Builds Joel's multipurpose 40 on 41s (3 Viewers)

[frijolee]

Boots4,

At low speeds I agree it's all fan. I don't have space for a RZR and a crawler, and tow vehicle, so I'm trying to make something a bit wild that'll function like the XJ I plan to replace, only with a heck of a lot more power. I basically want to drive it on the highway to the trails and have fun when I get there whether it's blasting in sand or crawling in rocks. Sand is probably the most likely extended wide open throttle opportunity. I don't have enough shocks on this for continuous desert whoops so it'd be more like an occasional blast on certain trails getting too and from rocks.

I'm also hoping I can tow my rx7 or a rented camper occasionally.

Given the proximity to the filters I think my best best is to finish what I have doing things fairly simply. I can always go back and add flipper valves (or vents or ducting) to this shroud as needed.

-Joel

PS I love your rig by the way. The Oregon dunes trip made we want to find more sand.

 

[White Stripe]

Fan Shroud Frustrations…

My fans are a pair of Spal 11” ultra high flow, knock you over, “you sure you really need this?” versions (or whatever other superlatives they’re using to describe their performance products these days). Part no. 30102800. https://webstore.spalusa.com/content/files/content/PDF/30102800_SPEC.pdf

The cladding bodies measure right around 12” which leaves me hanging off the overlaps of the end tanks a bit.

I’d forgotten that the Ron Davis version I’d eyeballed used a shroud just like this until I spied that pic digging for info for the last post, but it’s nice that there’s precedence. FWIW, I’m also planning dedicated fan/trans cooler for the TH400. Power steering will get a finned cooler under the winch as well. Like I said, I’m putting just about as much cooling on this thing as I can.

Testing vertical placement in place.

Started a layout in 0.090” aluminum. Probably could get away 0.060” but the header and foot plates were 0.090” and this should see some heavy bouncing around.

What’s all that decorative sharpie going on there? My plan was to bead roll the hell out of this thing since it’s in a somewhat visible location and why not? I even figured out how to use washers to trace profiles and end up with a shape that would just be super rad. Then I tried out my bead roller…

Wow. Bead rolling is hard. If you want to put a step into something, the dies are too close together for 0.090”. I mean, I know I was a little higher than the recommended capacity but I figured I’d just go over it a few times. Also, you can get a get a kit for Mittler Bros for adjustable die offsets so I made my own shim before I even tried rolling.

Problem is, for a step, I didn’t have enough clamping to do this in one pass. If you’re at a partial depth, the plate wants to engage at an angle. Now you can’t go around corners and what not because it crashes into the jaws.

So I did the math. For a rectangle, bending stiffness = 1/12*B*H^3. B = base or length of bend (which is constant in this case). H = thickness. That ^3 power term means that jumping from 0.060” material to 0.090” material is about 3.4x harder to bend. Huh, no wonder I’m having difficulties…

I tried rolling a classic bead since in this case I’d be able to take multiple passes and it doesn’t engage at an angle. It kinda worked but not really.

You need to be able to “take in” material and force it to stretch locally vs. the surroundings, not just bend it. If you take too many passes it just ends up functioning like a really crappy press brake and putting v’s into the metal. Oh and you scar up the metal something serious to boot.

Backside: Standard bead at right, ugly step roll on the left.

I gave up. It was late and I was due up at Anthony’s first thing in the AM. Basically decided to finish this as a simple/heavy duty shroud. If I want to make a fancy one, I’ll need to start from material with a proper thickness and remake the shroud. Since it’s a bolt in, that might not be the end of the world.

That said, I do have about 4” of covered radiator at the top of this shroud since the fans must sit kinda low to clear my cross bar. I’m debating making my own little rubber flipper valves to help evacuate air at speed. The downside is that my intake filters will to live right behind this area. It’ll be a dual filter in a sharp Y coming off the throttle body and living just under the hood skin inboard of each shock tower. What would you do, let the filters see somewhat warmer air (fans will be blasting away underneath them either way)? Rubber flip valve in the areas between the filters? Leave it alone? Bead roll new shrouds, repeatedly until I make my bitching plan a reality?

