BUILDING Lower Links For A PRERUNNER! (Full Walkthrough)

[Music] what's up guys welcome back to another video today I'm gonna be showing you how to put together a set of giant Motorsports weld at yourself lower links I have everything from the kit laid out right here on the bench the first two pieces are gonna be your side plates that go on each side of the lower link we have an overlay plate that will end up sitting on top of your top plate we also have the main lower tube right here that comes pre bent one side has a notch in it for this tube sleeve that will end up sitting just like this that will have some bushings in it and then the other side of this will have this bone right here that will hold a Heim we also have your shock spacers that will be used for your shock mount and then we have some internal gussets that will end up going inside of the link to add some strength around the shock pocket as well as close off the lower links so no water can go to each side of the lower link because that will be kind of like a spot where stuff can pool up inside of there once the link is all together but before we can start putting any of this stuff together we need to go ahead and prep all the surfaces on all this stuff and because I'm gonna be TIG welding these lower links together I want to go ahead and make sure I knocked down all the mill scale on the edges of all this plate work because when this stuff is plasma cut out it leaves kind of like a mill scale surface on the edges of all the plate work so I need to grind all that down just sand it down to a nice shiny metal and then we'll go ahead and and prep all the surfaces of actual pieces just so everything looks nice and uniform because there's a little bit of surface stress on this stuff so I'm gonna go ahead and prep all this right now and then we'll go ahead and start tacking the first pieces together and getting this thing put together the interrupting today's video to let you guys know that we're gonna be so some hoodies this weekend on our website links world product calm if you guys think and a chance to grab a shirt last time around that's probably because you weren't following Curtin right on Instagram so I'll put those right here as well go follow us we're gonna put updates on the hoodies there we're gonna have camo in black so I hope you guys get some but for now back to the video these two tools right here what I use to prep all my plate work I have a flap disc 80 grit flap disc that I use for the edges of everything just to get it nice and shiny smooth and then for the faces just to keep everything nice and uniform and looking the same through all the pieces I'll use an orbital sander with some 80 grit sandpaper on it and I'm not going to show you guys me actually prepping this I'll just go ahead and and just like that all this stuff is nice and prepped and you can see with the orbital sander it just puts a nice finish on all this stuff and flat disc goes in and just cleans up all the edges and puts it to nice shiny metal you're not necessarily taking material off the edges you're just knocking down that plasma cut end and just making it nice and shiny again and that will pay off in the long run when you go to weld all this stuff up now we can go ahead and get this overlay plate put onto our top plate that's gonna be our very first step because once this top plate is actually tacked to the lower link and to the tube you won't be able to weld this overlay plate on from the bottom side right here so that is going to be the first step I'm gonna go ahead and line all this stuff up get it exactly where it needs to be tack it together and then we'll burn the bottom side of this in right here and when I flip this over you'll see there will be a nice little lip inside of here that you'll be able to weld here is the little lip I was talking about so what I do is I'll flip the top plate over as you can see it's flipped over the overlay is underneath and then I'll get this little gap set up on both of these openings nice and perfect so everything's nice and symmetrical all the way around and then I'll go ahead and I put two tiny tiny little tic tacs just to hold it together just in case I need to pull it back apart flip it over make sure all my gaps right here are nice and the same on both sides make sure this overlay plate is sitting where it needs to be perfectly straight on this top plate and then now that I know it's where it needs to be I can go ahead and weld this whole thing up and what I'll do just to kind of keep a little bit of heat out of this is I'm gonna do it with silicon bronze and just weld this whole each one of these openings up that way it doesn't want to warp this top plate too bad because if I just sit here and normally take this it's gonna be putting a lot of heat into this and then this top plate is gonna turn into a banana so you can go in and MIG weld this as well you can just stitch weld it just trigger weld it you're not going to see this this is gonna be underneath so as long as you don't over cut onto this piece right here and have your world stick up you'll never even know that it's underneath there I just got done welding the inside of this overlay plate on as you can see it puts a very little heat into these pieces of plate the reason it doesn't put as much heat in there is because the silicon bronze has a lot lower melting point than the two pieces of plate do so it just makes everything real nice I did go ahead already and get some tack welds on the outsides of this top plate and ground the edge flush and if you've seen the previous video on my plate fit up you'll know why I did that and it's just to get the perfect outside corner joint between this top plate and your side plates so I'm gonna go ahead and get one side plate tacked on this just with a couple big tacks on the inside and then I'll show you guys the next step on getting the actual tube in and