nobggrnchvy Goatbuilt Ibex

[Bggrnchvy]

I mounted some more sheet metal over the weekend. The rear sheet metal is now all tabbed in and I also got one one of the engine covers in.




I had to come up with a solution to preload the panel inwards to keep the gaps tight while I was running a foot pedal, torch and filler rod upside down. I ended up with a 1/4-20 bolt threaded into the backside of the unwelded tab pemnut with some paracord tied to it. I looped that around a tube on the far side of the chassis back to the nearside where I could draw it tight and tie it off. It worked pretty well.



With the front seats home, I mocked one up to make sure the shoulder harness mount bars were correct. They were so those got installed and welded out as well.



One other thing I did for my own piece of mind was sleeve the holes in the engine crossmember. The bolts are clamping on the narrow profile and the frame side mounts are a saddle as well but I've never liked or had good luck clamping through a hollow form. Especially when it's supporting something heavy.



I opened the holes up to 5/8" and sleeved them back down to 1/2" (original hole size) for 3/8" hardware.

 

[Bggrnchvy]

I received a set of seat sliders that bolt into the vertical tab style mounts on these seats and deliver ~5" of movement.



I mounted them onto one of the seats and set it in the rearward position and set the seat in the frame 1/2" from the B pillar. With that mocked up I measured out and came up with some tabs I lopped out of a drop of 1-1/2" .120w. I cleaned them up and put some offset 3/8" holes in them and bolted them in, tacked them, pulled seat and welded them out.



They will need some support underneath, probably ribs under the center console/seat bracket and some stringers out to the rub rail from the narrow seat rails to offset the moment I've induced by mounting off center. I wanted to get the floor in first to see what I could fit though. A lot of work, but it will let me wife drive this as well being she is about 9" shorter than I am.




To fit the floor, I need to fit the entire firewall assembly as they all bolt together. To hang that I needed to weld in the passenger wiring bulkhead blank and the driver side orbital and brake MC mount.




Hard work done, almost without any adjustments bolted the entire firewall up. Amazed at how well it all fits, both panel to panel and panel nested in the frame. I had to use an aluminum burr in about 3 spots to clearance a couple of corners or tube reliefs, very minor.

 

[Bggrnchvy]

I cut up some more steel and made some tabs and return gussets for the seat mount tabs. I promptly cooked the welds on the tabs, less heat next time.




With the buggy upside down again, I burned in the extra pair of sway bar saddle mounts Goatbuilt sent out. I was missing the second pair in the kit originally.



I righted the rig and pulled the floors and firewall to weld out the tabs I had tacked in place from below.



Once all those were welded out and I put all the sheet metal and the driver seat back in for the time being, I fit the dash kit. Once again, it all dropped in, no fuss.

 

[Blase]

Looking good.

 

[Thornbird1]

Thing is legit. Makes me want a buggy

 

[Bggrnchvy]

Photodump of the last couple of months of odd hours I was able to put into this. Main things accomplished: dash tabs welded out, welded out upper shock mounts, received the rear bench, built the bump cans and welded the steering ram skid, but the major hurdle was stripping/cutting all the brackets off the 60. That's finally done so I can start fitting the truss.































Knuckles are at my BILs for sand blasting so I can weld on the JHF arms I picked up. I bought a few pounds of Ni99 for more piece of mind, I'll washout a good section onto the knuckle, then build up the throat with ER70.

 

[Wisconsinite]

Looking good!

 

[Bggrnchvy]

Putting an off the shelf kit weld on arm always looks like an easy process. I had some challenges, some of which were self induced.

I started with a set of knuckles off an '08 Texas truck. I pulled the vacuum hose adapters and plugged them with 1/8npt plugs.



Which I found out are the 09-12 lightened knuckles. Same mounting points of everything, but the casting is windowed in a couple spots and the contours are reduced.

I made the project longer by taking them to my BILs and sandblasting them.



When I started fitting up the plates, the top plates had some major fitment problems with these later knuckles.



