Optimus Maw. 
CK5
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'72 K5 - Greg's @MightAsWellK5 Build
- Thread starter Greg72
- Start date
This is the build description. I will improve this later. (GB)
bp71k5
3/4 ton status
'72 K5 - Greg's "Might As Well™" Build - !!! DOM DA-DOM...DOM DOMMMM!!!
If you got those two outside tubes to stay aligned, the inner ones will be easier. If you were going to MIG those tubes together, I'd think the long slider tube would shrink enough to stop your plans. But if you can get the two outer tubes TIG'd and still slide in, I think you have a decent shot at success. Maybe even earn one of these
smilies.
If you got those two outside tubes to stay aligned, the inner ones will be easier. If you were going to MIG those tubes together, I'd think the long slider tube would shrink enough to stop your plans. But if you can get the two outer tubes TIG'd and still slide in, I think you have a decent shot at success. Maybe even earn one of these
smilies.
Greg - your build looks great - I do believe this will be an issue though.
It's too bad you can't incorporate a concept similar to a diamond pin mount - it allows much more freedom.
I have used these in production weld fixtures with success:
http://www.carrlane.com/catalog/ind...006280B1713050245221E0107070F1A3C3B285356405F
I was waiting a bit to see how everything would go together.
I don't think this is a good idea Greg. Couple of reasons.
The slider will get tweaked. May not be the first time you hit it but it will eventually get tweaked enough that it either will not come out or will not go in. This of course is preventable by not wheeling certain places. But in that case why not just run stock rockers. Sliders are a consumable item. They get dented bent dinged scraped etc. They simply don't last forever.
The second reason is to protect everything like you need to those tube are gonna have to be bare steel. Subject to much corrosion and mud and all sorts of crap off road. Paint adds thickness and it's not hard so if the tube slip fit with paint that will allow wiggle room. With no paint I think it won't be very long before you have to clean up the receiving tube every time you switch.
I think after a little while these will prove difficult to use and problematic over a longer period of time.
I would certainly add lots more structure to the actually rock slider itself. When you think of rock sliders you kind of have a conventional thought of well tube will be just fine. We'll it is but rocks get stuck in between tube you get hung up on stuff and have to get pulled off. Even Dom is fairly easy to tweak in that situation.
I don't think this is a good idea Greg. Couple of reasons.
The slider will get tweaked. May not be the first time you hit it but it will eventually get tweaked enough that it either will not come out or will not go in. This of course is preventable by not wheeling certain places. But in that case why not just run stock rockers. Sliders are a consumable item. They get dented bent dinged scraped etc. They simply don't last forever.
The second reason is to protect everything like you need to those tube are gonna have to be bare steel. Subject to much corrosion and mud and all sorts of crap off road. Paint adds thickness and it's not hard so if the tube slip fit with paint that will allow wiggle room. With no paint I think it won't be very long before you have to clean up the receiving tube every time you switch.
I think after a little while these will prove difficult to use and problematic over a longer period of time.
I would certainly add lots more structure to the actually rock slider itself. When you think of rock sliders you kind of have a conventional thought of well tube will be just fine. We'll it is but rocks get stuck in between tube you get hung up on stuff and have to get pulled off. Even Dom is fairly easy to tweak in that situation.
Good point ^^^
The first time you plant the weight of the truck on the slider it'll warp, then add in the moisture and dirt in the tubes and it will then become a permanent fixture on your truck rendering all this time and money spent on the sliders pointless.
I hate to be a ney-sayer but why not make a flange and make bolt on sliders? That will still get your convertability with having a FAR simpler design than if tweaked can easily be tweaked back.
The first time you plant the weight of the truck on the slider it'll warp, then add in the moisture and dirt in the tubes and it will then become a permanent fixture on your truck rendering all this time and money spent on the sliders pointless.
I hate to be a ney-sayer but why not make a flange and make bolt on sliders? That will still get your convertability with having a FAR simpler design than if tweaked can easily be tweaked back.
Don't listen to 'em Greg, I have faith in your
Glenn,
The main motivation was to try to extend the support of those small rockslider tubes so that the entire loading of the slider wasn't concentrated on just the flange area. I was hoping that by making them as long as possible, I could better support them (closer to the frame). Minimize bending and increase strength!