then we'll go ahead and get the inside gussets in there as well with a couple tack welds holding this together now you can kind of see how this goes together so what I do is I'll start on this side of the top plate and just kind of line the side plate up right here with this edge and get that to angle in you can see it kind of angles in with everything I'll start on this side tack it and then just start working my way down slowly and just making sure the fitment is nice and where I want it and then you can see that leads us with a nice outside corner joint to go ahead and weld all the way across here now that that is on there can go ahead use this as a little spacer to hold the tube up but the next step is going to be getting your main tube on this actual link so the side that has the notch like this on the top plate you're going to be putting the hind side on so that will sit in there just like that kind of hard to do one-handed but I'll sit in there like that I have the spacer holding the tube up right now where it needs to be and the goal with this main tube is you can you can tell the top plate is actually sitting on a level bench and you want this tube to be able to sit level the bend to sit level as well you don't want this sitting crooked one way or the other you want it nice and straight so that's looking pretty dang good right there I'm going to go ahead and tack this side plate to the tube I'll probably do that in a spot where you're not really going to see it probably up in the corner over there then down in the corner over here and then I'll go ahead and start getting these internal ribs in I flipped the link over so this is right side up the way that the links actually going to be on the truck and I did get these internal gussets in place and weld it in you can see they do taper in towards the center of the link and a good reference point for where these actually need to go on the link itself is you can Center it up on the overlay plate hole right here and just use that as a reference point on both sides you can see it basically lands dead center on both of those holes and then they taper in towards the center of the link I'm going to get these shock Bosses actual shock mounts where the shock bolts go through I'm gonna get those put into links so I can go ahead on the bottom side underneath here before I actually put the other side plate on I can get a nice weld on each one of the bosses and then we can go ahead and close this link up and it's pretty much done Oh what I did for the shock mounts I know the spread for my eyelet on my shock is inch and three-quarter so I made I got three nuts that equal inch and 3/4 and then I have 120 thousandths shock shim in here as basically like a spacer so that is four you have your inch and 3/4 width and then 20 thousands over so when you put your shock in and out once everything's welded together it'll slide together nice and easy so what I can do now is this will end up sitting up in here and what you want to do with this is just make sure everything is centered in the link you want to make sure your spacers are the same width apart you can see it overhangs right there so you'll be able to weld all the way around it on the outside on each side but what I'm gonna do is go in here and weld underneath right here on each side that way it's just getting more contact area getting welded on there there's no tendency of those bosses wanting to flex in and Bend the bolt or do anything weird like that so I'm gonna go ahead and get these tacked in place right now I did just get these shock mounts burned in I did add a couple extra plates that don't actually come in the kit I just handmade them and the reason for that is because I think it'll just add a little bit more strength down the road and I don't want to have any issues with these links ever because I am going to be running some pretty big shocks on these I can't tell you what exactly these are gonna be going on but I am running a 3-inch coil over and it will have a four inch bypass on it at some point as well so I wanted to add a little bit more strength to everything and you can see I came in here and welded on the tops and then I also added this plate right here added a little notch in the plate work so the eyelet for the shot can come down in here and not get in contact with it and then it's welded all inside so it came out really good I like the way that it looks we can go ahead and get this side plate on and before you actually get the second side plate on you want to add this little unlit alike this at the very bottom when this is sitting on here you want a drain for all the water or anything that or dirt or mud or anything that gets inside of your link you want it to be able to come out of here especially when you're washing the truck if it gets all dusty inside of there and you go and rinse it out you want a drain hole for stuff to be able to come out of so what I do is I put this drain hole on the inside of the link you just got to make sure when you're building both of these you Mir you put them both on the inside so you don't see them from the outside when you're looking underneath the truck and then that way you'll always be able to get all the water and stuff out of your links and it's not just trapped inside of there but now that the internal pieces are all in there and tacked up and welded together we can go ahead and get this outside piece on you can see fitment on this side is real good - I am more than likely going to add some extra overlays to the outsides as well which is not in the kit but it's just something you can do the good thing about this kit is it's a starting point it's not necessarily what you have to do you can add whatever you want to this so we're gonna go ahead and add some overlays after the fact but these links are almost together I did like this overlay plate that goes just like this so this will be the inside