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RE-Build Thread: 1989 K5 Trazer "The Dirty Girl"

After addressing a few issues, it was time to take her back to The Badlands Offroad park





For some reason, my truck seems to get more dents when my brother is driving it....



This Jeep got so scared of The Dirty Girl, that it spit out an axle shaft!







My favorite picture ever taken of my truck:

 
76zimmer said:
really diggin this build Ryan...like the black and marine green?
can't go wrong with Kerts parts either!
Click to expand...
Thanks Zim, this is the paint I used. I originally found it in a local Army/Navy store, then bought a whole case online. When I needed more paint a few years later, the price jumped to like $8 a can! Unfortunately, it does fade. So I started using satin black on more of the brackets.

 
Next project was making that flatbed a little less naked.

What we had to work with:



The inspiration:



First bend, no swearing yet!



The cab halo ended up a little lower than we wanted but we decided just to go with it and make it work





Then my bro added "fenders". These will help keep the truck sliding along the trees instead of the rear tires getting caught up on them.





 
Then we started with replacing the original rockers with some rock sliders. My bro also cut out the old cab corners since they were starting to rust, were dented, or covered with bondo.







The rock sliders were also reinforced to the frame.



This is what my brother did to replace the cab corners. The back wall section was just replaced with a flat piece of 1/8" thick steel. But for the curved side of the corner, my brother made this handy tool. The steel plate is fed through this as he consistantly hits the tube with a hammer. He takes the piece back and forth to the cab to make sure the curve is correct.





Here you can see the piece mocked up. You can also see a support tube he made that will connect the flatbed to the rock sliders.



And here's the finished product with a tree basher tube added to the rock slider that will help protect the doors (hopefully)





Some wood panels were then cut and painted to help finish off the flatbed for now. I would like to replace these with metal panels at a later date.



We also mounted the storage box my bro got me for christmas, re-mounted the batteries, and found a place to store the Hi-Lift jack.

 
After the flatbed, we finally got the rear traction bar mounted up. My bro modified the DIY4x crossmember and mounted it to the flatbed.



This original frame crossmember had to be clearanced just a little bit.



 
That's it for today. Tomorrow's pics will feature a wheeling trip and the complete re-paint of the truck :D
 
Thanks for the compliments everyone!

So with a wedding approaching, September 2012, we had a Badlands Bachelor party for me and a bunch of my buddies came with and brought a few of their rigs.

Before the trip, we repainted the whole truck in hopes that it would help my chances of making the CK5 calendar. Didn't make it, but there's always next time. On to the pics:



I had mrk5 make this for me:



My Brother "locked" the rear axle for me before the trip :haha:















We didn't have enough time to do the rock slider, replace the cab corner or add the tree basher tube on the driver's side, so naturally my brother banged up the rocker and I managed to crunch the door.





Here's two videos from the trip:

[youtube]es7f1FOiZ8E&safe=active[/youtube]

[youtube]2OFzga6VBIw&safe=active[/youtube]
 
Last edited:
muddermilitia said:
Thanks for the compliments everyone!

So with a wedding approaching, September 2012, we had a Badlands Bachelor party for me and a bunch of my buddies came with and brought a few of their rigs.

Before the trip, we repainted the whole truck in hopes that it would help my chances of making the CK5 calendar. Didn't make it, but there's always next time. On to the pics:

We didn't have enough time to do the rock slider, replace the cab corner or add the tree basher tube on the driver's side, so naturally my brother banged up the rocker and I managed to crunch the door.





One more set of upgrades and we will be caught up to where the truck is at today
Click to expand...

I'm all about a little mother nature mods:thumb:
 
Well after that last trip, some modifications were definitely needed. I was sick of not being able to steer the truck unless I was moving. And pretty much any rut you hit would pull the steering wheel out of your hand. Also, some of my buddies really like to hit up The Cliffs Insane Terrain Offroad Park in Marseilles IL. I have never been there but I hear the trails are even tighter than those at The Badlands. But it is half the distance to travel for me, about 1.5 hours, making it the perfect place for a day trip.