I think I'm approaching the point I don't care and I'll just finish what I have but I'm always curious on your opinions.

-Joel

Fancy mechanical stuff is cool and all, but I don't get too flashy with it. I figure who is going to see it and actually care? A few dudes on the forums maybe and a few dudes on the trail that check out the rig? pfft, who cares. It it works and doesn't look like a clown did it sometimes I just call it a day.

 

[boots4]

Boots4,
... I can always go back and add flipper valves (or vents or ducting) to this shroud as needed.

True, might as well test out the first configuration to see if you really do need anything more. It might be just right as it sits.

Sounds like the plan is for more of an all-rounder than I realized. It'll look menacing on the highway, surely to scare that prius that hangs in the fast lane going slow. More power is always a nice thing. I'm excited to see it going.

Thanks. That sand trip was a blast.

 

[frijolee]

Trying to finish the shroud... I went to use my other new tool. Baileigh BB-4416 mag brake.

Baileigh BB-4416 mag brake:

I’ve known I have quite a bit of sheetmetal work ahead of me, so I bought a sheet metal brake. I liked the small footprint and versatility of bends possible so went with a Baileigh BB-4416 Mag Brake. My garage continues to be 10 lbs of stuff in a 5 lb space so I had to make a few mods before the brake would work for me.

Added risers to put the elevation of the work surface just above my weld table.

You have to add your own plug.

The brake calls for 220 V +/-5% (209-231v) and straying outside this range will void your warranty. Since my house nominally runs at 240 (and I was measuring 247 V at the plug) I got to wire up a buck boost transformer to drop the voltage into range. I’m not 100% sure if my multimeter read correctly as I ended up at 215 V rather than the 225 or so I was hoping for. I may rewire the buck/boost the alternate approach for less drop. I’m finding I want every bit of capacity I can get out of this machine.

The pedal plug was installed backward with threads not facing the connector so I got to redo that. (Thanks Baileigh, loving you guys right now).

I also built a holder for the pedal so it wouldn’t be in the way on the floor when I clean up.

 

[frijolee]

I used the brake to build a holder for the various dies and tooling to hang off the back. I can vouch for their limits. It wouldn’t do a 44” piece of 16 gauge stainless (manual says 0.050”), so I ended up having to section my holder to get it done.

The more I use it the more I find capacity is the Achilles heel of this machine. On a traditional finger break you can cheat things a bit and do more than you’re supposed to. On this one, you just pop the magnetic bar.

Getting back to the fan shroud write up. Remember that 0.090 aluminum I talked about? Yeah, turns out this machine’s rated capacity is probably only 0.060 aluminum at 4’ (estimating from other numbers since they don’t call out aluminum). Either way my shroud is 24” long. Cutting the “B” term in half from 1/12*B*H^3 means I’m still trying to be 1.7x the machine capacity and that doesn’t take into account the magnetism falling off with distance.

At the end of the day, I still don’t really have space for a press brake. The machine works awesome for smaller stuff. Case in point. I made some quick soft jaws I was stoked on before bolting the bead roller in a vice.

It kicks ass hitting specific angles.

Even folded the corners and marked which side goes toward the handle.

What I think I’ll eventually do is void my warranty (don’t care that much) and build clamps to aid the bar up top in those times where I need the extra capacity. I should also probably re-wire the buck boost to put myself at the top end of the allowable voltage.

In the spirit of “waste not - want not”, I used the wood crate the brake came in to make rolling storage that fits under the Land Cruiser. Makes clean up a great deal easier when needed.

-Joel

 

[frijolee]

So what happened on the fan shroud? I bent it at Anthony’s. On a proper 55 ton press brake. We cut off and welded the sides since we didn’t have ideal lengths of dies to make it a box break.

M6 rivet nuts driven. 4 across the top since it hangs the weight and I like the pattern better. 3 across the bottom since a 4 piece pattern would reduce clearances vs. my links. I’m only building in about 3/8" to the axles at full stuff so better not to reduce that.

This is the filter position relative the top section I was talking about.

While at Anthony’s I also bend some scrap for the extensions needed for the side overhangs. Dummy, and working my way down with test cuts.

Shave to fit.