but you get the gist of what its going to be doing and then I'll come around and take weld all the way around the outsides of this and it just adds a little bit of strength where the shocks are doesn't want to let this link go out or do anything not that it necessarily would but I just wanted to add a little bit more flair to these links and I think it's gonna look really good so the two last things that you need to do is get your bung so we got this right here this will end up just sliding right inside of the tube just like that can't act that then you can see there is a bevel right here that you're going to be filling in when you go to weld it which is perfect that's exactly what you want when you do go to finally weld this you want to make sure you take your time and do little sections at a time and let it cool off because you will distort the threads inside of this bung when you weld it so you don't want to put too much heat into this bung itself or you'll have to go and get a tap and then inch-and-a-quarter right hand thread tap is definitely not the cheapest thing in the world so you definitely don't want to do that so just take your time and it will pay off in the long run and on the other side you don't want to do any of the bushing side of things until you go to start mocking up your lengths on the truck because the bushing needs to sit at an angle to be able to kick these links away from the actual frame rail so you want to wait to do this but you can weld everything here and then once you go to put your bushing in and everything set this part of the upper plate will come around and wrap around your actual bushing and then you can weld all the way around it to get a nice full wrap around that bushing end so we do need to do a bunch of welding on this but I'm probably gonna do that off camera and then I'll catch up with you guys once a lot of this stuff is burned together or it's completely done and because I am TIG welding knees I need to go back and grind all these MIG tacks that I put in here I need to grind those out and just get them a little bit knocked down so that way when I go over it would take you won't necessarily see where this big old MIG tech is and then I'll go ahead and every so often I'll put a tic-tac now so nothing wants to expand when I go to start welding it when you're TIG welding stuff like this it definitely takes a little bit more prep and a little bit more fitment and a lot more time all said and done this links probably going to end up taking about twelve to fifteen hours to completely weld because a lot of this stuff like this bottom section is going to be a double pass and then all with all the overlays it's going to take a lot of time between letting the link cool off and actual sit down welding time because TIG obviously takes a whole lot longer to this will end up looking a million times better than MIG when it's all said and done and I can't wait to see this thing all finished up [Music] I just got done getting this lower link completely welded as you guys saw in those clips when I was welding I was doing small sections and kind of moving around this lower link the reason for that is because it keeps the heat down and then apart this big without a jig holding it down you can get a lot of warpage in the whole part itself if you go and put too much heat in certain areas so you want to kind of work around the part and keep the heat down as much as possible but as you can see I did get the bung welded all in got an FK Heim up in here from the good old US of A and then on the opposite end I did get this bushing tube weld it in here and I got that wrap put around it from the upper top plate the way to find the location of where your actual bushing setup needs to be sitting in the lower link is you need to get your link assembled and then mock it up on the actual truck so this will end up sitting at an angle depending on which way or which side of the truck it's on and its kicked because you want the lower portion of the link where it actually mounts to your axle to be as close to the tire as possible to get your shocks away from the frame rail so this will be kicked out away from the frame when it's actually on the truck so to be able to find that angle you need to mock everything up and then set this and then you can come back in and put the wrap around it and weld all this together but giant Motorsports also sells a weld at yourself lower link mount and upper link mount kit it goes together super easy it's very straightforward for the lower link mounts you have two pieces that go together just like that and it is easy as taking a bowl dropping it down through there where your actual link will be mounting inside of there and then you just go ahead and line the two plates up get everything nice and straight and you can go ahead and tack that and weld it all in and I do have the upper link mount already done and as you can see I am too welding everything just to kind of keep with the same theme with the links I just want to give a big thank you to Jeff at giant motorsports for sending me these lower links and the link mounts if you guys are looking for something similar to this you can head over to giant motorsports website and they have a bunch of weld at yourself stuff as well as stuff that they have welded for you but that's going to be it for this video if you guys liked what you just saw make sure you like comment and subscribe and we'll catch you in the next one peace [Music] [Music]

Channel: Wings World

Views: 72,942

Keywords: WingsWorld, Wings World, offroad, trophy truck, prerunner, 4 link, 4 link suspension, 4 link suspension build, prerunner suspension, suspension, offroad suspension, prerunner links, prerunner 4 link, desert, fabrication, hoonigan, ken block, cleetus mcfarland, rob dahm

Id: QFbejUwVbMg

Length: 17min 13sec (1033 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 18 2019