It's An OCD Thing, You Wouldn't Understand

[inVERt'D]

Thanks Art

Haven't been down to Corral Canyon in a long time. Would love to tell you it will be soon, but some things are just gonna cost money and that is tight.

[inVERt'D]

On the road again, sorta.

I was laying under the Jeep one day, looked up and saw this little guy (or gal, idk) looking back at me. It must have roosted in the workshop for at least a month. I tried to work outside with the door closed whenever I could, but my workshop is not usually a good place to get a peaceful day's sleep. What do you think, is that love in its eyes?


With the driveshaft moved back about 12” further than stock, my driveshaft was way too short. Last time I'd payed a driveline shop $130 to add 2”. IIRC they charged $10/ inch of DOM. Plus I had to drive a long way. So I figured I'd give it a shot. You know what, it was really a PITA. Maybe partly because it's not thin-walled tubing. I gotta build a press one of these days. Anyway, getting the yoke into the tube is one thing, and getting it straight is another thing. Here's what I came up with, and it actually worked pretty well. The aft end I got to ~.001” or less runout, and the forward end to ~.005 or less (according to my HF dial indicator, anyway). I haven't had it up to highway speeds yet, so we'll so if it needs balance weights. So far, so good.

The trick here was to make a bunch of tiny tack welds with my TIG, mostly going opposite sides in a circle, like tightening lugnuts. Each little weld would bend the DS a tiny bit in its direction. Took quite a long while, but I finally got to the point where I could put some short beads on it (again opposite sides in a circle), and I finally got it all welded up. In between the welds I would rotate the tire to rotate the DS, sometimes gently adjusting it with a hammer tap.


Upper spring perch on the frame:




Here is the Jeep parked in front of a friend's house last fall. Had to use the shop for another project, so I kinda rushed the Jeep out the door. Those are TeraFlex 4” rear springs there. The body needs to move forward, be realigned, and come down a few inches in the back. That's how high that rear bumper really is. The LCAs are quite a bit further inboard than I plan to run them. The control arms are thin-walled fence post with about two 1/2” tack welds each (because I wanted to be just like Art). The axle spring perches are barely tacked on. The seat is sitting high because after a year and a half, I'd put part of the suspension together backwards. No rear brakes and no shocks mounted, but dangit, it moved under its own power! Not long afterward I welded up the axle spring perches with the springs in-place. That was like welding while playing twister with a Jeep.


Doing a little flexing here. Nothing too serious.



Gonna get back to the shop and the UCA bracketry next.

[daniel_buck]

Nice! Why so many adjustment holes for the spring perches and bump stops though?

[inVERt'D]

Nice! Why so many adjustment holes for the spring perches and bump stops though?

Thanks, Daniel! About time you piped up Pregnant question, actually

Conceptually, it's a Picatinny frame rail. There are may be more holes there than I will ever need for the spring perches, but they could be useful for mounting other things. I have toyed with the idea of a bolt-in crossmember and other things relating to my desire to create and experiment without having to grind out welds.

That said, when I was making the back-half, I wasn't committed to putting the perches behind the axle. In fact, I'm still not, and I may add provisions for moving the axle mount position forward, aft, inboard, and out. Really it wouldn't be difficult. Part of the reason for putting them behind the axle was to keep the perches low, keep the perch angle, LCA bracket angle, and pinion angle independent during setup, and be able to use a 1/2" retainer bolt. Also, the springs at the corners puts less leverage on the springs themselves. More leverage can be a good thing for getting maximum suspension travel out of a coil sprung suspension, but for less leverage will tend to make a more stable platform. Because of the effect of leverage on the springs, the longitudinal (forward-aft) position also relates to the effects of anti-squat geometry. Again, I want to be able to experiment with different spring and shock positions relative to the axle. On a related note, I don't really like having the shocks behind the axle in the rocks because mine sometimes took a beating in some of the messy stuff I wheeled in. I tried to be careful, but it was probably more luck than anything that I never had a rock take out a shaft.

Finally, I'd like the freedom to adjust the length of the wheelbase. It's currently at about 105-1/2". The main impediment to this is my driveshaft. I need a long slip spine unit.

[daniel_buck]

sounds reasonable! I guess leaving the holes there won't do anything negative to the strength of the frame, eh?

[inVERt'D]

sounds reasonable! I guess leaving the holes there won't do anything negative to the strength of the frame, eh?

The holes affect the strength of the frame, but it's still pretty danged strong. Besides that, I'm planning to do some triangulation and roll cage tie-in back there. I won't have as much triangulation back there as a buggy should, but it won't need it either.

