Volkswagen Vanagon 4x4 Conversion.

[vwhammer]

Got the rear axle all welded up and ready to assemble.
Before I get into that I would like to show you a couple of preparation step I took before welding it all up.
I am confident in my welding and my equipment.
However, I wanted to make sure I never had to worry about any of this axle junk so i took a few precautions.
I showed you the sleeves that I made and this is how they worked in the housing.

Here it is all welded up.

This should get it up and running and drive-able until I can save my pennies and send the specs off to the axle builder and have a new housing made that I will swap out at a later date.

As I mentioned before, with the housings ready to rock I had to get all the parts in to put them together.
I got some bearings and seals and necessary brackets from various suppliers.

There are a couple of pieces still to show up but I think I have everything to build some fresh "new" axles.

I am currently awaiting delivery of some front hubs and the locking diff for my front axle but I had some other work to do in the meantime.

For example, I needed to strip the park brake bits off of my rear brake caliper mounts as I will be running a transfer case mounted park brake.

This was a lot easier said than done.
So the pivot for the park brake shoes (the protruding bit in this pic) appeared to just be held on with a couple of rivets.

After grinding the heads off of both sides of the rivets and pounding and heating and pounding on it for 20 minutes it was apparent that there was something else holding it on.
I don't have a pic but it turns out that the center of the park brake pivot runs through the bracket and is pounded flat so it also functions as a giant rivet that is more than 3/4 of an inch (19mm) in diameter.
You can see the bit I am talking about in this pic.

After some work with the plasma cutter I finally sorted this out and managed to get the piece off.

Of course after that there were a handful of... spot welds that held the backing plate and a couple of other bits.
I learned long ago while working in the collision repair industry (AKA a bodyshop) that these rotabroach cutters are the best and only tool you need for removing these welds.

A couple of center punches and some work from my trusty (using the term loosely) cordless drill and I was left with a couple of bare brake caliper mounting brackets.

After that was wrapped up I needed to get the last of my steering knuckles torn town in anticipation of a thorough degreasing and some time in the blast cabinet.

As is tradition, everything is taking longer than I anticipated.
Meh. I have no real deadlines other than those that I have dreamed up in my own mind.
I would really like to do some exploring and camping in this beast this spring and/or summer but I am not going to rush anything.
I am still pretty pleased with the pace at which things are happening and its just fast (or slow) enough that my income matches (well almost) the need for new parts.

Next on the parts list are some springs.
I will work on getting the control arm brackets welded on the axles and finishing up all the control arm pieces.
Then I will get the axles assembled and (fingers crossed) get them bolted under the van and it will finally be sitting on its own suspension or at least most of it.

Until Next time...

 

[Backcountry Pursuit]

This has to be one of the most intense custom builds in this section. The amount of machining is astounding. Nothing on your project is a simple bolt on! Good work man.

 

[vwhammer]

Well, I do all of this now in the hopes that the next one will be completely bolt on.

 

[philos]

+1 on those Blair hole cutters, wonderful tools to have access to. I'm going to have to buy the large hole saw/cutter set now that I've used them.


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[vwhammer]

Little update.
I managed to drill a hole.

That hole is for this thing to fit like so and function as such.

However, after struggling with my hand-me-down, el cheapo supreme drill press for 30 minutes to drill the first hole and realizing that I need 7 more pieces, four of which needed 1.0625 holes, I decided to whip up a couple of quick drawings and send them off to the laser cutters to make my life easier.
This poor drill was just not cut out for such tasks.

I think I am being spoiled by the laser cutters.
I can usually get anything cut within a 5 day window and I just drive 20 minutes to pick them up and I am done with the whole deal.
It just makes my life simpler.

After the drill press debacle it was time to move on to the next thing; finishing up my last pair of control arms.
I started to lay out where the holes needed to go on the new control arm material when it hit me.
I could use the parts from my first control arm design as a fixture to locate and guide the hole saw for the new holes.

Of course my poor drill press would not be able to handle this either and it was not really a job for the laser cutters so I had to tackle this one myself.
Fortunately I have access to a full machine shop at work so it meant just dragging all the necessary parts there and making it all happen.

This all went pretty smoothly.
It's pretty amazing how easy this stuff is when you have the right tool for the job.
Now I just have to weld in my bushing sleeves and finish them up.

I will get to that soon enough but some parts showed up and I had some cleaning to do.
I finally got my front locking diff and the hubs I need.

This left me with a pile of parts that needed some good cleaning and a couple that need some machine work.

Once again I decided to take advantage of the shop at work and bead blast my brake calipers.
Before and after... Well in this pics case after then before.

I started to blast my rear brake caliper brackets but the blaster was running low on beads and was not working too well.
I could not find more beads in the shop so I bailed on that idea until I can talk to the shop guys and get it back up and running.

That's where I ended for the week but I will likely be out in the garage tomorrow to do something.

In other news, I would like to ask a question to anyone that may have some experience or knowledge on the subject of currently available on-board air compressors.
I am on the lookout for a small, durable, quality 12 volt air compressor that I can use to fill a 3-5 gallon tank for use on my air actuated lockers and air suspension.

The funny thing is I used to design and build air suspension systems for a custom shop but generally we just used whatever crappy, cheap air compressors that we could find at any generic air bag shop.
Most of the stuff we built would just get used and abused for a show season and would be redesigned and rebuilt with new stuff for next season.
As such we never really got to test the durability of any of the compressors or valves.

