Rear Shock Mounts

Welding the Rear shock mount.  We are using a VW bug shock, it seems to be good enough

 and small in diameter.

This is a little hard to see. 

This is a picture of one of the students putting the wheels on the front.

Here is the front at ride height.  Next we start on the front shock mounts.  It is coming together.  Once we get the shocks mounted, then we will blow it apart and sandblast and paint.  Yee haw.

Rear air bags

Yay, it's like Christmas morning.

The airbags are here from airbagit.com. 

This is with the airbags squished.  The c-notch is barely off of the axle tube.

This is with the air pumped up.   Now the fronts...

Ok so it is quite a bit lower than I anticipated.  I am cool with that...

C Notch

OK so we decided to C-Notch the frame, just for better clearance.

It's a little hard to see here, but here is the C-notch.

So here it is with the C-notch sitting on the axle tubes.  The axle will be sitting on the airbags, we just didn't want metal on metal.  So it won't be quite as low as shown here, but almost.

Here is the problem.  The pumpkin will probably bump into the bed with the frame this low, and we really didn't want to build a bump in the bed for clearance.  Also the drive shaft line is getting really close to the cross members.

That brought the rear end down, the frame is just about level to the ground now with front and rear on the stops.  Next we need to beef up the C-notch area because cutting it out weakened it quite a bit.  And even though we no longer have the leaf spring perches in the rear part of the frame that require the strength, we are planning on putting on a trailer hitch, so we need it to be strong in the rear section of the frame. 

Panhard Bar

So the Panhard bar is the suspension piece that keeps the rear suspension centered left and right.  This picture shows the right frame rail and the panhard bar mount.

Here is a shot from underneath.  Unfortunately as you can see here, the Panhard bar is just about horizontal with the suspension fully collapsed.  So we are going to build the frame end mount a little lower so that it is slightly 'downhill' when collapsed, then horizontal at ride height and then slightly 'uphill' on her tippie toes.  We were originally going to put the axle end on the rear face of the axle tube, but this would mean that the spherical rod end would be moving the wrong way.  So we rotated it toward the bottom, making the frame end now too short.  Oh well, live and learn.

Here it is from the top.  You can see that the panhard bar angles back slightly, it seems to be okay though.

Here is the axle tube mount.  We are going to finish weld it all later, just before sandblast and paint.  As a final note, I called the guys over at Airbagit.com and they are the best!!  I finally blew the dust off of my visa card and bought the airbags that I need.  We are going straight bags on all four corners, so we will have to fabricate a shock mount for the front suspension.  Joe and Tom, thanks you guys, you're the best!

Let's see how she'll sit...

To C-notch or not to C-notch, that is the question.  Hamlet had it wrong...so here is the pumpkin and it is less than an inch below the frame rail height.  So if we do C-notch it, it will only be an inch or so.  We'll C, um, see...

So we put the body back on, it is nice to have a dozen teenage boys to lift this thing, it is heavy!  And we actually have a ton of room in the rear wheel wells.  I don't want to mess with the bottom of the bed, it will still be a truck after all, so we can't go so low that the pumpkin sticks out into the bed.  But it looks cool even this level.

The trouble is, we still have the monster huge springs in the front.  The Astro vans were heavy!!  Even with the engine and trans in place, and a couple of big boys on the frame, we were barely moving the front suspension at all.  So the question is, should we just get the airbag shocks, or just airbags, and remount the shocks?  The problem is the shocks have a limited amount of travel, and so the serious airbagger dudes don't like them as well.  We'll take the springs out and see what it looks like resting on the down stops.

Here it is in Wheelie mode.  Just photoshop out the jack...

OK, shocks and springs are out of the equation, sitting on the down stops, and it looks mean!!  The front crossmember is a little too low for the jack to slide under.  I think this is about right!  If the airbag shocks will allow this much travel then we are good to go with them.  What do you think?  

And here it is from the back. The wheels won't steer too far this low in the front, but that is the price that we pay for looking good.  My buddy Bob says that you just don't steer them very much with the bags dumped.  Yeah!  I might find some rims with more negative offset...I don't mean to sound greedy, but I would like to see the rear lower, maybe I can do it with tire diameter.

4 Link Rear

 So when we decided to put air bags on all four corners, we had to build a 4 link suspension on the rear.  When we priced out DOM tubing it was out of the question.  But what about the 1" square tubing that is more reasonably priced?  So we built 'bungs' to put into the ends of the square tubing, using 3/4" solid.  I drilled and tapped it (left and right hand thread) to fit the spherical rod ends.  I have a 4 jaw chuck on my lathe, where all 4 jaws move together.  The jaws move independently on 'normal' 4 jaw chucks, so this is way cool.  Until you try to do a left hand thread and it unscrews the chuck from the headstock.  Then we cut out the mounts for them, and drilled and tapped them as well.  Only right hand on the mounts though.

This is a close up of the 'bung' that will be used for the panhard bar

  At first we were going to use the stock front spring perch to mount the
four link.

But it would make the 4 link bars too short.  So we ended up cutting the original spring mount off.

Here is the rear end with the spring perches all cut off and ground down.

The 4 link tacked in place, measure to confirm that it is square to the world and weld it.  A little at a time, so the axle doesn't warp. 

See we are a peaceful bunch! 

We had to remove the wheel to get access to make the final passes on the axle end. 

Looking good.  Looks plenty strong enough. 

Pretty Welds, Boys!

This is how they look with the suspension fully collapsed.  The rubber bump stops are sitting on the axle.  So it will angle down from here at ride height.  We didn't want to have the front mount hanging down too low, so we compromised and the links are going to be going 'uphill' at ride height.  Next we need to add the panhard bar mounts.  Cut the panhard bar to length.  Then we need to buy the airbags.

I took a picture off of the internet and 'chopped' it using paintbrush.  I also moved the wheels up into the wheel wells.  This is the look we are going for.  It is just too cool.   Chop s'cool.

Body off

 Oh look something to climb on.  Boys.

 So here is the crusty rear suspension.  I think it is a 4.11/1 rear end ratio which should be good for the 5 speed T5 I will be using.

 So we put the chassis on the rotisserie, just kidding, we flopped it over to finish the welding and such on the bottom side.

 Here is a detailed shot of the ford rack and pinion steering attached to the Astro van front suspension.

 In this shot you can see that we just butted the astro clip up against the body mount and then fishplated everything to beef it up.  Yes the students are actually doing all of the work.

 So here is the rear end with the rear spring perches removed.  We will be fabbing up a 4 bar set up with a panhard bar just like I do with the hot rods and race cars that I build.  Except we will used 1 inch square tubing, .125 inch wall thickness, because that is what we have laying around a welding shop.  I will machine some solid bungs for the ends for the spherical rod ends to screw into.  We might C notch the frame a little bit but it will go low enough for a daily driver I think.  The next thing to buy is the rear air bags and then start making the mounts for them.