Builds 550hp 2JZ 1978 RN28L Build (1 Viewer)

[ntsqd]

Pretty common in the world of LoCost 7's to use a McPherson strut donor front suspension and cut the strut down, weld a plug into the top of it, and then use an SRE or captured SB for the the upper spindle/upright joint in a fabricated upper A-arm. I can see using FWD suspension stuff like mod'd as one option for the front drive of an AWD lay-out.

Another would be first gen 4WD S-10 uprights, unit bearings, etc. Not sure that those have large enough OEM rotors, and I sure wouldn't use those calipers, but the rest of the knuckle assembly is viable. I'm told that those unit bearings are used in some of the desert racing buggy rear swing-arms. If so, they ought to be a decent size & strength.

Taco uprights are really tall, and I'm not sure if they lend themselves to mods easily.

 

[snivilous]

Pretty common in the world of LoCost 7's to use a McPherson strut donor front suspension and cut the strut down, weld a plug into the top of it, and then use an SRE or captured SB for the the upper spindle/upright joint in a fabricated upper A-arm. I can see using FWD suspension stuff like mod'd as one option for the front drive of an AWD lay-out.

Another would be first gen 4WD S-10 uprights, unit bearings, etc. Not sure that those have large enough OEM rotors, and I sure wouldn't use those calipers, but the rest of the knuckle assembly is viable. I'm told that those unit bearings are used in some of the desert racing buggy rear swing-arms. If so, they ought to be a decent size & strength.

Taco uprights are really tall, and I'm not sure if they lend themselves to mods easily.

I'll probably just design it and have it machined since I think it's fun and cool going down that route. This is the knuckle I designed for my buggy a year ago, and would like to follow a similar path on this truck. Then I can easily add all the features and geometry I want.

 

[cruisermatt]

Just now seeing this. Fun project and looks like you are learning a lot.

What’s the reason for such a big tire on the rear, just looks? Have you tried a 225 or 235 Mickey Street R? I have gone really fast on those at around this weight/HP.
Also, Id recommend going about double the size on the IC just based on the looks of that one.
Do you have enough IO to do IAT and MAP sensors pre and post IC?

Too late now but a stock Fox rear goes into these trucks really easily and would be super strong and probably a $200 or less axle. I have a 1JZ 79 Corona project I am
working on and was hoping the rear axle would hold up for a little bit until I put a Ford rear in it, those cars are 4-link though.

 

[snivilous]

Just now seeing this. Fun project and looks like you are learning a lot.

What’s the reason for such a big tire on the rear, just looks? Have you tried a 225 or 235 Mickey Street R? I have gone really fast on those at around this weight/HP.
Also, Id recommend going about double the size on the IC just based on the looks of that one.
Do you have enough IO do do temp and MAP sensors pre and post IC?

Too late now but a stock Fox rear goes into these trucks really easily and would be super strong and probably a $200 or less axle. I have a 1JZ 79 Corona project I am
working on and was hoping the rear axle would hold up for a little bit until I put a Ford rear in it, those cars are 4-link though.

The big tires are just for traction, it spins in 2nd with the current tires still. I was concerned they'd look a bit weird, which is why I didn't push to a wider tire, but it's still traction limited right now. I had looked at the Mickeys since they would hook better, but from the reviews I saw the Nittos were a lot more friendly if I got caught in the rain--like have a chance of making it to the next exit instead of instant death

I completely agree on the IC, this is a cheap $100 one I grabbed that fit. My plan is to build a custom one that is full width and has outlets going straight back. The only reason this one is so narrow is the room needed to fit the two 90deg boots. I have not thought about measuring MAP pre intercooler, but I do have a couple ports left I can get data from if I wanted. One of my friends was suggesting measuring turbo rpm too, and I've also thought about measuring oil temp.

 

[cruisermatt]

I wouldn't waste your time on turbo RPM at all in a car like this, but IAT and MAP pre and post IC is good useful data. That way you can have a good idea of exactly what you need to change, or if you really need to at all. The other thing is once you have that data you can just leave the pre IC sensors in place and use those wires for other sensors, it's not like that data is going to really change later.

As for the tires, yeah they are going to spin, you are on the street, pretty much anything is going to spin on the street over about 400whp and stick shift.
When do we get to see it make a real pass on a drag strip?

