lil bit of tinkering

[aw12345]

Beau, have you ever seen them preheat the skeleton of a high rise building when they weld it? Or the frame of a Bulldozer or other piece of heavy equipment, I bet you haven't because it is not necessary. Now on cast iron or cast steel that is an other story

[curtis]

Art When I did weiding and bending on Stuff like PM arms in the old days. We would heat it after weiding or before bending to a low red and then stick it in a big bucket of sand to cool. Then again you know that.

[Jeeperator]

Beau, have you ever seen them preheat the skeleton of a high rise building when they weld it? Or the frame of a Bulldozer or other piece of heavy equipment, I bet you haven't because it is not necessary. Now on cast iron or cast steel that is an other story

Well yes I have seen it done a few times on escavator booms, Crane booms and ripper shanks anything that gets alot of stress. Guys would spend hours welding a broke ripper shank back together and bury it in dirt overnight and it still flamming hot the next morning, talk about a heat treat. Just relaying info I recieve from my welding instructor from back in the day who was the guy to see to get get your welding certification. He always wanted us to preheat stuff whether it needed it or not. Steel building are riveted still arent they? Heat treat is not necessary but it will only help make it stronger. Oh yea art clear your pm's out. little info on why it helps http://esabna.com/us/en/education/kn...-Treatment.cfm

[aw12345]

Lot of the steel frames are welded, those ripper shanks are made of high tensile steel which is why you want to cool them slow to keep making them to brittle. Mild steel and this chunk of metal and the amount of welding it gets no need for it, message box is empty

Still chipping away

[aw12345]

Got a working pitman arm made , that's good, the draglink and track bar line up pretty darn close to perfect, happy about that. The tierod needs to come down about 1/2" to 3/4", kinda bad, but still close to 2" higher then before I took the front end apart. The happy, it'll work, getting some steel tomorrow and have a long weekend coming up so hope to get close to being finished with it.
A 6-7" front end stretch with less than 5" lift and 14" coilovers with 6" uptravel makes, packaging the whole shebang a pretty hard chore

[Tumbleweed13]

Wouldn't full hydralic steering solve this?

[aw12345]

Wouldn't full hydralic steering solve this?

Would make it a little easier

[aw12345]

I sure opened a Pandora's box with this one, however a couple of tubes of KY jelly later I am getting close to slamming the lid back on that darn box

Need to make a top plate for the passenger steering arm and then on to making a assist ram mount and skid plate.
Mounting the ram and routing the hoses is going to be fun also

[curtis]

I always use the KY for something else, but hell never tried it on fabwork. But I'm old school.

[dirtman13]

Doesn't look like your panhard and drag link are the same angle anymore. Full time trailer queen now? That ram will easily fit on the top left of your diff cover.

[aw12345]

Actually the panhard is perfect at ride height and pretty darn close in any other spot. Even if it's off the ram would dampen to many ill effects.

[aw12345]

To darn hot to do much of anything today, still kinda positioned the steering ram where it roughly needs to go. Looks like rotating it and pointing the fittings to the back will be my best bet. Going to make a skid/ integrated mount for the ram. Ordered some new electrodes for the plasma cutter so this weekend might turn into a cut fest lol. Snapon sure is proud of their stuff though.











This needs a bit of cleaning up with the grinder, but I am pretty darn happy with the fit and where it resides

[aw12345]

Made some more progress, really starting to like this shoehorn job, this is at ride height with the axle centered. going to have to change some hose fittings to get the hydraulic hoses routed the way I want to but the ram fits pretty nicely like this.

[aw12345]

Made some good progress this weekend, hoping to do a shakedown run next weekend

[aw12345]

My blingy mall krawler wheels lol, those things look tiny. On the bright side looks like my steering project will be done tomorrow. Got to weld the tabs for the center strap in and finish up the the hole in the frame for the draglink.
Then mess with the hoses for the steering ram and bleed it and take my baby for a spin.