The plates were trimmed back and I made up some add tabs to tie in to the second plane.




Beyond the top plates, the side plates needed some grinding and one just wouldn't work. I made a new one, but these come with a 1-3/8" hole on a 2" tall plate. Well, I only round hole maker I have at home 1-3/8" or less is 1", so one side ends up looking different. Not something you will ever notice when they're on the rig, but they look funny on the bench. Oh well.

I preheated them on the grill and turned the Dialarc up. All the horizontal plates got 2-4 passes top and bottom depending on joint. I installed a bolt in the rod end pocket with opposing nuts and prestretched it by about .035" big. It still shrunk up .015 short of 2" after I removed it when the assembly cooled. I guess I'll be turning the misalignment spacers down a little. The cast to mild steel joints were nickel rod and the mild to mild just ER70. I've seen a few arms welded with ER70 ripped from the casting (weld intact, just pulled out the casting). I was ok giving up a little tensile strength for the ductility and carbon mitigating effect, even if some say it is unnecessary with cast steel (not iron).

 

[Bggrnchvy]

In between life and holidays I've been picking away at the front axle truss. It's a Goatbuilt kit, but it is universal, so I had to do some work to fit it all.

The main structure and internal rib had to have the tube copes opened up to fit the 3-3/4" diameter axle tubes, luckily it comes pre-scribed for that and it's just a few minutes with the plasma and a flap disc to do.

That done, I had figure out how much caster and pinion angle I needed to find where the truss would be plumb to. First order, find out the difference between pinion and caster on this axle.

Zero the caster:



Measure the pinion angle:



10.5 degree between them. Factor in the 3 degree offset bushings for the balljoint eliminators coming for the knuckles and aiming for 7* of caster I get 4* of caster from the mount with the truss at 0 and 6.5 degree of pinion inclination, which is good.

A peice of angle was clamped to the tube to set the angle, I found centerline and matched those as well, then I found the truss interfered with the pumpkin at the deepest point by 5/8". So I sat the truss on two 5/8 bolts to get it to site level.



To get the contour to cut, I grabbed a compass and set it to 5/8 and just traced the outline of the pumpkin onto any truss it contacted. A little time with the plasma again and a grinder and we had clearance.



The backbone of the truss was welded in the corners to secure its shape, then I welded the points of contact with the tubes, as it's all rolled steel and ER70 and a few hundred amps works fine. Before moving on I bolted the Ruffstuff cover on to try and add some more stability to the housing.

The trickier was then welding the housing to the truss. This is nodular iron and I can't fit it in bbq. I spent a while trying to warm it up with a Mapp gas torch, then cranked the welder up to 250a and laid a bead on the casting only of ni99 filler. This gave me a wide throat tying into the cast and made sure everything was very hot. With the initial pass done, I made a root pass, with ni99, joining the two peices at the same settings moving quickly to not blow through the 3/16" truss. Finally I laid a cover with more ni99, washing all 3 passes together followed by post heating. No cracks.



Somewhere amongst all that I trimmed the plates to fit the housing and tacked them all on, and in some places welded them to the pumpkin.



With everything tacked, I stitched the truss together to hold the shape and keep the tacks from breaking while I welded it out.



Welding process was a few inches at a time front and back, alternating as much as possible to bring it all up to temp. When I finally got the root done on it all, the plate to axle tube got an almost continuous cover pass, just er70, to increase the throat.





Ram mount is next up and I've already done the rough fit. Should have an update in a few days.

 

[Bggrnchvy]

A few more hours in this weekend. I really wanted to have the ram mounted before I ran out of time Sunday and we got there, with some room to spare.

Per directions, I cleaned the nuts that will act as threads for the ram skid and welded them in place. I did not have a flat head cap screw to center them, so I made one without resorting to the lathe with a drill and flap disc. I might need to make a set of these to have around in common sizes.



