Not much done this weekend as still working OT at Toyota, and my sister & brother in law were here. I took to a few of our golf courses.
I did get the 440X upper A-Arms (one was tweaked but I got it straightened back out), the clear gas tank and the rest of the 440X bracing.
I also made the brackets to TIG to the lower arms to allow use of the end-link style sway bar. I am dumping the slide-style sway bar.
Here are the brackets getting evened up to look the same.
Here are the A-Arms. You can see where they were bent. I heated them and straightened them.
Here is the new tank. I have not cleaned it up yet. But it should clean up just fine.
And these are the new braces. I still have some others coming. They should be here this week.
OT at work is killing me. I am hoping to get a bunch of stuff done this weekend, then get it welded up next week.
I want to get a bunch of stuff off to powdercoating as well this weekend. I just need to pop out the bushings in the skid and that is ready to go.
I got the wrap in the mail earlier this week. I will get some pictures of that tonight.
Not much going on with the project right now. But I am hoping to get the chassis welded up this week, but we will see.
I took a load of stuff to be powdercoated this morning:
Here the chassis is loaded in the truck. I took it out to Cool Concepts today to see if it would fit in his oven. It fits, so we are good to go. I then stopped off at the car wash to hose off the crud so I could start to work this week.
I got the sled wrap from Casey this week. Here are some shots of that. The lighting makes it look more red, but it is a really cool day-glow pink.
Here is the VanAmburg edge rails.
I need to get the pieces made up to be welded down the footwells to extend the rear running boards. They will be about 1" wider in the back than stock with the VanAmburg rails, the 440X center supports, the front supports, 440X footwell supports and rear drop brackets. They should be plenty strong.
I want to beef these things up because I want to ride this thing. I want to get some frequent flyer miles with it, too. LOL
I got the rest of the chassis prepped for welding. I have about 50 rivet holes to weld back up, numerous cracks in the chassis and I am adding about 1" width to the back of the running boards along with some of my bracing.
We will see how the weekend goes. I made up the new tower supports, also. I will get pictures of everything tomorrow.
A lot of time was spent trying to get all the adhesive off the chassis. The rear reflectors, the side pieces, the foam from the tower supports. I also drilled all the loose rivets and everything is ready to go to powder coating.
I need to find a plastic welder. There is about a 2" crack in the side panel. It should weld up nicely.
I am beat for tonight. I will get some pictures either tomorrow, or this weekend.
OK. Here is what I have so far...
Here is the rest of the stuff ready for powder coating.
Here are the tower braces I made. I used .080" instead of the .040" factory uses. I also flared the holes to give it even more strength.
I flattened out one of the old ones that was torn, and used that for a template:
Here you can see the flared holes:
You can see the difference in material:
Here is a pile of stuff that needs to be welded to be finished up:
I circled all the holes that need to be filled, and then sanded down. When I am done, you even know there were holes there. There are LOTS of them to fill on both sides. He had the factory fish skeleton reinforcements, then knubbed plastice riveted to the tunnel. That equals lots 'o holes to fill. LOL
This is the piece I am welding in place to make the boards wider all the way back. Once it is welded into place, it will be ground down and smoothed out, then cut to fit the Snow Eliminators I had made up. I used the same dimensions as on my mountain sled project.
Here is the way it will be once the Snow Eliminators are in place.
Here are some shots after spending $5 at the car wash on nothing but the chassis.
Today, I ordered up the lower control arms, Boyesen reeds, tank supports and I am looking for some nicer spindles.
The engine seals and gaskets should be here Wednesday next week, along with all the bushing for the rear suspension.
I should also have the first round of powde coating back this weekend. So next week things should start hoping....
Stay tuned in.....same bat time....same bat channel.....
That stinks! I was just ready to hit the enter key and the power went down.
I did a bunch of stuff around the house this weekend, trimmed hedges, trees, etc.
I also got the remainder of the powder coating stuff ready to go. The chaincase needs a new lower bearing and both new seals, but the rest looks fine.
I also took another load over to the neighbor's shop to be recycled. I got the garage all cleaned out, and the rest of the sled parts cleaned up and ready to be installed.
I got all the decals removed from all the panels, the panels cleaned up and the HP Wrap put on the sled.
Here is a shot of all the panels done up:
Here is a shot of the trunk lid finished:
Here is the hood and console complete:
Here is the fanner side. This took some doing. As you can imagine, no one has a wrap specifically for a 550F REV. So I had to modify the regular wrap to fit. It doesn't fit exactly like I want it to. But this is as close as I can come. I think it looks OK.
