Definitely Some of the STRANGEST Suspension I’ve Ever Seen…

all right it's another day of working on Colin C10 I unintentionally wore my matching shirt today but uh you know it's fitting all right so the last thing we were doing was modifying the back end of this Frame so we've got the axle side mounts and we've got the frame side mounts now we need to build the links that connect the two and then we can continue building the frame around the axle so let's quickly get that done so we can cycle the suspension and see what needs to come next so measuring from there to here that gives us 29 and an e all right so the joints I'm using for the rear links aren't necessarily compatible with each other and what I mean by that is one is this size of bun which goes in a 2in pipe like that and the other one is this size which goes into a small pipe like that so we need to adapt from this side to that size clearly doesn't fit so to kind of neck that bigger pipe down to the smaller one I cut out these little E8 in strips here I cut three of them out and we'll just put them kind of in a triangle shape to hold it centered in the pipe that way when we weld it up it's not all wonky and wants to warp all weird so I'll get these tacked on to the small pipe and I'll show you exactly what I'm talking about well that's exactly what I was talking about so they're welded on the inside and these are an inch and a half so I'm going to pound the rest of this in to sleeve it an inch and a half in I think that'll give it um I think that'll make it more rigid and stuff as if we were stuffing the pipe properly um and when we weld it up you won't even know and it kind of looks cool to wait next down perfect now all we have to do is throw that bung in there and uh we can weld them [Music] up with a little bit of patience you get the links welded up without ruining the threads and uh I got two of them on already take a look at this oh yeah perfectly parallel at the moment that was completely unintentional um but I don't really think it's a bad thing I think Colin's going to be super happy with that anyway next order of business is getting this slammed because that's what we're after on this project but there's one thing holding us back time and money no no I'm just kidding it's not either of those things now um it's the drive shaft holding the cab up right there so if we try to go any lower cuz this has a long ways to go we got to cut up into that man it's hard work going low I'd rather lift it to be honest but you know this thing's pretty cool you know those videos where the trucks is totally the wrong wrong kind of vehicle but where the suspension goes like Bo you know Hydraulics yeah yeah is this going to do that no it's not even cool I'm sorry it's not even cool it's not an airplane either so if you expect it to fly it's it's not going to do that no I just I don't I I don't know this is a cool truck it's Colin's dream I get that but like I don't know I I like high things you know like lifted things this will be really cool though I'm really excited for how this is GNA turn out all right well let's get this cut [Music] [Music] out that looks horrible I'm so sorry we'll clean it up and make it actually look good but it just pains my soul to cut into a cab of this era or or NAA for that matter you just have to have enough confidence that you can make it better than it was before so it doesn't mean it has to be good it just has to me mean like whether you get satisfaction out of it doesn't matter what other people think but if later when this Project's completely done and uh and we wish that we did nothing with it at all that's when we messed up oh it's still hting the floor all the way up in there it'll definitely clear now that got you closer it's pretty low how it sits that's exciting okay well we'll see you tomorrow good morning today we're back in the shop we got Zach with us today and and Higgins hi so today we are going to get the airbags installed we are we're not I've been saying that for the last like 4 days but we're going to get close to it today so here's what we got going down I redid the axle mounts cuz I didn't like them they are now cool looking and they've got speed holes in them um we put in a more permanent crossmember Zach is also putting uh gussets on right there just to strengthen that whole joint up because it's a weak point now and they're cool looking they that's the important part even though you won't be able to see them now we need to kind of finish the frame top part a little bit more so that we know how to mount the airbags and whatnot um so we've got this cool little logo over here that will kind of be the top plate for the frame hopefully Chevy doesn't me I don't know what their trademark stuff is but boom so yeah just a couple more measurements to make to make sure it clears everything and then we can get it cut out and installed all right that's what we're going for I've got a sheet of 3/16 right here cross our fingers [Music] [Music] oh that is it right there man all right still needs to be cleaned up more but it's actually looking really good and I'm sure you're asking yourself what about the rear airbags how's this thing going to move up and down have you forgotten about it no I have not right Zach we got a plan I've been thinking and thinking and thinking about how this rear end's going to be set up in fact I've had 2 years to come up with a way all the ways I was thinking about I threw out the window and we're doing something completely different now we're going to add another arm so we have our parallel four link set up and that keeps our axle perfectly in line keeps the pinion from rotating so I'm going to be adding another arm to mount the airbag to and it seems excessive because that would mean this is six arms and then with the Watts link eight so it' be an octopus yeah we're we just need to get started on on that and I think to start I'm going to mount the airbags here's what we're working with for airbags