battleaxe
Captain Obvious
My bad, misread that somewhere I guess!
Loving the build progress so far. It must be pretty satisfying having it cut up and ready to go.
Last edited:
The Mountain Goat - An FJ140/2UZ-FE/Ute Build
- Thread starter ddelong6767
- Start date
My bad, misread that somewhere I guess!
Loving the build progress so far. It must be pretty satisfying having it cut up and ready to go.
Box Rocket
Well-known member
Love seeing the progress Doug! The work is very thorough and well thought out. Impressed with the attention to detail and the workmanship so far.
Personally I think the choice of the 80 series chassis is an excellent one. The comfort level alone from the coil spring suspension is reason enough. The wider and longer track width/wheelbase is also a plus. Even with the radius arm setup good flex can be achieved with the right suspension setup. Nothing wrong with a 3-link and a well built 3-link can work very well but I don't see this particular build being a rockcrawler. The radius arms will easily provide the flex necessary for the terrain this truck is most likely to see.
Just one example of pretty decent travel from the stock radius arm setup. This is my 80. I considered a 3-link as well but have decided it's not necessary for me. 3" Stage4 slinky suspension with front and rear swaybars still on.
IMG_0630 by Adam Tolman, on Flickr
Personally I think the choice of the 80 series chassis is an excellent one. The comfort level alone from the coil spring suspension is reason enough. The wider and longer track width/wheelbase is also a plus. Even with the radius arm setup good flex can be achieved with the right suspension setup. Nothing wrong with a 3-link and a well built 3-link can work very well but I don't see this particular build being a rockcrawler. The radius arms will easily provide the flex necessary for the terrain this truck is most likely to see.
Just one example of pretty decent travel from the stock radius arm setup. This is my 80. I considered a 3-link as well but have decided it's not necessary for me. 3" Stage4 slinky suspension with front and rear swaybars still on.
IMG_0630 by Adam Tolman, on Flickrddelong6767
Member
Thanks Adam! I've read through your thread and am very interested in the Slinky setup, it looks like it performs really well. I was following a guy in an 80-series with it at Cruise Moab last summer and it looked like it was performing very well. Once I get the body on to the chassis I'll get more serious about picking the suspension and lift amount.
ddelong6767
Member
I made a little progress last weekend... Started with trimming the C-pillar back and measuring the relative angles of the C-pillar and D-pillar. I want to keep this thing fairly short behind the 2nd door so I'm pulling the D-pillar far forward so as to not leave too much rear overhang. I cut the donor roof section back and started with some test fitting.
I want this to look as close to a factory job as possible so this seems like the best approach. This is just a first pass mockup and there's still a lot of fitting to be done but it at least gives you an idea on how the roof transition will look. The drip rail in the rear blue section is almost one inch narrower than the rear portion of the red roof (the trucks have a slight taper at the rear) so I've got some work to do to pull it in and blend it all into a continuous curve. Lots of little slices and gentle pushing/pulling on the metal are ahead.
But first, some vacation and a little expedition to Moab. Time for some wheeling...
I want this to look as close to a factory job as possible so this seems like the best approach. This is just a first pass mockup and there's still a lot of fitting to be done but it at least gives you an idea on how the roof transition will look. The drip rail in the rear blue section is almost one inch narrower than the rear portion of the red roof (the trucks have a slight taper at the rear) so I've got some work to do to pull it in and blend it all into a continuous curve. Lots of little slices and gentle pushing/pulling on the metal are ahead.
But first, some vacation and a little expedition to Moab. Time for some wheeling...
Box Rocket
Well-known member
There are lots of good suspension options out there. Let me know if I can help if you get looking at the Slinky kits when you're ready.
ddelong6767
Member
The wifey and I had plans family plans fall through at Thanksgiving so we decided to escape to the desert. Moab always does good things for my soul, there's something about those red rocks and magnificent sunsets that just resonates with me. We spent a little time wandering solo in the workhorse FJ60 shop truck...
