Build The never-ending build: My 80 Series

[H8 Roads]

Went for a small beer run! Haha! We got married! We supplied the booze! Had a lot of it on ice inside the canoe. My wife called me crazy but I mean come on we got married in a barn. LOL. It was also a sentimental thing for me. The canoe belonged to a friend of mine that passed away and was given to me after his passing.

Didn't have too many pictures of the "Barn" at quick access but I figured you guys wouldn't care that much. Lol. It was very nice and the day went perfectly. Was a blast.

I even got to have my High School whip there. I have owned it for 20 years! I had completed the SECOND restoration on the old VW Beetle a few years before I started the cruiser build.

 

[H8 Roads]

Ok. Back to the build. My pockets were close to empty so I hadn't done anything on the cruiser in a while. I took on a project for my buddy of doing some mechanical work on his 1978 Bronco. I had been bugging him about starting to restore it for 10 years. When he said he was finally interested I wanted to be a part of it. Long story short I had it at my house for a couple months and did a lot of work to it.

This gave me a little spending money for my own rig. While his Bronco was at my house he had ordered some new wheels and tires for it. They were 37s. Unfortunately the two vehicles are not the same lug pattern or I would have bolted them on. I had fun measuring and holding them up to the cruiser though.

For some reason at the time these just didn't seem to be a big difference. Not sure what I would decide if I had it to do over. 37s really are the sweet spot for these trucks. My curiosity and the challenge to make it work got the best of me. I ended up ordering 40s! I got a little push when I found out that Mickey Thompson had a mail in rebate which made the 40s only about 12 dollars more than the 37s I was looking at.

One of the challenges I wanted to tackle was keeping the fender flares. I really like the look of them and was trying to keep it clean
and have that factory look. I had not really seen anyone running 40s and keeping the flares. There were a couple but they had HUGE lifts on them which I was trying to avoid. I wanted to try and do it with a 4 inch lift.

So the tires had been ordered. I knew that stepping up to the 40s was going to require cutting the fender wells so I got to work.

Wow talk about freeing up some space. I made the cuts just under the mounting holes for the flare. I just made a bunch of cuts and pushed the inner fender up. Seems to be the standard method on these things. I hope to one day come up with a inner fender well lining of some sort.

 

[H8 Roads]

Now that the front was done it was time to move to the back. I knew that the rear was going to get a little more tricky. I was a little more careful and took my time back here.

Don't judge my body work skills. My dad is the real body man. Not by trade but just more experience with our hobby than me. Ha. He helped me with my Volkswagen build. We cut the crap out of that thing and modified most every panel. Him and I did every bit of work on that thing.
Even down to the paint! Turned out way better than I expected and I was expecting pretty good. Anyway enough of my ADHD. Lol.

I figured that this is under the truck so if I messed up at least it nobody would really see it. Both sides are a little different. I finished up one side and then moved to the next. My dad did come and help me get stared on this side and gave me some advice.

All tacked in place! A lot of my tack welds look like crap cause I ran out of gas for the welder but it was good enough to get it in place.

 

[H8 Roads]

Then the day we had all been waiting for....the TIRES arrived! It was kind of funny how it was kind of an event. A few of my friends showed up as soon as I texted them to come check out the goods. 17x8.5 Method NV 305s wrapped with 40x13.5x17 Mickey Thompson Baja MTZ P3s. I would like to have real bead locks on day but these were within the budget at the time. I really like them for the price though. Got them on sale for $170 a piece. I think the tires were right around $320 after the mail in rebate. I believe they have gone up in price since then. Everything was free shipping too!

My neighbors didn't know what they were in for when I moved in. Ha. The good ol' boy came to the subdivision with a hobby of restoring cars. By the way I am an electrician by trade. Wrench turner by night. I'm the only guy on the block with a huge work van and a bunch of crazy old vehicles. We have plans of moving to the country and having some property. Can't wait to have a real shop one day!

After drooling over the wheels and tires for a while it was time to get back to work. I spread some filler on the rear fenders and got ready to mount these things.

