My Build... so Far

There you go, that's the best way to go. That would NEVER have problems lol. I think bedliner is stronger than the bumper itself haha

 

Im coming up on the 'put 20k miles on my truck' mark. Good thing its still only at 75k!
And i just went thru my 4th foglight switch! Fuck rocker switches im changing them all to toggles. when i change my oil this weekend.

 

how are you liking the 6 lights?

 

Love em when i. get to use them! Maybe i wish i would've used some different ones on the end. The blue ones arent very bright

 

I did a few minor things last weekend. Changed my oil, rotated my tires, and threw my mudflaps back on the rear, even though they look kind of ridiculous. I plan to fab some sort of brackets to move them over so they actually cover most of the tires. And since i don't have any I took a couple pictures of my diff drop and cv angles while i had the skids off.

 

people make me mad. that is a fine angle for cvs! but all these people whine about it. i dont get it.

 

Im perfectly content with my cv angles. Im really glad i got a diff drop when i lifted though. Better safe then sorry.

 

Mud flaps do look a bit ridiculous lol

 

At least now people will know i made an attempt to keep the mud down haha. And they'll catch some of tue mud at least. Better than nothin.

 

exactly, but everyone always says the diff drop doesnt do anything. i dont understand that either, you can clearly tell it works.

 

Im thinkin about building a bedrack out of a lumber rack that came with my old nissan...

 

Well, did some checking on my suspension after discovering my right shock is blown out because it hit on the leaf spring. Lesson, DONT flex hard with twin tube shocks without modifying first. So I did some measuring to kind of get an idea of how I want to relocate.

Sorry for the sketchy pictures. Most all my pictures are taken with my 2 megapixel phone camera.

The shock was at this point touching the leaf spring, and it was not quite at full flex. Had it been a monotube shock I would have probably been alright. But alas, I was not



Here you can kind of see where the leaf spring dented the shock body. I had the shock mounted bodies down, and have since flipped them to keep shit from building up around the seals. It also seems that the shock lost it's charge, as it is now sloppy and has little dampening resistance. (I can easily compress it between my hands).






You can see the leafs are beginning to invert and the bumpstop is nowhere near bottoming out, and i want my leafs to be flat at full flex to prevent any damage.



This is my passenger side tire measured from the top of the fender.



This is where my driver side was at while flexxed. The tire still isn't rubbing at this point so I'd like this to be my full stuff to keep my leaf springs from going inverted. Measuring from the edge of the lug it gives my about 12 inches of flex, which makes me worry about my 10 inch travel shocks

I had my truck on ramps, one under the front passenger tire and one under the rear driver to try and find out about how much travel I actually have, and where I want my suspension to stop.

I ordered some shock mounts and a new passenger side shock, so hopefully I'll start relocating this weekend.

Sooo, next mods to come are
4.5" bumpstops
Ubolt flip
Rear shock relocation

...theres much work to be done.

 

Well, Igot busy over christmas break finally! I managed to get my shocks relocated so I can rest easy without worrying about damaging anything anymore. I was able to get into our neighbors giant shop to work on it finally, so I could avoid freezing my ass off here (its been in the teens lately). I tried to take lots of pics even though i'm no photographer.

But here we go. First i took off the bed to make everything easier on myself when doing it, plus i put on a 2 inch body lift to clear my tires better. I know I'll catch grief for it sooner or later but i'm happy with it, and its functional, so thats why I did it.

Back to the shocks, I boxed the frame with 1/8" diamond plate. I know it was overkill, but that's what I had to work with so I used it. I welded the bottom tabs ( I got four of them from summit racing for about twenty bucks) and did a crossmember with some 2" water pipe that I'm not sure of the exact wall thickness, but its heavy.


(don't worry, I ground that edge off after it was welded on.)



(Bottom mount)



Crossmember Done

Bottom mounts. I know my overhead welds look like bird shit, but they're stronger than bird shit. They penetrated well and will hold. I'm pretty sure anyone whose ever done an upside down weld will say its easier said than done. Besides we can't all be JLee now can we?

Top mounts done! I did have to doc my exhaust and we heated it up and bent it out of the way a little since it was in the PERFECT spot to be in the way of my shock. My dad wasn't going for cutting it off at the muffler so we did this instead. I'm gonna try and have a muffler shop bend fix me up with something, maybe move the muffler up and dump it in front of the tire.


BOOM! to find the right position for the mounts I just jacked it up by the bumper to find full droop and welded the mounts in. I left about an inch of compression to compensate for any extra travel I might get while flexxed. I'm not a huge expert but I think that should work with 4.5 inch bumpstops when I get some. And if I should over extend I would rather bottom out the shock compressed than pull it apart from having it over extended.


For some reason I thought it was a good idea to weld with my sleeves rolled up and got a nice burn for it. STOOOPID

 

I also as mentioned before added a 2" body lift to compensate for tire rub (I didn't like trimming) and I feel pretty good about it. Only problem I hit was that my steering shaft didn't extend enough and the kit didn't come with a spacer so I ended up building one out of two pieces of diamond plate with a section of pipe in between. No pictures but i'm pretty sure the steering shaft would give out before my spacer did, its pretty solid, and it works well. Now I've done tons of research on body lifts and seem plenty of posts on them and from what i can see as long as you dont go over 3" and you don't go ramping your truck off something or hitting dirt whoops at 80 mph you should be ok. I'm not sure of the brand (I bought it used as a 3" and cut it down to 2") but they are polyeurothane spacers and I believe I did ok with it. I got new hardware before installing it and made sure everything was tight and had washers.

Here it is.






I'm not a big fan of the way the frame looks now but its not terrible and I eventually plan to either get nerf bars or sliders, since I haven't decided how dedicated I want it to be to wheeling yet. I live in North Dakota, so there isn't really enough rocks (let alone trails) to justify armor and sliders just yet.

Only thing I haven't buttoned up yet is the bed spacers and splash guard, which i think I'm going to wait on anyway until spring when its tolerable enought to work outside since it wont fit in my garage anymore.
And also my grille guard is takin a break for the time being until I can either fab some brackets to raise it up, but I think I may just put it on my mom's 4runner and save up for a trail gear bumper in the future.

Oh, and I almost forgot, I got a Kobalt for christmas!

 

Filled up with gas and clocked it at about 13 mpg . Kinda put a bad taste in my mouth. So i plugged my deck plate to see if i can reduce warm up time to avoid excessive idling and improve gas mileage.

 

After realizing spark plugs could be the culprit of my shitty mpg's (havent been changed in over 20k miles or more since i've never done it) i picked up a set of ngk's to put in tomorrow.. i can already see they dont look fun to get at either.

 

changed em plugs yet?

 

Nope, just havent had time, and i was told the ones there were fine, that they should be good for a 100k miles. I think its my air or fuel filter thats killing my mpg's. Time for a pro-dry i think.

 

Discovered these just now, and i want them
http://www.protuninglab.com/xehid97...medium=adwords&id=18283950120&utm_content=pla