Cheaper Than Therapy: A Build Thread

[JSmall]

In the midst of this, I knew I was going to sell off my 'vintage' High Country Hood in favor of one of the more modern hoods that have support on the bottom and decided on the Buckaroo hood from WH. (Shortly after I saw that Jeromy installed the same hood...I swear I'm not copying your build! I like your style though )

This was like last September...it has been a while!

All good! I'm not the first and you won't be the last ;D I love the hood and it was needed for the strut bar.

Keep up the progress. It's looking good!

 

[marjama]

All good! I'm not the first and you won't be the last ;D I love the hood and it was needed for the strut bar.

Keep up the progress. It's looking good!

Thanks Jeromy...great minds think alike!

 

[svastano]

Looks Good!

 

[marjama]

Radiator clearance issues...

Still catching up on past work...shortly after I picked up the hood I got to work thinking about radiator mounting. It became pretty clear that my old 'Ford style' double pass radiator wasn't going to work out - the outlet of the radiator is directly in line with the hydro assist ports on the steering box. I started to hunt for options, and ended up with a C&R double pass with the inlet and outlet on the opposite side (thanks eBay!). First couple of pics show this.

That leads me to what I've been working on lately - figuring out what angle the drivetrain should be at to create a transmission cross member. More on that later. Here's where I ran into a challenge (well, another challenge!). The distance between the intended mounting location for the radiator and the Explorer fan clutch is effectively zero and the radiator still needs to move back a bit to account for isolators and brackets. The C&R is thicker than the old Ron Davis. See the 3rd pic.

So, I'm in the middle of looking for alternatives. The entire assembly could move back a bit and still be fine for belt and accessory clearances. The fan clutch is huge and sticks out substantially. Does anyone know of a lower profile clutch setup? Or a very compact high volume electric fan? (I think I really only have about 4" or less to work with, so not much!) I may do some pick-n-pull shopping this weekend to see if I can find anything...ran across a Land Rover fan that looks promising online, but ?

Option 2 is to put the radiator up front, or to modify the hoop. I've been contemplating using a legit latch on the hood. The 'beam' on the underside where the latch would mount drops directly in front of that tube, so it's not easy to push the radiator in front of it unless I just stick with hood pins. Certainly an option!

Option 3 is to give up on a mechanical fan entirely, and mount the radiator at an angle to clear the fan and shroud. Thinking I'll look for some fan options at the yard next time I make it too!

Back to the drawing board until I find a solution for this...in the meantime, I'll be fabricating the trans cross member...

 

[marjama]

Transmission Crossmember

I don't remember the last time there wasn't a jack of some sort under the transmission / transfer case...but it finally happened again last night! Sometimes baby steps feel like a big deal...

I spent some time over the last few days moving the drivetrain around trying to get everything in a place where it would play nicely together. I wanted the Atlas to sit above the bottom of the frame rails, and after some trimming and reclocking I think I found the sweet spot! (This is with a 2" body lift...3" and I'd have had a "ton" of room. My goal is to keep everything as low as possible though!) Fortunately I remembered to bolt up the cable shifter brackets - I'll have to work the floor pans around that a bit as well!

Once I found the right location, I designed & fab'd the crossmember out of 1.75" X .120 wall DOM tube and 1/4" plate. The little tabs on top of the side mounts were probably unnecessary, but it sure helped locate the tube in the frame. I did double up on the urethane mounts - they are all quite stiff. The AA mount I used has been sitting on a shelf for years...worked out pretty well, but a few of the studs are really close to each other. Looks workable though. (The AA urethane mounts are not a very tight fit in the adapter - we'll see how that works out long term. I considered making a new inner tube to preload them more, but...I have other stuff to do!)

The reset of the pics are where the t-case ended up relative to the floor...still have a bit of clearancing to do, but good for now. That little vent line connection is just in a bad spot! Oh, also notice all of the junk on the floor - that all used to be white Durabak (you know, the roll on bedliner a guy "got on his hootus"). At some point I put sound deadener and a vinyl mat over it. Man was that a bad choice! It has been, and is going to be a huge pain to take that stuff off!

Now that the drivetrain is self supporting again and at its final angle, I'm back to figuring out where to put the radiator and how to get a cooling fan in there!

 

[JeffG]

Man, I love this build and the thought you are putting into it. I could use that Ford style radiator if you are looking to sell it. I still have an OE radiator and my Mustang 5.0 has been in for 15 years or so! Running cross-over tube but my radiator has started to leak a little.