Mount was trimmed and notched to fit the axle, moved over enough that I could get the 3 offset clamps for the ram on where I wanted but still pull the carrier. Then it got welded out, ni99 on the housing like the rest, all of it got a second pass. There is an internal plate that tab indexes (you can see the tab welds) that was welded out internally. After installing the plate I was able to reach in from the side with the mig and get 2-3" of weld to the front truss plate.




One cover bolt was not easily accessible, a few minutes with a carbide burr got clearance for a socket to take it in and out.



With the mount hanging over the cover, there's a combination of a no second plane at the top and a big moment on the bottom I just felt like I could fix. So I added a little tab up top to wrap the corner and box in the bracket and did a similar thing on the bottom but with two, so it unbolts with the cover. The hole has enough clearance for a cover gasket and I did have to trim the ram skid a little. Probably overkill, but it gives me some piece of mind. Current bolt will be swapped for a hardened one when I can pick one up.




Finally it was time to mockup the ram. I got it centered and then adjusted height to to be very close to the steering arms on the knuckles, which I can't mount yet because the ball joint eliminators are still 'shipped' without only the label created a month later. With everything lined out, I welded out the mounting feet.



With the ram all but mounted I decided to sneak in the upper link mounts as well. I cleaned them up, prepped the weld area and bolted it all together with the spacers Goatbuilt supplies and clamped it to the truss right on the scribed lines, very easy. It all got tacked a dozen ways and then welded out.




So that's were it sits.



Thinking about adding some mechanical stops for the ram end caps, unsure as 3 clamps is probably enough, but I would hate to loose it.

Next step is lower link mounts, with integrated coilover mounts. With the short side tube being quite so short, and the 3.75" diameter, they need some love (probably from the plasma) and I just wasn't up to the task end of day Sunday. Soon.

 

[HYDRODYNAMIC]

A few more hours in this weekend. I really wanted to have the ram mounted before I ran out of time Sunday and we got there, with some room to spare.

Per directions, I cleaned the nuts that will act as threads for the ram skid and welded them in place. I did not have a flat head cap screw to center them, so I made one without resorting to the lathe with a drill and flap disc. I might need to make a set of these to have around in common sizes.



Mount was trimmed and notched to fit the axle, moved over enough that I could get the 3 offset clamps for the ram on where I wanted but still pull the carrier. Then it got welded out, ni99 on the housing like the rest, all of it got a second pass. There is an internal plate that tab indexes (you can see the tab welds) that was welded out internally. After installing the plate I was able to reach in from the side with the mig and get 2-3" of weld to the front truss plate.




One cover bolt was not easily accessible, a few minutes with a carbide burr got clearance for a socket to take it in and out.



With the mount hanging over the cover, there's a combination of a no second plane at the top and a big moment on the bottom I just felt like I could fix. So I added a little tab up top to wrap the corner and box in the bracket and did a similar thing on the bottom but with two, so it unbolts with the cover. The hole has enough clearance for a cover gasket and I did have to trim the ram skid a little. Probably overkill, but it gives me some piece of mind. Current bolt will be swapped for a hardened one when I can pick one up.




Finally it was time to mockup the ram. I got it centered and then adjusted height to to be very close to the steering arms on the knuckles, which I can't mount yet because the ball joint eliminators are still 'shipped' without only the label created a month later. With everything lined out, I welded out the mounting feet.



With the ram all but mounted I decided to sneak in the upper link mounts as well. I cleaned them up, prepped the weld area and bolted it all together with the spacers Goatbuilt supplies and clamped it to the truss right on the scribed lines, very easy. It all got tacked a dozen ways and then welded out.




So that's were it sits.



Thinking about adding some mechanical stops for the ram end caps, unsure as 3 clamps is probably enough, but I would hate to loose it.

Next step is lower link mounts, with integrated coilover mounts. With the short side tube being quite so short, and the 3.75" diameter, they need some love (probably from the plasma) and I just wasn't up to the task end of day Sunday. Soon.