IGOR (Ben),
I like that idea about a tapered indexing pin of some kind. Is there something that is more of a cone-shape where I could weld in a tapered tube receiver and then put the male-end of that cone on the bolt-on part of the rockslider??? That would be awesome, since it would let me avoid all the fussy alignment issues due to welding/warpage. During the bolting up process, any misalignment would be "squished out" of those 5 tubes and they would be forced into perfect alignment by the receiver pockets. Additionally, it should be much less susceptible to issues of rusting, or binding over time since it's only really a TIGHT fit once the outer slider flange is torqued-down to the supporting structure under the door sill area.
-G
Make em sloppy 
No really, if the sliders are removable and won't be used aside from wheeling...what's the reason for making them have such tight tolerances?
"Build In" the loose fit and never worry about it again
No really, if the sliders are removable and won't be used aside from wheeling...what's the reason for making them have such tight tolerances?
"Build In" the loose fit and never worry about it again
Make em sloppy
No really, if the sliders are removable and won't be used aside from wheeling...what's the reason for making them have such tight tolerances?
"Build In" the loose fit and never worry about it again
Just strength....the tighter fitment should spread the loading around better...
Didn't want to put all my faith in he bolts for strength on the slider.
-G
Hitch receiver Rock sliders
Crazy idea. Mount (2) hitch receivers on the sides and mount your rock sliders with them.
Hold on hear me out....
Then you can remove the rock sliders and mount your hitch receiver BBQ, the hitch receiver drill press mount, you never know when you might need to side wench something, use all 4 and set up posts to the "crows nest" tent above the blazer. The possibilitys are endless. You can never have enough hitch receivers.
Crazy idea. Mount (2) hitch receivers on the sides and mount your rock sliders with them.
Hold on hear me out....
Then you can remove the rock sliders and mount your hitch receiver BBQ, the hitch receiver drill press mount, you never know when you might need to side wench something, use all 4 and set up posts to the "crows nest" tent above the blazer. The possibilitys are endless. You can never have enough hitch receivers.
Crazy idea. Mount (2) hitch receivers on the sides and mount your rock sliders with them.
Hold on hear me out....
Then you can remove the rock sliders and mount your hitch receiver BBQ, the hitch receiver drill press mount, you never know when you might need to side wench something, use all 4 and set up posts to the "crows nest" tent above the blazer. The possibilitys are endless. You can never have enough hitch receivers.
Receiver hitch was on my mind too. They don't seem to get too sloppy and you can slide in and out when dirty, but Greg's tolerance is probably going to require a snugger fit. I do think it's possible. Fun build
I'm taking bets on when Greg posts looking for links to receiver hitches with .002" tolerance
-- A
2014.11.12 - UPDATE!... E....I....E.....I......O.....!!!
Moo.
Welcome to my farm. We're growing tubes these days, and plenty of them. Hate to keep loading up the bed space with tubing, but the struts aren't going to work floating in thin air, so I have to do something...
The first step was to establish the correct height for the upper strut hole so that I'd have an accurate target to shoot for. Since the rear struts are 16" (vs. 14" up front), I needed to get the axle 1" higher off the floor to account for the extra bump travel. Since the axle hit the underside of the frame, it was time to mark my cuts...pull the wheels off and drop the axle down to give me access for the cutoff wheel.
Once that was dialed-in, I remounted the wheels and started playing around with the factory wheeltubs to see where the interferences were going to be against the ORIs. As it turned out, the first order of business was actually getting it centered-up to the wheel. Remember that I stretched the wheelbase from 104" to 107" and all of that "stretch" ended up happening at the rear axle...
When I dropped a plumbline to the new wheel center, the tub was offset by 3-1/2" (too far forward), so I shifted the entire wheeltub back and clamped it down temporarily.
Here you can see the obvious issue that I'm going to have with clearance until the wheeltubs are modified... in this shot the tub is sticking out 1-1/2" inches too far and it already hits the strut.
I marked the tub and cut it just before the beginning of the curved area....
So..... now the truck was sitting at correct "full bump" in the rear (for the 16" ORI) and the wheeltub was no longer interfering with the strut. The next step was to figure out how to create an upper mounting point for the strut that would be strong and not completely obliterate all of the rear cargo area & rear seat mounting options.
It seemed obvious that to build any sort of triangulated upper mount, I was going to have to install a new tube along the bedrail area at a minimum.... so that's what I did.
A little bit of notching and test fitting got both sides completed in a reasonable amount of time.
