on January 14, 2012
The week before heading to Built by Bones was a major push. With the delay in the trans mount we had to make some quick progress. What’s left? Well, we had to weld in the trans mounting tabs, make an access to remove the trans, box in the opening in the center of the frame horns and then get the body on there in order to transport it.
We got crackin’ on the frame horns with cardboard templates and a borrowed plasma cutter. Wow, without that plasma cutter we definitely wouldn’t be making progress as fast as we did. Matt W was welding everything together while Josh did a lot of cutting and fitting.
Once we got the pieces all tacked into place we finally wer able to weld it all up.
This thing is solid as a rock and we are psyched with the way it turned out.
We used reasonably thick steel for this part of the build in order to add even more strength to our frame horn and the King Kong installation.
Oh, and Matt thinks this stuff rocks…
Because of the gussets and the new trans mount we decided to make our transmission as easy to install and remove as possible. The best way to do that is to add power tool access. We popped a hole in the frame horn, installed a tube through there and welded that up, smoothed it out and TADA, we have a very nice simple access to be able to slide our impact in there and remove the trans in no time flat..
With the rear of the car finished up, we were busy fitting up a few more reinforcement plates.
Finally we flipped it onto its wheels and we popped the body on there. Without preloading the rear springs we only got a view of how the front was going to look in the end. It look amazing. We can’t wait to get some big tires on there!
Finally, Saturday came around and we were ready to head up to Built By Bones. Yves Braun came by and helped us take the car on up to Fort Collins.
After arriving at Built by Bones we quickly got started. Lots of prep to do before we really got to the good stuff. Grant Barclay is the owner of the shop and we are glad to have him on board. He’s a fast mover, so he’s a bit tough to get a picture of…
after taking a bit of time to discuss the cage design that we developed we started prepping tube. Each tube got a quick buff. Every bit has been cleaned up to make things go through the tubing bender faster and smoother, it also makes welding easier and finally later, the nice clean tube takes paint better. It is really the best way to get started and Grant has a cool sander to make this process fast and easy.
The first tube is the main hoop. That is kinda the backbone of the cage and with that properly fit in place we can then create the rest of the cage with ease. After some measuring, some discussing and some more measuring we got to the bending.
After a few bends and a few more measurements we had our primary bends done and we’re ready to do the final fit work on the main hoop.
With the main hoop finished and fit we started working on our X.
We then called it a night. after a long day we turned in a bit early because… well.. Ok, it is because the Bronco’s are playing. But we will be back up there at 9 am and ready to finish up the main safety zone of the cage and hopefully tack it all together. Next week we will run with the back of the cage and finally we’ll finish up the front. Finally we’ll be back at our shop to spend a ton of time welding…
Check back soon for some more updates!