Well not a lot to report, but baby steps at least. I really need to learn better fab skills or tricks as I forgot how much it sucks with cut offs and flap discs trying to get anything done. Also forgot how fast cut offs and flaps burn up. I'm out and guess it's time to call Roark again for another order... Anyway, there has to be an easier way but I suck at bending plate to get weird and odd angles so every piece of this was cut by hand on grinder then fit and tacked in before moving on to next.
Rather than cut and remove the old spring plates, I figured the span and position might just work out well for the coil overs and bypass shocks once I get to that point. I left them on and will modify later when I get there. I have all plates cut to fill the front and back on driver side but not tacked in yet. I got to thinking I may want access to the diff breather port and/or the ARB bulk head fitting at some point in future, so rather than box them in and be screwed later, I decided to make a couple mounting tabs to burn inside the trussed section. The rear plate will be burned in solid and boxed in, but the front plate will be bolted in with two bolts on outside most upright, and a single tab coming down just inside the bridge support. By removing the 3 bolts, I can pull the access cover to get to the diff breather and bulk head fitting if need be in future. There should be plenty of support all the way around the rest of this thing that this little cover section shouldn't be necessary to burn in fully. If at some point I find it does need fully burned in, I will address it then but for now, it will be an access cover. Everything is cut/shaped just needs set in position and burned in. This is NOT yet fully welded, just most of external work is done.
The rear 14 is a 2011 model out of big Chevy box van. Specs on this thing are 74" WMS, full 4" tubes roughly 5/8" thick, removable pinion support like all 14s, big disc brakes (yes complete with ear plugs to keep crap out of calipers) and because of the vehicle it came from- the highest GVW rating of any 14 out there if I'm not mistaken. Long side axle in this beast is roughly 1" longer than the longest 14 bolt axle offered in the aftermarket. I picked up a spare set of OE shafts from fellow Pirate member back east some time back just to have a spare laying around just in case. This will be fit with 5.38s and ARB later on down the road, for now I'm just trying to fit suspension.
If my measurements are correct, because of the big axle and big frame under Suburban HD, I can get a solid 12" separation at the axle, and 10" at the frame. Playing with calculator this gave me best overall setup which will provide 49% AS with -0.0 roll axis and a relatively high roll center. I should have roughly 48-50 degrees on the upper links to locate axle nicely without a rear track bar. Being dually width, lots of room on the lowers. I will leave axle mounts and lower frame mounts fixed, with only adjustments being on upper links +/- 1" up or down if needed. Again, not done yet but here's what I've got so far:
More to come...
Best of Luck,
Mike