 

[snivilous]

I wouldn't waste your time on turbo RPM at all in a car like this, but IAT and MAP pre and post IC is good useful data. That way you can have a good idea of exactly what you need to change, or if you really need to at all. The other thing is once you have that data you can just leave the pre IC sensors in place and use those wires for other sensors, it's not like that data is going to really change later.

As for the tires, yeah they are going to spin, you are on the street, pretty much anything is going to spin on the street over about 400whp and stick shift.
When do we get to see it make a real pass on a drag strip?

Drag strip pass will be aways down the road, I've never been on a drag strip but I definitely want to take the truck to one someday! I have a Dragy that I'll at least get some level of data from near the house. I just need it to do a 0-60 better than 4.5s so I can at least say it's faster than my Tundra, but I have a feeling that will be hard to pull off before the AWD!

 

[snivilous]

(PART 1) Been a fat minute since I did anything to the Hilux, after the last 3rd member broke life got busy with other stuff. In the past few weeks I've been chipping away at the truck since it needs to vacate the lift.

First my 9" housing from Quick Performance showed up.

I also got joints from Summit Machine who are local in Utah. I've wanted to run these joints for a long time, originally wanted to run them on my buggy. They are not cheap though, but if I did one end fixed and the other adjustable then the price was about the same as running all adjustable heims, and since you really only need to adjust them once that seemed fine. These are their "small" joints. They are rebuildable and greaseable and seemed like a good option for a street rig to try them out.

Now that I had all the parts, I needed to finalize the suspension design. My original plan was to do a 3-link with panhard, but mounting the upper link was a bit tricky and likewise the panhard had a tight window to operate in between clearing the differential and clearing the fuel cell. Because of that I looked at a triangulated 4 link, which in general I've always been a fan of, and that packaged a lot nicer. I did lots of reading and finally just settled on some parameters to get out of analysis paralysis.

This is where I settled for the baseline configuration. I have 1" of adjustment on the frame side uppers, and 1" on the axle side lowers, so I have 4x different options. All the other locations were just an afterthought of having room to add another bolt hole.

This was all done in conjunction with laying it out in Solidworks:

With all the points setup, I then drew up the bracketry in Solidworks and then exported it and setup the CAM paths for the plasma table.

The axle has an offset diff since the pinion is not centered in the diff, but the pinion is centered with the axle. Because of that the upper link mounts are unique to each side. This is where having the scan was very powerful.

Then off to cutting and welding the brackets together. First weld in awhile looking good!

As time has gone on I've settled on a combination of MIG and TIG for the projects. Some things, like two edges, I can TIG way better than I can MIG weld. But other spots it's way faster and easier to lay it down with the MIG and I can get good welds.

With the brackets done, it was on to prepping the frame. The lower link mounts went in the same vicinity as the leaf spring perches, and those were going to be a bitch to remove and I didn't want to spend days grinding, so I opted to completely cut out the perches and then weld in a replacement plate to get the frame smooth and it worked out beautifully.

Next was to weld in the link brackets.

Axle coming along and has the link brackets all done.

With the axle done, I decided to scan the completed axle and insert it into my CAD assembly to see how the real thing compared to the perfect CAD, which I thought was a fun experiment and yielded some cool results! The green is the new scan, the gray is the previous scan/perfect brackets.

From that I then pulled link lengths from the CAD and started welding the links together. The links are nearly replaceable top to bottom---in retrospect I should've tweaked the design to make them the same length---but the uppers are about 0.75" shorter than the lowers. The links have jam nuts plus an extra 0.25" of threads showing so they can be threaded in, so in a pinch I probably could swap a lower link and remove the jam nut and get it to the correct length to fit the uppers.

I'm using 1.5" x .120" DOM for the links, this should be massively overkill. From some reading a somewhat "large" link for a car is 1.25", so I decided to bump a size over that to be safe. Not a lot of bungs that fit this thread size and tube size, but I got some from WFO Concepts. Essentially everything in the rear is offroad sized hardware, which I think looks cool and I don't want to worry about the rear ever having a strength issue again.

 

[snivilous]

(PART 2)
With the rear link components done, I hung the housing so I could figure out how I wanted to do the shocks.

With the shock position and length figured out, I ordered some Viking coilovers. From what I've read they are a spinoff from QA1 and most people like them. They are also wickedly cheap! These are their mid tier valving setup that's a bit more performance focused than their pure comfort lineup. These are 5.75" stroke, have compression and rebound adjustment, and cost $275 a shock! Got a whole coilover for the price of a bump stop on my buggy.

