2014.04.28 - UPDATE! - MORNING (WHEELBASE) STRETCH.....
Sunday morning was a good day. The sun was out and even though the air was still a bit cold it felt like things were going to get done.
No monolithic projects remained, so it was time FINALLY... to do something different in the garage.
If you recall, back when I was working on the front suspension design and was pretty close to completion I hung the stock fender and discovered that the axle was WAAAAY to far forward and didn't fit into the wheelwell opening at all. I realized that even though I had set my wheelbase to 107" (stock is 104" on a 1st Gen) I hadn't properly set the rear axle far enough back. This pushed the front axle forward too far and made everything look weird.
The short-term solution was to move the front axle back until it fit the wheelwell properly, and temporarily let the wheelbase shrink below my 107" target. When I took the first measurement, it was actually at 103.5".... I decided it was time to take some action.
One of the nice things about working with links is that changing the axle position is as simple as just turning the links either clockwise or counterclockwise. As I unthreaded the heims I was able to stretch the wheelbase out and got to around 105" pretty fast. Unfortunately, there is a limit to how much you can unthread the heims before they simply fall out of the link. And in my case, since the truck is now resting it's weight on those links (in the rear at least) that could be a deadly event.
Safety first.
I hooked up my cherry picker to the rear hidden hitch and d-ring shackle and lifted up the truck to take the weight off the axle. I was able to extend the lower links pretty well, but the upper links ran out of adjustment and I had to take drastic measures.
This shows how far off the upper links ended up being from my target value. Ultimately, since I know that I'm swapping out all of these DOM links for aluminum anyway, I didn't care about cutting them up a little. I chopped the link in half and sleeved it with a 9" section of 1.75" .125 wall DOM. This allowed me to stretch it to an overall length of 33.75"
Not pretty, but it worked. Once the upper links were both modded the pumpkin rotated back up to a more believable pinion angle again.
The lower links were right on the hairy-edge of thread engagement, but I was able to get the wheelbase out to my target of 107" again.... as expected, the end result looks a bit weird.... if you remember from my earlier posts, the tire used to almost touch the leading edge of the rear fender opening, now it almost touches in the trailing edge instead.
Since I am adding 3" of wheelbase, and almost none of it comes from moving the front axle the visual result is pretty bad. This is not surprising. My original rear fenders were cut along the trailing edge for this exact issue though I never bothered to rework the entire wheelwell to make it look nice.
1st Gens always have the rear axle slightly forward in the wheelwell, even from the factory so I knew I could push it back at least an inch or two with no problem. Now the only question is if I've taken it a bit TOO far....
Of course the departure angle is great now, but when the fenderwell opening is shifted back the rear quarterpanel area may look a bit too "thin" and the overall proportions of the entire quarterpanel could end up looking strange.
Any photoshop experts feel like moving that wheelwell back so that it's centered over the tire, and then opening it up about 4" overall (while still maintaining the factory proportion and curve)?
-G
