What did you work on tonight? (3 Viewers)

[alia176]

This think looks like a torpedo or Humpty Dumpty, pick one but it's a central vac unit for the whole house. I was able to shoe horn it in the corner of the garage and using it as a shop vac. The thing has something like 50' of vac hose and I can suck dirt off the street now No more lugging the shop vac around.

 

[lurch]

Timing belt, water pump, thermostat, cam seals, front main, idlers, tensioner and new accessory belts on the girl's 4runner. Today it gets valve cover gaskets and I am going to dismount the tires to paint the wheels then new tires tomorrow. She's had to wait to register it because an appointment with the DMV couldn't be had until this week.

View attachment 2485036

There are the parts you need Justin!

 

[pappy]

There are the parts you need Justin!

More Information for AISIN TKT025

www.rockauto.com

 

[Mauser]

More Information for AISIN TKT025

www.rockauto.com

I bought mine on ebay from seller aircabinman

 

[evanz80]

More Information for AISIN TKT025

www.rockauto.com

How do the prices look for this kit at RockAuto compared to AmToy with the Mud discount?

 

[pappy]

How do the prices look for this kit at RockAuto compared to AmToy with the Mud discount?

AISIN aftermarket is always way less. This kit is $170.

 

[alia176]

AISIN aftermarket is always way less. This kit is $170.

I bought my Aisin kit for the V8 from Amazon for about the same price, IIRC.

 

[thegadgetguy]

I had been putting off some maintenance on the 80 over the fall, but finally decided to dig in and knock out as much as I could at once.

• Rebuild front axle (all seals)
• Replace front rotors and pads
• replace all TREs
• pull front 3rd, inspect, reseal, as it had been leaking

I've done this job once before, almost exactly 7 years ago and 90k miles. I had never worked on a car then so it went pretty slowly. It went much faster this time.

I started Friday three weeks ago and had the axle completely torn down that evening. It ended up sitting until the following Friday (I cleaned some parts during that time) as I was waiting for spindles from Cruiser Outfitters.

Everything cleaned up:

 

[thegadgetguy]

The next Friday I started reassembling around 1:30 PM. One of the knuckle studs sheared as I was reinstalling (took virtually no torque - it must have been severely compromised already). That was not confidence inspiring for the integrity of the other studs. I was honestly a bit annoyed at this point, but just decided to power through and had it out in about 15 minutes.

I ordered a new stud plus a complete set of spares from Sean at American the following Monday, but proceeded with reassembly that night, just leaving one of the studs out.

Shortly after this I realized Cruiser Outfitters had sent me not one, but two incorrect spindles. So I ended up just reusing the old spindles, and am trying to get a refund from Cruiser Outfitters as I don't want to tear the axle down again and the old spindles were in alright shape. The rest of the reassembly was pretty straightforward, and I finished around 7:00 AM.

 

[thegadgetguy]

Unrelated to rebuilding the axle, I also recently finished-ish my second swingout.

The first order of business was to weld the pivot-tube that the bushings are pressed into onto the 2.5" x 3/16" wall square tube that comprises the swingout arm. I cut the round tube and coped the square tube.

I jigged everything up perpendicular and clamped it in place. Having the Makita carbide saw is really nice for this because you can easily get a really square cut on the end up the round tube, which makes getting everything square easy.

did some root passes:

I decided to try pressing the bushings in post-welding. When I did this the first time on my tire swingout, I welded the bushing-tube to the main swingarm tube with the bushings pressed into the round tube and the bolt inside the bushings, as I thought this would help keep everything from warping. Unfortunately, as the bushings I used are oil impregnated bronze, when they got hot the oil started boiling/burning off, non ideal.

I went slow with the welds and it seemed to work ok with pressing the bushings in afterwards.

 

[thegadgetguy]

Here you can see after I finished welding and pressing the bushings in:

I temporarily installed it on the bumper, and clamped the second tube where I wanted it to ensure proper fitment. I then tacked the joint at the corners.

Pulled off the bumper and tacked it to a large piece of steel to help reduce warpage. I did two passes to ensure good penetration. Please excuse the mess.

 

[thegadgetguy]

I added this little outrigger piece to hold the basket, a destaco clamp, and holes for the license plate to mount (still need to figure out a light).

I added 4 holes to the flange so I could bolt the basket on. This way I can swap the basket out for a different basket, or a different attachment like a bike rack. I'm please with how stiff the whole assembly turned out.

Done except for the liscense plate. Ready to head to Utah!

I need to work out a more permanent strap arrangment (I like how Larry's straps attatch on his 200 Slee bumper and will try to emulate that most likely). Other than that and paint, eventually, it's pretty much done.

 

[alia176]

Nicely done David! Curious on the swing out, how did you weld the two pieces together? Is there a sleeve inside the square tubings or did you simply butt welded them together?

 

[thegadgetguy]

Nicely done David! Curious on the swing out, how did you weld the two pieces together? Is there a sleeve inside the square tubings or did you simply butt welded them together?

Thanks Ali. I just butt welded them together, no sleeve or anything. I beveled both sides of the joint about 30 degrees to allow for good penetration. I did two passes, and made sure to get good penetration on my root pass. That's how I do most of my welds in thicker material that I want to be strong. Not sure if that's the right way or not since I mostly attended YouTube University of Welding, but I didn't lose the jerry cans last week in Utah so it must at least be adequate, haha.

Here is a pic of my root pass. It's maybe 1/2 or 5/8 of the tube wall thickness. The second picture is with the cover pass on top. I could have done a thicker root pass, maybe even just did one full thickness pass, but it's just easier to do two in my opinion, and you can focus more on getting 100% penetration on the root if you're not worrying about getting full thickness at the same time. This is all TIG if that wasn't apparent, I still haven't gotten a MIG welder yet, though the time is fast approaching.

You can kind of see how I beveled the mating surfaces in this picture:

I think if you have good welds with full penetration you shouldn't have to sleeve it to make the welded area pretty much as strong as anywhere else. Obviously this depends on base material strength, filler material or welder wire used, quality of weld etc., but when using relatively low carbon low strength steel like this I think it's a reasonable assumption. And if it's not, that's what the safety factor is for . In this case it also wasn't super feasible to sleeve it because there's a 12 degree bend in the swingout arm to match the contour of the bumper.

 

[NyNomad]

I worked on my resume

 

[alia176]

Agreed David, you don't need a sleeve for this lightweight application. I need to do the same with my swings and was thinking about cutting a pie slice out then re-welding back together.

Last night I worked on swapping out the front springs on the Runner. Went from 600# Bilstein to 700# King springs along with SPC UCAs. Trouble is, think I got too much lift and I'm only the 4th groove (out of six) on the Bilstein 6100 shock bodies. Let me do the other side this am and see how she settles before going to the 3rd groove.

 

[Mauser]

Those are some good looking welds David! You are a very patient man. How many hours do you estimate you have just welding on your bumper?

 

[alia176]

Those are some good looking welds David! You are a very patient man. How many hours do you estimate you have just welding on your bumper?

Wait, don't answer that David, we should start a poll

 

[marcfj60]

I'm just impressed that he started with a TIG system. I started with SMAW. Learned how to stick the electrode really well. Then I moved into learning how to blow holes in everything I was trying to weld. Eventually I got to a level of competence that I could join two pieces of metal together and my welds didn't look like total crap. Then I moved on to GMAW and can make welds that are marginally acceptable. Never made my way up to TIG though.

 

[NyNomad]