 

[GW Nugget]

Wow, thats awesome...
Fitting 40s with flares, I see you gutted the flares out to fit them. How much did you lower your bump stop to fit 40s did you move the axles forward or back... longer wheelbase?

 

[H8 Roads]

I sanded down the filler and painted over it with black spray paint for now. I kept all of this below the top of the fender flare since I knew that it would have to stay like this for a while. I used seam sealer on all of the welded sections and eventually sprayed undercoating on all of it. Inside behind the plastic panels I used a spray that I got from the local paint shop. It's a wax like spray that stays tacky and seals everything from moisture. I bought a long straw attachment that hooks to the spray can that has multiple holes in the end that sprays in all directions. I used this to run down the insides of the fender under where the door shuts where you can't get to otherwise.

After rolling these massive tires around the garage I began wondering if I made the right call. These things are HUGE! My wife just shook her head but couldn't resist taking a picture of me with them. By the way I am 6'4" just to give you some reference.

Enough screwing around I was ready to mount these monstrosities.

I was instantly in love. They looked great. Next step was to put it in the ditch!

 

[H8 Roads]

Wow, thats awesome...
Fitting 40s with flares, I see you gutted the flares out to fit them. How much did you lower your bump stop to fit 40s did you move the axles forward or back... longer wheelbase?

Yeah I cut 2 inches off of the front flares and about an 1 1/2 off of the rear. I made 6 inch bump stop extensions for the rear to get it to stop where I needed. The front has hydraulic bump stops. I just positioned them as needed to stop the tire from hitting the fender well at full articulation. I don't know how much lower than stock they are. The wheelbase is pretty much stock measurements. I couldn't extend it really without chopping a bunch of metal out of the front fenders that I wanted to keep.

 

[H8 Roads]

Me still playing around...

Now I was ready to tackle the one thing I had in mind from the beginning. Making the flares fit. I cut 2 inches off of the front flares and about an 1 1/2 off of the back. Took me a while to trim, test, trim, and test. I took a little at a time so that I could keep as much of the flares a possible. I used painters tape to tape them in place so that I didn't have to keep bolting them on every time.

They turned out great! I love it. Only downfall is if I rip one off I'll have to trim a new one. Not to mention they are pretty pricey if you can't find a used one. A risk I'm willing to take. I hope I never damage one because that means I will probably be getting some body damage too. We all know that there is a chance for anything when going offroad. Which I plan to do regularly when this thing is done!

 

[H8 Roads]

Now I wanted to drive it around some. I trimmed the stock bumpers to match the fenders and headed out. I stopped by a couple of my buddies shops to let them check out the progress. And could not stop taking pictures of it. It drove really nice considering I had not re-geared or gone through the brakes yet. Definitely made sure not to follow anyone to closely. Ha

 

[Online Olympian]

Nice job, nice right up.

 

[H8 Roads]

Well it certainly was fun to drive the cruiser around for a few weeks but it really was in need of lower diff gears. Since they were now laying in my garage it was time to start tearing things apart...again. This was starting to get old but since I had got myself in this deep it had to be done. Luckily I had done some research before removing the third members. I learned that you have to engage the lockers before removing them. It would have been a slight disappointment if I would have tried to do it without this step. Everthing came apart fairly easy.

When I pulled the rear hubs off they were full of gear oil. I had read that these full floaters actually have axle seals to keep this out and the wheel bearings were supposed to be greased like the front. As far as I know this is the only full float axle set up this way. Others are meant to be lubed by the gear oil. I actually decided upon reassemble to leave the seals out and let the gear oil do the work. My wheel seals had not been leaking before so I thought this would be ok to do. I actually found that some other people were doing the same thing. Seems like there was a 50/50 opinion on which way to go. My justification is that there is one more seal in there to fail and I would rather just start with gear oil then have a seal fail and mix with the grease. Probably wouldn't hurt anything as my old bearings seemed fine. For me this seemed the way to go. I have only had it around the block a few times but it seems to be fine and not leaking. I will keep an eye on this and keep my fingers crossed that the bearings will be getting lubed properly.

