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Three Day 3link

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sreidmx

sreidmx

Fortify Offroad
GMOTM Winner
Joined
Oct 24, 2013
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Location
Yucca Valley Ca
sreidmx submitted a new Build:

Three Day 3link

Ill preface with @secutright and myself are embarking upon a business venture where we build products for these square body's, we call ourselves Fortify Offroad.
CK5 has been instrumental in giving us a place to gain constructive feedback, the information on this site by far is much more usable and tangible than any other platform dedicated forum online. So we felt it appropriate we release this information here first.

We have been developing a "kit" we feel has the best of all things with little compromise in regards to handling and comfort. It is not the best at anything but performs good at all things. Road manners, adjustability, simplicity of installation, maintenance and all things we considered when developing this.

We want to share some of this process with you, we're passionate about this as we know you are too.

Without further ado, I give you the Three Day 3Link..

This all started a few years ago when @secutright (Scott) and myself went 4wheeling with @bergerking(Jesse) at that point my k5 was pretty much just 4 inch springs and some minor mods to the motor, Jesse's k5 was much more comfortable and had more bells and whistles than mine and still does! It's a very well setup rig, rides nice has nice seats a winch etc.. All the basic items anyone could want for a nice simple effective and reliable rig.
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Scott had just come into a 75-76 k5 that is poo green and needed a motor, while out on vacation we brought him along as he and I had been friends via my wife for a few years already. He got the k5 and that kicked it off. Our trip went well, we Roosted it up in the sand and did some crawling, that's in my build thread so go check it out! Ultimately we talked about suspension changes to take these trucks to the next level, there was an offroad swap meet right after that and I saw a blue k5 and the front was linked and it seemed pretty simple, or so I thought. I believe Scott had already started to order parts before me and had a solid plan in place to build his front end.
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I ordered some parts from an online vendor and that was a long wait followed by stuff not really fitting how I thought it would, Scott's original order never actually made it to him and got canceled, once we did find a vendor @Gravel Maker hooked us up with the proper parts needed to make this happen, everyone knows how much RuffStuff...
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Read more about this build here...

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sreidmx said:
Ill preface with @secutright and myself are embarking upon a business venture where we build products for these square body's, we call ourselves Fortify Offroad.
CK5 has been instrumental in giving us a place to gain constructive feedback, the information on this site by far is much more usable and tangible than any other platform dedicated forum online. So we felt it appropriate we release this information here first.

We have been developing a "kit" we feel has the best of all things with little compromise in regards to handling and comfort. It is not the best at anything but performs good at all things. Road manners, adjustability, simplicity of installation, maintenance and all things we considered when developing this.

We want to share some of this process with you, we're passionate about this as we know you are too.

Without further ado, I give you the Three Day 3Link..

This all started a few years ago when @secutright (Scott) and myself went 4wheeling with @bergerking(Jesse) at that point my k5 was pretty much just 4 inch springs and some minor mods to the motor, Jesse's k5 was much more comfortable and had more bells and whistles than mine and still does! It's a very well setup rig, rides nice has nice seats a winch etc.. All the basic items anyone could want for a nice simple effective and reliable rig.
View attachment 205516

Scott had just come into a 75-76 k5 that is poo green and needed a motor, while out on vacation we brought him along as he and I had been friends via my wife for a few years already. He got the k5 and that kicked it off. Our trip went well, we Roosted it up in the sand and did some crawling, that's in my build thread so go check it out! Ultimately we talked about suspension changes to take these trucks to the next level, there was an offroad swap meet right after that and I saw a blue k5 and the front was linked and it seemed pretty simple, or so I thought. I believe Scott had already started to order parts before me and had a solid plan in place to build his front end.
View attachment 205515
View attachment 205514
I ordered some parts from an online vendor and that was a long wait followed by stuff not really fitting how I thought it would, Scott's original order never actually made it to him and got canceled, once we did find a vendor @Gravel Maker hooked us up with the proper parts needed to make this happen, everyone knows how much RuffStuff kicks ass on service and quality so this was a no brainer to continue with them.

