Build My mini-truck buildup thread...'86, 38's, FJ80 front axle, etc...

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Ary.....been another month now. What's the progress look like?
 
He'll be out at Snowshoe where the truck is for just over a month... we otta see some progress now :flipoff2: ... however I don't think there's any internet out there for him to update.

Chris
 
Hey guys.

Dissappointing progress report. Been here for a week and a half and haven't TOUCHED the truck. I built this stupid little remote control buggy during finals week and I've been tinkering with it in my spare time instead of wrenching. It doesn't help that my parents and grandparents are here which means no loud wrenching anyway(shop = basement of house = you can hear everything going on in the basement while in the house). They leave this weekend, so hopefully I'll make some progress.

If Chris(TheGr8Doughboy) would get his ass up here and gimme some help I might make a little better progress. :D

Ary

Oh yeah, and we got 'net now Chris, wireless even! :D
 
well get on it and quit playinh with the little toy :) We wanna see some progress!
 
UPDATE!!!!

Finally, I have made some progress.

But before I post the latest progress, I have pics to share of the rear frame rehab.

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I welded the shackle hangers to the ends of the frame rails in attempt to minimize the lift provided by the chevy springs. I'm trying to keep this thing as low as possible. The hangers are simply butt welded, but will have straps welded over the butt weld to add strength and eliminate the simple shear connection. I still need to add a shock crossmember and finish weld the rear crossmember in 2 spots. The truck is on its own weight in the rear though, and we pulled it out of the garage and turned it around and it didn't collapse! :cheers: :D

Now, onto tonights progress. I started at about 7:45 tonight on cutting out the IFS. After 4 hours of working by myself I have the majority of the IFS cut out. The subframe has been removed, the A-arms are gone, and the brackets are on their way out. I had to stop for the night 'cause it got too late to be making much of a racket and my back is sore as hell, but I'm hoping to finish it before I have to go to work at 2pm tomorrow. We'll see if I can drag my ass out of bed and git'r done.

Here's how she sits at the end of tonight:

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Thanks for looking.

Ary
 
who is the manufacturer of the front fenders?
 
I HATE grinding!

Ok, now that I got that out of my system, I made a bit more progress tonight. Not a ton as I didn't get home from work/dinner till 10:30, but at least I worked on it. ;p The front diff is in the trash pile now, along with all of the brackets from the driver's side. I ran out of gas for the torch, and as I said before I HATE grinding, so I'm gonna get some more tomorrow and finish the passenger side. After that, I'll weld up the motor mounts and start mocking up the axle.

This is where I expect the progress to slow a bit as I'm entering fairly uncharted territory with the FJ80 front axle. Hopefully it'll just fit perfectly and everything will bolt up. Hey, I can dream right? :flipoff2: :D

That's all for tonight, gotta get to bed so I can make it to the gas supply house tomorrow morning.

Ary
 
It's looking good, but take more pics...
 
74fj40 said:

Jeesh, make a guy feel like a slacker why dontcha! ;p

Nothing to report really. The IFS brackets are completely gone and one frame rails has been ground smooth. That's it. I'm also not up there anymore, so progress will stop again for a while.

Ary
 
Made some progress today! Went up and worked on it for about 7 hours. Got the front hanger modified and mounted. Because the FJ80 axle is a bit wider, the typical 29" spring width is a bit too narrow to be practical. 30-31 is much easier to work with, so I wanted to find a fairly easy way to accomplish this. Of course the rear frame width and Marlin's hanger are both setup to work w/ the 29" width. So, not wanting to waste the marlin hanger, and not wanting to have to fab up offset shackles, I decided to widen the marlin hanger. How do you widen it? By cutting it in half and adding a 2" reciever tube.

Once you've got that done, then you need to add some material to brace the hanger back along the frame rail. I had some 1x2 laying around, so I made up some quick pieces out of that and welded them on.

Finally I welded the whole thing to the truck. Nothing too complicated, and I know I still need to brace the actual spring mounts back to the crossmember.

While I was doing all that Baber was diligently grinding away at the frame cleaning up the remains of the IFS. Thanks again Baber!


After we got the hanger done, we decided to throw the springs and housing under there to see how it looked.



That's as far as we got today. I needed more Oxygen for the torch to do the frame tubes and I ordered the wrong size replacement bushing for the springs, so I need to get that fixed. Thanks for looking guys and keeping me motivated.

Ary
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