Without having steps/notches in the cylinder, it takes a lot of clamping force to hold the cylinder in place. My old 3" PSC was unnotched and would slip with two clamp as it could never be torqued enough. The aluminum clamps would stretch and or the paint would allow slip. I ended up switching out the normal outside clamp with extra inside clamps and upsized to 5/8" hex head bolts and the movement stopped. Worst case for what you have is the cylinder slips until the clamps hit the weld at the port and it stops. I would switch out the split washer for a nordlock locking washer. If you did through my build you will see the washers.

 

[Bggrnchvy]

Without having steps/notches in the cylinder, it takes a lot of clamping force to hold the cylinder in place. My old 3" PSC was unnotched and would slip with two clamp as it could never be torqued enough. The aluminum clamps would stretch and or the paint would allow slip. I ended up switching out the normal outside clamp with extra inside clamps and upsized to 5/8" hex head bolts and the movement stopped. Worst case for what you have is the cylinder slips until the clamps hit the weld at the port and it stops. I would switch out the split washer for a nordlock locking washer. If you did through my build you will see the washers.

That's what I was thinking. Clamping force, especially when it's 6061 to a painted surface, needs to be excessive. This is only a 2.5" ram though. Some external stops are probably the most elegant fix.

Good call on swapping hardware. I use a lot of Nordlocks, they work very well.

 

[Bggrnchvy]

Two months later after work trips, covid, a couple weeks of prep and a trip to the sand with small toys I'm back to working on this again.

Previously I moved the 60 and weighed it, empty and knuckless, at the same time.



Surprised it's only 244lbs for a big pig of a cast center section.

14 bolt rear got stripped down and cleaned up.




I tacked the rear truss together on the bench after cleaning it all up.



To mark out the trim of the universal truss I made a fixture of sorts out using a couple pieces of angle, some spacers for the truss and a 2x4 to lock in the pinion angle.





Truss fit to the housing, I welded in the missing pieces and added a couple shims so the bump areas would fit tight to the tubes.



Then I worked my way back and forth, front and back tacking, then stiching methodically the truss to the housing. I made a filler piece to join the back of the truss to the housing as the relief as cut from GB didn't leave a lot left on one side. It got burned together with the ni99 rods leftover to the housing and er70 to the truss. Same on the front, minus the extra plate.



Tube to truss mates got a cover pass.



Truss welded out I started laying out the TMR shave kit. With the starting point I'm just going to shoot it with the laser to transfer it around.



Of course the laser is at work, so I changed gears. The balljoint eliminators had come in so I toasted the knuckle again and welded in the uniball cups, followed by trimming the split bushing to establish adjustment and bolting it all together.

 

[desertPOS]

Thinking about adding some mechanical stops for the ram end caps, unsure as 3 clamps is probably enough, but I would hate to loose it.

Next step is lower link mounts, with integrated coilover mounts. With the short side tube being quite so short, and the 3.75" diameter, they need some love (probably from the plasma) and I just wasn't up to the task end of day Sunday. Soon.

One thing I've noticed on a few different rigs that only ran three clamps on the ram - the endcap on the end with no clamp tends to unthread and leak. Or unthread to the point that the whole endcap is spitting out. If you notice it leaking later, it'd be worth putting a clamp on the diff end to lock that endcap in place. Or use wire or some other idea to retain the endcap from being able to unthread...

 

[The Unknown]

Nice work on the housings. I know that isn't easy and takes quite a while to get it to come out so clean. Well done.

 

[Bggrnchvy]

One thing I've noticed on a few different rigs that only ran three clamps on the ram - the endcap on the end with no clamp tends to unthread and leak. Or unthread to the point that the whole endcap is spitting out. If you notice it leaking later, it'd be worth putting a clamp on the diff end to lock that endcap in place. Or use wire or some other idea to retain the endcap from being able to unthread...

I was convinced by friends to add stops, they're in there a few posts back.

Nice work on the housings. I know that isn't easy and takes quite a while to get it to come out so clean. Well done.

Thank you, it is a time suck and a half.

 

[Wisconsinite]

Thank you, it is a time suck and half.

I feel your pain. They turned out really great

 

[Bggrnchvy]

Finished up the housing side of the axle shave. I still need to chuck up the ring gear and turn it down a half inch.

