69' Series IIA Build

[Bowie69]

I'm betting it will take quite a thump to bend that!

[abosely]

I hope so, the steering arms are 1" thick billet steel machined.

The tie rod ends will be HD FJ80 and the tie rods 1.5" x ¼" tube with threaded bungs welded in.

Tucked up nice and high, hopefully out of harms way. :-)

the main reason for using these HD steering arms is to get high steering and be able to use the 25mm steering pins instead of the stock 17mm cast pins.

The trunnion/steering pins are a bit of a weak link in the Land Cruiser steering system, so not really overkill to get them.

Everything kind of goes together as a system, so I do get the full Monty this way.

The steering system won't be a weak link that's for sure. lol 

Cheers, Allen

[Snagger]

Wow!

[abosely]

The spring hangers from RS got here this afternoon si was able to finish laying out the rear spring hangers base that the individual hangers will mount to.

The hangers will go on the front & rear. They are made from ¼" materia and have a 'brace' piece to be welded into the long side.

That's a secret new high tech form of welding holding it in place there! :-)

I made patterns from poster board as I figured out the shape & dimensions of the base part. Then made a thin plywood pattern.

I was sitting here watching A Touch of Frost and doodled on the pattern.

The upper 2-⅜ " overlaps the Chassis rail & the part in the upper R corner will be cut out of the inside plate to clear the cross member. 

The side parts will be ¼" and overlap the rail. The lower three sides colored in show where the ¼" x 3" wide pices get welded between the two side plates.

They sit like this for the rear springs.

I was sitting here watching A Touch of Frost and doodled the pattern to show where things go.

While sitting here I drew a sketch to show the size of the parts.

I made the bottom section a bit longer than the RS hangers a place to run a nice weld bead on the front & rear.

Here is how the spring hangers will sit on the hangers bases.

Tomorrow I plan on getting the pattern for the front dumb irons done.

They will be similar in concept as the rears, ie.. two ¼" side plates with ¼" x 3" pieces on the bottom three sections welded in to make a box and then the RS hangers welded to that, but offset to the outside like originals. 

Cheers, Allen

[abosely]

I haven't been able to make as much progress as I had hoped to recently, did get some smaller parts designed and built, ready for welding. But next week I'll be getting the steel so I can finish building the chassis! Right after I build a welding cart for my new welder. :-)  Decided to go ahead and get a good welder, a Hobart 210 MVP and is big enough to weld anything on the build, actually it can can weld up 3/8'.  

This is the under the flywheel bolt in cross member, it's 2"x 3"x 3/16" with 1/4" plates to bolt through the chassis rails using sleeves in the bolt holes. The first pic shows it without the 1-1/2"x 1-1/2" x 3/16" angle and the 3/16" vertical reinforcements from the tubes to the plates, the second pic shows them sitting in place. The angle pieces will be welded to the main cross member for reinforcement, but mostly to have an angled face on the front  the cross member so if it hits a rock or something, it doesn't present a flat face to take the impact and help it slide up and over, since it's going to get smacked on occasion. Both the 2"x 3" tubes and the angle section will have either 3/8" or 1/2" holes drilled and tapped so can coat insides with etch prime, CIO and WAR, then thread a bolt in the holes to seal them up, later can unbolt them, flush insides and re-coat if wanted.

 

These are the vertical braces tying in the 2 x 3 to the side plates, and making them all uniform size. 

 

 

Cheers, Allen

 

 

[abosely]

This is the bolt in cross member that goes under the gearbox, 1-1/2"x 2" x 3/16" and it will have the 3/16" angled front reinforcement (already made but didn't get pic) drilled and tapped for application of etch primer, CIO & WAR. The outer ends will be cut, boxed in and will bolt to brackets welded to the chassis rail.