I have valves covered but, as I have been out of the air suspension game for 10 years or more, I am not really sure what is available now days for compressors.
The emphasis on the compressor should be on quality and durability.
I do not want to run an engine driven compressor due to space constraints so I am looking specifically for a 12 volt electric compressor.

I understand that ARB and some of the other off road equipment companies sell compressors for such things but are they any good?
Does anyone have any experience with durability of such things?
I wondered if there might be some more industrial grade stuff out there.
Viair has their industrial grade compressors.
I wondered if that was just marketing mumbo jumbo or if they are the real deal.

Since I am on the subject of air suspensions I should mention that I have made the decision to run a full air suspension.
My original intention was to run a full air suspension but I could not find bags of adequate travel that would fit within my space constraints.
However, after catching a glimpse of and airbag in a couple of Ronny Dahl's youtube vids that may fit the bill, I started to do a little digging.

This digging lead me to Boss Air suspension in Australia.
They have the bag that does everything I need and is the right size.
I did a little more design work to make sure it would all work and I think I am ready to get some of the bags in house.

Well.
That's about all I have for now.
I may post the compressor question in one for the more general forums in order to get a little more input on the subject.

More later...

 

[Backcountry Pursuit]

My brother has a Puma compressor in his van and it is one impressive unit. Many air ups through Baja and it plugs right along. Makes pulling out the trail deflators a no brainer even for short jaunts down a gravel road because that compressor airs back up so fast. He bought the Puma for reliability and performance and it has lived up to the hype.

 

[snwbrdr435]

Well, I do all of this now in the hopes that the next one will be completely bolt on.

My 85 subaru powered westy is ready for that!

 

[Haf-E]

Any updates?

 

[vwhammer]

Well I did manage to do a couple things but not nearly as much as I wanted.
Like a doof I went and bought myself a motorcycle and it has been quite a distraction.
But I must carry on.
I will be taking a week off from work sometime in the coming weeks so I can work full time on the van to really make some headway here.
I also have some fabricating friends that may be willing to come help out a couple days a week so I can do 2 or 3 times the work in the same amount of time.

Here is what I have done since my last update.
My laser cutter dude was a little slow with my last parts which, Oddly enough, were the simplest parts I have sent him to date.
Anyway if you recall from my last post I was having these rectangles with the holes in them cut.
They simply work like so.

They then make up the adjustable part of this assembly.

I had a hell of a time with my welder on these parts for some reason but I managed to get them welded up and they work like so with my lower control arm.
In case you can't tell the axle will be welded into the "C" shaped brackets and there is or will be a bushing where each of the bolts are located on the gray control arm pic.

On the subject of lower control arms, I got the last set almost finished.
Had to do a little prep work, some heating and some hammering but ended up with this.

Pay no attention to the spatter on any of these parts.
Apparently I had the wire feed set to high and didn't really pay that much attention until after I was done welding most of it.

Some may notice in one of the pics with just the latest set of control arms that there is a section around one of the sleeves that is not welded.
If you look more closely you will see that there is a crack across the top of that.
That set of bushings is offset in the tube so when I drilled the hole for the sleeve it all but drilled right through the side of the tube.
I knew this section was going to be very thin so I bought material to weld across that section to reinforce it a bit.

Other than that I bought some square tube to reinforce my skid plate/transfer case mount because I noticed it flexing a bit when it was under the van and I was putting some force on it with the jack.

The weather finally warmed up so I finally got around to making a big ol'greasy spot in my driveway de-greasing some more of my axle bits.

A couple of these parts are heading off to my friend in the machine shop to be turned down so my new rotors will fit.
I also have to machine my knuckles for my keyed steering arms.

I suppose the goal now is to finish up the skid plate and get my axles together since everything else is nearly ready to put under the van.
I also bought that silly motorcycle so I can retire the Subaru that will be donating the engine.
I am hoping to have my friends help me attack the Subaru strip down to get it knocked out post haste.

I still have not ordered my air bags and associated bits so I suppose I should get on that as well.

Someday soon the time will come to get the suspension bolted under this thing.

Until then...

 

[kccourtney]

This has to be one of the most intense custom builds in this section. The amount of machining is astounding. Nothing on your project is a simple bolt on! Good work man.

Seriously!

 

[snwbrdr435]

Any updates?

 

[vwhammer]

Man you caught me.
I think this is the first time someone has asked about updates that I don't have anything substantial.
I did have my hubs machined to fit my front brake rotors.
Other than that I just cleaned and spray bombed some parts so everything is nice and clean for assembling the axles.
As I mentioned I bought a motorcycle and it needed a few upgrades to do what I wanted it to do.
It's apart now and occupying a lot of my garage and time.
Should be back together sometime next week.
I will then be back on the van getting some things bolted together in preparation for the week I am taking off from work to work on the van.
More substantial updates soon... I promise.

 

[Vandit]

Looking forward to it! Also, since it's your thread I wouldn't mind seeing a pic or two of your motorcycle project....

 

[vwhammer]

You can check out the whole build if you're bored.
http://advrider.com/index.php?threads/nother-nc700x-thread-but-this-time-an-adv-build.1215824/

 

[Vandit]

I had a chance earlier to check out your bike project. I like where you're going with it, looks like you've got a pretty good start since you've got a vision and have already done a lot of research. I'll be checking in to see your progress on it since you're right about to get into the heart of it. Thanks for sharing the link.