I have a buddy that has all the tools to set up gears. I usually just borrow the tools and do them myself but at this point in the build my time was limited. I asked my friend if he would be interested in doing them for me. He said 200 bucks for both sets. That was too good to pass up. It ended up that I went to his house and we both tackled it together. It was really nice to have two sets of hands on these things. They fought us a little bit but we are both very particular, especially when it comes to this. We worked with them until we thought they were just right. I made him take the money anyway for helping me. He was a great help. Can't wait to break them in!

 

[H8 Roads]

Fast forward about a month after the gear install and we get some exciting news. My wife was PREGNANT! Things kind of worked a little backwards here. I was pretty burnt out on the cruiser at the this point and needed a little break from it. Really should have been time to step up the game and hammer on the thing but just didn't have it in me. I had already been talking about getting another motorcycle before my wife got pregnant. Low and behold I found one two weeks later and was off to pick it up. I was wanting to build a café racer and found a project that a guy had started and got it pretty cheap. I've had dual sports and sport bikes but really always wanted to build an older bike. It's a 1981 Kawasaki CSR 650. Not super old but looks a little older. The pictures are of the end result. Did quite a bit of work to this thing. By the way how COOL is my wife?! Ha

Had to sneak this one in there.

Then hit the river again!

 

[H8 Roads]

Had another little project to do for a friend before jumping back on mine. My buddy bought a 2017 Tacoma and installed some sweet suspension and some 33s. Only thing he couldn't do himself was the body mount chop. He asked me if I was willing to cut on it and I told him to bring it on over!

I like projects like this. Quick gratification. A few hours later it was done and we were on our way to grab some beers and burgers.

This gave me some motivation to get back on my rig. This is where stuff started to get out of hand. Lol. I had ordered some 4 inch Dobinsons slinky coils planning on running those and getting it back on the road. Well the baby was just months away and I was thinking how was I going to get this all done. About that time my buddy in Alabama was saying he was going to sell his rig. He had a 2008 Jeep JKU. I know I know another Jeep. Well what was left of one. This thing was over the top for sure. By the end of his build this thing had a 400hp LS, 40s, Dana 60s, hydro assist steering, king coilovers at all 4 corners, etc, etc. Was a classic rich kid whip professionally built. He was selling it for a stupid loss. Was hard to believe really. I'm not into these things but this was one well built rig. One of the cleanest I've seen. With baby on the brain I really was considering it. Could have an already built rig that was reliable and wouldn't have to be working on something after the baby was born. Even though the price was incredible it was still a lot of money. The timing just wasn't right. Never is. Is it? Well two days past and he sold it. Didn't really have anytime to think about it.

This kind of had me messed up for a little but, then again, I didn't have to sell my cruiser. Or the rest of my toys. Ha. Most importantly, I didn't build it. I'm crazy like that. I take pride in doing things myself. A flaw as well as a plus sometimes. Basically, this is the biggest reason why my build turned into what it did. I decided that the cruiser was going to get crazy but still be less than half the price this Jeep would have set me back. Sounds reasonable right? Other than the fact that I just added more time to the build than I could ever have imagined. Ha. Not to mention that it did add a couple dollars as well. Not the best timing with a kid on the way. Never is. Is it? The challenge was on!

 

[H8 Roads]

As I started playing around on what I wanted to do I was looking at some coilover set ups. I was new to this game so before I went cutting I decided to do some research. I spent a lot of time doing this. Wasn't quite as easy to find people doing this to 80s as it is in the Jeep world. Can't just buy a bolt on kit. Not my style anyway.

Finally I decided I was going to it. At least I had decided on the three link. Wasn't sure about the coilovers yet so I started cutting on the axle first.

I have a plasma cutter but it didn't get into as many spots as I would have liked. Most of the cutting was done with a 4 1/2 inch cutting wheel on my grinder. Took a while but I got it all smoothed down only leaving the mount for the panhard. I ended up using stock locations for this with an Ironman panhard bar. I didn't see the need for custom joints since I was hoping there would not be much caster change during suspension cycling with this set up. Well see how the bushings hold up. I bought a bunch of brackets and some DOM tubing from RuffStuff Specialties.