Cheers, Allen

 

[abosely]

Here is the pattern for the front spring hangers, there are four pieces like this all 1/4" material that welds on each side of the chassis horn. The blue line shows were the 1/4" plates go to box in the bottom of hanger and where the actual spring hanger welds onto the base. The red line just shows the outline of the chassis horn. These will have two 3/8" holes drilled and tapped so Buzzweld etch primer, CIO & WAR can be applied to the inside of the boxed section and then a bolt with sealant put in holes to seal it up, till want to check and re-coat if needed, all boxed in sections will have either taped holes or drain holes, depending on location and situation so all interior areas will be coated with Buzzweld etch primer, CIO & war. All the outer surfaces of the chassis, axles, driveline ect, will be coated in Buzzweld 2K Armor, CIO & WAR. Rust should not be a problem! lol

  

 

Cheers, Allen

[Anderzander]

Thanks for sharing - I’m looking forward to it coming together 😊

[Daan]

Like the wooden templates. Keep up the good work!

Daan

[Arjan]

Nice

Edited January 1, 2018 by Arjan

[abosely]

Thanks, the plywood is cheap 3mm 3 ply, it cuts pretty easy with a utility knife and makes it easier to fine tune the shape with a sanding block. The trouble with paper patterns is they get damaged and out of shape to easy, especially if they are used to make more than once. 

Cheers, Allen  

[abosely]

I haven't posted for a while, because the things I have been making aren't very photogenic, just a bunch a parts and pieces. lol 

But I now have pretty well everything for the chassis cut out, made and ready to start welding it all together to be a HD chassis,  hope to start welding later this week.

Today I did a few finishing touches on rear cross member. Here is a pic of everything sitting in place for a dry fit. 

The main part started out as a length of 4' x 6" x 3/16", then cut like this. The ends were tapered like a SIIA cross member and the center part cut down to 5" height. Then a piece of 2" x 4" x 3/16" tube was cut, to make the center 7" high. 

The 4" x 6" now 5" high was notched for the 2-1/2" x 2-1/2 x 1/4" tube that will be the hutch receiver and the two pieces of 2"x 4" go on either side of it, and the ends of the 2" x 4" get 3/16" caps. The bottom of the angled sections and those ends get capped with 3/16" plate too.

 They also were inletted for the two 1" x 2" D-ring clevis, for 1" pin D-rings, to weld into, and will be welded into the the bottom of the main tube, this gives 7 'sides' welded, plus the top of the clevis gets welded to the main tube also.

The hole in the L side 2" x 4" is for the threaded weld washer sitting besides the hole. The R side one shows the lifting grade eye-bolt that threads into them after they are welded into the lower section of CM. I forget what steel they are made out of, but the threaded section of the weld washers is 3/8" of 5/16" thread for trailer safety chains. This way I can simply unscrew them when not needed and have less clutter in CM.

I made the larger tube out of 1/16" plate, rolling it by hand & using C - clamps around the hole saw I used to cut the hole, kinda low tech, but used what I had available, I ended up with a bit more gap in the tube than I intended so cut a strip that will get welded into the open slot of the tube. The tube sticks out on both sides till it's welded in, then trimmed flush. The smaller tube is a piece of Schedule 40 pipe that the trailer wiring plug will go through and have a circular plate on the outside that the plug actually mounts to. This way I have access to run the wiring and a way to mount it, without having an opening into the CM, it will be trimmed flush after welded in.  

When I cut , (with the 4-1/2" angle grinder that I used for all the cutting) the 4" x 6" tube it pinched inwards along the cut. I needed a way to spread it back in 4" OD width, so I cut some pieces of angle the inside dimension and put them in the tube. They have the wide part at the bottom so junk doesn't fill up the V over time, will weld them into place along the underside of the angle. These add a lot of torsional strength the the CM and maintains the proper width while fabricating it too. On the right side I used two to strengthen the outer end because it gets a CM mounted swing-away hinge.

 

Well those came out a bit bigger than planned. But for less than $100 not going to make a swing-away hinge, heaven knows I'm making enough other stuff! lol

I'm pretty confident that by the time I do the chassis tie ins of the rear cross member, it probably won't bend or the D-rings won't pull out. :-D

Cheers, Allen

 

 

 

 

[abosely]

Here’s my fancy cross member tube bending apparatus.