Here is the other side. It was straight forward:
Well....let's see.....the skis didn't even make it home. I stopped in Dubuque at the Casino. I took them off the sled in the parking lot when I bought it. They were sold 65miles before I got home. LOL
The hood was close, but I actually got it home and took it off here.
I can get both the Snow Eliminators and the VA edge rails. I will have to figure out how much shipping would be. I can get that later in the week if you PM me your address.
Today was kind of like going through Hades then having X-Mas....I guess.
Worked 7a - 7p at Toyota. Came home, loaded up the truck with the recycled aluminum again, dumped that off. Picked up the first round of powder coating from Cool Concepts and dropped off the second round of coatings to be done.
Here are some shots of the stuff I got back. My computer for some reaso makes them look blaze orange, but they are actually Neon Pink. They almost glow in low light.
Here is another goody that came in the mail today. I got the Boyesen's. So those will be ready to go.
I should be getting all the engine gaskets this week so I can get the motor and carbs done up. I need to get the Holtzman ATACC on the way so I can get that installed.
Well...my old Motorola Q decided to dump all 260+ phone numbers in memory. I went to US Cell to get them downloaded as I had them 'backed up' in their system.
Well....apparently, they don't exactly what happened, but their system did not have any information downloaded to back up. So.....I am SOL on all my old numbers.
So....I got a Blackberry. They do their own backup without actually having to do a backup.
The phone takes better pictures than my camera...LOL.
Here are some shots of the actual color of the powder coating.
This weekend, the plan is to get the rear skid done up. I have to file down the edges of the powder coating, and then press in all new bushings in the skid.
I will have more pictures this weekend.
I also plan on getting the engine torn down and bearings repacked with ISO Grease, and check it all over. I want to get that over to the shop and have the crank checked over and adjust the runout.
If I have time, I want to go through each clutch and get those rebuilt, too.
Got the skid put together..well...mostly.
I have some parts I forgot to send along to get powder coated. So I will have to wait until I get those back to finish it. I still have plenty to do. I got all the stuff to start tearing down the motor, so that is coming apart this week.
I also got the Boyesen reeds put in. I took a picture so you could see the difference in the styles.
I have to revalve the center and rear shocks yet. I think the fronts will be fine as the Custom Axis shocks are extremely adjustable. But the back ones are a little too stiff, even on the softest settings.
Here is the rear skid, I am still waiting for the Hyfax yet, those will be here Tues.
Here are the Boyesens. Stock on the Left, Boyesen's on the Right:
Wow! What a busy last couple of weeks.
Lots o' shocks comming in. Hopefully, we will all get to use them up with good trails.
Well....let's start with the stupid thing that I did.
I was welding Sheila's tunnel the other day and the battery went dead in my auto-darkening welding helmet. I had all the line stuff done, and just needed to do all the 3/16's holes you can see in the tunnel, there are about 70 of them.
So instead of doing the smart thing and going to the store for a new battery. I figured I would line it and just look away...BAD IDEA. I sunburned the white part of my eyes. MAN!!! Does that sting for a LOOOOONG time.
I had never done that before. I didn't know what the heck. I thought I might have gotten a piece of slag or somthing in them. The doctor said it would take about a week for the pain to go away, and my eyes to clear. I could light up the night sky for how red they are. LOL
So, anyway. I got the chassis all welded up, but I haven't had time to do anything else to it. In between customer's shocks, I have the engine torn down, the crank checked (all was fine - THAT's unusual for this project), I trued it to 0.000" runout, hot tanked all the parts and found that one of pickup leads was not put in properly and rubbing on the magneto, it had to be shorting out. I will fix that, put all new seals in it and reassemble it.
Here is the tunnel done up and the flares added to the back of the tunnel. I decided to use a spool gun for this to keep heat soak to a minimum. Since it was all going to be ground down, I didn't really care about the looks.
Here is the reinforcement plate I made to go across the bottom. This significally strengthens the upward force exherted on the NUN.
Here is the fix I made for the engine mount. It is plate I welded across the bottom to reinforce the break. I will drill new holes and grind the top down.
Here is the front plate welded. It will be ground down so no visible welds will be seen.
While I was doing everyone's shocks, I redid her's, too.
Here is the skid ready for BC3's spacers and springs. I just boxed up the springs as I am using a setup from an 09 to give her a nice ride.