I didn't get any pictures of the coilover mounting, but pretty simple brackets. The axle has a boxed in tower that hangs down pretty far, the front fuel cell crossmember has some little tabs come off. This leaves everything mounted below the frame so if I want to add a floor in the bed it can still be flat. With the coilover mounts done I painted the axle.

And then today finally mounted everything!

You can see the remnants of an original crossmember which sat too low for the upper links at full bump. I'm not worried about deleting it since the fuel cell crossmember which I added to the frame is only a couple inches behind it.

I fought with the rear brakes a bit, and you have to completely disassemble the parking brake drum to get the axle shaft retaining plate in place from what I could figure out. That seemed like a huge pain in the ass, so I deleted the whole parking drum brake assembly to simplify things. I can't actuate the parking brake right now anyway, and having the axle shaft be quick to pull out is a much higher priority than a dedicated parking brake.

The tops of the coilover where the adjustment knobs are is very easy to access. These shocks have 20+ adjustment positions, and by position 5 they are already wickedly stiff. I'm worried even the softest setting might be too stiff for how lightweight the truck is, we'll see when I drive it and do some launches. Worst case I'll tear them down and revalve them, or for how cheap they are just buy some of the comfort lineup.

This is roughly ride height, which is where I wanted it to be. This is with zero preload on the springs, just kissing the spring collars at full extension. This ends up with 2.75" of up travel, and 3.0" of down travel. This is with a single 150 lbf/in spring as I recall.

I am so stoked how it's turned out, it looks absolutely nasty. I saw a mini truck at a car meet a few weeks ago with a similar four link, but I think he just had bushings on both ends with small tubing. The links on this look like she means business, and having the huge billet ends on top of the axle was just coincidence but is pretty cool!

And that wraps up this update, I wanted to post all the pictures before I get too many. I'm on the books for the driveline shop, that's probably two weeks out. Both coolant lines are welded up, one is installed and the other needs some mounting brackets added. The exhaust I haven't touched. Couple other minor things. Truck should be ready to rock by the time I get the new driveshaft, and hopefully (knock on wood) is bulletproofed enough to handle the power for awhile!

 

[snivilous]

Yesterday finished up the cooling lines and tackled the exhaust. I ended up cutting down the passenger side coolant hardline so it would line up with the softline a bit better, and then cut and welded new brackets to locate the hardline where I wanted. For the exhaust I ended up replacing nearly everything with the exception of right next to the front V band and the outer foot or so where it curved into the bedside, only because I didn't have any more curved exhaust pieces to make a new tip. I ended up splitting this section of the exhaust that goes from the in front of the transmission crossmember all the way to the back, into two sections with another V band. The front section is just a 4ft straight piece effectively and ends right before the rear of the cab. This makes putting everything together a lot easier compared to last time trying to snake the exhaust around the coolant lines, bedside, above the trans crossmember, and into two exhaust hangers. The rear section curves up at 30 degrees right into a Vibrant resonator muffler thing, and then does a normal 90deg turn into another straight and out the bedside. This is a fair bit simpler than the previous setup that did a funky compound curve to clear the battery. I'm hopeful the resonator muffler thing quiets it down a bit, I'm fine with the truck being loud at full throttle, but right now it's too loud for me just cruising around--like I wouldn't take the dog with me ever in the truck. We'll see if it does much if anything, of course most reviews are how it's loud compared to whatever other system people had, not people going from straight piped to adding this muffler. It's also pretty small so I don't have high hopes, but you can only fit so much without looking weird or getting crazy.

Today I screwed around with the front suspension, and got it mostly together then pulled parts of it off again to change my plan for it. After some measuring I should be able to fit the same Viking brand coilovers the rear has without really any modification. The front shocks don't seem to be blown, they still have nitrogen in them, but they are really soft. Additionally the stock spring setup is a complete pain to install, it's like 4" too long, so it's really awkward to get the spring in. The best method seems to be unbolting the LCA from just about everything and then compressing the spring, then jacking the LCA up to bolt it to the frame---it's a cluster and sketchy at best. I'm hoping by shoving some coilovers in it will make installation of the spring less sketchy, plus have compression and rebound adjustment and be able to dial it in for the increased weight of the motor.

