Aussie is in the front third, threw some side view mirrors on, made up some front fenders (still need some work), and got a cool skull emblem goin (bolted to the dash for now).
started on the last page... had to read this thread in reverse, could not stop.
hats off for uniqe engineering and strange ideas turning out great!!
some of the ideas make me laugh hard, it seems like this plow rig is gonna plow anything!
buttoned up it will do apocalypse cake walk.
Whacha talkin about strange ideas???? lol. I do get sidetracked sometimes but it always seems to add a little something.
Nothin too picture worthy lately. Got the hip bars installed between the a and b pillars of the roll cage, spent yesterday making 4 gussets for the cage, fixed up the crappy fitting ds fender thing, mounted the overflow bottle to the inner fender..... Did some more hammering and welding on the ds firewall, its all attached now but still kind of lumpy. May have to finesse it a little here and there.
Also daydreamed a little and drew up plans for a rear winch mount.... I keep telling myself it would be easier to make w the body off but I might start on that soon. Still have to pop the front third in..... Too much to do man, not enough time.
So I dug into the front axle yesterday.... That was fun. I dont think this unit has been cracked open in a good long while. Half the bolts were partially rusted away and I had to use a socket a size smaller to get em off (they all came out w/o stripping/breaking thank god). Thought the caliper bolts were gonna break for sure, someone used their retard strength when they tightened them and they sounded like gunshots when they finally let go. The backing plates flaked away to nothing, might leave them off even though I have good spares.
Im now thinking it wouldnt be a bad idea to swap the knuckles for the ones off of the 529 axle. They look to be in way better shape, the ones on there now look like theyve spent a couple decades at the bottom of an ocean. Have to finish cleaning them before I make the call, If I can get the steering stops to move I may just leave them. King pins feel tight.
Now if I can just get those axle seals behind the birfs out without lighting the van on fire......
Front axle is rebuilt, 529'd/aussie locked third is in (locker seems to work good to boot). While I was in there I eliminated the backing plates, had a couple extra rotten ones that I made spacers out of. What a greasy mess man. Every single tool I used is coated in grease, my garage floor is coated in grease, s***, I was coated in grease.... Also got the ruff stuff diff cover painted and put on the rear axle.
Just have to rebuild and clean up the calipers now. Pistons dont seem to be seized, thats as far as I got.
So of the two sets of calipers I had I chose the fancy ones ones. The other calipers have 4 pistons but theres one small one and one big one on each side, these have 2 big ones on each side. Dont know what that means but it must be good. Havent seen these before but I like the way they turned out.
Ugly ones.
Pretty damn cool lookin ones. Anyone know what theyre off of? Im thinkin maybe F/BJ62?
Did some parts hunting yesterday and found a 4 spd tranny/tcase thats the same as mine so I snagged em for spares. Got worried when I saw the three speed shift knob, I couldnt row through the gears cause po had the shifter in the tranny the wrong way but he threw in a set of shortie jump seats to sweeten the deal so I jumped on it. Opened up the tranny when I got home after it thawed out and sure enough its a four speed, nice. Anyone need a 3 speed knob? lol
Seats, didnt see any rips, one is missing the rubber cushions that rest on the wheel well but otherwise they look good. Donno If I can get em to work with the cage so they will probably end up in the classifieds.
Sold the jump seats for a hun so I got a free tranny/xfer.
Made a couple few gussets out of 1/4" to tie in the rub bars to the rear cage plates, drilled/sleeved/welded the hard top mounting holes around the edges of the tub, welded some angle over the rear inner fenders... and threw some cool brass fittings/grease nipples on the knuckles to make grease jobs easier.
My buddy has an lt1 350 hes willing to give me for a good price so now Im thinking of ditching the 2f..... Decisions. So far the plan would be to keep the 4 speed/one piece case, throw in a ranger overdrive or use the AA adapter to the 350..... Replace one piece cases as needed (have a spare now) then upgrade to a split or an orion 4:1... Dreamin.
Test fitted some super cool flaps Randy got me....
Got the hand throttle hooked up using some mountain bike brake parts (brake lever barrel adjuster at the pedal) and a few scrap pcs of steel. In the pics the adjuster is facing the drivers seat but its now facing the firewall. I think I ended up with a real hillbilly cruise set up lol, the pedal gets close to full travel when the throttle knob is maxed out. Could come in handy if I ever have to fake my own death.......
Sunk some strips of steel into the doors where the window rollemup used to live to make some stash pockets. I was lazy so I just pre bent the steel, traced it out on the door then made cuts w the grinder and slotted it in. Got some drain holes in there and whatnot... Took the time to fill in the 10 000 holes in the inner door panels, that was fun. Still have to figure out what to do with the other gaping door holes. May just leave them to stash bigger stuff, maybe make a door of some sort...
Also started patching the holes at the bottom of my wind shield frame. Rust sucks, I feel like just cutting the bottom lip off and replacing it w a strip of 1/4" lol.
So, after adding all the associated costs for droppin that lt1 in the van and after getting some sense talked into me by Randall Im gonna just finish er with the motor thats in there and think about swaps further down the line. Dammit Randy. lol
Workin on wiring today, gonna try to transfer some more crap from the old fire wall to the new one. Dragged the old one down from the loft yesterday and got all the vent/hvac (lol)/choke cables out and sorted. Have to figure out what holes I need in the new fw and which ones I can delete to clean things up. The new 70's fw isnt all that different from the 69 but just enough to make extra work..
Anyone know of a place with a good selection of grommets and such?
So a bunch of crap got crossed off the list this week. Got all the mechanical push pull cables routed and hooked up, only one left is the throttle cable but thats gonna take some creativity since my carb is set up for a linkage not a cable. Made up a heater valve bracket, clutch slave soft line bracket, e brake cable bracket......
Got the fan on and the rad shroud modified to fit around the new rad/ps box (still needs a little more trimming to clear the box) then mounted all the splash shields. Everything fit except the ps one under the distributor but after a small carefully thought out chop she slid in and bolted up like butter. Made a little rpm gauge bracket off the cage... A new e brake cable to lever pin since I seem to have lost the one I had.... A new steering column gasket since mine was fallin apart, redid the retainer plates at the same time and just cleared them bare steel style. Heater and duct work is in. Took me a while to figure out the part of my datch intake I brought down wasnt part of the 40 ducting lol. Finally saw the chrysler star on there, 10 minutes after trying to find out where it went..
Was kinda fun draggin all these parts down from the loft then trying to remember where the hell they all go.
Supposed to work on gettin a throttle cable in there but my rad support rod was all bent so I got side tracked and had to sleeve it. Then I avoided the cable again and got the rad lined up perfect, didnt need to take any more out of the support to clear the steering box so that was cool. I then decided to try and get the head light buckets ripped apart, half the stupid phillips screws were stripped but I managed to slot em with a grinder in conjunction with some surgical grinding skills and get em loose.
I finally got to workin on the throttle... nope. There was spot on my apron that came out crooked when I cut it to fit around the steering box so I made a couple cuts and bends and fixed that up. Mofo cable will have to wait.