I bent/rolled the three tubes for the three cross members like this.

The front & middle cross members are made up & ready to weld together.

[Anderzander]

Looks great 😀

Those first few photos are tiny though? 

[Arjan]

That is serious work !

[Soren Frimodt]

Great Work! And nice bit of ingenuity  

[abosely]

Thought I’d repost the pics from above bigger to easier to see.

[abosely]

 

 

This is a pic of the back side, what goes towards the inside of chassis.

[abosely]

11 hours ago, Soren Frimodt said:

Great Work! And nice bit of ingenuity  

Thanks Soren, part of the reason I'm posting detailed pics of what I'm doing and how I'm accomplishing it, is to encourage others to go ahead and go for it, using materials that are available. And you don't have to have the ideal tools and equipment to make the components and parts, just think outside of the box and get creative and the finished part can be just as good and precise as using the optimal tools and equipment, we just have to use a bit of imagination, but that is part of the fun. :-)

Cheers, Allen

     

[Snagger]

The cross member looks very robust.  My only concern would be the fact that it'll be butt welded on the chassis rails.  The original design had the rails protrude inside the cross member so that there were welds where they contacted the rear face, the front edges of the top and bottom surfaces, and longitudinally along the corners of the rails where they run along the top and bottom surfaces.  That's a great deal more weld length than you'll get.  Adding flitch plates over the butt welds will help with that load spreading.

[abosely]

Yes, I’m going to put a 3” wide strap on the top & bottom caps of the rails that go over the cross member and corner gussets on inside & outside corners top & bottom of the rails.

Also will have 1/8” x 1-½” angle going from the rails to the outer ends of the cross member and one st the top & bottom from the rails to the middle area of the cross member on each side to tie in the cross member to the rails and strengthen the center of the cross member where the hitch is located.

Since the rails are ⅛” material, putting a doubler plate on the rails where the angle is welded to the rails to spread the load over a larger surface area of the sides of the rails.

There will be quite a bit of added structure to tie the cross member into the chassis rails. It doesn’t add much weight, does add more welding, but that’s a small price to pay to have everything tied in well.

Having the cross member well tied into the chassis rails is a big consideration. 

Wait till you see the front & rear spring hangers, robust comes to mind . Plus lots of weld area to spread loads out to the chassis rails. I can say cutting them out of ¼” plate was an all afternoon job. :-)

I’ll post up pics of them tmw, now I have them cut out & shaped.

Cheers, Allen 

[abosely]

Here’s a pic I found of the front spring hanger side plates, as I was finishing them stacked together so they are the same profile.

The inside ones butt against the front cross member and the outside ones extend past the cross member and have their ends fish mouthed so there isn’t an abrupt change in the thickness in one spot.

I’ll get some pics of the finished pieces posted tmw.

That’s four pieces of ¼” inch plate being finish shaped to match. The blue line is a leftover from figuring out layout earlier & isn’t being used at this point.

Cheers, Allen

Edited February 15, 2018 by abosely

[abosely]

These are the front parts of the side panels of the chassis rails with the front spring hangers.

The top one is the inside spring hanger and the bottom one is the outer spring hanger plate.

The red lines are where the ¼” plates that box the spring hangers, the red line is the outline of the chassis rails. 

And shows the fish mouth on the rear of the spring hanger plate to distribute the stress to not cause stress concentrations.

Lower picture is shows the position of the front spring hanger as it will be welded on.

Cheers, Allen

[abosely]

Here is the rear spring hangers bracket in approximate location on the chassis rail.

The red area shows where the plates overlap the rails & the red lines show where the ¼” plates weld to make the spring hanger brackets.

And the spring hanger welds onto the brackets.

These are the the brackets and bits for the chassis. The two pieces on the lower right are two hand brake brackets and are the only pieces that are being used from the old chassis.

These are the brackets for the gearbox cross member. One side of the angle will be trimmed when cross member is mounted. 

[Snagger]

That is going to be a fiendishly tough chassis.  You're going to need strong springs for it, though!