My current conclusion, maybe coming full circle, is that the LCA is bent. I measured stuff AGAIN and the UCA all seems to be in the right spot, and the LCA mounts seem to be in the right spot, but the LBJ is 1+ inches rearward from where it should be so it has to be the LCA is bent. I think I will just fork over the $100 for the one LCA on eBay (even though it's way grosser than the one I already have) and see if that fixes the alignment. I'm also going to order a proportioning valve, AN3 brake lines to replace the rear brake lines, and then some other components to refresh the front right while I have it totally torn down. Now to wait for parts!

 

[gnob]

nice job on that exhaust.

 

[snivilous]

nice job on that exhaust.

Thanks! Getting better each time hahaha! I do like the exhaust work, I cut a bunch of 15deg pie cuts and then it's just puzzle piecing it together to go where you want, tack it with the MIG, then finish it off with the TIG which I've gotten to the point 99% of it is just running over it and fusion welding since the fitment is dialed. It's a lot faster than the first times I was figuring it out!

 

[gnob]

Thanks! Getting better each time hahaha! I do like the exhaust work, I cut a bunch of 15deg pie cuts and then it's just puzzle piecing it together to go where you want, tack it with the MIG, then finish it off with the TIG which I've gotten to the point 99% of it is just running over it and fusion welding since the fitment is dialed. It's a lot faster than the first times I was figuring it out!

this is how i did my 3.4 crossover. all day project.

 

[snivilous]

Another update, not quite driving but nearly there!

After the last update, the main remaining task was the front suspension. I ended up ordering some coilovers from Viking which didn't show up until a couple days ago.

I still had to address the passenger side being bent, and it turned out the LCA I ordered on eBay actually had been sold already. I tried to track down another one, but in the mean time did MORE MEASURING and pulled the driver's side off to bolt back to back with the passenger side to confirm the LCA was bent.... and it wasn't! At least not a meaningful amount. After MORE MEASURING what I concluded was that the UCA seemed to be in the correct location, but the LCA certainly was not, and the bump stop was not in the correct spot either. What I think happened is that the entire subframe kind of rotated around the axis of the hub, with the UCA staying in the right spot and the LCA getting shoved backwards. I also think the frame deformed since using the front tow point location seems extremely inconsistent between the two sides.

With all of that in mind, what I decided to do was to cut up the LCA mount and make it adjustable so the LCA could be moved back to the correct position relative to the body mount at the rear of the wheel well. The body mount there seemed far enough back that it was the same between both sides and would serve as good reference geometry. I then took the huge bolt/pivot for the LCA and chopped it up and welded some brackets to it with slotted holes so I could rotate the LCA, move it front to back, and to some extent in and out so caster and camber could all be adjusted. I don't have any before pictures, but this is how the passenger side is now:

Not sure if this will be strong enough and I'll need to run a brace between the two sides, but I think it should be fine. As for maintaining alignment, I may end up tack welding the plates to the subframe once I get it on an alignment rack. I used a tape measure to the body mount and a level gauge on the spindle to approximately set the LCA to the same position as the driver's side (hard to see much in this photo since everything is the same s*** color).

That photo was from the final mockup and torquing. After making the LCA mounts, I mocked up the coilovers which seemed to fit beautifully! The first thing to change was the new coil springs were too small for the coil buckets, but too big for the spring perch to properly seat at the end of the coilover. The coil bucket is tapered, so you can't fit the coilover in as a fully assembled unit, and instead the coil spring has to sit in a feature inside the bucket but that feature is meant for a much larger spring if that makes sense. This was easy to fix though, I took the spring seat for the coilover and machined a lip around the outside, which then aligns with the stock coil spring seat:

This works out very nice, the bottom of the coil spring still sits on the coilover, but the top of the coil spring sits against the stock coil bucket and the end of the shock eyelet goes through the stock eyelet hole. It ends up being a bit of a hybrid between a stand alone coilover and a coil and shock factory setup.

The lower coilover mount took a bit of thinking, but I ended up with a very elegant design. The bottom mount sat just below the LCA, and if you could run a rod through the eyelet and drill two holes where the factory retaining bolts are, you would be done! But the factory retaining bolts are nearly the same size as the 1/2" rod for the coilover, so that doesn't really work. What I ended up doing was using a small 1/2" rod, and then a bracket that wraps around it and holds it up tight against the LCA and retains it from sliding out either side.

This is a beautiful solution that is really simple and and really easy to assemble. The coilover ends up being the absolute perfect length where it tops out the same time the factory droop stop engages, and has plenty of up travel so the factory bump stop works.