It's been about two years or a little less since his truck was done, it turned out amazing, I do not have the words to tell you how it rides and drives but to just come to KOH and see for yourself.
Everyone knows my forever build.. And it's ever changing direction.

But enter a new guy! @Dil.Pickle is my good bud from high school! He's a crazy dude that gets along with everyone and someone you can truly count on. He partied hard but works hard too. In HS we both had squares, his was a lifted shortbed on thorn birds, bad ass 350, the works! Bad truck. My truck was a long bed 3/4 but stock as a rock with a 400, all go no show... Believe this Ethel was a mutual buddies truck too so they were all there..
Funny how this all ties in.. View attachment 205513


Dillon has had a few squares in the last few years since we reconnected, all of which were bad ass, but the latest encarnation is truly a sweet truck, it has an excellent body, and basically all the good parts you would want. 3/4 axles, built 355, it's got a nice cam, trans works good, etc.. It just needed to be finished.

It rode as well as a brick house.. Which means it might have had 3 usable inches of travel, no joke..

So we did what any logical crew would do.. Cut it off and threw it away..
This project had been in the works for three months, we have been planning, ordering parts, design in solid works had been ongoing, test fitting things etc. anyone in this business knows nothing ever goes perfect the first time.. This was our "first"..

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Here is the blank slate. We took this from leaf spring to coilover in 3 days.
Click to expand...
:popcorn:
 
We left about 2-3 Friday, I had to register Ethel and once that was done I got on the road.
We were about halfway and I felt it necessary to take some pics before the truck was done. I tried to get some good ones. Ironically this was the only part of that day and drive where there wasn't gale force wind.. weird.
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Step one, remove axle and accessories from truck.
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Step two, cut stuff in way off... @Dil.Pickle is here cutting off the shock mounts and removing the paint. We found out the truck had a broken center pin which explains the bad road manners.
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Here's the pin.. we didnt even bother to remove it.

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Wheel wells are going to have to be trimmed to fit back in.
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Squares everywhere!
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Friday night was eventful, between changing the brackets and getting stuck in traffic on the way to @charity case to have them re cut, had us beat!
In the morning we finished cleaning up the housing and frame and prepped to attach all the components to the truck for final fitting to ensure nothing was going to collide.
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This is our shock bracket combined with the double shear track-bar bracket, we feel this is very important on trucks seeing lots of abuse, on a crawler it might not be as big of a deal because the side loading isn't as sharp and abrupt like you might see in a desert truck.
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Another notable thing is the tube insert for the axle brackets, it isnt common but splitting the axle bracket or if one side gets impacted causing it to twist and distort is prevented with this, it also allows additional jigging of the assembly when building the brackets.
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Once we were able to get the towers in the truck we mocked up the compression and droop heights, this particular truck will end up around 6 inches of lift and have 6 or so inches uptravel.

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At this point we were ready to build and setup the link lengths, allowing us to mount the chassis brackets. We had these cut from 1/4 with holes for rosette welds, they're in shear so we wanted the maximum weld area. We had to modify these to allow clearance for the saddle tanks. We had to remove the rear corner and create an L shape.
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Here is a pic of the truck once we finished up the links, I did not get any pictures of us building those, it became a rush tward the end because we could not find the proper bolts, at this point it has become a lesson to us, the next time well have all the bolts on hand to do this type of conversion.

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Here are the 2 inch Dom .250 wall radius arms, I am confident these will not break with the trucks intended use.
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We modified the trackbar bracket from its original design because we could not source the bolt, which is good because it decoupled the shock and trackbar allowing for easier removal of the shock and also allows us to move the trackbar if it needs it.
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I feel we nailed the steering geometry, or as close as it could be.
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Passenger side shot.
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More shock tower goodness, we have to get the cross brace on along with a few other things like limit straps etc..
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Here is the cut made to the chassis side of things to allow us clearance to weld along side the tanks, if we had more time we might have dropped the tanks, they were full at this point and we didnt see the value in setting ourselves on fire.
 
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