B3000 SHO swap

[pat8703]

Self explanatory.

 

[Uncle Gump]

I've never looked into the drifter builds... so the single handle Wilwood brake master cylinder makes me go... hmmmmm

I've used single handle steering brakes many times... but they push pull and have two masters... one for each wheel.

Nice work on the plumbing and exhaust.

 

[MikeG]

Holy turbo plumbin tubing, Batman!

 

[RonD]

Nice work

That's going to be a "bump" in the hood

 

[pat8703]

I've never looked into the drifter builds... so the single handle Wilwood brake master cylinder makes me go... hmmmmm

I've used single handle steering brakes many times... but they push pull and have two masters... one for each wheel.

Nice work on the plumbing and exhaust.

in case it's not obvious, the hand brake will activate a second set of rear calipers that area independent from the oe calipers and factory parking brake.

 

[pat8703]

Nice work

That's going to be a "bump" in the hood

It actually will clear the hood just fine. There's a picture of it in the bay in one of the earlier pages.

I'm considering doing a body drop on the cab, so I guess maybe after that it will stick through the hood. I don't know if the cab will get low enough for me. I have the frame ride height set for optimal suspension geometry. I have poly cab mounts ordered and when they get here I'll put the cab on and see.

If I do a body drop it will definitely be a traditional drop, or a channel. I'm not cutting the frame up for a stock floor drop. We will see when the mounts get here.

 

[pat8703]

Would anyone be able to do me a favor and measure their truck? I'm curious how far the frame sits below the rockers. I forgot to measure that before pulling the body

 

[pat8703]

Uneventful but successful day.

I made the brackets to secure the radiator lines to the frame. I was putting it off and finally got it done. I also shortened the height of the tubes coming out of the bed. I was planning on putting the radiator across the down tubes of the cage but I think I'm going to lay it flat across the rear end instead.

I spent most of the they modifying the tranny crossmember. I wasn't planning on doing this at all. I started installing the main brake line down the driver side frame rail and ran in to an issue where the tranny crossmember bolts were going to be pushing against the brake line. That's no bueno. I'm not really thrilled how it turned out, but it's fine for now, and when I put a t56 or gforce in it later I can remake it to look better. Remaking it does help me out in other ways though. It gives me a lot more clearance to run the exhaust, which was shaping up to be pretty difficult. It also lets me service the radiator tubes without having to pull the crossmember. That's good, I guess.

 

[cbxer55]

That's quite lot of really impressive fabrication. WOW! Being watching this to see the finished product for certain. Maybe, if the turbo sticks though the hood, you can obtain a Boss429 hood scoop from Cervinni's. It's a very well made, stout scoop. Not flimsy in the slightest. Pic of one on my Mustang below.

I have a Mustang scoop on my Ranger, though not the Boss 429 style. It's functional. Yeah, need to paint the hood again. Waiting for it to get warm again and a no wind day. The bra is no longer on the truck.

Here's a link to that hood scoop, it's kind of hard to find on their site.

 

[pat8703]

That's a pretty massive scoop! It's a little overstated for my tastes though. I would rather trim the hood to fit around the turbo, add some rubber trim, and call it good.

I am really tired of working on this frame. I'm ready to move on and start working on getting this thing actually put back together...... Anyway I had to delete the spring buckets. I was mocking up the lower control arms and wheels and found they have some heavy interference with where the tires need to be. By shaving the spring buckets I get 4 inches of clearance per side. Here's how that went down:

Unrelated, but I wasn't really thrilled about the idea of using silicone couplers for all the SHO connections, so I ordered a bunch of aluminum v-bands and cut them in to the intake manifold. They're all o-ring sealed, so no worries about it leaking. It was a bunch of lathe work to get them down to size, but in the end it came out nice. I'm going to have to re-paint the manifold but I think I'm going to also get it sent out for extrude honing. I also still have to machine the variable runners for the larger butterflies.

 

[pat8703]

Last little bit of work for a while, as my traveling work season is kicking off. I finally got the cab back on the frame, for the time being. It will come off once more too do a final clean up on frame, mount the front a-arms and shocks, and undercoat the bottom of the cab.

I ordered a set of energy suspension cab bushings. I stupidly tossed the stock bushings. Well the truck sat too high for my tastes. I'm not looking to lay frame or slam it, but it didn't look muscley enough. I'm going to have to mod the spindles, but I'm going to lower the frame 1.75" below where I originally was planning on having it. I also machined solid cab mounts out of delrin that drop the cab on the body by another inch. The body needs a little clearanceing underneath for the 1" cab drop, but not a lot. Very very minor compared to a body drop.

The attached pictures are before the cab drop. I'm still waiting for the wheels to come in..... I ended up ordering rpf1's. 18x10.5 et15. I think I'm going to have them painted white. That usually looks good with a green body. The wheel in the picture is set at the expected track width. It looks like I'll be making wide body fenders after all.