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Once a Postal 67 800 Build

Spent time tonight building the doubler box. Took the np241 i had cut up and welded some scrap aluminum to it as a cap.
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I also welded some tabs to bolt down the adapter plate to. I also built the adapter plate out of 1/4 inch aluminum, but am going to probably scrap it and make a steel one. The aluminum one will be too flimsy and bent/crack under the load of a transfer case bolted to it. Feel free to critique the aluminum welds, I did them with a spoolgun after a quick preheat with the torch. Came out ok for my first time welding aluminum.
 
I also have some plans for putting trailing arms in the rear to keep the shocks away from the tires, and to get rid of the radius arms for a parallel four link in the front. I am drawing it up in CAD currently and will upload a picture when it is done.
I also blew up a powersteering line, and an o2 sensor went out. Everything is backordered until next year which is annoying. Semester ended so I have more time, but I am waiting on parts which is a tad bit annoying.
 
You should let the case sit full of diesel so you can find your leaks.
 
Made up some trailing arms. I took the rear links (2" OD by 1/4 wall DOM) and cut them about a quarter of the way to the back. I took some 1.5" 1/4 wall DOM that was left over from the steering and panhard, and bent two pieces in the good old harbor freight pipe kinker. I pounded the bigger tube over the smaller tube to give it a bend and cut some 1/4" plates for the shock mounts and to reinforce the trailing arms. The shock mount sits at about an inch below the centerline between the suspension joint bolts. I also replaced the rear johnny joint with a forged poly bushing from barnes.
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Will add a plate to the bottom to act as a skid. Going to relocate the shock mounts on the frame to where the old gas tanks were and it should all go together pretty easily.
 
Was out of town for a few weeks so not much has been done. Found some time to install the trailing arms.
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Cut out the flat plate the gas tanks used to sit on and started figuring out shock placement.
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It looks like the shocks will fit great. Much better than before with mounting the shocks on the axle. This setup allows for about 22 inches of travel. But I will probably have to strap it at less because of the driveshaft binding. I wish I had some 10 or 12 inch coilovers instead of 14's for the rear since it would have been even easier to package and the travel would have been easier to manage.

I also got in contact with NWF and they said they can ship me one of their shafts for the ecobox for a few hundred bucks. It should fit perfect in the case that I built. Was hoping to have this thing ready for KOH this year but oh well, it will have to stay home again this year. I got school starting up again but my new job will give me more time so I will be able to work on this more than 1-2 days a week.
 
Made some shock mounts out of the old ones. And got them tacked on the frame.
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Flexed out the axle to see how everything cleared. It all looked good so Welded them up. Then its paint and final assembely. Currently have the shock limited at 11 inches of stroke, with 15 inches of wheel travel. I will have to get new straps for more travel, but the driveshaft seems to hit its limit at 17-19 inches of travel, and it will only get worse once the doubler goes in. I have some heavy 16 inch and 14 inch springs laying arpund i will probably use. They are quite a bit heavier than the old springs, so we will see how they work.
 
Painted up the rear and got they shocks on. Fixed the powersteering and took it for a drive. I have 200lb 14 inch springs as uppers and 250lb 16 inch springs as lowers. It gave me the ride height I wanted without any preload.
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I Can push the back bumper down easily and almost hit the bumpstops. (Currently at 6 inches of bump.) The back compresses to the bumps when I back down my driveway, (it is pretty steep) and backing up the driveway the suspension extends in the rear until it tightens up the limit straps.
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The tire is only a foot above the ground, but the back end fully flexed out right away, and the front passenger did not move at all, only the front driver, which is on the strap. One of the radius arm uppers is dissconected. Instead of flexing like it did before, the body just wants to spill over. I definetely need to actually tune the shocks properly, the rear needs way more aggressive valving to help with the rear being so easy to move, and I also need to buy a rear swaybar once my paycheck comes in.
 
Revalved my shocks. The rear had 15/15 valving with one free bleed hole, and the front had 20/8 valving with a free bleed hole. Explained why the front was loose around turns and wanted to knock your teeth out on bumps, and the rear didn't really feel like it had valving and would ride harsh at speed. I know jack shit about selecting shim stacks, so I have been messing around with different stacks, some make it ride better some worse. Will have to take it out to the desert to tune it better since the field by my house isn't cutting it. Will also get some blank pistons with no free bleed holes drilled in them. Right now you can pick the bumper up and down several inches with no effort, it needs something to control the low speed.

Also took it on the freeway to see how well ot would drive. It cruises just fine at 65, but when you get passed by a semi it want to go off the road. Not much I can do about that it just gets really squirrelly when you try to correct it. Will give currie a call tuesday to order a swaybar for the rear. Acutune says to put a swaybar on to control handling and then worry about shocks to control the ride, will hopefully get that on before messing with the shocks more.
 
You should be able to tap the free bleed holes and put set screws in them with locktite, which you can do for cheap / free and play around with.

The free bleed holes should help, by allowing "slow" shaft movement, but being small can't allow much fluid through them, so in a "fast" piston movement they shouldn't make that much difference as most of the fluid has to go through the piston and shim stacks. Something else is going on.

I think a sway bar is on the right track.
 
LScout800 said:
and the front had 20/8 valving with a free bleed hole. Explained why the front was loose around turns and wanted to knock your teeth out on bumps,
Click to expand...
Sounds like perfectly good valving to me. Wouldn't want bottom out too hard and break shit. :laughing:
 
Opiebennett said:
You should be able to tap the free bleed holes and put set screws in them with locktite, which you can do for cheap / free and play around with.

The free bleed holes should help, by allowing "slow" shaft movement, but being small can't allow much fluid through them, so in a "fast" piston movement they shouldn't make that much difference as most of the fluid has to go through the piston and shim stacks. Something else is going on.

I think a sway bar is on the right track.
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That is smart. Will have to do that so I can play with the freebleed. I am curious as to what it will do without it.
arse_sidewards said:
Sounds like perfectly good valving to me. Wouldn't want bottom out too hard and break shit. :laughing:
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Gotta love FOA. Going down a rough road with that vavling makes my f-250 feel like a prerunner.
 
No 1. I love this thing.
No.2 any plans to raise your drag link to the PS knuckle to improve the relationship (angles) between DL and TrackBar?
I have a similarly built XJ and struggled with steering / suspension induced handling issues. I noticed some improvements once the TB and DL angles / lengths were closer to the same.
I'm also curious- are you running poly bushings throughout both your radius arms?
 
The Freeak said:
No 1. I love this thing.
No.2 any plans to raise your drag link to the PS knuckle to improve the relationship (angles) between DL and TrackBar?
I have a similarly built XJ and struggled with steering / suspension induced handling issues. I noticed some improvements once the TB and DL angles / lengths were closer to the same.
I'm also curious- are you running poly bushings throughout both your radius arms?
Click to expand...
Thanks!
Yes, that is one of the things I am going to do. It is tight though, I have 6 inches of uptravel on this thing while sitting pretty low, so there is not a whole lot of room to move the panhard. I do have a a scout 2 box someplace I might try to put on the outside to get a longer drag link, but I think it would hit the tire. The short drag link is also limiting my steering a lot, I have more room on the stops but my box limits out. I might get a highsteer knuckle for the passenger side, the draglink is also limiting me to 12 inches of down travel so that will help also. I do not have much room to move the panhard around, when this thing stuffs it gets way too tight. Bushings on the axle/link side are all poly with johnny joints on the frame. The front actually flexes pretty good despite being radius arms, it should be well balanced with an antirock. Only gripe I really have with them is the lack of antidive.
 
This project has been put on hold for a little. I got tired of cutting out brackets with an oxy propane torch and a grinder, They never fit good and it takes the better part of a day to make them, so I spontaneously decided to build a CNC plasma table. My bedroom is now full of CNC parts and my 3D printer has been running nonstop making parts for it. I will hopefully start putting it together this weekend, and get some pictures of it. Trying to put all the parts I drafted up into an assembly, but it appears they decided to change how assemblies worked in FreeCAD and now I can't figure out how to import all my parts into an assembly to put them together.

Some technical aspects of the table:
-Arduino Uno with CNC shield
-Nema 23 Steppers (3 Nm for x/y-axis, and 1.9 Nm for the Z-axis)
-DM542 Drivers
-Table will use belt drives for x/y and some threaded rod for the Z
-2 inch square tube for the frame/rails
-Random 3D printed parts drafted in FreeCAD
-Lotus Plasma Cutter (cheapest LF start plasma with CNC capability)
-3*5 cutting bed (this thing is huge and my dad will not be happy with even more of his garage being taken over by my stupid projects)

The scout will be put on hold for a few weeks while I get this table going, but the many changes I want to make are going to be much easier/faster with a CNC table. In my mind spending thousands of dollars and several weeks on a new tool is more worth it than a few bucks in gas and a couple days spent making brackets...
I will make a dedicated thread to the table when I turn it on and it does not work so I can get some help trouble shooting it.
 
Was waiting on parts for the plasma table so I pulled the tranny.
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I then lopped the end of it off.
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Then I cut some out and welded it back on.
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The underdrive box bolted to the back with the transfer case hanging off the end.
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The underdrive box is 9 inches long. I was able to reduce the overall size of the transmission by 3 inches. This gives me a longer drivetrain by 6 inches. Now the issue is that the drivetrain has just enough legnth to get into the rear link mounts. They need to get moved back about two inches. Either I move the link mounts back 2-3 inches or I get a new transfer case, preferably a 205. The 205 would be a good deal shorter, but also bigger meaning I may have to gut the cab more or notch the frame. The np241 is only a 1/4" from the framerail, so I doubt a 205 will fit. It might be the same amount of work to shorten the rear links and move the mounts back.
 