Not a lot of work, and this is a 100% bolt in solution for the truck. It's now on coilovers with spring adjustment as well as compression and rebound adjustment, and uses the factory bump and droop stops!

With all of that said, two current issues to solve. The springs are WAY too soft, I think I multiplied instead of divided somewhere

I ordered new springs today, the 250 springs up front are getting swapped for 750s. And then the suspension seems to be bottoming out on something besides the bump stop.

I think the coilover body is hitting the upper spring perch. I did open up the center bore on the spring perch in anticipation of that---to be clear, what I think is happening is since the upper spring perch is essentially "floating" around the shock shaft (since it's located on the stock frame spring perch) as the suspension cycles the shock shifts over but the spring perch doesn't move with it like a normal coilover, so the shock body ends up hitting the spring perch and that's what's bottoming out I think. This should also be easy to solve, I just machine out the center bore of the upper spring perch more. As I said, I DID do that, but just an arbitrary amount thinking it didn't really need to happen. I have a LOT more material I can remove, something like opening the inner bore to here:

It does work out that I had such soft springs in, since I would not have found this bottom out issue without driving and bottoming the suspension dynamically. I had considered buying super soft springs (like tender springs) just so I could cycle the suspension with the upper perch and make sure it clears (can't really cycle it by hand since you have to hold the upper perch up inside the coil bucket). Sucks I bought the wrong springs, but works out it helped reveal another issue.

Another thing I did was I threw some big gussets on the front crossmember since it was cracking off of the subframe. I have a rear gusset that goes vertically up towards the engine mount, and a forward gusset that ties in along the length of the subframe. Some pretty nasty welds (somehow this picture makes them look worse than I thought hahaha) since everything was gross and I could barely reach any tools in to clean it, but I got good enough welds up in there for the time being. Both sides are gusseted and I think this will make a huge difference for the front end.

Other minor things I've done, the rear relays have been replaced since they had been destroyed. I added limit straps that just mount janky style to the shock bolts. Rear axle has gear oil in it. I ran AN3 brake lines from the master to the rear (will do that up front eventually too). At this point the rear end is completely done and just waiting on the driveshaft.

I should have the new front springs by the end of the week. Fingers crossed I get the driveshaft this week too! Then she's ready to drive I think. And since it's been awhile and I don't think a full engine bay photo of how it's currently configured was ever posted, here is the good ole 2JZ

I didn't expect to go from the engine build phase to the suspension phase so quickly, but there are a LOT of upgrades over the past couple months and the truck should be in a very good spot now. Hopefully it will be back to the point of being reliable and fun like it was a year ago!

 

[aztoyman]

WOW! Some crafty solutions you came up with. Great work. I'm looking forward to seeing it rip around again.

 

[snivilous]

I was having issue with the suspension reaching full compression. This was as close to the bump stop as it would get with the springs installed:

(This is the passenger side, you can also see the misalignment that now exists between the LCA and the bent subframe and bump stop area.)

I also measured the front end again just to get an exact number, I took the crane scale and engine hoist and looped it around a stud to get an exact force on the hub.

I came up with a range of numbers for coilover spring rate, and today ordered a 750 lbf/in spring from summit. Next was to figure out why the front was bottoming out. First thing I did as a hail mary was to machine out the upper coil seat as far as I was willing to go, but that didn't fix the issue. I then took everything apart and ratchet strapped the suspension up and realized the shock is nearly rubbing on the stock coil mount.

This isn't the simplest thing to solve. The coilover springs are about the same diameter as that lip that is near the shock body, and the upper spring perch centers the spring on that lip---ie the spring is such a small diameter that you can't remove enough material from the upper spring perch to make the spring perch clear the shock, you would just end up with nothing there. The spring perch has to fundamentally be changed and offset the spring in the stock coil bucket to clear the shock. Lots of ways to do this, but nothing particularly elegant and no nice way to keep it indexed in the coil bucket to prevent it from spinning over time and then jamming up the shock body again.

My solution I decided to try? Using the stock spring! And specifically cutting it down (to nearly half its length) so that it can rest on the coilover lower spring perch and allow the ride height to be adjusted. Then the factory upper coil interface can still be used and nothing gets near the shock body! I cut the spring down, literally in half, cut two 1/4" plates out (could do one, but the stock spring is so big it completely overhangs the coilover spring perch, so I was worried about the plates bending), and then welded a little section of 3" exhaust tubing I had laying around which keeps the spring centered.