 

[broncojam]

Marjama any chance you have pics of the rear brakes assembled. I am building a similar rear axle with stock f150 housing RS plate etc.. I will be using 15" rims and I think I am going to need to mount the brake rotor on the back side of the hub. I probably missed it in your thread are you using 17" rims?

 

[marjama]

Marjama any chance you have pics of the rear brakes assembled. I am building a similar rear axle with stock f150 housing RS plate etc.. I will be using 15" rims and I think I am going to need to mount the brake rotor on the back side of the hub. I probably missed it in your thread are you using 17" rims?

Hey Broncojam, I don't...I'm still working on designing them and trying to figure out what my plan is for a parking brake. I originally machined the rotors I have to fit on the backside of the hub for extra clearance with the wheel, but I decided to switch them around to the front. If I remember right, this was a result of the available wheel stud sizes I could find + the size of the holes in the rotors.

I'm currently using rotors from a 2010 Dodge Ram 1500, and same for the wheel studs based on my parts list. I am, however, using 17" wheels...I don't know if any of these parts would fit under 15" wheels.

What rotors are you planning on using? There has to be some that are set up to properly press onto the backside that will work.

 

[broncojam]

I also used Dodge front rotors. I found Dorman part number 610-279 works for putting the rotor on the back side of the hub. I think I have determined that I can use a 1-1/4" spacer to solve the brake clearance issue. Now I need to decide if the spacer should go between the rotor and hub (rotor mounted on the backside of the hub) or use a wheel spacer to move the rim out. I may have clearance issues with moving the rotor farther from the hub. I don't have my bearings installed yet to see the clearance between the spindle flange and the rotor/caliper. I think the caliper may interfere with the spindle flange. I am using the GM metric calipers and there is a boss right in the wrong spot. I looks like it could be ground off though. we will see.
The studs I am trying don't press into the rotor. the have a fairly narrow serrated section that passes through the rotor and then presses into the hub. I was assuming that this would be ok. The rotor hole dimension is right at .625 the hub measured just over .6. The 610-279 had knurl diameter of .609.
I plan to use a drive line mounted parking brake at the transfer case.

 

[marjama]

What a year...

Geez...where does the time go!? In typical fashion I haven't kept up the build thread, but I have been making slow progress! Life just keeps getting in the way, and I'm not the best at taking photos while I work.

When we last left off, I was attempting to sort out radiator mounting after getting the drivetrain angle fixed. The original Explorer clutch fan assembly was just too long for what I had built. So, I chased down a 2 speed Volvo electric fan at the local yard (I believe this one came from a mid 90's 960). Still a no-go...space is tight!

I could find details on actual dims anywhere, so...here they are:

Total fan depth: ~4"
Shroud mounting flange: ~.75"

So, you've got about 3.25" sticking out of your shroud, .75" in...plus some clearance. The good part about an electric fan is that you can move it around on the shroud. Unfortunately I still couldn't find a solution that didn't impact the water pump snout.

 

[tatersalad]

There is an electric fan called sidewinder that a company sells for tight spaces. It is similar to a spal fan but offsets the electric motor

 

[marjama]

Explorer fan clutch...V2

I spent an excessive amount of time contemplating the Derale HO electric fan which is quite thin, and a bunch of Spal options. I think the Derale would have worked, but it's still an unknown...with a significantly higher cost than any stock option. I won't bother debating the pros and cons of electric fans here. There is plenty of that everywhere online.

(If you do go down the electric, you'll eventually find that the Auto Cool Guy is the place to go for PWM fan controls. This was part of my plan, until I found a better option.)

After a little more research I discovered that the Explorer 5.0 had a couple of different fan clutch options - one being significantly shorter than the other. (If I can find the original thread I read about this in, I'll link it here - thanks to whoever shared it originally!) You can see the difference in the pic attached. The fan essentially stays in the same place, but the clutch is substantially lower profile. This one came off of a 1998 5.0.

I'm not sure I'd say "more than enough clearance", but I've got ~3/4" at the clutch now and at least an inch everywhere else. Should be alright as long as things don't flex too much!

(No images, but I also picked up the Explorer alternator and passenger side accessory brackets - I was running an odd combination of Explorer and T-bird 5.0 brackets before. Most 5.0 Explorers I find in the yard have been pillaged already!)

 

[tatersalad]

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...FjABegQIIxAL&usg=AOvVaw2KEIFDnK3ETR37wXsiMF_5

 

[marjama]

There is an electric fan called sidewinder that a company sells for tight spaces. It is similar to a spal fan but offsets the electric motor

Thanks Tater - I did look at the Sidewinder, but couldn't justify the cost when there were other solutions. I also considered smaller dual Spal setups, but in the end the mechanical fan won out!