these bad boys are bigger than the front but they'll go right in here somewhere do that look about right yeah let's get them mounted Zach had to go but he got the Chevrolet all cleaned up and if you've ever cleaned the slag from a plasma cutter you know how much work it is really happy he did that not me that's it upside down at the moment Chevrolet this is the bag mount idea that I have so I think I'm going to mount this bag to the frame right there and there's going to be have to be another arm that picks up the frame so I have this piece here that I think I'm going to mount and have an arm come all the way down and connect to the axle with a shackle so with that kind of setup I'll be able to get more lift out of the bags which I'm hoping to get because ride height is about 9 in and the bag's travel is also only 9 in so that leaves no room for down travel at full full height also to avoid excessive pressure let me get this a little further along and then I'll show you what we come up with because it's really hard to explain it wow this is taking way longer than I thought it would but we're making progress making very good progress so um we built this arm right here okay and this arm picks up from right there that's kind of a solid joint um we might change that up a little later then it goes down to the bag and the bag is what actually like picks up the truck and then the r the end of the arm is going to go and it's going to sling down below the axle I'm actually about to throw a couple more bigger tacks on that kind of test it without any real weight on it just cycle it without breaking anything hopefully and just seeing what it does [Applause] now we're talking see that's full ride height right there go down now and see completely aired out I aired up the front again again we should have 9 in of clearance Air aired up the back with the Jack here holding everything up and it's about 9 in that should be about ride height for this truck I think nine 99 and 1 12 in of uh ground clearance is perfectly reasonable for a truck like this cuz it's not for off-road this is what it looks like with the bag all the way aired up obviously could lift little more than that even I think I'm going to call it a day though because I really like how that's going absolutely gorgeous anyway until then we'll see you tomorrow back to the project last night I got the one arm done or mocked up and it's taken a long time to get the other arm done um so now we've got two pairs one for each side there's the spindle for one there's the spindle for the other bag location right there and there now we just need to put it together tack some axle mounts on and we'll be good to go so and then I'll go over the geometry of things and how it makes sense it doesn't make sense where's the washer you have it yep so Zach welded up these cute little arms um these heims go into them for our little uh shackle link Mount arms are now in we got some stronger gussets um with the bags also in now we need to get the airlines pulled off the front and put them on the rear so we can actually test the air function of it and now we can get rid of the Jack we don't need it anymore installed and good to go wow would you look at that you can go taller than right height easy as cake down kind of takes a while boy that is taking the rest of my life [Music] well actually they don't take forever to fill up it's just a long [Music] time that's so [Music] cool looks pretty good it's been kind of over the weekend and nobody's been here except me so I've just been welding up some parts and pieces like welding the rear frame portion up welding these arms up and everything and while I was doing that the wheels actually came and I noticed right away that they are the wrong lug pattern they had the the lug pattern listed wrong on the website so I can't really you know blame anyone really it's it's an honest [Music] mistake nice so we're running a six on 5 and A2 and these are a six slug on five so now I need to decide if I'm going to send them back or if we're going to try to do some stuff and redrill these hubs to fit the only reason I'd consider that is because I'm having a really really difficult time finding the wheels with the right offset so we don't have to narrow this rear axle because that's going to be a ton of work and I'd rather just avoid doing that so far I went ahead and Drew the redring pattern I cut it out already and then I've got it setting over here right there so that's those holes are what it is currently and these other holes are what I need it to be so if if I rotate this you can see the difference um it's pretty pretty [Music] big to redrill the front hubs uh is not going to be super difficult but the rear flanges could be a little bit more work so since I want to see if these wheels are even the right back spacing anyway I think I will redrill the front uh hubs just to see how they fit and how they clear this will go right onto here [Music] all right so we just need to get these holes a little bigger and then we can pop those studs into it and uh we'll call it a day for testing purposes we only have two put in get it all bolted up get the wheel on and see how it looks that would be two legs holding it on [Music] so that looks pretty good yeah so the edge of the tire actually sits like right there full stuff and that's our Edge reveal Edge right there so that should be more than [Music] enough that looks really nice I think I'm going to go ahead and convert the rest of the wheels so uh yeah I guess next on to pulling the rear axle shaft out to see what we can do with that I decided I'm not going to pull the axle shaft right now uh instead I'm going to get this rear frame put back up where it actually needs to go I just got a a little distracted with that wheel and wanted to see if it' work and it does so moving on today we're going to be putting the Watts link together if you don't know what that is it locates the axle left and right it's kind of like a track bar