Those burned in fine, but then I tried to weld a brace across the backside and suddenly I had a massive taco shell on my hands.

Tried to heat it with a torch to get it screaming hot and see if I could get it to stress relieve a bit, but that only made things worse. Decided to soldier on and see what it looked like with the holes cut out since the heat affected area might have a bit less sway. I’d been planning to plasma out the middle with a circle cutting fixture I hadn’t tried yet, but now I was paranoid about using heat so I instead I broke out a jig saw and just cut it out the old fashioned way. Thankfully my taco laid right back down, but I swear part of that circle closed the gap behind the saw blade as I did it.

More rivet nuts and the brace that gave me such a challenge. Had a hard time getting it tack without filler so probably put too much heat into it. I’m still learning aluminum.

At least it fit and clears everything as intended. I really did want a brace there since it got pretty thin in the middle.

And the final final fit check before I move over to the chassis side.

-Joel

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Note to self, don't buy a mag brake.

Shroud looks awesome!

 

[frijolee]

I like the brake... Just not when I'm not running into capacity issues. It does a great many things well and one big benefit I haven't meantioned yet is the ability to use round bar stock as the clamp to bend larger radii. If I can Jerry rig some more capacity into this it might be OK. It's not an apples to apples comparison vs a standard mechanical clamp brake though. I will rewire that buck boost transformer and see if that helps.

Admittedly the first few times I pushed the capacity limit were all non-ferrous materials which doesn't help the clamping power.

 

[frijolee]

Before I committed to the burning in the new radiator mount points I remembered that the cross bar had some tension in it from various welding operations nearby (welding deformation leading to residual stress). Popped it loose and confirmed, 1/8” or more off.

Decided I wanted this to be removable without too much headache so cut and rewelded one of the insert bits. Ended up reburning the opposite end.

Now I could finally burn in my radiator supports.

Decided to make a bit more threaded area, rather than relying on wall thickness. Sometimes even the little scraps come in handy. I've been purging some of my truly randomness, but anyways.

Cross bar parts are the same except they use rectangles since it was easier to cut down square tube to match curvature.

Turns out TIG welding upside down with poor access is harder than MIG welding upside down. More pleasant since it doesn't splatter on you, but still harder.

Final fit, not much extra but it works. While I could go up more, this elevation of the fans lets me slip them under the cross bar to install from the front fully assembled.

-Joel

 

[frijolee]

Fuel tank. I want to actually drive this thing--meaning have the option of road trip use not just trail duty--so I wanted a healthy tank. I made it through 3+3 rounds of CAD (3 cardboard aided design, 3 computer aided). I think the final capacity should be about 20 gallons but I did so many tweaks to this thing to get it right that I could honestly be anywhere in the 18+ range and I wouldn’t know the difference.

Where we left it...

Girls supervising last check of tank before fully welding. They like riding bikes in the street when the garage door is open.

Fit check, fill point will go in one of the access ports and tuck behind a flippy license plate bracket.

Seat Mounting should work out. The gap is so I have a place to route all the lines, vent, and wiring harness.

And last but not least...

What, you don't weld the insides of your fuel tank? More to come.

-Joel

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Curious about the inside welds. Baffles?

 

[SuperBuickGuy]

I did weld inside tanks until hydramat... that stuff works amazingly well.

 

[frijolee]

I have another area I could use a hand with in figuring out how I support this.

I’m still working on it, but one key bit is that I modified my skidplate concept from the XJ. Rather than being a pure cover, this one will support the tank itself with some 3/8” rubber padding between the skid and tank. Frankly this is tucked in so far toward the axle it should be hard to hit and even if I get rear ended that’s more likely to hammer into a tire before it get underneath me

The skid is all 1/4” plate. It’s 100% welded out out. Pretty happy with how it turned out.

Drain holes in the corners so it can’t become a pool, one of them was enlarged as a placeholder for a tank drain I have yet to add.

Cardboard to mockup the rubber spacers. Need to figure out how much I need to support this while maintaining a drain path.