What bothers me more regarding strength and rigidity are the rather large holes at the bends where the stock frame rises up for the axle hump. I'd like to fish plate over those, but in a way that wouldn't create a worse stress riser forward of it.

[inVERt'D]

FUBAR Part 2: Damnation, Tarnation, and Lamination

When I was able to put the Jeep on stands again, I started on the next phase of the UCA bracketry: laminates and such. I don't have a lot of pics I'd like to because I haven't sprung for new camera batteries in far too long. Many times I tried to take a pic and was denied.

Here's the first laminate. The purpose here is mostly to add rigidity and durability. Total thickness will be about 3/8” (3/16” x 2). I wish now I would have made them a little longer in the forward direction, but I was being a miser with material, and that size fit some scraps I had. The two little holes are for plug welds.






Good grief the paint job I did on that LCA stuff is atrocious there. I guess I had to prove to myself that using mineral spirits to thin the primer and a roller to apply it would come out looking like a cat's butt.

Next I welded some top tabs onto the UCA captures. I guess these make the setup triple-shear. Whatever, I just really don't want these things to break. One thing I don't seem to have a picture of is the hinge hole. It's just a hole with a sleeve welded in for a 5/8” bolt.


To this end I bring more laminates (and yet more still, and even more later).



We'll get these welded up in the next installment, and remember kids, Krylon Rust-Tough Enamel is the bee's knees!

[aw12345]

You got to much time on your hands, eagerly waiting on the next installment of the one and only meccano redneck jeep

http://www.meccano.com/ In case you are wondering

[inVERt'D]

You got to much time on your hands, eagerly waiting on the next installment of the one and only meccano redneck jeep

http://www.meccano.com/ In case you are wondering

I would have been wondering. Pretty cool stuff for kids. Like Erector Sets, but more specialized. They even have a little Eiffel Tower. I did some reading on the Eiffel Tower recently. Humbling indeed. Talk about thousands of accurately placed holes!

[inVERt'D]

FUBAR Part 2: Damnation, Tarnation, and Lamination (cont.)

To finish (I use that word loosely here) the UCA captures I the laminates needed to be welded on and the rect tubing underneath straightened out. I rounded sharp corners of the laminates, even though they had been strategically placed. Where corners stuck out above the radiused tube edges I pounded them down with a hammer.

The idea behind these was to make the captures more rigid, the holes more durable, and to fishplate the weld joints for an additional margin of safety. Clearance in the boxes was limited, so that played a big factor in the laminate design. The inboard laminates are 1/4", but the outboard laminates were made of 1/8" for the sake of frame clearance at full outboard adjustment. This was also the reason for the design of the bottom of the laminate.

Outboard UCA capture laminate tacked on:


Inboard UCA capture laminate tacked on:


UCA capture with laminates welded up and primed and painted. I could have made much more beautiful welds with less heat, but I would have wasted more argon, so I gitted them done. It will never be a show jeep anyway. Never.




Up next, more laminations on the boxes.

[inVERt'D]

The lower laminates for the boxes had to fit between two substantial welds. Welding the inside corners with my big WP-26 TIG torch was challenging. Would have rather used MIG for that, but my MIG gun won't reach.


Enough of the cantilever stuff. These trusses were designed to brace up the UCA boxes without creating bad stress risers on the crossmember, which is the main reason they're not welded on top. The bolts are there just to keep things in-place until the welds cool.





Inboard laminates with an action shot!



They go like this.



Not done with that stuff, but done for now. Next, putting it back together.

[daniel_buck]

The pieces that are laminated, is that just a way of beefing things up without actually having to use thicker stock? or are there other reasons? Just curious It's amazing the amount of custom parts made from scratch on your jeep, I look forward to seeing it in person

Looks like it will have a nice flat belly too

[inVERt'D]

The pieces that are laminated, is that just a way of beefing things up without actually having to use thicker stock? or are there other reasons? Just curious It's amazing the amount of custom parts made from scratch on your jeep, I look forward to seeing it in person

Looks like it will have a nice flat belly too

Thanks Daniel! I hope you see it in person reasonably soon . Realistically I'm now looking at Fall or Winter, depending on the weather and other factors.

Yes regarding the laminates, and yes there are other reasons too. As much as reasonably possible, I'm making do with the materials I have on-hand, so the laminates are a way of putting more beef where I want it. Got a lot more 3/16" than 3/8" stock, and besides those boxes which are bigger than they strictly need to be) would be ridiculously heavy if made of solid 3/8". Also a way of making a lot more work, but I must like doing it or something. If I had CNC laser, I'd be dangerous .