To where we left off, I used a laser to transfer my cut line across the ribbed housing.



Prior to digging in I added a support to try and keep the housing from springing open after I pulled the lower lip since I welded the truss on the backside. Likely futile, but a couple of 5/16 holes took 2 minutes to do.



A 7" grinder got most of the way through, but I had to finish it with the sawzall and a 12" blade.




I welded it in and out, again with the Ni99. After building up the outside bead with 4-5 passes, I tried to wash it a bit more uniform and it looks like giant cold mig tacks That's what I get for not leaving well enough alone. Oh well.




Axle housing done, I needed to lop the bottom off the Ruffstuff cover to match the TMR shave kit. I leveled the housing, then bolted on the new piece for the cover and rotated the axle so that piece was level. It has a 6° difference to the bottom plate. Then, back out came the laser and I adjusted it's height to the bottom of the plate to be welded in, which was in the same plane.




Then I removed the plate to be welded in and bolted on the cover without moving the laser to get my cut line. Worked out quite well. I did take the cover off to cut the lip off after I traced the laser line.





I tacked the snot out of it and then did a root and a pair of cover passes with ER70. I also pulled it off and welded out the inside.



For the last item since I just plated the bottom of the housing in mild rolled steel, I stole a few sticks of Stoody 31 hard facing rod from my BIL (he's a foundation driller, so he hard faces all the time) and put a pattern on the bottom. The last time SMAW'ed anything I hadn't graduated HS, so it is as good as I could hoped for. The hard face should be about RC47, about as hard as a low quality knife.



Finished for now. Onto the 205 next.

 

[DMANbluesfreak]

I dig the hard face... my 14b has been shaved probably 1/16"-1/8" more than I did with my sawsall. Maybe I could benefit from some of that lol. Nice job overall too. That'll be nice to have that extra clearance.

 

[Bggrnchvy]

I dig the hard face... my 14b has been shaved probably 1/16"-1/8" more than I did with my sawsall. Maybe I could benefit from some of that lol. Nice job overall too. That'll be nice to have that extra clearance.

Thanks, it just seemed like the right solution for the situation.

 

[Bggrnchvy]

205 teardown/cleanup/cutoffdisc assault/weldyweldy/tape+paint.

Baring some bearings I'll rebuild it and marry the ORD Magnum to it next.








FYI, cheap ultrasonic cleaners are awesome. I bought this one for all the little carburetors that argue with CA gas and it cleans them up with a quickness. It does the same with greasy transfer case parts. 140°F, 50/50 Simple Green/H2O, 5-10 minutes of ultrasonic party time and they come out looking really good.

 

[chaplinfj60]

205 teardown/cleanup/cutoffdisc assault/weldyweldy/tape+paint.

Baring some bearings I'll rebuild it and marry the ORD Magnum to it next.








FYI, cheap ultrasonic cleaners are awesome. I bought this one for all the little carburetors that argue with CA gas and it cleans them up with a quickness. It does the same with greasy transfer case parts. 140°F, 50/50 Simple Green/H2O, 5-10 minutes of ultrasonic party time and they come out looking really good.

so i click on your pics and get routed to photo bucket, is it a glitch?

 

[chaplinfj60]

and how big is that cleaner the basket i mean

 

[Bggrnchvy]

so i click on your pics and get routed to photo bucket, is it a glitch?

and how big is that cleaner the basket i mean

I host through photobucket, so the links all lead to photobucket.

They have all different size baths. This unit is the 3 liter, there's a smaller 2L and they go all the way up to 30L from this brand. When I bought it I wasn't sure I would use it much but for the little carburetors. Now I wish I had a 6L.

 

[chaplinfj60]

you have just opened my eyes never heard of ultrasonic cleaners, now looking at a 10L, also found a thread on here about the cleaners too. too cool, thanks again

 

[Bggrnchvy]

Some minor progress the last couple months.

