'72 K5 - Greg's @MightAsWellK5 Build

[cuervo]

Pirate 4x4 started before the internet and I know most of the people who started it. I was part of the club that maintained the Rubicon trail. Guys from San Francisco wanted to run the trail but the club was...how do we say... the trail 'guardians' were not terribly welcoming. I thought it was bs, but the powers-that-be weren't changing and I kept my mouth pretty shut (you'll find this amazing the more you get to know me) mostly because I liked running the trail. Things came to a head, and eventually the ones that thought they owned the trail were out on their collective tails. By then, I'd moved away from Reno and only maintained contact with one of the people from there - strangely, someone who's also part of the first group on Pirate.

Pirate was the name of people who ran the trail without the club stamp of approval. I rarely went on there, and there was some guilt-by-association with the original guy who did the poison spider crawler (and was also part of the original pirates of the rubicon). What's funny in that, is I never met the guy.... but that seemed to be the flavor of Pirate - that they fought the "in" crowd then became their own "in" crowd... needless to say, I've always had a chip on my shoulder because of the early stuff so I'm not terribly charitable and wasn't when I went to build my '40.... something about a 20something telling me that I don't know what I'm doing really doesn't fly with me... anyway, when I cuss - they're my cuss word. It wasn't a founder of Pirate that was my moderator problem - in fact, one of the ones who started it I think politicked on my behalf and kept me from being banned - rather it is one of the moderators who is sponsored by Pirate that was my problem. He was ringleader of the crap, and as he was in the position to cool them off - I fully blame him for allowing it to continue. When the hack happened, because the email associated with the screenname was really, really old (think netscape) - I never did the 'fix it' and took it as a sign to be shut of an annoyance in my life. To be blunt, if I saw any of them broken beside the trail - I'd leave them - and that's quite something for me as I do SAR and have rescued some pretty unsavory people. I don't like exclusive clubs - and I'm old enough to no longer care enough to 'make' people like me, so Pirate remains a negative by-word to me.... what's kind of funny is that moderator is now posting on another forum claiming it's too boring in Pirate... I simply ignore him because every post he does in the other forum is the admission that I'm right (that and his rig is a boring, hacked-together POS)....

longwinded, but the tl;dr is I don't like them and the 100k views (or more) that my builds garner goes to far more worthy forums. The comment on your forum about not tolerating personal attacks was probably the biggest motivator for me to join... I do this for fun, when it's not fun it's called work and I avoid work

Quite honestly, it was all the BS strong arm kind of behavior and post over on pirate that led me to CK5. CK5 was/is place where you could post stupid questions and ask anything without some douche bag being a dick in your post about how dumb you were.

The good news, is if all the jack ares from pirate end up here we have a can can that straight up can!

 

[JoshHefnerX]

Don't like Pirate at all. Don't even like going over there to read. It's like the wild-west over there.

 

[76zimmer]

Quite honestly, it was all the BS strong arm kind of behavior and post over on pirate that led me to CK5. CK5 was/is place where you could post stupid questions and ask anything without some douche bag being a dick in your post about how dumb you were.

The good news, is if all the jack ares from pirate end up here we have a can can that straight up can!

and he's the good cop!
wait til the bad cop finds out about em!

 

[FOR MUD]

For the most part, I'm invisible there and nobody even knows my name or what my original involvement was with the 4-link Calculator.



-G

I read your comments in the 4-link for dummies also the stuff you posted on ORI struts over there when I was researching those subjects, if that counts for anything.

 

[superbuickguy]

Don't like Pirate at all. Don't even like going over there to read. It's like the wild-west over there.

wild west is cool, jackarses aren't cool.

my working theory is there are 3 or 4 builders there who are really worried people will realize how easy doing it yourself is and put them out of business.

 

[tRustyK5]

I never liked the feel at pbb if you were a new guy. I figure why not wait to see if I am a douche before you treat me like one? We're not perfect here at CK5, but I do think we've always been welcoming, and have given people the benefit of the doubt. Anyways, I guess we should stop cluttering up Greg's build thread here.

More cool build stuff/pics....and go!

