I’m workin on it. I’ve gotten a bit done since the last pictures Jody posted. Things around the MarsFab casa have been very different since COVID came to be. Currently I’m teaching two 6 year olds and an 8 year old school every day, trying to run a business, cooking all the meals, essentially being a single parent while this years tax seasons have pretty much completely taken over my CPA wife’s life. She’s working 14-16 hours days bringing home the bacon while I’m working 2-3 hour days cooking the bacon
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A lot of the work under the Ranger seems like it was pretty nice when it was initially built. Lots of thought went into things. Right now though, many of those things have been modified or changed due to years of use and upgrades. It’s been somewhat of a rabbit hole delving into it. Fortunately for Jody I’m not the type to not try and fix what needs fixing. He pretty much told me what he wanted to invest into it. He said he wanted to lower it some, gain some wheelbase, gain some up-travel and overall take care of issues that I find along the way. So here we are...
The crossmember/belly pan configuration was very cumbersome and tough to remove so that’s getting completely re-done.
As of now I’ve built all new 3/8” wall lower links, .250 upper, gotten away from the dreaded Barnes joints that are prone to fail and gone with 1.25” heims (every one I’ve installed in the last year has failed, sorry guys/customers). I’ve pushed the axle forward roughly 8” which allowed the truss and portions of the diff housing to clear the oil pan and crank pulley plus I’m hopeful that it’ll not be so far forward that I can’t do something nice with the grill. We’ve not gained quite what Jody was hoping for but it’ll still be a big improvement in stability and uptravel. After looking over all the bracketry on the axle I found that the lower link holes were wallowed out some and the panhard bracket and the hydro ram bracket lacked much structure. So... 2 or 3 days were spent cleaning all that off and starting fresh. It’s getting new Lower link mounts with skids to protect the new heim joints and I’ve also come up with a design for a long side “truss” that incorporates the panhard, upper link and the single ended hydro cylinder mount. I’ll try to take pics of that progress this afternoon.
Anyways. I really haven’t done much online in quite some time. Time has become quite the commodity around here so when I do get to work I try to be as efficient and productive as possible. It leaves no time for taking pictures.
Next week my kiddos will finally be back in school a couple days a week and tax season will be over for the wife so hopefully life will go back to a somewhat normal schedule for me. Hopefully bringing up my productivity and giving me more time to get back into doing what I love. Thanks for all the interest in my builds and sorry for being so silent on the web for so long. Hopefully things will get back to normal soon.
Oh and someone asked about the suburban. It’s.... uh.... a..... huge project I’ve been working on for a while now for a customer. Andy and I started it over a year ago. The specs are, 54’s, super built 12v cummins, 5 ton Unimog portals, full chassis, cage, Hybrid exo, roof top tent, rear steer and thousands of other things. It’s basically being built to drive cross country (yes on the highway LOL) as a no expense spared expedition vehicle.
