2012.08.18 - UPDATE! - A "QUASI"-HERO DAY.... !!!
I am pretty strict about the use of the term "hero day", and I don't like to throw that term around unless something really substantial has happened with the build. So, for today's update I will only give myself a "quasi" hero rating for the forward progress...... the actual parts added were small but it is leading quickly to more meaningful steps in the very near future.
First of all, let me give you a little taste of how things work around the Greg72 household when it comes to "garage days" (aka The ManSpace)..... this weekend, I wanted shop time so I had to trade a day's work on the house for a day of K5 stuff. The latest project is tearing off 60-year old siding and tarpaper and replacing it with fresh Tyvek and new cedar siding.
I chip away at this stuff for an hour or two most weeknights, and spend a full Saturday on it. As anyone who has ever installed siding knows... the work is a lot faster up to about 6' high. Once you have to climb ladders to pull measurements and nail up siding it gets a lot slower.
Anyway, I got this wall completed by Saturday evening, so Sunday was all mine!
The shop was clean when I started my day. That's a good feeling. Usually I have to spend about an hour cleaning up residual messes that have accumulated throughout the week but I managed to get all that done on Saturday... I was able to roll up the doors on a sunny morning and see the truck just like this:
(You can see the blocking under the rear tires in these photos. This allows me to level the truck and frame, even though the cement slopes downward toward the rollup doors.)
Time to dig in and get some more "pretty" brackets built to finalize the front suspension....
Here's the start of the DS lower link mount bracket. This heavily leverages the design from the PS bracket, but since there's no pumpkin on the DS to anchor to, things are going to get a little different.
One of the areas where things changed was the way I created and angled link mount but still preserved a good flat upper mounting plate for the lower strut mount.
Basically, I created the angled mount that I wanted, then built one additional plate that would "square off" the area. The real trick is to make sure that all of the existing bolt holes can still be accessed afterwards. so I had to get clever with my annular cutters in a few spots, and also make sure the brackets left small gaps for wrenches, etc.
Once the bottom plates were all in place and burned-in, it was time to affix the upper plate. I thought it would be overkill to drill a few holes in the plate directly above the 3/4" thick CNC adapters and puddle in some nice hot plug-welds in addition to all of the other normal perimeter welding I'd be doing...
Here's how the bracket looks from the front of the truck. This speed hole isn't for bolt access...this one is truly just for SPEED!
For comparison, THIS one actually is for bolt/nut access... This gets a socket wrench in to tighten up the lower link mount bolt when the time comes....
Time to add some more "overkill on top of the existing overkill".... I welded the 3/8" thick strut mount base with plug welds to the 1/4" plate underneath it. It will get fully perimeter welded later on when I pull the axle and get it up on my workbench for all of the final welding processes.
Shortly after that, I took one of my existing 16" struts and collapsed it down to 4" of exposed shaft (This simulates the eyelet spacing for a 14" strut at 6" of stickout), bolted the mounting tabs to the lower mount, wrapped everything critical with green tape to protect it from welding spatter and then laid a few heavy tacks on the tabs to lock them down to my new strut/lower link mount.
So there you have it.... not a TON of progress, but the fact that the struts are starting to find their way onto the truck (and are starting to hint at the type of upper mount they are going to need!) I'd say it counts as a quasi-hero day....
-G
I am pretty strict about the use of the term "hero day", and I don't like to throw that term around unless something really substantial has happened with the build. So, for today's update I will only give myself a "quasi" hero rating for the forward progress...... the actual parts added were small but it is leading quickly to more meaningful steps in the very near future.
First of all, let me give you a little taste of how things work around the Greg72 household when it comes to "garage days" (aka The ManSpace)..... this weekend, I wanted shop time so I had to trade a day's work on the house for a day of K5 stuff. The latest project is tearing off 60-year old siding and tarpaper and replacing it with fresh Tyvek and new cedar siding.
I chip away at this stuff for an hour or two most weeknights, and spend a full Saturday on it. As anyone who has ever installed siding knows... the work is a lot faster up to about 6' high. Once you have to climb ladders to pull measurements and nail up siding it gets a lot slower.
Anyway, I got this wall completed by Saturday evening, so Sunday was all mine!The shop was clean when I started my day. That's a good feeling. Usually I have to spend about an hour cleaning up residual messes that have accumulated throughout the week but I managed to get all that done on Saturday... I was able to roll up the doors on a sunny morning and see the truck just like this:
(You can see the blocking under the rear tires in these photos. This allows me to level the truck and frame, even though the cement slopes downward toward the rollup doors.)
Time to dig in and get some more "pretty" brackets built to finalize the front suspension....
Here's the start of the DS lower link mount bracket. This heavily leverages the design from the PS bracket, but since there's no pumpkin on the DS to anchor to, things are going to get a little different.
One of the areas where things changed was the way I created and angled link mount but still preserved a good flat upper mounting plate for the lower strut mount.
Basically, I created the angled mount that I wanted, then built one additional plate that would "square off" the area. The real trick is to make sure that all of the existing bolt holes can still be accessed afterwards. so I had to get clever with my annular cutters in a few spots, and also make sure the brackets left small gaps for wrenches, etc.
Once the bottom plates were all in place and burned-in, it was time to affix the upper plate. I thought it would be overkill to drill a few holes in the plate directly above the 3/4" thick CNC adapters and puddle in some nice hot plug-welds in addition to all of the other normal perimeter welding I'd be doing...
Here's how the bracket looks from the front of the truck. This speed hole isn't for bolt access...this one is truly just for SPEED!
For comparison, THIS one actually is for bolt/nut access... This gets a socket wrench in to tighten up the lower link mount bolt when the time comes....
Time to add some more "overkill on top of the existing overkill".... I welded the 3/8" thick strut mount base with plug welds to the 1/4" plate underneath it. It will get fully perimeter welded later on when I pull the axle and get it up on my workbench for all of the final welding processes.
Shortly after that, I took one of my existing 16" struts and collapsed it down to 4" of exposed shaft (This simulates the eyelet spacing for a 14" strut at 6" of stickout), bolted the mounting tabs to the lower mount, wrapped everything critical with green tape to protect it from welding spatter and then laid a few heavy tacks on the tabs to lock them down to my new strut/lower link mount.
So there you have it.... not a TON of progress, but the fact that the struts are starting to find their way onto the truck (and are starting to hint at the type of upper mount they are going to need!) I'd say it counts as a quasi-hero day....
-G
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