It's kind of janky, but it works beautifully! At the lowest setting the bump stop sits about an inch off, and you can push on the truck and fully bottom it out for the first time! I think this is the move! It does give some issue if I ever want to swap springs, but the ride height at the lowest setting is right where I want it, with an inch or so of preload it should be perfect! Once the summit springs show up they'll get turned around and sent back---and then I ended up ordering MORE springs, but this time for the rear. The rear springs are 125 lbf/in, and right now the truck is sitting around ~2.75-3.0" of up travel in the back. I'd like to get that number about a half inch lower but the rear springs already have zero preload on them. I ordered some 80 lbf/in springs which if my math is right (this time....) then that should let me lower the truck 1.5" more than it is now, so with an inch of preload should be around the rear ride height I want, which is with the tire just below the fender to match the front.

The front end solution is working out great, whether it works on the passenger side with that bent coil bucket remains to be seen tomorrow.

 

[cruiserdan]

My brain is full

 

[ntsqd]

With the front springs so radically shorter how stiff did the front get?

Occurs to me that another option might be to order c/o springs for, say, a 3" body c/o (or bigger?) that might seat in the stock upper perch and on another custom lower adjuster.

 

[snivilous]

With the front springs so radically shorter how stiff did the front get?

Occurs to me that another option might be to order c/o springs for, say, a 3" body c/o (or bigger?) that might seat in the stock upper perch and on another custom lower adjuster.

That's a good idea, I think you're right that a 3" coilover spring would be about perfect since the stock spring ID is like 3.25", and the OD is 4.5".

Where I cut it down to and from the numbers I punched I think the front springs are around 600 lbf/in, the lowest that seemed feasible when I was measuring yesterday was 550 so the stock springs are on the lower end of the working range without cranking the preload. Should be a good starting spot, and I think the 3" springs is a great idea. I keep forgetting these are only 2.0 coilovers so theres two more common diameters that are larger.

 

[ntsqd]

I've seen 4.0" and 4.5" customs on some of the bigger, heavier off-road racing stuff, but I don't imagine that those springs are all that common.

What about spring clearance on the lower end? Would a spring for a 3" c/o run into anything?

Now that you've used it more, are you still happy with the 3Dscanning app, or would you go with something different if you were choosing it now?

 

[snivilous]

I've seen 4.0" and 4.5" customs on some of the bigger, heavier off-road racing stuff, but I don't imagine that those springs are all that common.

What about spring clearance on the lower end? Would a spring for a 3" c/o run into anything?

Now that you've used it more, are you still happy with the 3Dscanning app, or would you go with something different if you were choosing it now?

I've seen the larger coil springs but I think there's not a lot of selection going on, usually 3" stuff is the standard largest since that's a somewhat common coilover size for single shock rigs. If anything I'd be worried the 3" spring wouldn't be big enough to seat in the top coil bucket, the bottom side has room for days.

Absolutely zero complaints with the scanner, someone I talked to a few weeks ago found the Einstar for like $720 on Amazon which is a great price, I paid a grand from Einstar direct. I've never used a scanner or software from anyone else, so can't say how others stack up. Probably my biggest complaint is the Einstar is always wired in, and fancier scanners (albeit might not be in the same price range) are all stand alone wireless which would be nice. They will scan and process everything on the unit and then you plug it into the computer after the fact, where as with the Einstar I have to move my laptop over to what I'm scanning, plug in the laptop to the wall, plug in the scanner to the wall, you just end up with a lot of s*** and wires to run the thing. Not really an issue, just annoying.

Working with the scans takes a little practice, but pretty straightforward at the end of the day. I use reference geometry for 99% of everything, or drawing sketches and eyeballing alignment with features. In Solidworks you can section something that's graphical (as opposed to a solid body like normal) and that was a big step up I found recently, so I can have a reference plane for say a tab on the axle, then section on that plane and it will section the scan, then sketch on that plane and eyeball the alignment with the scan and it ends up as dead nuts as can be and is pretty fast, that's how I did all the link mounts on the axle. It's just different than normal solid body modeling, but easy to figure out. You can also import the scan as a solid but the computer has a hard time handling that compared to importing the model as a STL graphic.

10/10 would recommend it. If the scanner broke tonight I would have no issue buying another one. There's a Tundra I'm about to work on where it needs the frame plated and reinforced, and the first step after pulling the bed will be to scan the whole frame.