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A Custom UJOR-Sportsmobile Build
- Thread starter notmiller
- Start date
notmiller
Observer
Thanks! It's been fun. I haven't done much fab work in awhile as I've been preoccupied with my fixer-upper house, so this is a great change of pace!
notmiller
Observer
Well, I took a break from 4 straight days of building and spent some time in Vegas and 3 days houseboating and wakeboarding on Lake Mead. My wife and I definitely commented multiple times how nice it would be to have the van with us, but not quite yet. It was a nice vacation and now back to work and the build. I'm supposed to have this thing to SMB West in less than 2 weeks, so I've got my work cut out for me!
So as for those leaf springs, I measured the van height under its own weight sans any interior, gas tank, or exhaust and it's sitting at 8" taller than stock in the front and 10" in the rear, much higher than my intended 4". I know it will settle once fully loaded, but will the rear really settle 6"? I spoke with Jeff at Deaver who spec'ed them, and he was as perplexed as I was. He said the rears are exactly what he's done for SMBs in the past, but he's never done a van completely empty before. The fronts are based off of Chris' UJoint specs plus the intended end weight of ~9000lbs, which seems to be typical of SMBs. I'm hoping that these things will just settle into place once the entire build is complete.
In other news, I ordered my driveshaft from Jesse at High Angle Driveline. He's big in the rockcrawling community and I've used his driveshafts before. I've got a shaft on order about 58.5" long with a 1410 non-CV up top and a specially-modified 1410 at the axle. It's "specially-modified" because I screwed up and thought I had a 1400-series flange on the Sterling. Turns out it was a 1300 series, and so he's building me a 1410 that will mount to this flange. I didn't really want to run mis-matched yokes.
A sneak peak of what I'm hoping to do this week/weekend: Tru-Cool trans cooler, a whole bunch of sound deadening material, modified Atlas shifters for a rotating driver's seat, custom rear shock mount cross-support, finish steering, and install new rear brake lines.
So as for those leaf springs, I measured the van height under its own weight sans any interior, gas tank, or exhaust and it's sitting at 8" taller than stock in the front and 10" in the rear, much higher than my intended 4". I know it will settle once fully loaded, but will the rear really settle 6"? I spoke with Jeff at Deaver who spec'ed them, and he was as perplexed as I was. He said the rears are exactly what he's done for SMBs in the past, but he's never done a van completely empty before. The fronts are based off of Chris' UJoint specs plus the intended end weight of ~9000lbs, which seems to be typical of SMBs. I'm hoping that these things will just settle into place once the entire build is complete.
In other news, I ordered my driveshaft from Jesse at High Angle Driveline. He's big in the rockcrawling community and I've used his driveshafts before. I've got a shaft on order about 58.5" long with a 1410 non-CV up top and a specially-modified 1410 at the axle. It's "specially-modified" because I screwed up and thought I had a 1400-series flange on the Sterling. Turns out it was a 1300 series, and so he's building me a 1410 that will mount to this flange. I didn't really want to run mis-matched yokes.
A sneak peak of what I'm hoping to do this week/weekend: Tru-Cool trans cooler, a whole bunch of sound deadening material, modified Atlas shifters for a rotating driver's seat, custom rear shock mount cross-support, finish steering, and install new rear brake lines.
notmiller
Observer
By the way, I was surprised to see absolutely no baffling in a 30+ gallon tank. Does anyone know why they don't or when you don't need to have it? I was thinking about welding up a high capacity aluminum tank to replace the stock one and assumed I'd have to figure out how to do internal baffling to prevent all the weight transfer. Maybe they just assume we burn through gas so quickly there'd be no time for it to move around...
notmiller
Observer
Got a few things finished this weekend:
Steering is finally in after a few issues with having the wrong pitman arm/ball joint combinations. Chris at UJoint was a big help in finally getting it all sorted out.
