Round 2: Keepin' up with the Joneses, Mud Devils and Tony Woody

New core support coming together. This’ll be stronger, lighter and much easier to work on things. Plus hopefully it’ll lead to less stitches because there won’t be any more jacked up sheet metal to work around.

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Got a little more done tonight before I ran out time...

It took a lot of thought to come up with a way to mount this dang winch, not loose any approach angle and not be a rock magnet.

The old tube work was still relatively solid and had done its job of protecting the radiator and winch but it didn’t look nice. The skid plate for the radiator consisted of a piece of 18ga steel wrapped over random pieces of 1.5” tube and it was not doing well lol.

Fortunately the chassis is 2” ~.120” wall and I happened to have a little 1.75” .188 wall dom left from a job I could slide inside it to make the horns. That tube will likely see a lot of rock contact

I decided to leave the tube under the radiator. It’s in a good spot plus it kept the rails tied together when I cut everything off the front. I’ll eventually tie it up into the bottom of the winch mount somehow.

I think... at this point I’d like to try and use the stock grill. It actually looks pretty cool and with a little work I can mount it nicely where it used to be. The front tires now occupy where the headlights were. Hoping I can squeeze in those triangle LED’s I mentioned earlier but if the won’t work I’m leaving room on top of the bar above the fairlead for a small LED bar. On top of the horns I’ll be doing a simple crash bar that’s only slightly wider.

Long story short I have a really nice early bronco coming in next week for some suspension work that has to take precedence over everything else I’ve got going on. Gonna have to push the ranger off the lift and bang the bronco out as fast as possible. This’ll mean probably no updates next week but hopefully it’ll only put me behind a few days.

Thanks for watching!

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Is the radiator on rubber isolators?

Digging the method to madness. Always curious if you approach the project organic? Meaning: Deal with the hurdles as they are presented and creatively solve.

Or Rigid Structure: Study plan and hatch a master scheme relatively complete with allowance for hurdles. But with a heavy dose of predetermined visualization above and beyond the obvious packaging requirements like wheel base and suspension geometry.

With things I do the latter seems to aid in flow. Until I reach a major unforseen bump. The organic approach keeps it loose and growing but without a pure goal I am usually diasappointed with the over all outcome.
 
WARRIORWELDING said:
Is the radiator on rubber isolators?

Digging the method to madness. Always curious if you approach the project organic? Meaning: Deal with the hurdles as they are presented and creatively solve.

Or Rigid Structure: Study plan and hatch a master scheme relatively complete with allowance for hurdles. But with a heavy dose of predetermined visualization above and beyond the obvious packaging requirements like wheel base and suspension geometry.

With things I do the latter seems to aid in flow. Until I reach a major unforseen bump. The organic approach keeps it loose and growing but without a pure goal I am usually diasappointed with the over all outcome.
Click to expand...

Yea the radiator support is rigid to the chassis. Right now the radiator caps are loosely bolted to it. The plan (and what I’ve done in the past) is to use small pin top shock bushings between it and the frame on all 6 mounting bolts. I normally prefer to mount them with flat bar laid in the top and bottom faces of the core but in this situation that wasn’t possible for clearance issues and it happened to already have aluminum angles for mounts welded to it.

I like to go with the flow. I have an overall picture in my head of the finished product but that usually changes by the time I’m done as I hit issues along the way lol. Sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse.

It’s ultimately why I work best by myself. Everything I build is in my head and I’m usually ten steps ahead of what I’m actually working on mentally. I “personally think” it’s what sets shops with a good design eye apart from shops who build purely for a paycheck. It also makes it virtually impossible for a guy like me to have people working under me. Andy Zuber was with me for 5 years. He and I worked well together because he was a good voice of reason when I wanted to get off on spending too much time on something that didn’t necessarily warrant it. It helps with keeping the bills paid but it reels my creativity in some.


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I personally think the hood prop is a very subtle tribute to your attention to detail.

Granted, all your work is impressive. But...that was kinda special.....and not required. So it's cool as hell
 
Ultimately the more tools and in house ability I have the easier it is to overcome those hurdles along the way with something that’s aesthetically pleasing and quick.

I know... I know.... Tell that to my wife...


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MarsFab said:
Yea the radiator at or support is rigid to the chassis. Right now the radiator caps are loosely bolted to it. The plan (and what I’ve done in the past) is to use small pin top shock bushings between it and the frame on all 6 mounting bolts. I normally prefer to mount them with flat bar laid in the top and bottom faces of the core but in this situation that wasn’t possible for clearance issues and it happened to already have aluminum angles for mounts welded to it.

I like to go with the flow. I have an overall picture in my head of the finished product but that usually changes by the time I’m done as I hit issues along the way lol. Sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse.

It’s ultimately why I work best by myself. Everything I build is in my head and I’m usually ten steps ahead of what I’m actually working on mentally. I “personally think” it’s what sets shops with a good design eye apart from shops who build purely for a paycheck. It also makes it virtually impossible for a guy like me to have people working under me. Andy Zuber was with me for 5 years. He and I worked well together because he was a good voice of reason when I wanted to get off on spending too much time on something that didn’t necessarily warrant it. It helps with keeping the bills paid but it reels my creativity in some.


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Click to expand...
Well said and agree 110%

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MarsFab said:
Ultimately the more tools and in house ability I have the easier it is to overcome those hurdles along the way with something that’s aesthetically pleasing and quick.

I know... I know.... Tell that to my wife...


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Click to expand...
Ah! Two parts of that proverbial triangle. I am always tickled to see folks like yourself and Matt get the support you do. Definately desearved.
 
CasterTroy said:
I personally think the hood prop is a very subtle tribute to your attention to detail.

Granted, all your work is impressive. But...that was kinda special.....and not required. So it's cool as hell
Click to expand...

Haha. Perfect example of going with the flow and this time not actually thinking everything through... got too caught up in the “details” to look past them this time lol. literally as soon as I posted the pics of the hood prop mounted I realized that the front of that main bar it’s mounted to is also where the grill has to mount [emoji2357]

Sooo now I’ll have to make what ever holds the grill level with the top of that tube arc under the prop rod so it still functions. Oh well. This is a good time to show how useful a CNC plasma table is because it’ll hopefully be no big deal to design a nice bracket that does just that. I’ll need two of them identical.
 
Dang. That things real nice
 
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