Pulled out an old friend yesterday...

[AgPete139]

Nice...

 

[Not All There]

Off to Dave at 137 Fabrications for some serious work.....and some beautiful welds.

 

[Not All There]

We came to a point at 137 where we thought we would be wasting our time. Dave got the motor set in the factory cross member nice, and welded a fresh plate on top of it to create a new mounting surface for custom mounts.

Then we started debating, 2wd or 4wd. For the area I live, it makes more sense to have a rig thats 4 wheel. I can still get in the trails with all my friends in their jeeps, but also if we set it up right, can still jump, which is what i want to do with this toy.

So we froze the build, just as some more issues came up with our race car. Once that subaru is finished, we will be cutting basically everything out of the front end, and will go with a tubular crossmember, with all new bracketry and a solid front axle. Then we can start over with the new engine cage, mount the coilovers, get rid of the old cab/cage, throw a new cab on and take off all the old decals, leaving it an all black fun truck.

Unknown when this will be done, but its not forgotten. Its day will come.

 

[Josh40601]

if you are going to be jumping it still, why not just bump up to the 44 TTB beams that have been cut and turned? They still do very well offroad, and are what most of the prerunner guys shoot for so they can still get the high speed aspect.

 

[Not All There]

thats the set up in there right now, cut and turned 44's. Alot of what you see, actually all of what you see on the truck suspension wise needs to be redesigned, and aproached differently. When we first started mocking it up a few years ago we were learning as we were welding. Now..years down the road, we notice there is so much that needs to be redone, we might as well start fresh. Figure on keeping to simple, by going back to a straight axle, similar to what most of the tough truck used to run at the jamborees and such.

 

[Josh40601]

ahh, ok. Makes sense.

 

[Not All There]

just seeing how much is "off" to make whats in there function correctly, i think we are better off simplifying it. Stay tuned.

 

[AgPete139]

Turns out this is got scrapped. Sad, indeed.

I hope you build up another Ranger someday...

 

[Explorin94]

I hope you are a skinny guy.....I sure couldn't get my big frame in between the bars of that cage.