Featured 100 - spressomon

[spressomon]

Spresso, stop with the cool ideas. Have to bribe my friend to let me use his welder again.

Come on up!

I need to credit my good friend Ali for the idea from our trip together to DV a couple months ago...

Next post: New lower control arms. Somebody here is going to be wet

 

[spressomon]

Part one of the rear lower control arm project. Nothing radical...just a little more clearance and ALOT more strength.

 

[FullyLitLED]

Part one of the rear lower control arm project. Nothing radical...just a little more clearance and ALOT more strength.

Send me those too! lol

I can't wait to get the 1" body lift in the mail! Good thing I did not get over anxious about the 12mm lift you put out a while back! As always, good work Dan!

 

[spressomon]

Leo: I also built a pair of heavy duty upper rear control arms after finding the Ballistic Fab joints proved to not to be what I wanted/needed on our effective 5-link rear suspension. Using 80-Series lower bushings for both upper and lower's with the stock 14mm mounting bolt hardware on the 100. So far both are working out perfectly! I learned a ton about control arms the past year and a half of messing around!

I just lowered the front lift height 1/2" to 20.5" effective. This gives better steering and CV angle performance. The 1" BL allowed me to do this rather simply. You will see!

 

[jgray]

So the rear lower control arms are basically custom? I see they are kinda similar to the WWOR ones but I didn't think they were the same animal...

 

[spressomon]

Yes. We did a shallower radius on the arm as I still wanted the arms to sit slightly below the driveshaft but also provide more ground clearance than any straight tube arm. Whereas the WWOR uses a higher angle of bend that, like John has posted, results in more ground clearance but they sit above the bottom of the driveshaft.

 

[spressomon]

Rear upper control arm update

Well...its all a learning process . In the end the rod end type of control arm bushings for the rear control arms don't function well with our 5-link rear suspension. The upper arm joints/bushings need the ability (applies to lower's too), mostly because of the 100's rear suspension design, to lengthen throughout the full range of articulation. Rubber bushings allow for this by design.

We fabbed heavy duty rear upper arms with OEM bushings and its butter smooth and quiet once again. FWIW: The OEM arms, at the bushing housing ends, were ovalized...so we went with thicker wall ends to hopefully contain the stress.

Back on track! And I learned a boat load about our rear suspension over the past 18-months of experimenting. All the stuff the pros like Slee and crew already know .

 

[AS1747]

On Board Air Pump

Spresso, Can you please post some photos of the compressor mounting and drive? Very interested in this one?
Cheers

 

[spressomon]

The photo shown a few pages back is all I have right now. I've got another couple ideas I hope to work out this summer that hopefully will lead to Sanden kits.

 

[spressomon]

As soon as I get done field testing the 1" body lift next week the SpressoWagon goes in for a little suspension redo.

Its getting custom made Radflo 2.5" 11" rear's with oversize #12 sphericals at each end and Light Racing jounce shocks up front to hopefully make better use of our limited front shock travel. More to report once that's done.

 

[spressomon]

And I finally got around to fabbing a pair of sliders for the frame side mount of the lower control arms; I'm done pounding the mounts back after every other trail run

Thanks to IBCRUSN on the 80-Series forum for his idea (https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-tech/274058-rear-control-arm-mount-ramp-sliders.html)! Mine didn't come out as elegant as his...I could have made them a little longer...but I used left over DOM scrap from the rear control arms project.

 

[2000UZJ]

Awesome idea! I love that

Whatcha doing with your old rear shocks? Are they toast already.
Sent from my iPhone using IH8MUD

 

[spressomon]

The rear shocks are fine. Well not quite. One of the upper mounts is slightly oversized now so the spherical bearing can't be snugly retained. I fixed that temporarily by converting the mounts to a urethane kit. But if you wanted to use the spherical upper mount someone would need to replace the tube and upper mount. But these won't fit the stock mount anyway...

I would have stayed with Fox but they wouldn't do a couple of the semi-custom items I wanted (not considered custom with Radflo ). And King was a freaking 3-month nightmare to deal with; don't even ask!

A couple neat things about Radflo besides their 3-week total order to receive build time (normally 1-2 weeks but I spec'd special bottom spherical bearings that they had to source): The valve shims are interchangeable with Fox so I didn't have to buy another $200 valve shim kit. And the rebuild kits are only $20 per...King's rebuild kits are $50 per! King is mighty proud of their parts pricing for basically the same type of kit Fox and Radflo offer for more than 50% less! Oh yeah: No one at Radflo never, during the ordering and fulfillment process, called me "dude"

 

[OregonLC]

he 'dude' those sliders look great! be careful or one of these days you're going to be a full-fledged vendor!

 

[spressomon]

Its a bitch for me trying to lay down decent beads on the rig while I'm laying on the ground. Jeez it would be nice to have a lift!

 

[TheFuzz]

I was all-position welding certified back in my USAF days (all position WELDING certified, people...WELDING). If im ever out your way, im going to have to check your setup out in person. Its awesome to see so much custom stuff going on.

What I would give to have a mill, lathe, and MIG/TIG setup...

 

[spressomon]

Oh boy: A vertical mill and a lathe have been on my "list" since high school . And as you know the shut-down mfr sector plants in the upper midwest were practically giving them away a couple years ago. I just don't have the space. Keep repeating: "Smaller house, bigger garage, smaller house, bigger garage"

 

[TheFuzz]

Ugh, tell me about it. I'm from Toledo, and back when I worked for my father in law in 2006 (right after moving to CO), me, him and a couple other people he hired flew back to Ohio for two weeks and worked as demo contractors in the wing of the Toledo Jeep plant that they were tearing down. Seriously cool stuff being sold off - huge rolling tool boxes, mills, large welders, you name it. Getting it back to CO was one issue though, and finding a place to keep it was another. We were after the robotic stuff, so thats all we were allowed to mess with. The coolest thing there though? Huge hydraulic broaches that were, no kidding, two stories tall.

I've decided that when I'm rich, I'll have 40 acres, a small house, a big garage, and a dedicated outbuilding wired with three-phase 220 for all of the goodies. And yes, it will be bigger than the house.

Gotta get that whole "rich" thing out of the way first though...

 

[SR.GRINGO]

As soon as I get done field testing the 1" body lift next week the SpressoWagon goes in for a little suspension redo.

Its getting custom made Radflo 2.5" 11" rear's with oversize #12 sphericals at each end and Light Racing jounce shocks up front to hopefully make better use of our limited front shock travel. More to report once that's done.

The options keep getting better and better

 

[IT Doctor]

Love your work, inspiration and jealousy all wrapped up in one thread.

Tell us more about the Sanden OBA install kits you are making now that it is summer

I am very interested in this type of OBA but to my knowledge no one has fitted one to a v8 here in OZ, I would be interested in buying your kits and selling here for you.