I did build the doubler. I incorrectly added the input shaft seal and retainer, it's not needed on this later revision Magnum. It was removed before I married the two. I am waiting for NWF to finish prototyping their new titan shorty output for the 205 so I can shrink my overall length before I build out the rear output.




There were a pile of fittings in the box and I think I figured it's to build a combination fill and sight tube so I assembled it as such.



I turned down the ring gear to 10.050" to clear the shaved housing and checked fitment before pulling the carrier back out, loctiting and torqueing all the ring gear bolts (which I remembered to buy some prior to needing them since they don't come in the rebuild kits).





Then I started to build the pinion support. It got torn down, cleaned up and had new races installed and an oil seal so I could start playing with pinion bearing preload.



I opted for a crush sleeve eliminator so it is a game of swapping shims to the right overall height. I started at the thickness of the old crush sleeve and have been slowly adding and recombining to get the right preload. Still not there yet as of last night. Mark Williams hardened flange yoke there. The old nut is being used for the different preload attempts with plenty of anti seize on the pinion threads. When I get it locked in I will put the new deformed nut on.

 

[Wisconsinite]

When I set the pinion preload on my axles, I did the crush sleeve delete and made my own shims. I used the shop press to apply the clamp load rather than using the pinion nut. It seemed a little faster for me. Just a thought.

 

[Bggrnchvy]

When I set the pinion preload on my axles, I did the crush sleeve delete and made my own shims. I used the shop press to apply the clamp load rather than using the pinion nut. It seemed a little faster for me. Just a thought.

I thought of doing it that way, but my press is tucked back in the corner between the lathe and Dialarc. It's great to press in a race or a couple of bearings on a carrier, but access is miserable for a repetitious process even with the air over ram. With a 2 jaw puller and both impacts (3/8 and 1/2), to run the puller screw and pinion nut respectively the swaps are pretty quick back and forth. Just don't forget to check under the bearing for a .010 or .015 shim that sticks and screws up several of your setups and skews all of your numbers

 

[Bggrnchvy]

I was one more setup away on the pinion preload. It's tight, right at 35in/lbs, so break in will have to be slow. Backlash is tight as well, on purpose, at .004" so it all works together I guess. A couple neighborhood rides when it all runs with dino oil before putting some 250wt synthetic in there should get everything lapped in. It felt good to torque the caps the final time, it's just too bad the tube of Right Stuff I had failed so I couldn't get the cover on.

 

[Bggrnchvy]

Progressing on multiple fronts the last month.

The fuel tank was a dilemma. The tank Goatbuilt makes is 18 gallons, which is a good amount but light for a long trip with a heavy buggy and healthy 6.0L and I hate carrying extra fuel cans. The space between the two vertical bars is right at 22.5" too so I can't recess almost any larger tank into that area either as they start at 24" wide. After measuring and researching quite a bit, I gambled on this RCI circle track wedge style tank fitting and boy does it! 26 gallons listed capacity and I'll probably be using one of Drew's adapter plates for both a GM drop in pump I'll add a Hydromat to and remote fill.




With the cell acquired, I needed to build some struct underneath for mounting and to protect it from damage. Two old tubes form the first XL chassis rear got chopped up and coped to fit. Coping them to fit made me miss all the laser cut goodness from the kit, I do not miss hand fitting tubing.





To help me make the plan for fuel cell mount/skid, coilover and bypass upper mounts and storage panels, I modeled the chassis rear section and I've just started doing some sheet metal. I'll get it all shot out and broken so I can dimple and add nutserts and hopefully buy myself some time ahead.




Fuel cell aside, the lower shock and link mounts were cleaned/prepped and welded out.




I pulled the used SAW 2.5x16s out of storage, crusty. They need a rebuild, but for the time being they are needed for mockup.



A liberal application Harvest Gold, a little time and some water got all the oil off. Add a single coil, an old hardware kit and a fresh set of Fox 2.5x16 3 tubes and we have a mockup. Everything fits!




I need to solidify some items before I can articulate the rear axle and plan for the bumps, but I think there's going to be plenty of room.