Back to the build!…..such a nice night had to go do some work out in the garage!
Well, had enough components to make up the front axle.
Started off my measuring, drawing sketches, measuring and calculating and came to the measurement needed to cut the tubing to the length needed.
I used some tubing I had in my shop (aka GARAGE!)…And it fit the original location of the axle perfectly! It is OVERKILL for an axle…but..oh well…Didn’t cost me anything!
Next I had to make up some end plates to mount the heims to.
Again…more steel I had laying around. The first plate was made up “FREE-HAND†with a drill bit and a die grinder. Got the shape as close as I could with the minimal tools avail to me for making a cut like this. The first one is always the easy one…it’s trying to make the second one match that can be the headache!
Anyway….After the first one was made up. I placed it over the second plate to be made and marked where I should drill the holes to open up into a slot.
Here is the second plate that I drilled out (3) .500†holes.
I then stacked the two plated on top of each other with the first completed plate on top. Clamped them in a vise to hold them together.
I then grabbed a can of spray paint and sprayed it thru the first plate onto the second plate to hopefully leave a pattern to die grind out so they both match.
After giving the paint a minute of dry time…I removed the top plate and whay was left on the second plate was the pattern I needed to make each plate match!
Here we are with two matched end plates.
Here I welded a .500†fine thread nut onto the backside bottom of the plates to thread the lower heim joint into. I wont have access to this nut once the plates are welded onto the axle tube.
Here you can see both end plates assembled with heims.
Here they are tacked into place onto the axle .
Here you can see I’m getting a little shy of 12* caster adjustment on the end plates alone. As you can see in some of the previous images, I have tack welded these end plates onto the axle tube with an additional 6* POSITIVE caster . This will now give me an adjustment from 6* NEGATIVE thru 18* POSTIVE caster on each side.
Here we are with one wheel just thrown on (waiting on my other hubs to arrive) to take a measurement from the center of the axle to the outer most part of the wheel. This measurement was giving me 17â€. This will give me a 34†front track width with room to make this wider if need be.
I’ll have enough adjustment to set the front chassis height from 3.750†to 5.000†depending on how I space the spindle.
Next will be to finish weld the end plates onto the axle. And weld it into the chassis.
Not counting my time...I'll have about $65.00 into this front axle once done. I had heims, the steel, and misc hardware...All I needed to buy were spindles, bushings and hubs!
That’s enough for tonight……Back out to the garage tomorrow after work!
Sorry for the smaller than normal images...had to use the el'cheapo camera tonight...the better one's batteries were dead and didn't feel like running down to the gas station to get some!