Stock exhaust is back in. I was originally thinking I would put in a Diamond Eye 4" exhaust, and so just Sawzall'ed the stock exhaust out early on. Now I've decided I'd probably prefer a custom routing, but since we're short on time right now, my dad and I pieced the stock exhaust back together today with some finesse and MIG wire.
Last week I figured out that I could fit 12" travel shocks in the rear to accommodate all the travel of the Deavers assuming they end up settling to the correct height after the SMB build. If they're still too tall, I'll have to get them re-arched and would lose a little bit of travel but not a huge deal. Unfortunately, to get the 440/85 valving for the rear that Jeff at Deaver recommends, the lead time is 3-4 weeks for custom valving from Bilstein. This would definitely not work for our June 20th build date with SMB and so I started trying to figure out what I could do. Fortunately, Jeff did some scrounging around his shop and found a used set of 23" shocks that he gave me for free to run in order to get me to Fresno for the build. He has definitely been very helpful throughout this process! So I used the set of Sterling shock mounts Chris provided me in his kit and mounted the donor shocks to the stock upper mounts. All this will come out after the SMB conversion and I'll build some custom upper and lower shock mounts to accommodate the 12" Bilsteins at that point. In the meantime, this'll have to do.
I also started playing with the rear brake lines and e-brake cables. I had switch to the 8" brake line kit from UJoint because of the longer travel Deaver springs, but I found even that wasn't enough to handle the rear springs at full droop. So I had to cut and flip the bracket at the frame where the flex line meets the hard line, which can be seen in the upper left corner of the last picture in primer gray. I also found out that the Sterlings in the Excursion have the T junction block further toward the diff than the F-series. This meant that I couldn't run the standard line that Chris includes in his kit for the driver's side caliper because it was too short, but I figured I could use it for the passenger side and ordered a longer driver's side line from the same manufacturer. I've kind of figured out how I'm going to retrofit the emergency brake lines, but I sure wish Chris had a simple kit for this since I know he does it in a lot of vans he puts Sterlings into (hint, hint)!!!
In parallel, my wife has been assigned as queen of insulation for the van. With the help of my dad, she put down two coats of Spectrum sound dampening coating on the floor. I ordered 3 gallons and this wasn't quite enough to get two full coats on, but it'll do.
She also put an additional layer of insulation into the doghouse.
We bought a few of the kits from Quietride in order to save time, although today we figured out they forgot to send us some pieces and so she couldn't start on the walls yet. It's nice having her in charge of this aspect because she definitely has more patience than I do to take the time with this stuff and do a thorough job. But I suppose now I won't have the excuse that I can't hear her over the engine noise when she's talking my ear off on those long drives.....
Steering is finally in after a few issues with having the wrong pitman arm/ball joint combinations. Chris at UJoint was a big help in finally getting it all sorted out.
Stock exhaust is back in. I was originally thinking I would put in a Diamond Eye 4" exhaust, and so just Sawzall'ed the stock exhaust out early on. Now I've decided I'd probably prefer a custom routing, but since we're short on time right now, my dad and I pieced the stock exhaust back together today with some finesse and MIG wire.
Last week I figured out that I could fit 12" travel shocks in the rear to accommodate all the travel of the Deavers assuming they end up settling to the correct height after the SMB build. If they're still too tall, I'll have to get them re-arched and would lose a little bit of travel but not a huge deal. Unfortunately, to get the 440/85 valving for the rear that Jeff at Deaver recommends, the lead time is 3-4 weeks for custom valving from Bilstein. This would definitely not work for our June 20th build date with SMB and so I started trying to figure out what I could do. Fortunately, Jeff did some scrounging around his shop and found a used set of 23" shocks that he gave me for free to run in order to get me to Fresno for the build. He has definitely been very helpful throughout this process! So I used the set of Sterling shock mounts Chris provided me in his kit and mounted the donor shocks to the stock upper mounts. All this will come out after the SMB conversion and I'll build some custom upper and lower shock mounts to accommodate the 12" Bilsteins at that point. In the meantime, this'll have to do.