So, now I'm left with the task of bringing up a couple of converging tubes from the top of the framerails to the strut, and then building off these new (and rather long) bedrail tubes to create a "3 legged stool" of support for the upper strut. The concern is that for such a long span, the bedrail tube will certainly flex when it sees actual loads.... I want to do something to add an extra support node in there.
So I started playing around with a small piece of solid rod, and think I might try something like this:
Basically, it is a diagonal that locks-in with the new beefy rockslider mounts, and then follows the angle of the wheeltub and locks into the bedrail tube just below the area where the strut tower will need to be supported. I like that it is low-profile and will blend into the bedside somewhat discreetly, and will serve to triangulate not only the strut mount, but will also stiffen the cage "front-to-back" somewhat....
-G
Moo.
Welcome to my farm. We're growing tubes these days, and plenty of them. Hate to keep loading up the bed space with tubing, but the struts aren't going to work floating in thin air, so I have to do something...
The first step was to establish the correct height for the upper strut hole so that I'd have an accurate target to shoot for. Since the rear struts are 16" (vs. 14" up front), I needed to get the axle 1" higher off the floor to account for the extra bump travel. Since the axle hit the underside of the frame, it was time to mark my cuts...pull the wheels off and drop the axle down to give me access for the cutoff wheel.
Once that was dialed-in, I remounted the wheels and started playing around with the factory wheeltubs to see where the interferences were going to be against the ORIs. As it turned out, the first order of business was actually getting it centered-up to the wheel. Remember that I stretched the wheelbase from 104" to 107" and all of that "stretch" ended up happening at the rear axle...
When I dropped a plumbline to the new wheel center, the tub was offset by 3-1/2" (too far forward), so I shifted the entire wheeltub back and clamped it down temporarily.
Here you can see the obvious issue that I'm going to have with clearance until the wheeltubs are modified... in this shot the tub is sticking out 1-1/2" inches too far and it already hits the strut.
I marked the tub and cut it just before the beginning of the curved area....
So..... now the truck was sitting at correct "full bump" in the rear (for the 16" ORI) and the wheeltub was no longer interfering with the strut. The next step was to figure out how to create an upper mounting point for the strut that would be strong and not completely obliterate all of the rear cargo area & rear seat mounting options.
It seemed obvious that to build any sort of triangulated upper mount, I was going to have to install a new tube along the bedrail area at a minimum.... so that's what I did.
A little bit of notching and test fitting got both sides completed in a reasonable amount of time.
So, now I'm left with the task of bringing up a couple of converging tubes from the top of the framerails to the strut, and then building off these new (and rather long) bedrail tubes to create a "3 legged stool" of support for the upper strut. The concern is that for such a long span, the bedrail tube will certainly flex when it sees actual loads.... I want to do something to add an extra support node in there.
So I started playing around with a small piece of solid rod, and think I might try something like this:
Basically, it is a diagonal that locks-in with the new beefy rockslider mounts, and then follows the angle of the wheeltub and locks into the bedrail tube just below the area where the strut tower will need to be supported. I like that it is low-profile and will blend into the bedside somewhat discreetly, and will serve to triangulate not only the strut mount, but will also stiffen the cage "front-to-back" somewhat....
-G
although the angle isn't as good, you could also do what I did on my K5 bedrail and move that rod up to the flange plate in front and rear of the tub...
if they are being tied into the frame of course.... I did just the rear, but I'd bet if you repeated it to the front, it'd be a stout mount for the ORI's....
always entertaining surgery from you Greg.....
if they are being tied into the frame of course.... I did just the rear, but I'd bet if you repeated it to the front, it'd be a stout mount for the ORI's....
always entertaining surgery from you Greg.....
bp71k5
3/4 ton status
I guessing your trying not to add a leg blocking the passenger view?
although the angle isn't as good, you could also do what I did on my K5 bedrail and move that rod up to the flange plate in front and rear of the tub...
if they are being tied into the frame of course.... I did just the rear, but I'd bet if you repeated it to the front, it'd be a stout mount for the ORI's....
always entertaining surgery from you Greg.....
Paul,
Yeah, I'm looking at all sorts of combinations like that now. Obviously the C-pillar mount is just hanging out in the breeze currently, so it will need a beefy cross sill like the one I did in the B-pillar area. My only reservation with running a diagonal from the B-pillar and C-pillar plates directly is that the angles seem a bit "shallow"...... it's a triangle, but just not a very uniform one.