We didn't get too ambitious since we were alone, mostly I used the time for driver training for her. Working through some easy sections of slick rock...
As a side note, I've never stopped in to talk with these guys (one of the many rental/expedition shops) but I sure like their style...
Saturday afternoon/evening was a long trip home in a classic Colorado snowstorm. I skipped a powder day on Sunday (blasphemous) and got back to work in the shop.
We left off with the challenge of blending the rearmost roof section in with the body. The problem here is that the trucks taper just a bit in the rear. The overall width between the rear drip rail above the hatch and the central portion behind the doors is a little less than an inch. Lining up the panels as I have them cut leads to this discrepancy between the two.
I spent a while looking at various ways to slice and stretch things so that I could line it all up. I made a few simple slices in the upper portion of the roof beam and the drip rail and tried to massage things with light hammer/dolly work.
In the end, I decide it wasn't going to work. Too much stretching/pushing/pulling required. I think it is possible but would look heavily worked in that area and not the factory-appearing finish I am going for.
We didn't get too ambitious since we were alone, mostly I used the time for driver training for her. Working through some easy sections of slick rock...
As a side note, I've never stopped in to talk with these guys (one of the many rental/expedition shops) but I sure like their style...
Saturday afternoon/evening was a long trip home in a classic Colorado snowstorm. I skipped a powder day on Sunday (blasphemous) and got back to work in the shop.
We left off with the challenge of blending the rearmost roof section in with the body. The problem here is that the trucks taper just a bit in the rear. The overall width between the rear drip rail above the hatch and the central portion behind the doors is a little less than an inch. Lining up the panels as I have them cut leads to this discrepancy between the two.
I spent a while looking at various ways to slice and stretch things so that I could line it all up. I made a few simple slices in the upper portion of the roof beam and the drip rail and tried to massage things with light hammer/dolly work.
In the end, I decide it wasn't going to work. Too much stretching/pushing/pulling required. I think it is possible but would look heavily worked in that area and not the factory-appearing finish I am going for.
ddelong6767
Member
A new approach was needed. If you're going to be cutting and welding panels to get alignment it's better to do it in a less-obvious location. With that mindset, the solution is obvious...
The plus side of this approach is that I can much more easily align the remaining portion of the D-pillar with the C-pillar. The downside of this approach is that my prior plans to use a stock hatch will have to be modified. Mocking things up meant a number of clamps to hold the positions at the C-pillar plus a section of bracing and clamps in the center to temporarily "join" the two sides.
The gap here is about 7/8" wide. In an ideal world you'd take sections from two separate trucks, cut each a little long and trim them to fit in a clean butt weld. I don't have another spare roof laying around so I'm going to have to fill this gap with custom fabbed panels. The good thing is that it's in the center rear of the truck and will pretty much be hidden by the canopy box, so it's not going to be seen much. I'll still try to match the factory sheet metal profile though and make it all look seamless.Whatever solution I come up with for the hatch/rear panel will now also have to account for this 7/8" extra width. It's easier to find two hatches than two roof sections though, so I may just splice two together to get it right.
The upside to this approach is that the corner transition at the C-pillar is now much cleaner. The pic makes this look simple but rest assured there was a lot of time in carefully measuring and trimming pieces to fit. The first step was to get the angle of the rear face off my other truck and make sure it matched here (so that the lower body lines will align). I riveted a support piece on and measured, clamped, adjusted, trimmed, measured, clamped, adjusted, etc until it was all just right. Once there, I put tack welds along the joint of the two panels. I then made a small filler piece to box in the upper beam which gets hidden by the roof. With all the tacks and the upper section welded it's not going anywhere. Later I'll come back and redo the drip rail with some replacement sections to finish it all off.
The plus side of this approach is that I can much more easily align the remaining portion of the D-pillar with the C-pillar. The downside of this approach is that my prior plans to use a stock hatch will have to be modified. Mocking things up meant a number of clamps to hold the positions at the C-pillar plus a section of bracing and clamps in the center to temporarily "join" the two sides.