 

[Joe91M]

More building, less pirate bashing. Lol. But seriously, I'm dying to see more CTIS ideas. I have been spending a bunch of time with the guys from TACOM going over the Rockwell system at work, and the only thing I can say about it so far isn't that it's over complicated. Most of the issues I have at work are sensor related. The only other big problem is young privates who can't put wheel seals in the right order and I doubt Greg is gonna do that. I'm thinking that a manual shut off for each wheel and a single line per axle would work fine, although the wait time to fill a 10 54"s is a little ridiculous. I think that for 4 tires with a decent compressor and tank should be fine. But, I'm just a mechanic, not an engineer. This is the typical setup for larger military stuff, but it's a little bit too ugly after all that work with those 17"s.

 

[Greg72]

More building, less pirate bashing. Lol. But seriously, I'm dying to see more CTIS ideas. I have been spending a bunch of time with the guys from TACOM going over the Rockwell system at work, and the only thing I can say about it so far isn't that it's over complicated. Most of the issues I have at work are sensor related. The only other big problem is young privates who can't put wheel seals in the right order and I doubt Greg is gonna do that. I'm thinking that a manual shut off for each wheel and a single line per axle would work fine, although the wait time to fill a 10 54"s is a little ridiculous. I think that for 4 tires with a decent compressor and tank should be fine. But, I'm just a mechanic, not an engineer. This is the typical setup for larger military stuff, but it's a little bit too ugly after all that work with those 17"s.

Yeah..... onward and upward. I was trying to get a quote from Parker Pneumatic on their CTIS system, but that was days ago and they never got back to me after the initial acknowledgement of my inquiry. I'm sure their system is expensive anyway.... and I will be stuck using whatever preset / predefined logic comes with a "canned" solution.

As mentioned before, the system can be pretty simple.....or pretty complicated depending on how involved I want to go. The basic concept of running some airlines, hooking up solenoids and manual switches and throwing a couple of manual shutoffs to deal with a broken line / malfunction shouldn't be that scary to get done. The only part that gets more "fancy" is if I decide to implement a controller for the solenoids to auto-fill the tires, check pressures, optimize tire pressures based on road speed, etc. That stuff is all "Version 2" and I'm not going to let that slow me down in the near-term anyway.... I like that it's something that can be easily retrofitted with just a few new wires.

To that end: I decided to pull the trigger and get more familiar with this...

Looks like fun, and I will get to learn some "C" programming to build my resume too!!! It's practically work-related...


Beyond that, the cage plate installation is just about finished. I've got 10 of the 12 plate sets fully bolted down to the bedfloor and the final 2 plates were marked and located last night.... just need to drill the through-holes to make it official. The Gr-8 square nuts that I ordered arrived at the local USPS sorting facility this morning, so hopefully those will be in my mailbox this afternoon and I can start welding those in place over the weekend. My local machinist says he's got a bandsaw I can use to cut the plates down to a more manageable, lightweight size.... so I'll probably try to schedule some time with him to get that done, and then do the final smoothing and edge cleanup on my 20" disc grinder back in my own shop.

We got hammered with about 12" of fresh snow on Tuesday.... which totally crushed my "spring fever" attitude for the time being, but I know that it's only a couple more weeks until we are into a more stable warming weather pattern. I'll keep cranking along on the "small stuff" so that I can get to a HERO DAY when the sun is finally shining and the garage doors are both rolled up for the springtime build season!!!!


-G

 

[AJs72K5]

Just saw these. Not the current topic, but leaving this here... http://www.67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=732929

 

[Greg72]

Just saw these. Not the current topic, but leaving this here... http://www.67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=732929

Thanks AJ,

I saw those, but unfortunately you definitely lose the back seat with a set of those installed. It's quite surprising that with the current setup the rear axle can do it's full 16" of travel and articulation with a stock wheeltub.... there is one spot near the floor where I may need to slightly box-in some clearance for the upper link when it lays over at full bump. But it will be mostly hidden from view under the lower seat cushion so everything can still look "stock" back there!!!!