After all this, the belly sure as heck better be flat!

[inVERt'D]

Speaking of weather, it's interfering with my outside work at the moment, so I have time for another post.

Almost forgot about the links. Pretty standard 4-link fare, really. All of the links on the Jeep will have one right-hand threaded end, and one left-hand threaded end. The links will be adjustable like turnbuckles: spinning the link one way will lengthen it; the other way will shorten it. This has the potential to be high-maintenance, but it allows easy and minute adjustment. When I bought the hardware three years ago, I knew I'd probably regret not getting a hex tube adapter for each link, and I was right. Gonna have to improvise something for the lowers, because I really don't care for using a pipe wrench on them.

Here are the lowers: 2”, .250” wall DOM with 2.63”, 1-1/4” shank, 5/8” bolt Ballistic Joints w/ solid Nylatron races. The joints have a lifetime warranty with one free race replacement. Ballistic now uses polyurethane races, which they admit are better, so that's what I have when I end up replacing these.

The uppers: 1.75”, .120” wall DOM. They'll use the same Ballistic joints as the lowers. They're about 3” longer than the lowers IIRC. Basically roll cage tubing. They should be strong enough with a decent margin of safety, but if perchance they bend, replacing them with something heavier won't be a killer.


Here are the threaded tube adapters for the uppers. The round ones are Ballistic adapters for 2” tubing (what I'd originally intended to use for all links), left-handed thread, and the hex shaped ones I got from RAT/ Kurt with some Johnny Joints (thanks again, Kurt). Those were actually made for the size tubing used.


I TIG welded the all the ends with 200 amps, (except for the ~120A cap passes), including 2 or 3 plug/ rossette welds for good measure. Afterwards, it was necessary to clean all the threads with taps. At least weld failure shouldn't be a problem, and if I have 1-1/4” ID tubing, I won't need threaded adapters.

Next, putting it back together.

[inVERt'D]

Once everything was ready, putting it back together wasn't too difficult. Like I said, the UCA hinge boxes are tight. Putting the UCA captures into them requires grease (I use moly-lithium) a short-handled sledge hammer, and a block of wood. An alignment pin (a bolt ground to a point) is also very helpful. Taking the captures out is done easily with a come-along hooked to a clevis on the receiver hitch.

Here are things bolted up on the frame side. I like the LCA sliders much better in black. Speaking of which, they will be adjusted outboard another inch to move the axle back a tad for the driveshaft's sake. Otherwise I'll have to lengthen the lower links slightly, and I don't bother with that until I've modified them for a wrench or spanner. Further outboard will also mean a little less roll-understeer. I'd like to weld more gussets and such onto the captures--another time.


From the rear. As you can see, the body is still sitting a little cockeyed. The link brackets also need to be adjusted to position the axle a little more toward the passenger side, but the important thing here was just to get it ready to roll so it could be repositioned for other work, such as the front suspension. Fire season is also a concern.



I'd already rigged up some spring retainers that worked well on the smaller diameter coils at the ends of the larger diameter springs. However, I want to experiment more with running stock TJ front springs in the rear but had no retainers for their large open ends. Previously I'd run the open ends up, which had worked, but wasn't satisfactory without matching retainers anyway. I'd kept a short length of large water pipe laying around for just this purpose. Two pieces of it are sitting in the tub in the last pic.

The retainer cylinders needed bottoms with bolt holes to be welded on, so they could be secured to the spring perch. Here's what I ended up doing for that. Started with a scrap of some well-rusted 3/16” plate with a pattern scribed onto it.


Some holesaw magic.


A little plasma cutting and grinding and they fit. I am NOT a flatbiller, and these are NOT iron crosses, they're low stress-riser Xs.



Was feeling lazy, so MIG welded them in. It's just water pipe for crying out loud. Had to clean off the galvanization first, of course. I built in just enough clearance from the bottom for a stout washer and for the bottom-side weld beads.


Cut some reliefs in the cylinders to give water, mud, pebbles, bits of squirrel, etc., easy ways out.



Bolted to the perch with the small retainer in the center. Those work with the bump stops. The hex head sticking up is not the final plan, but will do for now.


Rear at full bump. UCAs clear what's left of the rear tub, but further aft the tub will have to be higher. I know what you're thinking. Those retainer cylinders need some more holes. Be patient, more holes are in the plans.


Couple of more shots from the rear. Sorry about the green tape.



For comparing the height of the rear bumper: