'72 K5 - Greg's @MightAsWellK5 Build

[Greg72]

2014.08.07 - UPDATE! - IT'S OFFICIAL...500,000 VIEWS..!!!

Looks like we just cracked the 500,000 views milestone a few minutes ago! Thanks everyone for your continued interest in this build.... If you keep watching, I'll keep building.....

Speaking of building.... Here are a few shots from last night. After some additional progress on the Idler/PHB mount, I decided to do some finish welding on the engine cradle....remember: the only thing holding up the front end of the truck is the cradle (forces are all pushing upward through the upper ORI mounts) and a few tack-welds can't be trusted to hold 1000+ Lbs of engine, transmission, frame, etc.

Fortunately I built the cradle to be fully removable, so after zipping off a few bolts I had this....

From another angle.... Firewall side:

It's a little awkward, but it's possible to do all the welding from on top of my workbench.... Even so, doing long welds around round tubes and joints is something I haven't done in a LONG time. It's definitely not easy to stay "in position" and at a fixed distance from the part....

Fortunately, it's not too hard to rotate the engine cradle into favorable positions, so it gives me the best possible chance at solid welds. There's still a lot of welding left to do.... And yes, I still need to build the underside reinforcements for the upper strut areas too....


-G

 

[evolve991]

Greg you're freaking AWEsome

 

[folkenheath]

If you keep watching, I'll keep building.....

-G

Is that the opposite of the old saying, maybe you switched it around to "if they come, I will build it"?

Everything is looking good, I have one question. What size is the bolt for the rear lower frame attachment of your engine cradle?

 

[Greg72]

Heath,

Pretty sure those are 3/4" bolts.

As I look at the cradle standing on its own I am tempted to rebuild those mounting saddles as more of an inverted "U" shape so that the bolt holds them strongly from both sides.

On the vehicle it was harder to notice that weak spot.

-G

 

[folkenheath]

Heath,

Pretty sure those are 3/4" bolts.

As I look at the cradle standing on its own I am tempted to rebuild those mounting saddles as more of an inverted "U" shape so that the bolt holds them strongly from both sides.

On the vehicle it was harder to notice that weak spot.

-G

That would be a lot better, you could just weld another plate on the other side to the bracket you already have. I am a little concerned all these "removable" items are going to turn into "movable" items out on the trail. But as long as they are supported strong enough with enough bolts it shouldn't be an issue. Whenever possible you want to try and bolt things together from more than one plane, that greatly increases the rigidity of the completed assembly. Everything is really looking impressive, I am suprised how many updates you have had lately, been a lot of work in a short time!

I saw a shirt the other day that reminded me of you (in a good way). It said, "I'm CDO, it's like OCD but in alphabetical order like it should be".

 

[NorCal69]

Did you try putting it back on the frame last night? Curious if, or how much it might have moved from the welding.

Although, I guess it would be ok to pull back, being there is no triangulation on those lower legs yet.

I know mine moved some after the finish welding. It worked out ok, but now you just need to bolt it all together in a certain order.

 

[Greg72]

That would be a lot better, you could just weld another plate on the other side to the bracket you already have. I am a little concerned all these "removable" items are going to turn into "movable" items out on the trail. But as long as they are supported strong enough with enough bolts it shouldn't be an issue. Whenever possible you want to try and bolt things together from more than one plane, that greatly increases the rigidity of the completed assembly. Everything is really looking impressive, I am suprised how many updates you have had lately, been a lot of work in a short time!

I saw a shirt the other day that reminded me of you (in a good way). It said, "I'm CDO, it's like OCD but in alphabetical order like it should be".

The engine cradle (as you can see) also goes into the firewall area, and will be picked-up with tubes that connect to the a-pillar area. That should add another dimension of stability as well. I'm trying to make everything bolt-together just for the convenience of being able to blow it all apart for paint/powdercoat, and for replacing individual sections if I ever want to re-design anything. Obviously, I'm going to need to use a good supply of Loc-Tite and good quality locking fasteners to keep the whole assembly tight...... lots of "nut and bolting" of the entire truck for the first several months to insure that nothing is working loose, as I'm sure there will be some bugs to work out as I get some time behind the wheel again.

Did you try putting it back on the frame last night? Curious if, or how much it might have moved from the welding.

Although, I guess it would be ok to pull back, being there is no triangulation on those lower legs yet.

I know mine moved some after the finish welding. It worked out ok, but now you just need to bolt it all together in a certain order.

I'm pretty sure I already confirmed that a diagonal bar from the outer firewall plate down to that rearmost frameside plate will work (basically creating a triangulated structure parallel to the firewall)... I just need to be careful to leave myself some room in that area to sneak the outboarded headers and collectors too... there's still quite a bit of room there to do it, but not if I start carelessly building a DOM tube-farm.

The other bar I want to add is in the front "corner" of that large triangular upper strut mount plate (the one that is about midway down the perimeter halo). For maximum strength it should be a straight bar that should land just in front of my "top-of-the-framerail" motor mounts.... but realistically that area needs to stay clear for the tire when it's articulating. I might still be able to get a bar in there, but it will need to have a bend (like an inner wheel tub type shape) and ultimately by the time I create something that doesn't rub the tire, it might be too radically bent to actually add much strength....



As far as the welding / warping goes.... It's always better to weld things in-place on the frame to control the unwanted movement, but you don't always get that choice. Still.....heavy tack-welded parts that are also triangulated to each other should stay pretty much where they need to be.


-G

 

[y5mgisi]

I dont think i could ever stop watching this build.

 

[Greg72]

2014.08.11 - UPDATE! - MOO!!!....WELCOME TO MY TUBE FARM...!!!!!


At least that's what NorCal69 calls it these days.

This weekend was another slow-and-steady march toward completion in the form of finish-welding of the engine cradle and adding a few more tubes to help give it some additional structure and to address the "needs more triangulation" haters out there!

The engine cradle needs more support in the areas where the upper strut mount is located. I wanted to add a diagonal bar parallel to the firewall that would lock those outer mounting plates to the framerail... and as it turns out, I'd already done that work ages ago but pulled the bars out when I was doing some other fabrication work and never put them back in.

The fit was a little different this time around, so I decided to notch the lower part of the mount and drop it right on top of the framerail plates and fishmouth it to the existing vertical tube... like this:


Passenger Side:

Driver's Side:

Here's a long-shot showing the basic configuration, and my more completely "wrapped" links for weld spatter protection!

The other big objective was to improve the lower mounting "saddles" where the engine cradle bolts to the frame. This had been a simple L-shaped bracket, but after looking at it with a fresh perspective it makes a lot more sense to build it into a true C-shape so that the through-bolt can retain it from both sides, not just one.

The result looks more like this now....

After a lot of interior/exterior welding to beef up the new interior plates, and a LOT of grinding and smoothing the end results were good. You can see that I used small pieces of AllThread with nuts on the inside of the saddles to act like "spreaders" to keep the brackets from shrinking under the heat of welding.... in fact I actually pushed out the bottom of the bracket by about 3/16" so that it would be a little easier to get the engine cradle re-installed. Having them just a tad wider will help a lot, and the bolt will easily suck that clearance out once they are torqued down.

So..... the engine cradle is still perched on my rolling workbench, so the next step will probably be to do more finish welding of the upper strut plates and come up with a beefy underside support to prevent those plates from "ballooning" under weight loading of the truck.

Closer and closer.....



-G

 

[folkenheath]

Getting better ever time, I look forward to seeing it on it's own wheels!

 

[y5mgisi]

The tube says : mooooo

 

[blazinzuk]

Remember go over all your welded joints three times. No matter what I always seem to forget that little half inch that was hard to get to. I hate that. I sometimes number my joints but when you have 4 tubes intersecting it gets weird

Digging it as always

 

[Greg72]

Miles of perimeter welding completed last night.....

Tonight with any luck I'll get those undermounted strut reinforcement plates installed, and I'l be able to reinstall the engine cradle and bolt it back down for good!

-G

 

[folkenheath]

The front right mount is gone?

You are getting very close to putting it on it's wheels, I can smell it!

 

[Greg72]

The front right mount is gone?

You are getting very close to putting it on it's wheels, I can smell it!

It fell off!!!

Seriously.


Those front mounts were very flimsy, temporary items and the mounting plates to the frame aren't quite right anymore. The one on the steering box side was hacked during the steering/idler mockups, so I need to rebuild it anyway. I'll probably make them out of 1/4" plate next time around but I'll wait until the engine cradle is fully bolted down before I try to reweld those brackets on. Don't want to end up with a bunch of warpage that I can't resolve......


-G

 

[NorCal69]

The tube says : mooooo

You have no idea how many texts were sent back and forth this past weekend with the... Moooo incorporated.


As Greg put it, it was pretty Mootivating for both of us.