-G

 

[westn11]

If that Arduino similar to a Rasberry Pi? One of the guys here at work bought a few Rasberry Pies (plural spelling?) and clustered them together. He also configured a small SAN out of external drives. He said he was bored one weekend, and just wanted to see if he could do it. Its kind of cool, but personally I think he needs to meet a girl

 

[Greg72]

If that Arduino similar to a Rasberry Pi? One of the guys here at work bought a few Rasberry Pies (plural spelling?) and clustered them together. He also configured a small SAN out of external drives. He said he was bored one weekend, and just wanted to see if he could do it. Its kind of cool, but personally I think he needs to meet a girl

I'm a neophyte user but my understanding is that the Arduino is a very simple microcontroller vs. the Raspberry Pi which is a much more like a real miniature PC that can run an OS, etc.

For the purposes of my work, the Arduino seems like a "right size" application.... I can connect a series of input sources to the board (air pressure sensors, dashboard switches, etc) and then program some logic that will drive the output side of the board (electric solenoids, compressor trigger, indicator lights, etc) The programming is just some simple "glue" to define what I want done, and how the various inputs should be interpreted and how that should drive the various lines on the output side....

I like the simplicity of that. I'm sure the same thing could be accomplished with a Raspberry Pi.... but it's sort of like the "bazooka to kill a fly" kind of analogy, I believe.

@dremu and a few others here can speak with more authority than I can. I've opened up the box to look at all the shiny parts, but that's about as far as I've gotten so far..


-G

 

[ashman]

I saw those, but unfortunately you definitely lose the back seat with a set of those installed.

You've come a long way from when you were thinking of narrowing the back seat. Still an excellent call.

@westn11 I've done a few projects with the Rasberry Pi as well. @Greg72 is right, it's a full blown PC on a chip and probably overkill for what Greg has in mind. Of course once you get familiar with these small board computers your mind starts running wild with ideas.

 

[kgblazerfive]

With how infrequently you are going yo be changing the air pressure in those tires I think you are barking at a tree with no cat in it

 

[superbuickguy]

The air thing isn't something I'd do, but watching him work through this is really, really cool. Please continue and I'll get to putting a cat in that tree

 

[Greg72]

With how infrequently you are going yo be changing the air pressure in those tires I think you are barking at a tree with no cat in it

The air thing isn't something I'd do, but watching him work through this is really, really cool. Please continue and I'll get to putting a cat in that tree

I see it this way:

Sure, the offroading trips won't be all that common but the CTIS system is going to be in the truck every day.... might as well make use of it and let it manage simple stuff for me. Like checking & equalizing tire pressures automatically when the truck is started up... costs nothing to do, and it would be good to know that I'm sitting at a perfect 28psi (or whatever) at all 4 corners when I head out onto the road.

Where you should be focusing your concern is with the idea that at some point I'm going to realize that this same concept could be applied to the ORI Struts and I could create a fully-programmable system to adjust ride height, compression and rebound-type suspension tuning... High-centered on a rock? "No problem, let me just push this button on the dash and raise the truck up an inch or two..."

That's a whole 'nuther rathole to explore a few years from now... but I could see playing around with that for fun later on. I'll put Charlie on some of that programming when the time comes.


-G

 

[kgblazerfive]

So you're saying it will be running and driving before he moves out☺

 

[Greg72]

So you're saying it will be running and driving before he moves out☺

It's going to be close.



-G

 

[FOR MUD]

I see it this way:

Where you should be focusing your concern is with the idea that at some point I'm going to realize that this same concept could be applied to the ORI Struts and I could create a fully-programmable system to adjust ride height, compression and rebound-type suspension tuning... High-centered on a rock? "No problem, let me just push this button on the dash and raise the truck up an inch or two..."

That's a whole 'nuther rathole to explore a few years from now... but I could see playing around with that for fun later on. I'll put Charlie on some of that programming when the time comes.


-G

Now I'm all ears!!

 

[superbuickguy]

airbags in a suspension for altitude control.... ummmm, I hate to break this to you, but they've been doing that for awhile.
[

you'd really impress me if you incorporated active ride control into your rig.