LScout800 said:
This project has been put on hold for a little. I got tired of cutting out brackets with an oxy propane torch and a grinder, They never fit good and it takes the better part of a day to make them, so I spontaneously decided to build a CNC plasma table. My bedroom is now full of CNC parts and my 3D printer has been running nonstop making parts for it. I will hopefully start putting it together this weekend, and get some pictures of it. Trying to put all the parts I drafted up into an assembly, but it appears they decided to change how assemblies worked in FreeCAD and now I can't figure out how to import all my parts into an assembly to put them together.

Some technical aspects of the table:
-Arduino Uno with CNC shield
-Nema 23 Steppers (3 Nm for x/y-axis, and 1.9 Nm for the Z-axis)
-DM542 Drivers
-Table will use belt drives for x/y and some threaded rod for the Z
-2 inch square tube for the frame/rails
-Random 3D printed parts drafted in FreeCAD
-Lotus Plasma Cutter (cheapest LF start plasma with CNC capability)
-3*5 cutting bed (this thing is huge and my dad will not be happy with even more of his garage being taken over by my stupid projects)

The scout will be put on hold for a few weeks while I get this table going, but the many changes I want to make are going to be much easier/faster with a CNC table. In my mind spending thousands of dollars and several weeks on a new tool is more worth it than a few bucks in gas and a couple days spent making brackets...
I will make a dedicated thread to the table when I turn it on and it does not work so I can get some help trouble shooting it.
Click to expand...
What do you think the approx. cost savings is by building your own plasma CNC over something like the Langmuir Crossfire Pro? I have a cnc router table but have really been thinking of a plasma cnc as well.
 
crazy4ih said:
What do you think the approx. cost savings is by building your own plasma CNC over something like the Langmuir Crossfire Pro? I have a cnc router table but have really been thinking of a plasma cnc as well.
Click to expand...
Building your own can be done for 4-700 based on how much you add. I think I am about 500 bucks into the table. Check out JD's garage on youtube. They have a good series on building a budget table for around 500 bucks and will even sell you plans.
 
chaplinfj60 said:
derail......... cnc table. what plasma set up you using? got to go to that you tube channel. cool and thanks
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Lotus LTP500D. It was the cheapest LF start plasma cutter with cnc capability I could find. Have not gotten a chance to run it yet but from what I have read/heard it is a good plasma cutter.
 
right here in Ames iowa there is dude that has a scout shop. pretty cool on summer days he has a bunch out of the shop.

cool info on plasma too.

the 2 door scouts are soo cool too...
 
chaplinfj60 said:
right here in Ames iowa there is dude that has a scout shop. pretty cool on summer days he has a bunch out of the shop.

cool info on plasma too.

the 2 door scouts are soo cool too...
Click to expand...
That would be Anything Scout (New Legend) they build $150K plus Jeep framed scouts. Sean Barber is the guy, building a couple Race scouts for vintage class in Baja.
 
Winchested said:
That would be Anything Scout (New Legend) they build $150K plus Jeep framed scouts. Sean Barber is the guy, building a couple Race scouts for vintage class in Baja.
Click to expand...
That guys backhalfed 800 almost made me backhalf this scout. It is pretty sweet.
 
so one of our offices right next to their building. the green circles is that shop bunch of scouts there. like 20 plus that is out side. not to mention how many are in the building. the orange x is one of our small small office and lay down equipment yard.


cool beans. and if you need anything i can help let me know i go by there also.

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Some scout updates. Not much has been done, but I did chase a few of the electrical issues I am having and attempt to fix them. I cleaned up the wiring behind the dash and improved the steering column mount. I also sent the passenger knuckle off to get machined for highsteer. The scout needs to come forward a few feet before I can rip the rear apart again, so been waiting on the knuckle to come back for that.
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Figured out a leak I was having with the engine, my swaybar also came in. Can't wait to install it. It is their 40" bar. It is pretty thick being it is an inch thick, but I am planning on extending the arms to mount on the trailing arms so it will be softer. I wanted one of the 36 inch bars but it would not fit without hacking up the bed.
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Plasma table updates. Got the cutting bed/water table made. Currently testing it for leaks. It had a few that I marked and will fix tommarrow. It is a simple frame made of 1 1/2" angle with a sheet of 16 gauge on the bottom. The slats are almost perfectly flat, I need to gring a few down to make the cutting bed completely flat.
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This is my y-axis/gantry mount. I 3D printed it and it uses skateboard bearings to slide on a 2 inch square tube. A 2 inch tube mounts to the top to form a gantry.
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I had a x-axis made up but did not like it so it got scrapped, I will design a new one. I am planning on adding a z-axis to this eventually, but want to get it running/cutting first before I do that.
 
TLDR: are u using PLA for 3D printed pieces? Will it hold up with the heat? I have a spare gecko g540 sitting around, and probably most everything to do a belt driven X and Y, but going through 2 builds, there will be a bunch of little things crop up that used to require mill time. If they could be done with 3D printing I would be more apt to put something together.
 
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