So mounting is planned to have the biggest weight supported by the skid. The trick is that I need to figure out angles inside both frame rails once I’m ahead of the axle (also from below) and a variety of L shaped tabs along the topside to hold it down. If anyone knows of kick ass ways of getting rubber isolation to stay put under a tab, please chime in. I’m thinking it needs some sort of detent as well as glue to be sure the rubber can’t walk it’s way out from under the tab. Normally I’d use straps (and maybe I still can up top), but from beneath since the links tuck in there it has to be supported on the sides only.

The topside follows the back seat but isn’t that weird.

The big twist is that I made a void space so that the links and diff will actually tuck INTO the tank at full compression. Man this picture makes me happy.

Threw some weight on it (steering valve) to keep it at the right pitch and it sits pretty nice.

Welding inside I alluded to prior is twofold. All the seams that are most likely to take an impact at the bottom and rear of the tank were welded inside and out. Overkill, I know. However, I already talked about why I didn’t do the bladder version and this had me feel marginally better about it. It’s all 5052-H32 aluminum so it can bend a good ways before failure. Material thickness ranges from 3/16 to 0.090 depending on the sensitivity of the location.

The plan is for two smallish hydramats on either side of this well. It kinda gives me a sump for free without having to weld extra baffles.

Since the center of the tank necks down so narrow I also added a vertical gusset to tie top and bottom together.

This tank is a bit of a one trick pony, but this is why making a proper tank bladder would be so hard. This is certainly the gnarliest sheet-metal I’ve ever designed. I did the whole thing in Solidworks using sheet metal flat patterns to predict bend radii. Then took some digging to find a shop with the appropriate tooling. Took a 14 page drawing to describe (and one panel still managed to get built backward).

Getting this bent was enough of a headache that it reinforces that I really should have made the stretch to buy the 4’ press brake from my old job. I think I may be kicking myself over that for the next several decades. I’m thankful to have very few life regrets but dammit that’s one. If I had proper shop, I’d pull the trigger on a press brake, tubing bender, shear, and knee mill. I want a bigger shop far more badly than I want a bigger house.

Back to the tank.

Why the two holes up top?

One will be my fill point as well as exit, return, vent, and pump bulkhead. The other lets me fill the tank with anti-slosh media and will support the fuel level sender. The oval shapes are because I inherited 5x fuel tanks from Millenworks and therefore the access panels were free. By the way if anyone needs a bladder in a box style tank or tanks. Hit me up. Needs new foam, otherwise A-okay.

Final thought. My measurements were damn close but I still ended up with the tank sitting about 1/8" higher than flush to where my seat bar is. I may end up needing to space the seat up (which means moving it forward, which screws up my front mounting for the frame). I also need to reinforce the rear seat frame itself since I'm planing to use the seat frame as the mount point for the rear lap belts. I may end up just entirely cutting out the rear most cross bar to replace it with something heavier.

As always, thoughts and commentary appreciated.

-Joel

 

[SuperBuickGuy]

where are you in California? I know someone just north of San Diego who has a press brake for sale. I agonized about buying a Press brake, because it really doesn't get used that often, but it's nice to have (and it was cheap, so that helps too). The only reason I bring it up is because he doesn't want much for it... IIRC it's a 6' but that you'd have to verify.

 

[frijolee]

where are you in California? I know someone just north of San Diego who has a press brake for sale. I agonized about buying a Press brake, because it really doesn't get used that often, but it's nice to have (and it was cheap, so that helps too). The only reason I bring it up is because he doesn't want much for it... IIRC it's a 6' but that you'd have to verify.

I'm in Orange County a bit south of Disneyland so best guess that's only an hour away. If you don't mind, hit me with some contact info and I'll reach out. Unfortunately, I still know why I didn't grab the brake I had a chance for (it'd be damn hard to fit in a two car garage), and that hasn't changed... :-(

 

[frijolee]

Hi y'all, been a while.

Wanted to let you guys know about some changes for me and the family. As of last November I’m now the Sr. Mechanical Engineer for the Keck Observatory where I've been working on this:

It's one of two 10m telescopes at the top of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. I'd often half joked that I didn't want to die in CA (I'd lived in various parts of the state since I was seven) so now I get to prove the point.

So yeah, why haven't I been posting? We've been busy frying other fish.

New roads ahead. And here's a couple of them.