but it works using different geometry in the end it looks super cool and works really really well first we got to get these mounted up and then we can start building the wat link [Music] [Music] [Music] with the two uh frame rails in place I want to add another like crossmember bar kind of to match that one but I think I'm going to put it down here by these gussets and that will also hold our fuel tank which is right here we just went with a 20- gall tank I think that'll be plenty for this truck and it'll probably get better fuel mileage than it did before we did all this work [Music] all right so depending on how you do your link setup you need a way to Center your axle you can do that with the links or you can do it with like a track bar or a Watts link we're going with a Watts link let me explain what that is essentially you have a bar mounted to the axle right there and it pivots okay it can pivot off the center of the axle and then it is connected to the frame using two more arms that go to the frame it can pivot there and to the frame and it can pivot there you're going to have to build a a bracket down to catch that though so if you push the axle that way that center pin is going to want to rotate and it can't rotate because it's pushing against the other frame but what it can do is it'll let the axle move up and down as the axle travels up and down the distance from this point to this point has to change and uh it does that by pivoting on this Center Point without the center point doesn't work now when setting one of these up it's super important that this link and this link are the same lengths because if they're not your axle is going to bind and it's not going to travel properly and it's going to be bad really really bad so now that we have a basic idea of what we're building let's go build it all right so obviously we need enough joints for this to work and we also need a pivot just like I did over here if you look at it right here looks kind of like my drawing kind of so we need somewhere to mount our Center pivot which will go somewhere there obviously that needs to be cut down I'm going to come off the axle tubes right over here come across and right over there and then we'll attach that in the middle going to go play around on the computer see what we can get cut out that will work well this is what it looks like all cut out um I actually have two of them cuz I'll be stacking them so here's the one that is cleaned up I mostly put the holes in just for looks another thing that I touched on earlier but you want to make sure that that pivot is dead center of the axle and dead center between the frame and in this case the Pumpkin Center section is perfectly centered from that flange to the edge from that flange to the edge we're going to have to Halt progress for this evening because I have a birthday to go to or something like that something about it being my birthday but I I don't know I guess I have to go to it till tomorrow we'll see you good morning it is a beautiful day and I am so excited to get working on this truck today because we're going to get the Watts link finally installed in the rear suspension wrapped up so that we can mount the bed and start moving onto everything that's left so all the electrical interior motor stuff it's going to be a really good day last night we left off with this bracket being cut out I also went ahead and I made the way that it matched to the axle so that we can still unbolt this bracket so that we could get the diff cover off let's get the crossmember completely welded up and the uh rotating pins and everything kind of mocked up so we got the whole bracket kind of tacked on and it definitely sticks out further than I would have liked that's all right it's it's going to work the other thing I have these which will be the brackets that it pivots off of so that goes right there get welded on and looking good so we got two of them there one goes on the top one goes on the [Music] bottom yeah I'll get them tacked on so you can see what I'm talking about here's the piece kind of goofy looking I'm going to admit uh that's exactly what we need it to do here's the scoop with this Center pivot arm in I pulled a strap to Center the frame over the axle so that this is dead center and then I also added the lower Mount that goes to the lower arm and the upper Mount that goes to the upper arm so let's connect the two now is what we'll be using these are exactly the same length right now that's [Music] one perfect let's watch it work [Music] it works and it looks pretty cool I might do a little bit more tweaking here and there on it but I mean it works let's watch it go up again [Music] soon as we tighten the bolts down it's not going to have that loose bolt slop in it anymore now I do need to explain something you can go too far with a wattling if you keep going up eventually this arm will try to flip and rotate the whole frame will actually start moving really fast instead of just moving straight up and down it'll it'll just send the frame sideways and then start coming back down so it's kind of like a half figure eight pattern but you got to imagine the figure eight tilted to the side and the plane we're working with is the straight up and down plane If This Were to rotate all the way around and flip then we'd be dealing with the DraStic curves but as of now I think we can start finalizing some of these welds that's a lot of work but man it's fulfilling we have the rear suspension under Colin's truck now and I can't wait for him to see it because I think it looks pretty cool it just I don't know a lot of lot of different things going on I guess the only thing left to do is just to sit and look at it enjoy this montage [Music] [Music] [Music] and as always thanks for watching

Channel: Rudys Adventure and Design

Views: 134,231

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Id: B732i3zaiLU

Length: 26min 54sec (1614 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2024