After a bunch of searching for what Joints to go with I believe I ordered them off of Amazon. They are 2 1/2 inch Currie joints.

 

[EvanD]

Subbed.

Awesome work and great write up, thanks for taking the time!

Now take some more and keep with the 3 link info.... (My phone doesn't have the middle finger emoji...)

 

[H8 Roads]

The next big decision to make was where to mount the brackets. I started on the frame side. I saw that everyone else was mounting the brackets to the frame. Except for people with the 4wheelunderground kit. Their set up pulls the mounts in toward the center to give some triangulation. I tossed around the idea of using the factory mounts but decided against it because of the length and the angle of the arms. I figured if I had come this far I shouldn't cut corners and just remove them. The worst part about doing this is that, on the passenger side, the exhaust is right in the way. It was all rusted so I cut the pipes and removed the cats for now. Everything was going to be replaced anyway.

A note to you all that have pre 1995 80s with this Y pipe. Don't cut the Y pipe if you want to use bolt on style cats. If you can source one it is like 300 bucks. The flanges were all ruined from rust on mine so it didn't really matter. My exhaust guy used some weld in cats when I had the exhaust redone.

I had already bought a Slee Offroad belly pan, which is awesome by the way, before I had the idea for the 3 link. I knew from past experience that a lot of the Jeep kits had the brackets mounted to the belly pan or cross member. My Skyjacker lift on my Cherokee had a subframe section for the cross member and control arm mounts.I played around with this for a while and decided to do it. The belly pan was one of the first bolt on items I had bought. Now I was going to weld to it?

I Like the clean look of this and it brings the arms inward to give them some triangulation. If you were to be sliding on a rock or something it gives one less place to hang up on. The only downside I could see was that if for any reason that you need to remove the pan you loose your links too. Hopefully won't be too much of an issue. Some of my friends questioned the strength of the pan. I think its plenty strong. Its as thick as the frame and it is boxed where it replaces the cross member. I feel very confident that it will hold fine.

Now I didn't do all the math on this with a link calculator or anything. I probably should have but there is only so many places you can mount this stuff under this truck. It seemed fairly close to how the 4wheelunderground kit was designed and that was good enough for me. I am certainly no professional but a hobbyist that's willing to take some risks. Ha

The mock up process for all of this was quite a chore. Especially by myself. I had to tack, bolt ,and clamp everything in place and try to hold the rest.

 

[GOTLOCKED96]

Nice cruiser, I dig the build!

 

[H8 Roads]

It took a while to get everything positioned. I had the brackets on and off so many times grinding them until everything was lined up.
Again excuse my hideous tack welds. I ran out of gas again. I was not used to welding this much. This time I got the bigger tank. Lesson learned. I didn't even have any flux cored wire to use since I rarely use it. Without gas it will still tack it enough to hold the piece on. It's just fugly. I'm not the best welder but decent enough to be embarrassed to post these pictures but I want to show how things lined up.

Ok so that's as many pictures of the mock up stage I could find. I'm actually really surprised, and glad, that I took as many pictures as I did throughout this build.

Let's start burning some stuff!

I started with the links. I really wish I had a lathe to spin these things as I welded. It was a pain trying to rotate them and weld at the same time. Most of them turned out pretty decent considering I had to stop and then start again to get all the way around. You have to watch because you can get them too hot this way and the joints won't screw in. Its best to get a nice steady pass all the way around. I was resting my trigger hand on my knee and rotating with the other. If anyone is attempting this just a reminder, never weld the bungs with the joints screwed in them. Also don't test fit the joints until everything has cooled down all the way. The bung can shrink on the joint threads and if this happens it will be stuck in there.

I

 

[H8 Roads]

Subbed.

Awesome work and great write up, thanks for taking the time!

Now take some more and keep with the 3 link info.... (My phone doesn't have the middle finger emoji...)

Working on it. There is a little taste for now. This emoji works just fine on my computer.

 

[H8 Roads]

Nice cruiser, I dig the build!

Thanks man! Stay tuned. A long way to go still. Ha