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alright... you can use my sandblaster if ya want... just gotta pay for sand and help me out with cleaning up or something... my air compressor doesnt keep up to well with the blaster so you can only blast for like 2-3 min at a time with about 2-3 min wait for the pressure to build back up... but i figure it should take but a short period of time to blast some springs... shouldnt take more than a sack of sand either
Took a wire wheel and some Oxisolve to the springs on Friday. Now they look brand new. I would strongly recommend the Oxisolve to anyone trying to get rid of any rust; the stuff eats it right up, then leaves a coating on the surface afterwards that prevents future rusting. I still plan on painting the springs with some Walmart spray paint, just to make them look a little nicer.
Today I finished putting on my home-made gap guards to disguise the fact that I foolishly put a body lift on my truck in high school. Oh well, it was a cheap 3".
I also need to speed up the process for the front because I already put the 33's on, and they are rubbing big time. Two more inches in the front should cover it. How much longer till Katemcy???
so...are you planning on doing this in college station or at home? You don't have to do it all at once. Whos doing the welding? whos welder you using?
Well, Mario, first thing is first: I need to get those coils for the front ordered. Those won't take long at all to install, just a few hours. Hopefully I can find a free weekend between now and TCC to get that done. The rear is probably going to be a longer project. I will probably do the rear at home, and hire a friend to do the welding. As of right now, I am shopping around for everything I will need to do the u-bolt flip. The spring plate is the least of my problems right now. I still haven't figured out exactly what degree shim I will need to use to point the pinion flange at the transfer case. Also, I am going to need new lower shock mounts on both sides. These will probably have to be welded onto the axle housing. Sky Manufacturing sells a flip kit for $55, but it doesn't include shock mounts or the angled shims, and so their kit is looking to be too pricey.
Why don't you just mount your shocks like / \? It would make it alot easier on yourself and it wouldn't cost hardly anything...maybe 10 dollars in metal. Theres plenty of guys here that would do the welding for you. I'd be up for helping you this weekend if you wanted to go ahead and put the springs on. You can drive around without shocks for awhile and your pinion angle won't be so bad you can't live with it for a few days. Shock mounts wouldn't take but an hour to fab up and weld on. You'll be riding a55high for a while, but at least you'll have the rear done.
BTW. does anyone have a mig?
Lot to do before the rear is ready...still need to get some front hangers fabbed. I think I am gonna try to get some shackles fabbed too. They will perform much better than the double shackle set-up. How hard is it to make shock mounts for / \? Or am I better off ordering some from somewhere?
it shouldnt take long at all to make it so you can mount them like /\.
nah. Get some square and cut it in 1/2 and use the C for the bottom mounts that weld to the axle.
For the top, grab some small square tube...cut it so that it will fit snugly between the frame rails. Then whereever u want the top mounts to go, cut holes in the square on both sides, slip a 5/8" bolt in each holes and weld it up there. Then mount your shocks and its done. I can for sure do this for you if u want. It would be cheap. 20 bux would do it easy.
EDIT: I could weld this for you...I dunno if you'd trust me on hangers though. We could get bubba to do it probably. He does all my 'important' welding.
Mario and I went to Custom Fabricators today and got metal for upper shock mounts, and some metal for shackles. We jacked the rear end up 3 inches to look at how it will be setup. Everything looks like it will be good so far, but we may run into some trouble with the brakelines, we'll just have to see. And I have decided to definitely buy the procomps because the price is so much better than enything else. I hope that isn't something I'll be kicking myself for later.
We are gonna weld the cross bar for the upper shock mounts on Monday, as well as fabricate the shackles. Anyone interested in checkin it out is more than welcome.
We did some work again today. It turns out that Mario is just shy of Jesse James on the professional welder scale. Well, not quite, but he did do an excellent job. Here are the upper shock mounts. Just took two 4" long 5/8" bolts and welded them to some 1"x1.5"x0.25" rectangular tube.
Here is the final product. There is an old procomp es3000 that Mario had laying around resting on the top mount. Turned out real nice.
After we got the crossmember welded across the rear frame (almost directly above the axle), we decided to do some fender trimming to help the 33's fit. We didn't do anything drastic, simply because the truck will be lifted in the front pretty soon. We cut away some of the plastic shroud, then took about an inch out of the "pinch weld" that the tires were rubbing on. Here is a crappy pic, but it shows what we did. Now the tires no longer rub on the wheel well. Now they only rub on the frame. So, for anyone driving a tacoma and wants to put 33's on with only 3" of lift, you can't do it if your rims are 10" wide, otherwise, you have a green light.
Now the next step is getting the front coils and all 4 shocks ordered. Mario is going to torch holes in the metal that I got from Custom Fab into shackles for the rear. It's kinda starting to come together now.
looking good man so i assume you are gonna mount the shocks like this /\.
hey guys. we're working on some things on his truck, and we're trying to track down curved (not boxed) u-bolts and spring plates.
We've talked to xtreme (don't have/too much) and we're calling salvage yards and such.
Does anyone have ubolts/spring plates for cheap or free?
gimme a call 979.220.3108
or brandon 713.417.8537