(For those of you investigating electric fans, don't just look at the CFM rating. That's partly marketing BS. You need to find out what the maximum amp draw is - that will tell you how powerful it is under load. When you stack a multi row radiator and (maybe) an A/C condenser in front of it, that is when more power = more better!)

 

[marjama]

Radiator lower mount, V1

With the fan clearance issues sorted out it was time to get back on the radiator mounting. I had picked up a Kartek urethane mount kit and had this idea that I was going to combine the radiator mount with the front body mounts. In hindsight this was a bad idea, but...that's why we iterate, right?

I moved the axle forward, and did not go full width (front WMS is 64"). At full lock I was hitting the front body mounts, so they had to go. I also couldn't mount the core support directly to the top of the frame since I moved the steering box forward. Everything is a compromise!

Attached is my first idea for the lower mount with integrated body mounts. It's a bad idea for a couple of reasons, but the primary one is that any adjustment to the front core support changes the difference between the mounts. That wasn't going to work. (I also wasn't digging the fact that the Kartek mounts offered no lateral locating features...and I had to cut them up to make 'em work. Not ideal.)

 

[marjama]

Once I decided to mount the radiator completely to the core support / engine cage, I got going on the front body mounts and associated tubes.

I didn't get many good images of this whole process, but the images show the new front body mounts w/ modified urethane bushings, the vertical support assembly going together with the hex bungs I made, and what it looked like hiding behind the grill.

The front sheet metal is finally hanging on the frame again!

 

[marjama]

Lower radiator mounting

Here's what I came up with for the lower radiator mounting solution. I felt like it needed to be fairly stout since it's hanging out in space from the engine cage, since a radiator full of water weighs quite a bit.

The lower cups are just bent sheet metal with pressed in PEM studs, with buna-n rubber bonded to it for isolation. These mount to a c-channel shaped that is attached back to the engine cage. Seems like I didn't take many pics of this process!

I originally planned to connect the c-channel with tubing, but I didn't have a die with a small enough bend radius to work...so I made some excessively fancy hangers out of sheet metal and threw it all together. (The 'pointy' parts will be rolled back and welded to the tube...for now, they are just there to draw blood.)

 

[marjama]

At this point I went back to work on the engine cage in an attempt to finalize the core support structure. Man, I burned SO much time on the drivers side tube...I think I made three different versions! Trying to hold the front plane flat with bends in two planes...joining into a bend. WTF was I thinking?!

I was pretty happy with the end result! Until I put the tires back on and started cycling the suspension. SO. MUCH. TIME. WASTED. More on this later...but hey, at least I got a lot more practice with multi plane bends and hand fitting tubes. Fortunately I wasn't using DOM after the first attempt

Public Service Announcement: If you are building something ridiculous and you are going to spend a ton of time on something that you know is at risk of contacting other components, don't rely on your gut feeling that it'll clear!

 

[marjama]

Upper radiator mounting

Another area without a ton of images...upper radiator mounting!

Attached are a couple of pics of the upper mounts I made. I'm not yet convinced that a simple c shaped part will be enough - I suspect I'll need to make another set that is reinforced at some point, but the general idea seems to work. The last pic is the lower mounts tacked in to the main hoop. Apparently I didn't get an image from the top, but y'all get the idea...

 

[marjama]

Porsche 944 hood latch

Alright, so...my plan for a while has been to have a legit hood latch in this iteration of the truck. I'd prefer for people to not generally be able to just open the hood at will (not that these trucks are very 'secure' no matter what you do), and prefer the clean look of a latch - but not the original EB latch that has the release going through the grill.

So, the solution...a Porsche 944 cable actuated latch. These are essentially the same as the also common VW Rabbit latches that you see in a lot of the pro touring and restomod builds (Is anyone else here a Lateral-G.net junkie?). I just found a refinished 944 latch on ebay, so that's what I ended up with.

I decided to make an attempt at hammer forming the lower mounting plate that reinforces the grill. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! In the images you'll see the basic process, how it attaches to the grill, and the upper hood latch. (Funny enough, no pics of the assembly closed!)

Overall I'm pretty pleased with the result. I still need to source a cable and handle (Lokar is who most go with, but...I I think I found a cheaper but similar solution on ebay. Stay tuned for that one.). I also need to figure out some bumpers for the outer corners to support the rest of the hood. I'm still thinking about hood pins or Quik Latch solutions, but we'll see.