Skunkworks DCSB

Indeed

 

Nice man, I remember following along with your build when you had your sas first gen, my name over there was foxhead. I think we might have some mutual friends around NorCal from MTB as well. Good to see you over here! Sorry @Cruzer, back to your sweet ass build thread now lol

 

Tight! I sold that truck back in 2021 for a ridiculous amount of money lol. Had to capitalize on the toy market. Truck was really over built for my uses anyway, just want to camp with the fam nowadays

 

Today I chopped off the rear body mounts.



I did the final cut on the bed frame side, still need to do the one under the cab. But this picture shows there’s an 8 inch gap that I can’t close because the top of the frame is hitting the bottom of the cab, near the cab mount. I’ll need to C-notch the cab to fit the frame.

 

hey those look like nice straight cuts!

 

I purposely didn’t post a close up of the final cuts cuz they’re not Started with the but it didn’t stay straight for long so I finished it with the plasma cutter.

 

Good from far, far from good. Like my welds

 

Monet

 

Did monet do a lot of welding?

 

I just ordered 8' of the thinnest walled (16 gauge) 2"x3" rectangular tube at my local metal store. I'm going to reenforce the back of the cab from the inside so that I can chop the exterior brace.



Why such a long tube? I'm also trying to plan ahead because when the time comes to chop up the cab to tuck up the fuel tank I will use this tube as the base for the tunnel structure.

 

Here is what I did on my 4Runner for body mounts using the ES bushings, I ended up plating the frame underneath and gusseting after tearing a hole in the frame

 

I like the use of the square tube; way more simple.

 

Yep, no additional welding needed to fab the mount, drilling the hole was the "hardest" part. After the above fixes, they have been good-to-go for the past three years.

 

Are you the one with an Atlas TC?

 

Yep! Did the body mounts at the same time as the Atlas install to reduce body movement and get the Atlas as close to the body as possible without worrying about it hitting. It hitting was actually how I noticed the body mounts had broken, I was getting crazy vibes in the cab from the body sitting on the Atlas, which I couldn't figure out, then found the cracked and drooping body mounts.

 

Man! It was a video you did right? I've been looking for it hoping to copy how you did the crossmember mounts to the frame.

 

No videos, but here is where the Atlas install starts in my build thread on TW.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/wishbone-runners-build.238998/page-63#post-22400441

Here is the final crossmember setup, belly is totally flat, the driver side cat was moved up after this when I had the exhaust redone.

 

No wonder I couldn't find it I knew I came across it somewhere.

 

Closing in on that gap,



At the expense of opening a bigger one

 

Need to cut off 2 more inches on the passenger side but this just about how it’s gonna look.

 

@Wishbone Runner when welding on a reinforcement plate onto the frame, how close should the plate be to the edges, in this case the top & bottom of the C-channel? Want to add a 3/16th plate to the rear of the hanger to support the body mount.

 

Are you going to get that bad boy on the Rubicon this year ?

 

Nope. I'm hoping to weld the frame back together and put everything back on so that I can do a shake down run in late August or early September. Want to make sure I'm close to home if the truck decides to to do the splits. If nothing breaks then I'll continue with the rest of the mods.

 

Look how cute! They cleaned it up and painted it too.

 

At least we know you're not compensating

 

In my experience, as close to the edge of the frame (where it starts to bend) as possible while still keeping the weld puddle on the vertical part of the frame, if that makes sense. If you think about the forces, getting the plate to the bend will transfer the load to the part of the frame that in in the other plane (vertical vs horizontal in this scenario), which is stiffer to resisting flex in the other plane.

In my example that ripped off the first time, all the force was on a small patch and it just ripped the frame out, by spreading out the load with a bigger plate, as well as moving the forces seen at the edge of the plate to another axis, should create the greatest distribution of forces.

Is all this necessary to prevent ripping the frame apart? I don't know, it wouldn't be too hard to math and figure out, but I just went overkill (I used 3/16" plate as well), and added gussets where I could. I also did rosettes in a few spots by drilling a hole through the plate and plug welding them for extra strength.

 

Thanks! Very good info.

 

My fabricator mind has me wondering how I would accomplish this project. Would it have been easier to leave the frame as it was stock and shift the short bed up to the cab and make new mounts for it? Seems like quite a task cutting and splicing the frame and patching all that sheet metal. I think I just hate doing sheet metal work if I can avoid it lol

 

My goal is to shorten the wheelbase for better break over angles. The less I get hung up on the frame, the less I’ll break parts.

 

Yeah moving leaf spring hangars forward is part of all that too which would shift the axle forward