I'd like to avoid running a diagonal from the B-pillar plate unless it's absolutely necessary so that I can save that area for my subwoofer enclosures. The plan is to tuck them into the side panel areas on either side to keep them as unobtrusive as possible.... a man's got to have his tunes too, ya know!
-G
Exactly.... I really don't want anything else visible above the bedrail area. Some guys love having LOTS of bars showing, but I'm really trying to keep that to a minimum on this build (mostly for aesthetics) while still adding adequate strength and protection.
-G
funny.. that's why I didn't run that forward one too....
So....... another night of head scratching, and just a wee bit of progress. (Editor's Note: My company shipped me a new iPhone6 to replace my aging iPhone5, so tonight's photos hopefully look a bit crisper and cleaner than previous ones.... my old camera lens was getting pretty wasted)
I think I literally spent the first 45 minutes last night just standing at the rear of the truck, looking at the strut, the wheel/tire and frame areas waiting for inspiration to hit me with something. No real "light bulbs" came on, but I knew that at some point I'd have to close that wheeltub area back up, so I figured I'd start with that and see what sort of space was left to attach actual "structure" for the strut mount.
My early impression of this project, was that I'd have to extend each wheeltub by around 3-1/2", which makes the rear seat substantially narrower, and starts to really kill the utility of the rear bed area when the seat is removed. I went through a series of progressively larger crescent-shaped cuts on the wheeltub to see just how tightly I could fit the two halves back together....
Turns out, I can probably do this whole thing by stretching the existing wheeltubs by only 1" per side!
Once I saw how well the space of the rear seat area had been preserved I redoubled my efforts to find a mounting scheme that wouldn't throw away those gains. After playing around with a few scraps of round rod, I came up with a scheme to get a double-shear mount for the strut by running two parallel (to the bedrail) upper tubes. This required me to have at least one more landing spot for the tube, since I didn't want to land everything back on the bedrail tube itself.... so I started mocking-up a couple of small horizontal braces in the B-pillar area.
A piece of rectangular tube created a good index for keeping the new tube fitments nice and level. Peeking at the daylight coming through the tube allows me to quickly identify if the tube is slightly high or low relative to the existing bedrail bars....
These will serve doubly-duty, not only as strut mounting points but also to attach the upper seatbelt straps for my 4-point harnesses.
Another angle of that assembly once it was tacked into position and the rectangular tubing was removed...
... and one more.
Hopefully, I'll get a chance this weekend to add the next few bars so that this will start to make more sense to everyone.
-G
(Editor's Note: My company shipped me a new iPhone6 to replace my aging iPhone5, so tonight's photos hopefully look a bit crisper and cleaner than previous ones.... my old camera lens was getting pretty wasted)I think I literally spent the first 45 minutes last night just standing at the rear of the truck, looking at the strut, the wheel/tire and frame areas waiting for inspiration to hit me with something. No real "light bulbs" came on, but I knew that at some point I'd have to close that wheeltub area back up, so I figured I'd start with that and see what sort of space was left to attach actual "structure" for the strut mount.
My early impression of this project, was that I'd have to extend each wheeltub by around 3-1/2", which makes the rear seat substantially narrower, and starts to really kill the utility of the rear bed area when the seat is removed. I went through a series of progressively larger crescent-shaped cuts on the wheeltub to see just how tightly I could fit the two halves back together....
Turns out, I can probably do this whole thing by stretching the existing wheeltubs by only 1" per side!
Once I saw how well the space of the rear seat area had been preserved I redoubled my efforts to find a mounting scheme that wouldn't throw away those gains. After playing around with a few scraps of round rod, I came up with a scheme to get a double-shear mount for the strut by running two parallel (to the bedrail) upper tubes. This required me to have at least one more landing spot for the tube, since I didn't want to land everything back on the bedrail tube itself.... so I started mocking-up a couple of small horizontal braces in the B-pillar area.
A piece of rectangular tube created a good index for keeping the new tube fitments nice and level. Peeking at the daylight coming through the tube allows me to quickly identify if the tube is slightly high or low relative to the existing bedrail bars....
These will serve doubly-duty, not only as strut mounting points but also to attach the upper seatbelt straps for my 4-point harnesses.
Another angle of that assembly once it was tacked into position and the rectangular tubing was removed...
... and one more.
Hopefully, I'll get a chance this weekend to add the next few bars so that this will start to make more sense to everyone.
-G
boonedog
Registered Member
Love this thing!
