to believe that we are just about 1 month away from the 25TH ANNIVERSARY of the day I dragged this truck home from Oregon to California. Originally purchased at the beginning of 2001, it has been in a state of perpetual repair, upgrade, modify and improvement ever since.... and effectively represents the efforts of almost half of my life.
There is really a tremendous amount of work that I'd like to share with you here, but there's no way I am going to have the number of hours it will take to do it all in a single sitting... so here is the result of several hours of effort to move this story forward from where we all left off. There are probably another 9 or 10 equally long updates that will need to happen to fully explain and document everything new but let's just start with this... and see where it takes us....
The fabricated frame rails needed to be fully assembled with all of the internal bracing which was a huge learning curve for TIG welding and this project alone burned a couple hundred hours just to get all the welding completed.
This is the exploded view of the passenger side framerail showing the aggressive "upsweep" of the new design vs. the original factory framerails.
One of the key priorities was to use small tacks to lock down the internal bracing, and the hold all the external corner-to-corner joints in position as strongly as possible to prevent warping once the full-length welding passes at nearly 200A started to get laid down....
This is the driver's side rail.... you can tell the difference due to the extra material and internal bracing on the left side of the rail where the steering box ultimately gets installed (on the inside of the framerail)
Chopping off the original rail was a bit of a stressful thing since it removed even MORE of the indexes and reference points needed to eventually reinstall this vehicle... everything was squared up as much as possible with the rest of the vehicle and lots of measurements were taken in advance.
As the new framerail was assembled it went through several rounds of test fitting to confirm that everything was lining up properly. Then the rail was removed and more welding was completed.
The learning curve on TIG was probably one of the hardest single skills I've had to learn since starting this project. Learned a lot from YouTube and from a small handful of really talented pro-builders that I've met on Instagram. All of the welding is a 2-pass process. The root pass lays down the important structural connection, then the welds are blended to a uniform size and shape and then a hot, fast cover pass adds the final amount of material and allows for the more beautiful stacking of filler to give the part that coveted motorsports, professional look.
This takes literal HOURS of time.... welding, waiting for it to cool.... using up miles of filler rod and countless tanks of Argon sheilding gas as well.
Finally.... the new rails were completely finish-welded and ready to install to replace the "original" (albeit wildly modified) green rails that have been part of this build for more than a decade.
A number of horizontal datums were carefully measured out and installed to help maintain the locations for things like the panhard bar mount and idler steering pivot mount locations. Since those were being lost when the driver's side rail got cut off, I needed a way to accurately establish them again on the new fabricated framerail.
A slightly different shot from above. Basically, the drop brackets were drilled to show the original location for the heim bolts for both the PHB and Idler.. so that new mounts could be templated to hold the heims in those exact spots again.. even though the framerail was relocated and the mounts would need to be built from scratch...
On the far left here you can see those dropped steel straps holding the heims in place... this marked the end of this important phase of the framerail build.
Here's a video clip of the progress at the end of this build phase.....
Next up was the fabrication of the forwardmost crossmember that would need to hold the WARN 12K winch. This started out as a simple 1/4" thick plate.
The biggest objective here was to do enough test fitting to insure that the winch was 100% hidden behind the factory bumper. This required a number of installations (and removals) of the front fenders, as well as the core support and factory grille to confirm that everything was correct and that adequate clearance existed.
As usual, there were all sorts of surprises along the way... and the core support needed heavy modifications along the bottom to get into proper alignment with the winch and fenders....
Over time, things were starting to look really good... but the final test would still be to put the grille and bumper in place to confirm that the whole "Sleeper K5" effect had been pulled off successfully!!!
So here's the video walkaround showing the bumper installed and a peek-a-boo shot of the winch hiding behind it.
Next up: Create a new frame-side mount for the upper 3-Link bar on the passenger side rail. The orange ratched straps are holding the axle in place so it doesn't flop around with that link removed, but obviously a proper, strong mount was needed.
This is the final result. There was really very little room ultimately to fit the upper link in place.... especially once the engine was reinstalled, as that side of the engine is where the starter motor lives, and getting the upper link to swing up and down through it's travel without hitting anything is nearly impossible.
Here's the walkaround video that shows the final result of that upper link mount....
The last big part of the fabricated framerail project was to finally rebuild the PHB and Idler Arm mounts onto the driver's side rail.
The PHB mount was relatively simple, since the datums from those horizontal square tubes showed the exact location needed for the heim bolt. It was just a matter of creating some cardboard templates with the necessary shape, cutting them out with a few speed holes (for style points) and welding it into place.
The original idler arm (pictured here) was a good starting point but the design that actually worked for this new setup was going to require a much different shape overall.
To get the desired swing and throw of the pitman arm the idler needed a much more exaggerated "boomerang" shape than before, so a bunch of prototypes were cut out to experiment and find out how to get the clearance AND the proper motion for full lock-to-lock steering.
Once the cardboard templates were perfected, they were used to transfer everything into 1/8" plate.
Once again, a few speed holes were added to the outer plate wrapper... giving it a nice purposeful look and pulling out a decent amount of unnecessary weight and visual bulk.
It was a bit trickly getting a tight fitup with those curved end sections (all bent with a simple 20-ton press) but with patience they came out very professional looking.
After some 2-pass TIG welding they looked great and the idler was ready to install.
Here's the final video clip of that installation and walkaround of the area with the final idler and PHB mount installed.
So there you go.... probably a 10-15% update to start catching you up on this build.... I've already spent WAY too much time trying to get all of this uploaded, written, proofread and documented with good photos / YouTube clips.... so for now I'll end conclude by saying thanks for checking in, and I look forward to catching up with all of you in the comments section. Enjoy your Thanksgiving Holidays....
-G
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