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Ghetto Fab's Hack Job

Ghetto Fab.

Ghetto Fab.

No idea what I'm doing
Joined
May 19, 2020
Member Number
208
Messages
658
Ghetto Fab's hack job buggy, the aquatic axle and two bolt beef.

Time to start a build thread I guess.

Building a new buggy. Current plans are to keep this somewhat simple and basic. I'm a father of two boys, full time job and all the responsibilities that come with that, so my time and money is rather limited. I'm lucky to get an hour at night to work on things. I've spent the past few years tossing ideas around and planning this out. Hopefully that will speed things up in the end. Make no mistake, this will probably be a pretty slow build thread.

Current plans:
2 seat tube chassis of my own design
4.8 truck motor
4l60
Atlas 4.3
05 SD60 Front axle, spool and 5.38s, 45 deg steering, 3x9 ram
Late model 14 bolt rear, ARB and 5.38s
2.5x14 coilovers front and rear, rears on trailing arms, should be 7up/7dwn in front with a 20" belly height, 9up9dwn in the rear
Airbumps at all 4 corners
Cutting brakes

This thing isn't going to be a comp style buggy, nor an ultra4 racecar. I have no plans to race or do comps, just out for a good time! I wheel primarily the sierras and JV, with the occasional trip to sand hollow, which was the real push for something new. I'll post a bit of the old buggy for context, but I've outgrown its capabilities and am looking to expand my driving abilities further. Future dreams:
GFDB1.0 BUGGY PIC4.jpg
 
The old jeep buggy.
20221112_161538.jpg

I think I finished this in 2011. It was pretty old. Built out of a 75 cj5 that I had been building since 1995ish. Jeep stroker 4.0, T18, D20 with teralow 3.15 gears, kingpin 60 front and a 70hd rear. It worked really well for what it was and what it was built for. When I built it I was primarily just going to the sierras, so a primary concern was being able to camp out of it when on the trail. It would idle up a wall no problem, but I couldn't do front digs with it, wanted to get away from the 16.5 tires, and really wanted to build a new chassis. I reluctantly took it to sand hollow last may and had a great time.
20240518_151817.jpg

Afterwards it took me a little bit, but I realized it was time to move on. Time to shit or get off the pot as they say.:flipoff2: So I sold it and started buying parts.
 
Damn, that's a really detailed model you put together there :beer:

Why didn't you do digs with the Dana 20? Just worried about breaking a front output since there are no 32 spline fronts available?
 
Yeah, when you don't have money its cheap to build in CAD. Hoping the detail will payoff in shortening up the build time and issues. Get it planned out as much as I can down to the nuts and bolts. Even figured out the driveshaft angles to make sure I'm not maxxing out the joints. I shouldn't need to flex out the suspension to see what hits it should be pretty dialed from the start.

Yes, the 1 1/8" 10 spline front output is pretty small. I think the minor diameter on it is less than an inch. I'm honestly surprised it did survive as well as it did over the years.
 
The start, the aquatic axle.

I live in california, we don't really have rust issues out here, but it seems that whenever I buy a D60 for a project its spent time at the bottom of the ocean, hence the aquatic axle. A friend was selling this cheap as it was too rusty for him to want to use. It was cheap and close by so I picked it up. I wasn't scared off by the rust issues knowing that I was going to be doing some major fab to it and I had similar issues with the kingpin 60 in my last buggy.
20240629_134815.jpg


I wound up cutting the ball joint nuts off to get the knuckles off the housing. I was able to press out the remains and then attempted to wire wheel the rust off. It was a lot and I noticed that it was thick and scaley. You could start hitting the knuckle and chunks of rust would start flaking off and then more and more. I needed a better way to do this. So I started trying electrolysis.
20240721_111231.jpg


This worked out great! Cleaned all of the flakey rust off without damaging any of the machined surfaces!
20240725_091701.jpg


Eventually I got the largest bin from home depot I could find and started dunking the axle housing in to get it cleaned up as well.
20240813_194338.jpg


I had to flip it a few times but it worked out great!
 
The only drawback with the electrolysis is the amount of time it takes to work. I think I spent about 3 weeks total trying to derustify that housing. Luckily its mostly just a waiting game and that allowed me to finish up the design work on the front end.

Everything is interrelated. Its not just making sure the tires clear the front links or body, its do they clear the coilovers at full stuff, does the driveshaft fit and do the u-joints max out, does the caliper clear the coilover at max turn and compression, do the links clear the driveshaft. It all matters when your trying to stuff 10lbs of shit in a 5lb bag. Even something as small as the incorrect caster angle change whether the tire clears or rubs. This is where the power of CAD really comes into play. Being able to cycle all this stuff a million times and try out different approaches without spending a dime. Also, the better the information and detail you put in to it, the better the real life results will be. Eventually I had something I liked.

Underside shot showing some of the details. Driveshaft modeled to see if it clears the links and skidplates, etc...
GFDB1.0 Front Suspension Pic1.jpg


Full turn, full bump on the drivers side to check out clearances.
GFDB1.0 Front Suspension Pic2.jpg


Things get close on the coilover at full turn full bump!
GFDB1.0 Front Suspension Pic3.jpg


Complete front axle.
GFDB1.0 Front Axle Pic1.jpg

GFDB1.0 Front Axle Pic2.jpg


With that set I ordered up all the laser for the front axle.
20240828_185018.jpg
 
Keep in mind I really have no idea how this will all turnout, just using what I know.

