Colinb17's kinda sorta build thread - now with 4-link and long travel

makes sense. Appreciate the thorough explanation. I like how you went about it since you can remove the cage without having to cut out anything.


Great work and love seeing the updates.

 

I've done plenty of of things over the years that fall into the category of "that's a problem for down the road colin". Fortunately its mostly minor stuff that I've fairly easily redone the last few months, but with a project this substantial, I wanted to keep serviceability a priority.

 

Getting the perimeter pieces of the roof structure was the first time that I truly could have used an extra set of hands. Had to resort to shims and tape to play with positions and fit-ups to get everything aligned before tacking it up. Need to make the diagonal portions now, and then I'll weld out the entire thing at once.

 

Looks awesome! Are you doing just the one internal cage piece, and everything else will be exo? Or are you doing A pillars and through the firewall connecting to an engine cage too?

 

A-pillar and windshield bars will be external, but will still being tied into the engine cage. There will be some more interior work down the road when the little one can sit in a booster seat. I'll swap the rear seats for a PRP 3 seat bench or 2 more PRP elites. I wish I could do that now because it will make the overall system stronger and stiffer, but there's just no reasonable way around it with the baby seat.

 

long update, but lots of photos too! learned a lot in the last few days

Got the cab and windshield cage finished up Friday. loaded up Friday evening and headed down the road the Overland South for the weekend. Lots of tacomas, a few ow whom are TW regulars. of course all kinds of other toyotas, tons of jeeps, a growing collection of Lexus, and a handfull of other fun and unique vehicles. Ineos showed up with a new Grenadier. having spend a significant amount of my offroading career surrounded by land rovers, it was fun to get an up close look at a Grenadier.

The relatively young event is growing in every way, including their "challenge course". The nature reserve that the even is held on has an extensive and beautiful, albeit mild, trail network. did get some high speed running in on some of the trails to test things out, but the star of the show is the manmade challenge course, roughly a mile long. its a crawling oriented course, but you can strategically add some speed into some spots to do a little bit of log hopping. we're working on getting a jump setup for the October event.

Great family friendly event too. Wife and little one ventured out during the day on Saturday to see some sights and watch the frisbee dog show.

Took home a couple of prizes. Was honored to receive the best fabricator award, and then on Sunday, I tied for first with a perfect score of 1000 at the RTI competition. Fun for an IFS truck to tie with a a giant Jeep on tons in an articulation competition











Notes from the RTI competition.

If you're not familiar with RTI competitions (Ramp Travel Index), you take the vehicle's wheelbase, divide it by the distance traveled up the ramp, and then multiply it by 1000. so if you travel until your rear tire touches the beginning of the ramp, your score comes out to a perfect 1000. on a 20 degree ramp like this one, most modified jeeps are hitting 600-750. mid travel tacomas are generally in the 500+ range, and stock travel tacomas are closer to 400.

I actually have a good bit more travel than what can be shown on the ramp. if you zoom in on the head-on photo, you'll see that my drivers side front is essentially at ride height. look at the shock shaft exposed. The rear also had a hair more left, that the pressure in the bump stop was preventing.



The other thing that really got put into perspective is the articulated wheel travel. straight vertical travel, i'm bumped and strapped at 22 inches in the rear. however in articulation, we're looking at over 3 feet of wheel travel. this is also why the fender tube and storage cases had to be mounted so high.



A handful of shots from the challenge course









Happy family



couple event photos





the event owner's two trucks

jeep cab-over


Unimog

 

Perfect award for such a well planned awesome build.

 

Thanks

Was thinking about you yesterday when I started the stainless steel snorkel. It's a tough transition going from structural steel tubing to thin wall stainless. Nothing near as pretty as your stainless work.

 

Yeah. A lot less forgiving.

If you haven't, try about 58 amps. If you want, you could also pulse the pedal, or try a pulse setting.

 

i need to play with the pulse setting on my machine. Ive been pedal pulsing, but it's not the same. Also with my right foot on the tig pedal and left foot on the spinning fixture pedal, Ive got all 4 appendages doing something different. Would be nice to take the right foot out of the equation to simplify things.

 

Regular ole one man band over there. Lol.

Try some test pieces with anywhere between 1-2 pulses per second.

 

Stainless snorkel is finished. working on an aluminum fairing of sorts to cover up the giant hole in the fender and some of the safari snorkel mounting holes. obviously the snorkel is a functional item and it was a necessary build since the cage was in the way of the one i had. however the design of it and the fairing were kind of fun "artistic" exercise. by that, i mean there are plenty of aspects that are purely aesthetic.

snorkel is just regular old 3'' 304 stainless. after i put it on for a mock-up, i quickly realized how blinding the polished stainless reflections were, so i hit it with the torch to blue the whole thing. it's still a polished finish, but the reflections no longer scorch your corneas like an ant under a magnifying glass.






snorkel is mounted to the cage at two locations with rubber isolators and aluminum fender thumb-screws from a motorcycle. its also clamped into the airbox with a silicone sleeve, which supports that end well.






the aluminum fairing isn't done yet, but you get the idea. design ques were pulled from a combination of the heat shield from a semi truck exhaust stack, and the shroud/foregrip of a rifle, with a little bit of old-school aerospace thrown in.







probably not everyone's aesthetic, and I'm not sure if it's mine to be honest, but until i do something else about it, it looks a whole lot better than the gaping hole in the fender. still figuring out how to end the fairing on the back side.

 

Roadkill + engineering + fun = Perfect.

Love the blue-ing that you did too. Alllllmost got it to paint match.

 

No reportable progress, but ive been wanting to see what the truck looks like with both ends at full drop. Almost got there. 6 ton jack stands are on their tippy toes. If I get the rear tires off the ground, the front has already started to compress a little, but close enough for a photo.

 

my dude....this thing is intense.

 

Ryan!!! been a while. you doing anything fun with the Ford toys?

 

This probably isn't worth the effort, but pull out all the coilovers and let it sit down on the bump stops and take another photo. Then put it side by side with the full droop photo.

 

I was thinking about that. I need to pull the front coilovers soon to do the front but.ps stops. If time allows, I'll pull the rear coilovers at the same time.

 

its been a looong while! good to see you are still getting after it. No mods to the Ford toys, they get me to and from Starbucks in 1 piece which is about all the trails CT has to offer. I miss Colorado, it's on the list to get back and put them to work.