My Unique Ride

[lapeer20m]

In january i started a "new" project. Here's the original donor truck




We cut off about 14 feet of frame, disposed of the solid rear axle, found a new front GM IFS unit and welded it onto the back half of the truck.

The result:
4wd,
4wheel steer,
4 wheel independant suspension
electric lockers front/rear
38" super swamper tsl's
brand new rebuilt 300hp chevy 350
lowest point from the differential to ground is almost 20 inches


Here's some photos of the nearly finished product.

[RockyTop]

That ride is sweet! Nice fab work! Oh yeah, Welcome aboard!!

[95geo]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(lapeer20m &#064; Apr 1 2007, 12&#58;12 PM) [snapback]23803[/snapback]</div>

In january i started a "new" project. Here&#39;s the original donor truck




We cut off about 14 feet of frame, disposed of the solid rear axle, found a new front GM IFS unit and welded it onto the back half of the truck.

The result:
4wd,
4wheel steer,
4 wheel independant suspension
electric lockers front/rear
38" super swamper tsl&#39;s
brand new rebuilt 300hp chevy 350
lowest point from the differential to ground is almost 20 inches


Here&#39;s some photos of the nearly finished product.






[/b]

please dont take this the wrong way, if you roll over you will die.

having said that you should take my points into consideration. your rear(and front for that matter)tie rods if they are stock, will need to be strengthened. you "roll bar" is useless, there are 2 main things to keep in mind when you fabricate, nodes and triangles, your cage should be made up of triangles so it doesnt paralellogram when it takes a hit. nodes are so the load taken from one tube is transfered directly into another. and of course always tie it to the frame.

and most importantly get some real, reliable, tied in tow points and dont use a chain or cable for "snatching" pin clevices are about as bad as a knot, dont use them. go to tsc and get a 6 1/2 ton rated 3/4" screw clevice.... they cost &#036;13.48 and are worth every bit of it.

like i said, dont take my criticism the wrong way, its constructive and i hope you make changes to your rig. i will probably get repremanded by the "elders" around here but the last thing the 4wheeling scene around here, or anywhere for that matter is another catastrophic incident that could have been avoided.


if you have any questions i will be more than happy to explain whatever it is to you.

[WhiteRhino]

No criticizm from this "elder". The cage looks down right dangerous. Especially the sharp joint where the side bar bends upwards. That would crush right into the driver.

I would like to see some pics of how you integrated the front IFS into the rear.

[joe_jeep]

nice idea. ifs is coming of age. get the cage worked out and you will be all set. 4wd and 4wheel steering, sweet idea. nice looking rig for sure. best of luck and welcome.

p.s. the people talking about your cage are not dogging you&#33; they want you to be safe&#33; i bet some of them might even give you some ideas or even help with it, keep asking around.

[lapeer20m]

Before i recieve any more criticism, i should mention that this is a junk yard truck project. I&#39;m certian there are better ways to build a truck, but we built this one mostly out of stuff we had laying around or easily had access too with as little money as possible. I purchased the donor truck for &#036;160 and drove it out of the field where it had rested for years. Had the tires laying around. Bought the new rear end for &#036;150. Got over &#036;100 in scrap for the frame, rear axle ect. After taking her out wheeling once, some random stranger donated a rebuilt engine. The rear end has 4.10 gears and the front is 3.73. I used chain and sprocket to correct the gear ratio. If i had it to do over again, i would have found the correct gear ratio ifs unit and utilized a drive shaft instead. The chain works quite well though. Even when turning in 4wd on hard dirt with lockers engaged the chain doesn&#39;t give me any problems. The chain did pop off once when a cv joint bound up and snapped. As far as tie rod ends....both front ends are the 3/4 ton heavy duty 8,600? gvw units. The tires are significantly larger then stock, but the truck only weighs half as much or less than it did from the factory.

I agree that the roll bar needs some work.

We utilized a piece of 8" square tubing to marry the 2 frames together.....







the rear ifs (IRS?) is chain drive.

originally i used double 40 rollerchain,



eventually i upgraded to a single strand of #60 chain. You can see the size difference in the sprockets here:



here&#39;s another photo of hte rear drive:

[95geo]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MuddyPaws &#064; Apr 2 2007, 01&#58;05 AM) [snapback]23828[/snapback]</div>

I was wondering how you ran the rear.
[/b]

i figured a driveshaft... i guess i was wrong. is there any reason you didnt just make it so the front of the 2nd truck was the rear rather than making them both go the same direction? it seems like you made a lot of extra work for yourself not to mention adding in a weak link with the chain.

ill definately give you points for creativity

[lapeer20m]

the reason i have the pinion pointing toward the rear of the truck is two fold. First the fact that the drive shaft in a stock pickup truck spins in the opposite direction in relation to the axle on the front verses the back. That is to say if you take a front axle, the front drive shaft spins ccw. If you take that axle, turn it around and connect the rear drive shaft the shaft now spins cw. Because of this, i didn&#39;t think a front axle could be simply be put on the rear of a truck unless you turned the axle up-side-down. As it turns out, I was wrong once again. A front axle can be moved to the rear and everything works fine. Yes, the drive shaft does spin in the opposite direction (cw vs ccw) but it works out because the tires still drive in the proper direction. That was a tricky problem to wrap my brain around..

the other reason i used a chain drive is that my rear ifs unit has a different gear ratio than the front. 3.73:1 in front and 4.10:1 in the rear. This obviously won&#39;t work so well. Using different size sprockets i was able to correct the ratio. A 30 tooth and a 33 tooth sprocket would have been a perfect match. A 30 and 34 was the closest i was able to find. It is close enough that even on hard ground the truck doesn&#39;t appear to bind in 4wd.

When we started, we had a budget of &#036;500. The plan was to make a junk yard truck, drive it a couple times, then send it off to the scrap yard after it suffered catastrophic failure. The problem is that i overspent by about &#036;1,000 and the truck turned out much much nicer than anticipated. And now she had a new motor. Can&#39;t hardly get rid of her now&#33; Worse case scenario is that the rear drive brakes while driving around. The truck with lockers in the front will still go all kinds of places you can&#39;t take a stock 4x4.

The design of the truck is far from perfect, but it was built in a 2 month period of time on a very small budgett by a couple of hillbillies who hate to spend money. lol When i get some more &#036;&#036; i think i&#39;ll go back and re-work the roll cage. What i ended up with is an extremely unique and capable off highway vehicle,

[lapeer20m]

the trucks first youtube video

if you listen carefully you can hear the sound of that new gm diesel...(actually it&#39;s the rods about to shoot through the oil pan on that 350) (youtube sais you still have to wait a few minutes until you can view them....i&#39;m sure they&#39;ll be available soon



here&#39;s another clip of the truck utilizing her new lockers



this last one has no action, but shows the chain drive and also addresses ground clearance. I thought she had almost 20", but this test only showed 16.5. Perhaps i&#39;ll try it on level pavement sometime.

[joe_jeep]

neat ideas. a good cage and perhaps a ring and pinion swap in the rear, and your good to go&#33; congrats.