Greg, did ya fill in the feed hole on the back side of that contraption last night, too?

 

[Greg72]

Greg, did ya fill in the feed hole on the back side of that contraption last night, too?

You mean these things....?

I was just going to fill them in with weld, but I didn't have enough wire left on my MIG spool to do it that way.....

-G

 

[Greg72]

2014.08.13 - UPDATE! - STRUT BRACING BEGINS.....


Trifecta!

I have been in the garage for the last 3 nights in a row... and apart from the sleep-deprivation, it feels good to keep cranking along with these small projects and knocking them out.

Last night I started by killing about 30 sanding rolls.

On those new engine cradle mounting saddles, I'd done both "interior" and "exterior" welds where the side plates met the top plate. That adds a lot of strength to the corners, but also increases the profile enough (on the inside) that the saddle may not sit flat against the framerails anymore. The frame has a pretty generous radius on the corners, but the welded areas were still going to interfere..... so I spend some time dressing-down those welds until they had a nice gentle radius that more closely matches the frame. Everything should be good to go now....

Next up: Bracing of the upper strut mounts!

Despite all the new perimeter welding of the upper plates in those triangular areas, I still couldn't help but feel that under extreme loading the plates would "balloon" up and distort the mounting area. The idea was to do something to support those strut towers from the underside.... and ideally, run the bracing in a transverse direction so that they cross the actual strut tower assembly at a 90* angle. This allows me to stiffen-up the longest unsupported areas of that plate, and create a bit of a "grid" pattern to help interlock everything more strongly together. That's the plan anyway....

The first step was to do some cleanup on the welds that joined the multiple plates together to form the mount, and also to clean up the hole where the strut ultimately goes.... it was a little "shaggy" looking when I first plasma'ed it out and in my haste to get the mounts installed, I never bothered to clean it up.

(Note: You can clearly see the HAZ in the bottom of this part where the upper strut mount structure is welded on. The objective is to weld braces that cross over that HAZ line at the 90* angle I mentioned earlier.....)

Next up was the now familiar paper templating process.....

The templates were a bit of a challenge, since they had numerous angle changes across the bottom, and two fishmouth cutouts (one of which was at a skewed angle which makes it more of an ellipse). It was fussy work, but obviously it's a lot faster to fix mistakes and make improvements using paper vs. 1/4" steel plate!

After a period of time, I had a long-side and short-side template to flank that large strut hole area....

Time was slipping away, and it was almost 10:30PM before I even had tempates finalized.... so the best I was able to do before midnight was to get a single plate cut, shaped and into final form.

It does look good though.

It's not really much of a mystery what the next shop day will entail.... fortunately, with good templates it shouldn't take long to knock-out the remaining 3 braces and get them tack-welded into place.

-G

 

[A1971Blazer]

Great fab work! Awesome build!
Do you have an estimate of how much the whole thing will weigh?

Also, looking at all your steering/suspension setup, I wondered why you didn't just opt for a full hydo system and eliminate 90% of all that linkage?

 

[Greg72]

Great fab work! Awesome build!
Do you have an estimate of how much the whole thing will weigh?

Also, looking at all your steering/suspension setup, I wondered why you didn't just opt for a full hydo system and eliminate 90% of all that linkage?

View attachment 162068

Because full-hydro SUCKS!




I don't know of anyone who raves about how awesome full-hydro steering is on a street-driven truck....... it drifts, it's numb and is slow to react in an emergency maneuver. Doesn't sound like a fun time to me.

Not to mention that the "legality" of a fully hydraulic steering system is dubious at best.... perhaps I could spend all my spare time fighting the local police and vehicle codes about exactly what is considered legal, but I'd rather have a mechanical linkage and a lot fewer hassles each year when it comes time to register and inspect this thing for my windshield sticker!

The original truck with a modest lift and 35's weighed in at around 4,900 Lbs (the details are posted a couple hundred posts back in this thread). I figure based on that..... if I can keep the whole enchilada at around the 6,000 Lb mark after all the upgrades and tubework, I'd be doing pretty well.

The ORIs aren't really a great choice for SUPER-heavy trucks.... though they now offer a remote reservoir that can be added to increase the amount of fluid the system can carry. That is supposed to increase the weight capacity and allow it to still ride smooth..... we'll see!!!

This weekend is probably too aggressive of a schedule to get the truck out of the garage under it's own weight... but my personal goal is to have it 100% ready for that big event by the long Labor Day weekend.


-G