Builds The Truck of Theseus

[aztoyman]

Hopefully the pics help. I only ground on the one caliper and didn't like it so I stacked washers behind the wheel on the studs until it cleared and then had the spacers made based on the measurement.

 

[littlevulture]

Looks good, between clearing on the FJ and those pics I think it’ll work with mine then too. That’ll free up the Tundra brakes to go in my 3rd gen 4Runner that could use some new brakes. I also don’t like grinding calipers, spacers are always a better option in my mind.

Also tossed some lug nuts onto my rear axle to get the rotors sitting flush to the hub and got 58.5” WMS to WMS. That’s using SFA hubs on the adapter and slip on 2015 4Runner rotors.

 

[littlevulture]

Not directly truck related but I put a mini split in the shop the other day. It’s replacing a 50 year old natural gas mobile home furnace that’s on its last legs for winter heat and also gets me AC in the summer. It has a dehumidify mode I can run for comparatively little energy which should hopefully help with a flash rusting problem I’ve been having with bare metal when it gets humid even if I’m not in the shop using AC/heat. Also tied it to some home automation software so I can schedule or control it remotely.

 

[littlevulture]

I know IFS hub swapping is very old news but I always see people claim it nets an extra 3” of width. With both hubs on resting on a machined surface I’m consistently getting an extra 32.4 (essentially 32.5 mm) of width from one IFS hub or 65mm total for the whole axle which is only 2.56” wider.

 

[aztoyman]

Good to know. That means my 3/8" spacers I ended up using puts me at 3.31" wider. But maybe not? I did some other "mods" to fit calipers and rotors. I'd have to remeasure the whole works since It's assembled and under the truck.

 

[littlevulture]

Good to know. That means my 3/8" spacers I ended up using puts me at 3.31" wider. But maybe not? I did some other "mods" to fit calipers and rotors. I'd have to remeasure the whole works since It's assembled and under the truck.

I’ll be curious to see what you get for a WMS measurement. When I measured my IFS swapped front axle a while back it didn’t really match any of the commonly cited widths.

 

[aztoyman]

I'm not running these anymore and my caliper bracket is 1/2" thick.

 

[littlevulture]

Caliper brackets shouldn’t add any width right cause they go on the outside of the spindle…at least mine do.

 

[aztoyman]

Yep, you are correct. I didn't think of that. I had to go WAY back in my build thread to see what I did.

 

[littlevulture]

Spent the afternoon working on a full size crossmember mockup and I've very glad I did, after staring at it for awhile I noticed it was trying to coexist with the futures locations of the front driveshaft, exhaust, the rear part of leaf springs, and also my old crossmember and transfer case I was using to locate the transmission. Turns out moving the crossmember mount from the transfer case to the transmission is fine for an IFS truck but isn't really compatible with SFA stuff.

I ended up hanging the transmission from the shifter mounting holes and the transmission tunnel so I could remove all the mockup stuff and put my new case in to really see what I was working with.

Also pulled the gas tank out cause its pretty rough and kept getting in my way.

 

[littlevulture]

I'm think a 2 pieces welded together might be the way to go, use the green piece to pickup the crossmember mount on the transmission and take it back to where it will clear the front driveshaft output then use the blue piece with the stock crossmember holes for frame side mounting. You can see the location of the holes on the frame circled in red in the second picture. Anyone have thoughts on this idea? The big plate I bought for this is 1/2" thick so I think it'll be strong enough and shouldn't deflect too much even though the drivetrain will have a lot of leverage on it.

 

[aztoyman]

It never ends does it? Looking forward to your unique solution.

 

[littlevulture]

Nope it doesn’t, I dawned on me when I was looking at this how stupid it was to commit to drivetrain, suspension, and a general refresh of old parts all at once but I think it was unavoidable. Lotta work ahead…

 

[The Machinist]

Nope it doesn’t, I dawned on me when I was looking at this how stupid it was to commit to drivetrain, suspension, and a general refresh of old parts all at once but I think it was unavoidable. Lotta work ahead…

This is so incredibly relatable right now.

 

[littlevulture]

Did a little more cardboard work last night and came up with something I think will work. The 1/2” plate will get trimmed down to 6” wide then run parallel with the drivetrain, I’ll probably keep it long and see if I can find a find a forward mount later so it can double as a transmission skid plate. I’m swinging by the surplus yard after some errands this morning to see if I can find a good piece of 3/8” plate to become the piece that spans the frame rails.

 

[littlevulture]

Made the first longitudinal part of the crossmember today, I should've realized this beforehand but processing 4 feet of 1/2" plate form 8" wide to 6" wide with a cheap harbor freight 4.5" angle grinder totally sucked. Anyhow, I tried to put the big hole in it with a hole saw before deciding that was stupid so I moved to the mill and was barely able to fixture the material without removing the vice which was nice. I did manage to chip the cutting edge on 2 brazed carbide boring tools which is a huge bummer, not sure what I did wrong so I'll have to do some research there.

Once the mounting features were in place I notched it to clear the front output drop and shorted it to be about the same length as the engine/transmission combo...I've got a picture after the notch but no pictures after I shortened it.

Then I mounted it, since the bushing is pretty flexible it wasn't hanging right so I squared it with a combo square and a couple clamps off the face of the rear driveshaft flange. At this point I remembered the drivetrain is tilted back a little bit so I had to measure that, I got 6.5 degrees of drivetrain tilt relative to the frame if anyone is curious (the old 5VZ swap is still sitting in there and the new R156 is dimensionally identical to the 1988 R150 so I'm pretty confident this is actually the factory angle for a 1988 3VZ truck). You can really see it in the last picture. Ran out of time after that but I did find a perfect piece 3/8" x 6" x40" flat bar in the drop pile at the surplus yard this morning for $20 so turning that into the perpendicular part of the crossmember is my next task.

 

[littlevulture]

I swear everything I've done so far is more an exercise in thinking than building...got the passenger half of the crossmember built yesterday over about 3 hours. Spent quite awhile taking some more precise measurements and got 5º of drivetrain tilt. After all that thinking it doesn't actually sit flush on the longitudinal part so I'll probably put a 1/4" shim between the crossmember and the frame for the rear two mounting holes to get it aligned before I give it a couple solid tacks. It's going to bother me every time I look at it but I really don't wanna do all this again just to avoid a 1/4" shim. In any event its a good dry run for the driver side which is going to be more complicated since it has to clear the front output stuff. Also fixturing a 6 inch wide by 4 foot long piece of plate on the mill is very difficult...dunno why I didn't cut it down to size before adding the mounting slots.

 

[aztoyman]

Can you cut the two joints and tilt each one 1/8"? Basically put a slight twist in the welded joint.

 

[littlevulture]

I think I could, I was actually thinking about that last night but I wanted to let the idea sit for awhile before I cut any more. It’s a shame to do that since I’ve got such crisp bends right now with the score/bend method but it might be a cleaner look than shims.

 

[aztoyman]

I think it would look the same as if you did a bend with the needed twist. That would require heat and/or a press and wouldn't be as precise.

I know EXACTLY what you mean about it bugging you every time you looked at it. Even though it works, it isn't the way you intended. And it's not a quick and easy redo. I have to fight that "make it perfect" urge regularly.