Bed sides rust repair

Some previous owner had tried and replace the lip that lies ontop of the bed wood, I would say that he wasn´t that sucessfull of doing a good looking job. Functional yes but not good looking. The bed side also had some heavy pitting hidden under some bondo, so I decided to replace the whole area from scratch. 

Make your own $15 shrinking disc

I have been looking for a shrinking disc for some sheet metal work, but as I live in Sweden I wasn´t able to locate a retailer selling this stuff in Sweden and I really didn´t want to spend $80-$100 and have it shipped from the states incl shipping, taxes and stuff. But the other day I was at IKEA and passed thru their kitchen ware department and saw this....

and I did´t see a saucepan, I saw a shrinking disc......

the saucepan was about $10

Bought a support disc for the angle grinder at a hardware store for another $5.

And some light fabrication, this is what I ended up with.

Rear trailer hitch brackets testfit

Got the rest of the parts back from the welder today. Wanted it done correct, by a skilled person that has a powerfull enough welder.

Rear trailer hitch, parts arrived.

This week one of the most important parts arrived from a friend that has helped me out machining it.

In the picture above I have done the last finishing touches before it´s off for welding together with the brackets. I wanted this part to be welded by a professional, just to be safe. The finsihing touches was some small fillets on the edges and a chamfer on the hole so that the ball stud could fit correct.

I actually did a lot of FEM simulation to get this part as strong as possible. As you can see the inner radius is actually not a radius, but an elips, this distributes the loads onto a larges volume witch decreases the stress levels on the inner radius.  

Mounting of CPP power steering box

I love good quality products....I certainly hope the steering box itself is better engineered than the distance tubes and the choice of bolt lengths.Those small tubes will put a lot of stress to the framerails. 

So I figured I needed to make an own distance plate, also it seems like I haveto go for metric on the bolts......bummer.

Shift linkage repair

 

When I took the Shift linkage appart one of the small attaching T shaped thingies came of with a breeze, but the other one was stuck. Penetrating oil, time and heat didnt budge it. So I added more heat until I got it of, but the thread on the end broke beonde repair. So I hade to switch it out.

 

Above: the broken end next to the new replacement.

CPP dual master cylinder, drum drum application, braket modification

Well on this page you can see the first mockup I made of the CPP dual master cylinder with bracket kit, that is suppose to be a bolt on kit. By all meaning it is a bolt on kit but with some drawbacks. First of all the centerline offset between the brake pedal and the cylinder is 35 mm (1.378") and CPP deals with this in a way that´s just doesn´t cut it for me safty wise. The bolt can bend.....period. The other thing is that CPP states that this kit will place the master cylinder reservoir just below the old cab floor hole......Well it doesn´t its 35 mm off!! that half the reservoir lid !!!. 

The modification I have done will join the brake pedal and cylinder centerline and also put the master cylinder reservoir lid right where CPP states it should be.

 Here I made some markings where I wanted the cuts to be made, 35 mm apart.

Leaf spring perch modification #2

When test fitting the lower damper and axle bracket I noticed that the increase in axle diameter from stock 2.5" (Dana 44) to 3" for the ford 9", made the U-bolts a bit short. So I decided that I would take about 6-7 mm out of the thickness off the spring perches.

Rear leaf spring perch modifications #1

When I ordered the new rear axle I was given a set of free spring perches, however I forgot to tell them what width i needed, so I got a 2.5" wide set and my rear leafs are only 2". This meant that the U-bolt couldn´t fit over these perches.