The gap here is about 7/8" wide. In an ideal world you'd take sections from two separate trucks, cut each a little long and trim them to fit in a clean butt weld. I don't have another spare roof laying around so I'm going to have to fill this gap with custom fabbed panels. The good thing is that it's in the center rear of the truck and will pretty much be hidden by the canopy box, so it's not going to be seen much. I'll still try to match the factory sheet metal profile though and make it all look seamless.Whatever solution I come up with for the hatch/rear panel will now also have to account for this 7/8" extra width. It's easier to find two hatches than two roof sections though, so I may just splice two together to get it right.
The upside to this approach is that the corner transition at the C-pillar is now much cleaner. The pic makes this look simple but rest assured there was a lot of time in carefully measuring and trimming pieces to fit. The first step was to get the angle of the rear face off my other truck and make sure it matched here (so that the lower body lines will align). I riveted a support piece on and measured, clamped, adjusted, trimmed, measured, clamped, adjusted, etc until it was all just right. Once there, I put tack welds along the joint of the two panels. I then made a small filler piece to box in the upper beam which gets hidden by the roof. With all the tacks and the upper section welded it's not going anywhere. Later I'll come back and redo the drip rail with some replacement sections to finish it all off.
Scrapdaddy
Adventurer
Nice work!
ddelong6767
Member
Next step in the reconstruction is to graft on the lower corner/taillight sections. Originally I welded in a brace across the rear tailgate opening and cut all this off as one piece. You can see it laying in the floor in the photo below. My idea was to keep it all as a single unit to maintain relative positions of the taillights and make it easy to keep everything square.
When I lifted this unit up into position it was clear this wasn't going to work. Much like I found in the upper corners, the lower portion of the rear body has some taper. This was evident when I tried to match the surfaces where the side panels and character lines run on the two pieces. The rear sections were about 1/2" too narrow to match the surfaces where the body is cut at the C pillar.
The only way forward was to separate the two sides and fit each corner separately. I cut the cross brace out, cut off the upper crossmember/corners and then began prepping the individual lower corners. I had originally left some of the inner structure in those panels but after some quick test fits found that I'd have to strip everything out from the interior so all that was left was the skins. After some careful work with the sawzall and cutoff wheel I was left with this.
Test fitting started by overlaying the rear corner on the existing metal surface of the body. The first step was to get the cut line at the top edge trimmed to just the right height. The key reference for this is the indented body line and corner lip just below where the glass runs. As you can imagine, this is an exercise in patience. I spent a lot of time slowly creeping up on the fit so that I wouldn't cut too much and have large gaps to fill in. The shot below is it in "pretty close" condition.
As I was working through this, the next big problem jumps out. The body has a small ledge that runs under the rear quarter window. As the window comes up at the rear that ledge curls up and everything blends back in to the main surface. Because I've cut the D pillar sections back to behind the rear window I've lost that ledge and the blend is now gone. The closeup below shows how the two overlay and difference in planes between the D-pillar in front of the rear vent and the C-pillar plane which is above that ledge.
I debated how to address this for a while. You could try to pie slice the panel just below the pillar vent and pull that section in to match the C pillar, but I think that would require too much stretching and the surfaces wouldn't quite align so I didn't go that approach. Blending the forward flange of the vent and the corner of the C-pillar seemed like the best idea, but it will leave a small vertical wall where the door frame comes up (just above the chrome trim). In an ideal world we wouldn't have that sort of overhang but it seemed like the most aesthetically appealing solution given the choices. By making a custom corner transition I can blend the two surfaces into a single plane and only have a small step in the body at that corner. (I know this sounds a little complicated, future pics will help illustrate).
When I lifted this unit up into position it was clear this wasn't going to work. Much like I found in the upper corners, the lower portion of the rear body has some taper. This was evident when I tried to match the surfaces where the side panels and character lines run on the two pieces. The rear sections were about 1/2" too narrow to match the surfaces where the body is cut at the C pillar.
