JeffsJeep04
1/2 ton status
Well, I finally got a chance to get 'em made. I'll put down all the info I gathered together in case anyone can use it.
Not nearly as booty fab as you are probably thinking. Little background, I've done a bit of everything over the last few years, but finally decided to go back to school and finish my machine tool degree. I'll be graduating in March and needed another project to do. I asked my instructor if I could engineer up and put together a set of wheel spacers. He seemed pretty impressed with the idea, so I dove in. Drew them up in mastercam and made a fixture for them. I got some scrap 6061 from work that was 12"x12"x1" thick. It was the end pieces of a bar that they just keep around for building fixtures and similar. I put that in the vice and ran the first side. Drilled all 12 holes (7/16 for the holes to be bolted to the axle, 15/32 for the stud holes), then I counterbored and used a ball end mill to make the 60° lug nut seat. After that, I drilled a hole in the middle and used a 1" indexable end mill to pocket out the center bore. Once I had that blanked out, I had a nice machined surface to index off of, so I put my fixture in the vice (has 4 of the 6 bolt holes tapped into it) and bolted the spacers down flipped over. Counterbored the back side of the stud hole and milled out the outside. Cycle time from load to finished spacer was around an hour each. I could drastically reduce that by having some round stock to start with...or something closer. Going from a 12" square to just under 7.25 round is a LOT of chips.
15/32 is .4688 and the factory blazer rear studs have a .472 knurl. I should have drilled the holes at 29/64 (.4531), but live and learn. A few of the studs I got were a little undersize on the knurl and I didn't feel very comfortable, so I did some researching. Turns out that the studs for a 69 camaro and a pretty good range of corvettes (80 was as new as they went) is identical to the rear blazer lugs but has a .475 knurl. I went and swapped them out and pressed 'em in. Nice and tight!
The stance is still just a touch narrower in the rear, but I wanted that to retain some of the turning radius advantages. It has a MUCH better stance now. It still looks like it's low in the rear, but not nearly as bad as it used to. I know you guys are picture whores, but unfortunately it's snowing to beat heck outside right now and my camera is 1000 miles away at the moment, nice and warm in Georgia with my wife. I tried with the camera phone, but you can't see crap, so I'll just have to post more up later.
Not nearly as booty fab as you are probably thinking. Little background, I've done a bit of everything over the last few years, but finally decided to go back to school and finish my machine tool degree. I'll be graduating in March and needed another project to do. I asked my instructor if I could engineer up and put together a set of wheel spacers. He seemed pretty impressed with the idea, so I dove in. Drew them up in mastercam and made a fixture for them. I got some scrap 6061 from work that was 12"x12"x1" thick. It was the end pieces of a bar that they just keep around for building fixtures and similar. I put that in the vice and ran the first side. Drilled all 12 holes (7/16 for the holes to be bolted to the axle, 15/32 for the stud holes), then I counterbored and used a ball end mill to make the 60° lug nut seat. After that, I drilled a hole in the middle and used a 1" indexable end mill to pocket out the center bore. Once I had that blanked out, I had a nice machined surface to index off of, so I put my fixture in the vice (has 4 of the 6 bolt holes tapped into it) and bolted the spacers down flipped over. Counterbored the back side of the stud hole and milled out the outside. Cycle time from load to finished spacer was around an hour each. I could drastically reduce that by having some round stock to start with...or something closer. Going from a 12" square to just under 7.25 round is a LOT of chips.
15/32 is .4688 and the factory blazer rear studs have a .472 knurl. I should have drilled the holes at 29/64 (.4531), but live and learn. A few of the studs I got were a little undersize on the knurl and I didn't feel very comfortable, so I did some researching. Turns out that the studs for a 69 camaro and a pretty good range of corvettes (80 was as new as they went) is identical to the rear blazer lugs but has a .475 knurl. I went and swapped them out and pressed 'em in. Nice and tight!
The stance is still just a touch narrower in the rear, but I wanted that to retain some of the turning radius advantages. It has a MUCH better stance now. It still looks like it's low in the rear, but not nearly as bad as it used to. I know you guys are picture whores, but unfortunately it's snowing to beat heck outside right now and my camera is 1000 miles away at the moment, nice and warm in Georgia with my wife. I tried with the camera phone, but you can't see crap, so I'll just have to post more up later.
