Making progress...

[Skidmark]

Always a nice feeling when it is no longer on the floor!

191712764_10217420759325959_8190878181666421490_n.jpg

[Leatherneck]

Been along times once it looked that clean and whiney back there.

[Skidmark]

I am going to pressure wash it once it comes out of the shop. Debated doing it while it was on a furniture dolly, but didn't want to soak the new clutch and flywheel surface.

[Skidmark]

The motor is breathing fire once more. I tried to post a short video, but it said an MP4 is an invalid file type. All electrical, oil pressure, and temps are acting normal, and the typical really smooth idle. 8 months, 2 weeks, and 5 days since she fired up. Damn!

[Leatherneck]

That’s super cool Skid. How does it sit, going to have to do some suspension tuning?

[Piledriver]

That might be a feature... do you really need the windshield frame to be structural? Might be better with rubber there...

Sorry about that, keep getting notifications to posts 10 pages back, rather than current...

[Ol'fogasaurus]

That might be a feature... do you really need the windshield frame to be structural? Might be better with rubber there...

Not sure what you mean with this Pile. In a cage type of structure (frame and cage) the windshield frame part of the cage is very structurally important. I have seen rigs that have been rolled or smacked into and if the cage wasn't done properly; e.g., for load transferring, things didn't always look good when it got back in camp.

Could the window glass be set in rubber, probably but in the case of say a hard type of roll over or collision...would the glass stay in place or would you want the glass to stay in place? For sure you don't want it to come back into the pass compartment.

Lee

[Jbuggy21]

That looks great man!

[Piledriver]

Not making the window frame be part of the damage in a rollover should greatly reduce the chances of it shattering or even picking up stress cracks in heavy typical use. There is really not much structure there, and there are much better locations to attach the frame and cage just below it.

This was just an observation from a post 8 pages back: the ship has likely sailed by now.

The window glass and rubber gasket look stock, adding anti-popout tabs inside and out would probably be a good idea.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

From memory the few windows on a cage I have seen had a frame added by the glass installer and was sitting in rubber. There has to be some room for movement of the glass and the potential movement of the cage and not from bouncing around either as heat can be one of several a players here.

If you think about it the contact surface on the arc of the cage tube is pretty small so the additional mounting of the glass and soft material holding it in place is probably needed as the frame can be hard mounted and should be designed to have a bigger surface to contact the cage tube.

Again... an opinion and worth what you paid for it .

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

I was curious about the expansion and contraction on glass so I looked it up. It was very interesting and the recommendations on mounting glass https://www.bing.com/search?q=the+expan ... ffb865d8bd

Lee

[Getrdone]

nice job.................


PENIS!

[Ol'fogasaurus]

nice job.................


PENIS!

[Skidmark]

The first dirt test is in the books. The rear suspension is working a lot better now! The back end doesn't try to pogo at all any more, and the ride is much, much smoother. Due to the weight of the water cooled Suby and radiator out back, I had to run 30mm diameter SAW torsion bars, which had to have too much preload to keep the ride height up. Thus the tendency to pogo over the bumps. Not sure why I dragged my feet for so long with going to coil overs (other than sucking up the cost).

[Skidmark]

So after the first mild dirt test, I found several issues needing to be addressed:

1) It settled (not unexpected) more than I was thinking it would. Car had 1" less ground clearance than with the torsion bars, with 2" of preload in the springs. I had 4" of thread at the top of the shocks before applying preload. So I ordered not only 2" longer upper springs, but increase the rate on them from 350 lb to 400 lb. The new shocks are now running 400 /450.

2) The spring perches on the bottom of the shocks made slight contact with the shock mounting plate on the trailing arms. Some clearance needed to be ground to prevent any contact.

20210630_133523.jpg

20210630_133542.jpg

3) I not only hit the air bumps, but I also touched my hard stops. This is partly from the car being lower than before, partly from the pressure in the air bumps, and partly from the light spring/need for more preload. I am increasing the pressure in the air bumps from 200 psi to 300. The spring change and new preload/ride height will help with this as well.

4) one of the dual spring plates moved on the right trailing arm, changing the camber on that side. I need to realign the rear and double check the torque. I already added a fourth bolt a while back. May have had some slippage with the new powder coat finish.

5) I got stuck trying to find my way home (after dark) for a number of reasons. One being my OnX Offroad app on my new dash mounted iPad wasn't operating properly. User error for sure, but tried to get out by memory and failed miserably. So, the new extraction contraption arrived today. Hopefully I won't have to rely on outside assistance as much.

20210630_140207[1].jpg