I also started playing with the rear brake lines and e-brake cables. I had switch to the 8" brake line kit from UJoint because of the longer travel Deaver springs, but I found even that wasn't enough to handle the rear springs at full droop. So I had to cut and flip the bracket at the frame where the flex line meets the hard line, which can be seen in the upper left corner of the last picture in primer gray. I also found out that the Sterlings in the Excursion have the T junction block further toward the diff than the F-series. This meant that I couldn't run the standard line that Chris includes in his kit for the driver's side caliper because it was too short, but I figured I could use it for the passenger side and ordered a longer driver's side line from the same manufacturer. I've kind of figured out how I'm going to retrofit the emergency brake lines, but I sure wish Chris had a simple kit for this since I know he does it in a lot of vans he puts Sterlings into (hint, hint)!!!
In parallel, my wife has been assigned as queen of insulation for the van. With the help of my dad, she put down two coats of Spectrum sound dampening coating on the floor. I ordered 3 gallons and this wasn't quite enough to get two full coats on, but it'll do.
She also put an additional layer of insulation into the doghouse.
We bought a few of the kits from Quietride in order to save time, although today we figured out they forgot to send us some pieces and so she couldn't start on the walls yet. It's nice having her in charge of this aspect because she definitely has more patience than I do to take the time with this stuff and do a thorough job. But I suppose now I won't have the excuse that I can't hear her over the engine noise when she's talking my ear off on those long drives.....
bknudtsen
Expedition Leader
What did she use for the doghouse insulation?
SWbySWesty
Fauxverland Extraodinaire
looking great! I wish I was working on mine!
notmiller
Observer
It's foil-backed cloth fiber mat insulation, much like the OEM material under the floor covering. In addition, she re-tacked the factory Dynamat-type damping pads that were already there but were barely holding on anymore. She sealed all the seams with foil tape and then re-installed the factory fiberglass insulation layer.
It's refreshing after 5 days in the office! But now I'm back in the office again
notmiller
Observer
Received the driveshaft yesterday and it fits after a quick dry fit this morning. Unfortunately, I totally forgot to buy any fasteners and straps to actually mount it! Welded a drain plug into the tranny pan. Received the rear brake adapter fitting I've been needing. Still waiting on a replacement Trucool trans cooler after the first one was damaged in shipping. Hopefully I'll have time to get all these things mounted on Sunday and get this thing rolling by the beginning of next week!
Can anyone guess what I'm going to make out of these???
Can anyone guess what I'm going to make out of these???
blupaddler
Conspirator
Awesome!
I wish I had the skills you do. There is a part of me that still wants a RB.
btw... Which SMB layout are you planning to go with?
I wish I had the skills you do. There is a part of me that still wants a RB.
btw... Which SMB layout are you planning to go with?
89s rule
Adventurer
Swing outs on a rear bumper??
notmiller
Observer
Thanks blu. Let's just say I've had a lot of practice screwing up. I think we're going to go with the standard 50 layout. My wife's uncle had an EB33 with a long gaucho down the driver's side that was great for napping and having the dogs on. But we're thinking with kids in the future, or even friends in the near-term, sitting back there facing sideways for hours on end wouldn't be pleasant nor safe in an accident. We don't really want rear captains chairs because of how much room they take up, and so the 50 seems to be the best compromise.
Nope. Didn't think about that one, but I could definitely see it! I haven't decided about bumpers yet. Of course, I'd like to build both, but I've got too many other things on my plate. I'm thinking I may do the front bumper and just go with the Aluminess rear, since swingouts take a lot more time.
notmiller
Observer
$10 in materials and a few hours on the lathe and we have some snazzy shifter handles for the Atlas. We wanted a rotating driver's seat, and so I cut the Atlas shifters down, welded on a threaded portion, and these will thread onto that. Now when we want to rotate the seat, we just unscrew them and rotate away!
WHAT?!?! No push-button tethered fold-aways flush mounted into the doghouse?? :smiley_drive:
Just kidding, I am jealous of your skills and attention to detail.