Around this time I was also looking for rear axle so I could work on the rear suspension design. I had really wanted to build a rear steer axle, but decided that was over my driving talent at the moment, not to mention my limited budget. Once again, I had a friend with a 14 bolt that he didn't need. This is where the two bolt beef comes in. It only had two bolts holding the cover on instead of 14.
20240824_132444.jpg


I cleaned off all the tabs and brackets.
20240825_194105.jpg


Then I scanned it to get it in the model.
20240830_193804.jpg
 
mobil1syn said:
care to break down the details on this? equipment, formats, etc
Click to expand...
Using solidworks for the modeling. The scanner is a creaform handyscan 3d scanner and running vxelements for all the post processing. My work allows me to borrow some cool tools at times!
 
Super envious of your SW skills..... That would be so helpful to have. My CAD is "cardboard aided design" sadly....
 
Ghetto Fab. said:
I live in california, we don't really have rust issues out here, but it seems that whenever I buy a D60 for a project its spent time at the bottom of the ocean, hence the aquatic axle. A friend was selling this cheap as it was too rusty for him to want to use. It was cheap and close by so I picked it up. I wasn't scared off by the rust issues knowing that I was going to be doing some major fab to it and I had similar issues with the kingpin 60 in my last buggy.
Click to expand...

:Laughs in midwest rust:
 
Cheers looks great! 🍺
I think he is being modest. Looks like he knows exactly what he is doing.
 
Time to actually do something.

I did wind up cutting all the radius arm brackets off the front 60 before derustifying the axle. I bought a cheapo chinese plasma on a recommendation from a friend and got to cutting. This cheapo plasma works bitchin!
20240724_182054.jpg


Slicin through half inch cast steel with little issue.
20240723_192049.jpg


20240723_193647.jpg


About this time I also bought a tig welder, another recommendation from a friend. Had a couple of yearly work aniversary bonuses sitting around and I used the money to help pay for the welder. I already had a mig welder and this tig will greatly increase my abilities in the shop being able to do different materials and more specialized welds.
20240823_170326.jpg


I've been tig welding for a while, not professionally mind you and I don't consider myself a welder by any means, but I think I do ok. Practicing with the new setup.
20240830_205411.jpg
 
Apparently I didn't take any pics of the front axle cleaned up. I'm sure you know what that looks like. I did cut 2" off the drivers side end of the diff casting to get a little bit more tube on that side.

Anyways, I formed up some of the laser and put a few things together to see how they fit. Shock mount tacked together:
20240902_191246.jpg


Fit fairly well on the axle.
20240902_191843.jpg


Also started making some of the rod end spacers for the steering arms. I decided to try to get the knuckles done before tackling the housing.
20240829_202804.jpg


With the spacers done, I started welding the overlay plates and spacers to the arm sheetmetal.
20240915_150228.jpg
20240915_150234.jpg
 
Ghetto Fab. said:
The scanner is a creaform handyscan 3d scanner and running vxelements for all the post processing. My work allows me to borrow some cool tools at times!
Click to expand...
I was gonna say, you can afford 3d scanning and shit but rear steer is out of the budget? :laughing:


Looks good so far. :beer:
 
Technology sure is neat. Wish id have paid attention to that shit in school
 
Technology is neat! Honestly you just have to be interested in it to make it work. I can't for the life of me figure out my kids stupid alexa things they have in their rooms or some of the video game junk they play. There is a lot of computer stuff I don't get now a days either. I'm pretty good at a few things and that's about it.

Started working on the steering arms. One of the reasons for the new tig machine was using it to weld to all of the cast. Have used stainless 309 filler rod for all of this and it seems to have gone well.
20240918_205540.jpg


Had some issues with welding dealing with preheat. The first knuckle I had about 45mins to do some work, then into the house to deal with the kids, then back out in the shop for 30mins, then its time to put the kids to bed, and maybe an hour after that to work in the shop. It was hard to preheat, do some weld, then walk away for awhile, come back do more preheat and a bit of weld, then back inside, etc... All the while trying to fit parts together and keep things from cracking. Really would have preferred to do all this in one shot, heat it up and just keep welding.
20240920_214129.jpg


Got the lower section done and then moved on to the upper. Anything welded to cast was tig welded with a double pass, anything that was mild to mild got migged. Tig welding is more expensive and time consuming than mig, so I'm trying to save the tig for more specialized processes.
20240922_205333.jpg

20240923_200539.jpg


Got this one done, wrapped in a blanket and let it cool the rest of the night.
 
chaplinfj60 said:
why use stainless filler rob. besides the fact it looks good. does it have good dissimilar metal properties?
Click to expand...
Yes, the amount of nickle in it makes it flow better and syick to cast better. Also less chances of cracking. 309L works similar to specialty rod like super missile rod.
 
I was always told to use stainless filler rod for welding to cast. This is the first opportunity I've ever really had being able to use it on cast as I've only ever had mig welder. To be honest from what I've seen welding on the knuckles and the cast center section, it seems like the real key is preheat and not so much what you weld it with. Cast just doesn't handle localized heating well which causes things to crack. Mild steel is able to handle it, but causes warping that we are all to familiar with. Cast materials just can't do that so you preheat to get around that issue. I will say the stainless rod seems to flow and wet in really nicely.
 
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