Anyways, it’s rad over here. I’ve having a ton of fun, work is good, the family is settling in well and there are so many places to explore. I’m back into working on my FJ40 (it came with) and have a bunch of catching up on posting to do. If there are any other peeps on the Big Island please say hello.

Aloha!
Joel

 

[SuperBuickGuy]

nice! from earthquakes to earthquakes and lava flows....
don't mind me, but you moved to paradise - so ribbing is in order.

 

[frijolee]

nice! from earthquakes to earthquakes and lava flows....
don't mind me, but you moved to paradise - so ribbing is in order.

I'm on the far side of the island from most of the volcano ish, but I hear ya. I was actually working under my FJ40 when the little 5.3 quake hit a week ago! First time for that... I still had the wheels on so it couldn't have crushed me but it was weird none the less.

 

[frijolee]

So what’s involved in moving to an island? Basically a crap ton of logistics. Keck gave me a bucket of money based on a set formula (X people, Y distance) and I got to figure it out from there. Some folks take the money burn/sell/give away everything and just show up with suitcases. That doesn’t work so well when you have tools and one non running FJ40, so we ended up renting the biggest shipping container available. More on that in second.

What do you do first? Well, first you purge, then purge some more. We were trying to sell our house in SoCal and every realtor we spoke to told us the same story. Great place, you need half the stuff to stage this well… Three weeks later we had about half the stuff (inside anyways). Sold a ton of stuff on eBay. I think there were 15 runs to the Salvation Army.

Then you list your house for sale with your chosen realtor. We went with the version that had the most bells whistles, (3D fly around, landscaping etc). On the plus side the listing looked rad and I was stoked that they used my engine block coffee table in the staging.

Listing is here if anyone cares…

14931 Bridgeport Rd, Tustin, CA 92780 - 4 beds/2 baths

(CRMLS) 4 beds, 2 baths, 1684 sq. ft. house located at 14931 Bridgeport Rd, Tustin, CA 92780 sold for $775,000 on Oct 19, 2018. MLS# PW18225152. Welcome to 14931 Bridgeport Road, a Light and Bright Single ...

www.redfin.com

One single open house later and we sold the home (really nice young family that was stoked on the deck and some of the backyard work I’d done).

While escrow was going down I was working like a dog packing. I quit my job Oct 18 with the new one scheduled to start Nov 5. The challenge: A standard shipping container is 40’ x 8’ x 8’6” tall. If you rent a 45’ high cube, it comes in at 45’ x 8’ x 9’6”.

It also normally is delivered to your house on a chassis on wheels. You don’t get a ramp… How the F do you get a non running Land Cruiser 4’ in the air? How about a 1000 lb welding table or giant steel cabinets, or any of my other myriad of heavy stuff? Answer: you have to hire heavy equipment movers. You can either have them load or be like me and have them set the entire container on the ground (after verifying that they can pick it back up loaded of course)

Give away some more stuff. That solid carbon fiber truck bed I had went to a friend of a friend and unfortunately probably burned down in the Paradise fire up in NorCal.

I also did a CAD layout of all my bits and pieces to help ensure I’d played tetris as best I could (with relatively evenly distributed loads).

I borrowed race car scaled from my friend Ash (thanks amigo!). Turns out my FJ40 currently weighs 4639 lbs with almost all of its parts inside (had a few extras, plus a few missing bits).

I can also say I hauled home 13,000 lbs of metal back when.

To be continued…

 

[frijolee]

In case you missed it, the Land Cruiser got at least mostly shot in primer since I was moving somewhere wetter… Preview of my tailgate too. I’m sealing between stitch welds for future rust avoidance.

And it was the first thing loaded since it was about the last thing I’d need access to. Looks lonely back there.

I ended up building 3x raised decks inside the container so I could put things on top of things (covered hood etc).

One of my best and oldest friends came down from NorCal, so between he and the 6 day laborers I hired from in front of Home Depot, we moved the heaviest stuff: metal carts, weld table, compressor, and stronghold cabinets. That got us here:

Then the wife and I left on a 5 day cruise we’d won in a raffle the year before and had pre-booked 6 months back before we knew any of this was going down. We’ve got time, right?