With all that in mind, it was time to go full hydro steer, taper the front clip and add more body armor to handle the tight trails of The Cliffs.

First up was to remove the front sheetmetal and start the cab exo.



We didn't want to add any more width to the truck, so the a-pillar bars goes inside the front fenders and mount to the rock sliders



The original radiator support will no longer be used.





The front fenders and hood were lightened up by removing the inner structure. Now they are just sheetmetal "skins"





We decided since the radiator support was no longer in the truck, we now had the room to shorten the bumper and move it back a little. This will give the truck a little better approach angle.



Here you can see how narrow the front clip has become.



Now obviously the sheetmetal skins won't be able to take a hit from a tree and survive. So my bro bent up some tube inner armor. The lower "fender" tube follows the wheel well opening of the fender.







An engine cross bar was added. Ruffstuff tube flanges are used so that this section of tube can be removed if/when the engine needs to be pulled.



We decided to re-do the front shock mounts. I wanted to gain a little bit of uptravel (the old modified F-250 towers only gave about 3"s uptravel) Also we leaned the top mount in towards the frame a little, to gain some more travel. These shock hoop kits are from Lo-Range Offroad. It is 1.5" tube.







I narrowed down the stock grill center section and my bro modified the hood.

 
Front bumpstops were added. These are from Poly Performance. They have a few different spots for height adjustment. Also, when I want to put in Air Bumpstops, I just swap out the aluminum tube. My bro welded on some bump stop contact pads onto the DIY4X U-bolt plates too.



I also decided to remove the front half of the S&W 6-point rollcage that my bro welded up years ago. The a-pillar bars were just too close to the steering wheel, making it uncomfortable to drive sometimes. We kept the rear hoop though. 5-point racing harnesses will be mounted to it and support tubes will connect it to the rockslider supports, eventually.

 
So while this was all happening, we were also working on the full hydro steer setup. I first started collecting parts from swap meets and such, but decided just to keep things simple, I ordered a full kit from PSC.

I went with the double ended ram kit.



Also ordered the Orbital valve mount from DIY4X



Got the new steering pump mounted up and mounted the orbital valve with steering shaft adapter. The DIY4X orbital valve mount re-uses the existing steering box mounting holes.



Once we started playing with the front shock mounts, we decided to mount the orbital valve in a different spot so that it gave us room to inboard the shocks.

Here's where it will sit. A "shelf" needs to be made for the valve to sit on. Also the valve mount needs to be shortened.





Here's how it ended up. My bro made a little spacer that went in between the orbital mount and the shelf on the frame. This allowed the brakelines to go under the Orbital.



Steering cooler was mounted to the front frame crossmember.



My bro then fabbed up a mounting bracket to hold the fluid reservoir.





Work then began on the hydro ram mount. The diff side of it is removable to give room to remove the diff cover. The diff side tube is also sleeved with another tube inside of it to give added strength. The center section has two tubes that go back to the axle tube so there are 4 connections to the axle tube in total.





 
I have a few more pics that I still need to add to my photobucket account. But that's it for tonight
 
I think I'm going to copy your front end cage and design. Maybe not quite as narrow, but close!
 
Thanks everyone, I thought I had pics of the finished steering but I guess not. I will snap a pic next time I am at the house. This pretty much brings the build thread to where it sits today. We are currently working on mounting the radiator and then we need to make a tube to go across the wiper cowl. Then the cab and front cage can come off for some finish welding, prime and paint. Then it can finally all be welded completely to the truck.

I still have a few projects I want to do in the future. I have a York A/C compressor that I would like to use to do onboard air. I would also like to change up some of the storage on the flatbed. I have some cool ideas for it that I can't wait to work on.

Oh and I have this waiting for me:



and this:



I also need to find a place for these:





So progress is being made. The ultimate goal is to have this ready for the CK5 hillbilly sand dune party in July. I would like to get a shakedown run in before then though. Maybe hit up The Cliffs sometime in June or late May.

If you have any questions/comments, feel free to post up. Thanks for following along. :)
 
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