The only way forward was to separate the two sides and fit each corner separately. I cut the cross brace out, cut off the upper crossmember/corners and then began prepping the individual lower corners. I had originally left some of the inner structure in those panels but after some quick test fits found that I'd have to strip everything out from the interior so all that was left was the skins. After some careful work with the sawzall and cutoff wheel I was left with this.
Test fitting started by overlaying the rear corner on the existing metal surface of the body. The first step was to get the cut line at the top edge trimmed to just the right height. The key reference for this is the indented body line and corner lip just below where the glass runs. As you can imagine, this is an exercise in patience. I spent a lot of time slowly creeping up on the fit so that I wouldn't cut too much and have large gaps to fill in. The shot below is it in "pretty close" condition.
As I was working through this, the next big problem jumps out. The body has a small ledge that runs under the rear quarter window. As the window comes up at the rear that ledge curls up and everything blends back in to the main surface. Because I've cut the D pillar sections back to behind the rear window I've lost that ledge and the blend is now gone. The closeup below shows how the two overlay and difference in planes between the D-pillar in front of the rear vent and the C-pillar plane which is above that ledge.
I debated how to address this for a while. You could try to pie slice the panel just below the pillar vent and pull that section in to match the C pillar, but I think that would require too much stretching and the surfaces wouldn't quite align so I didn't go that approach. Blending the forward flange of the vent and the corner of the C-pillar seemed like the best idea, but it will leave a small vertical wall where the door frame comes up (just above the chrome trim). In an ideal world we wouldn't have that sort of overhang but it seemed like the most aesthetically appealing solution given the choices. By making a custom corner transition I can blend the two surfaces into a single plane and only have a small step in the body at that corner. (I know this sounds a little complicated, future pics will help illustrate).
ddelong6767
Member
With that decided, I went ahead and cut out the C pillar sheet metal in that area. The top of the cut aligns with the top of the corner piece, the lower edge is where the black sharpie is in the shot above - right in the middle of that small vertical surface where I need to align the two pieces. I also trimmed back the main side panel in the body to match the corner piece. Here's the fit after all this trimming:
As you can see above, the C-pillar has been cut out where that ledge mismatch was and later I'll make a custom fit filler panel. In this phase I spent a lot of time making small tweaks to raise/lower the corner panel and match the body lines as best I could. There's a little difference in the radii of the body lines which will somewhat be addressed when it's welded by grinding down the bead and shaping that corner but it may also take a little hammer/dolly work and/or body filler to help make the transition seamless. Since these two sections were originally a couple feet apart in the stamped panel it's not too surprising they aren't a perfect match.
Once I was happy with the fit I started stripping all the paint at the edges in prep for welding. Here's a shot of just the body so you can see how the C-pillar and underlying sheet metal have been trimmed.
With both panels ready to weld I did final alignment and fitting. Once again taking a lot of time to get things lined up as good as possible. Next step, lay down some beads and make it a single piece.
As you can see above, the C-pillar has been cut out where that ledge mismatch was and later I'll make a custom fit filler panel. In this phase I spent a lot of time making small tweaks to raise/lower the corner panel and match the body lines as best I could. There's a little difference in the radii of the body lines which will somewhat be addressed when it's welded by grinding down the bead and shaping that corner but it may also take a little hammer/dolly work and/or body filler to help make the transition seamless. Since these two sections were originally a couple feet apart in the stamped panel it's not too surprising they aren't a perfect match.
Once I was happy with the fit I started stripping all the paint at the edges in prep for welding. Here's a shot of just the body so you can see how the C-pillar and underlying sheet metal have been trimmed.
With both panels ready to weld I did final alignment and fitting. Once again taking a lot of time to get things lined up as good as possible. Next step, lay down some beads and make it a single piece.
cruiseroutfit
Well-known member
What an awesome build!
ddelong6767
Member
What an awesome build!
Thanks Kurt! Will be calling you soon, need to order a bunch of parts for this and some customer builds.
Box Rocket
Well-known member
Looking good Doug! Good choice on how to handle the C pillar.
