Point of NO RETURN! We might have RUINED the FJ45 Unicorn

i may have done a whole bunch of work for nothing at this point it's morning and i'm in the shop and it's a good day because my o.r.i.s have showed up so i've taken and mocked this sucker up i'll give you a gist of what she's going to look like but today is ori day i got to build the frame front piece of frame because this is ride height and this won't do that's touching so i got uh that's first on the agenda is to get enough clearance for up travel and then i can put these those are my ori mounts they're going to weld to the top of the frame and hold my ori in place so that's what's going on today it's going to be a lot doesn't sound like a lot but building that frame making it oh yeah i forgot to mention the end of the frame is going to be an air tank as well because i need air and i can't have a very big bumper because as you can see tires stick out past the frame rail so i can only have a bumper that's like 30 inches wide so i got a bunch of stuff to do today let's get after it all right so somehow i've got to create five inches of up travel right here i think what i'm going to do is cut it off right there both sides lop that off and start building see what i can do with it i may have to trim some more but i'm going to start there get the saws all out and get happy with it [Music] what seems to be happening here cat you're in the way of progress for sure you're just going to lay on the fender i got to take the fenders off [Music] i wouldn't do that i wouldn't do that let's get down because i got uh i got what what are you doing i'm not a cat person you know that i like dogs dude i can't work with you on me sleep over there all right we're the point of no return yeah that's gonna work i just remembered i can't cut this clear out yet because that is the only cross member i never built my my one between the motor mounts so i gotta hurry and do that right now because if i cut it off now it's going to try to spread the frame out i don't want that to happen we about had a bad day but saved this is tacked in place right there and now we got this thing cut we're going to put it up here it's going to go across something of that nature like that now i just got to figure the angles out half them cut both those off weld it all together then i'm going to make this removable so this is just tacked i'll plug the end of this drill and tap it drill a hole through that put a bolt in it then i can take it out if i need to pull the motor in and out should be pretty easy i fabbed this up but i knew it wasn't gonna work properly this side over here is gonna come in contact with the driveline there so i'll show you see how close it is right there so i'm gonna have to make another little little jog kind of a thing in that one see if i can get it away from the driveline never-ending customizing all right so this is where i'm at this is my cross member been kicking my butt a little today but i'm on the downward slope here so we're going to pack this all together see if we can get it setting under there and maybe just maybe we'll get this done and then we'll try to do something else we got to get ori's in it today well that's looking more like what we needed now we'll figure out where we got to cut it off to get that right there's possibility that we're onto something here this has been a nightmare so this jog is where the driveline is going to fit then we're going to have to cap these drill a hole in them put a bolt so i can take it out later i'm making this up as i go the blueprint is in my head and sometimes not very accessible we're about to get this all right we're gaining i think sure there's a better way to do this but this is how i'm doing it that's what it's going to look like it's my cross member i got to cut this side to fit still and then we'll have it finished product she's welded together we're going to let it cool off set it up in there and weld it in place for now later on we'll get the holes drilled everything i got to get the oris in i got a frame built i got a bunch of stuff to do so we'll finish this later but we're going to tack it in place so it'll hold my frame rail where i need it to and then we can size all it off it's in there temped in place right now i just have it tack welded in that's going to keep this frame rail from expanding out as i cut it off so here we go one side all right now you can really see what this look like all right we're gonna have to take some fenders and stuff off now it looks like and then i can start piecing frame rail okay now we can really see what we're up against here let's see where does that hit looks like that's gonna be full squish i'm creating problems left and right see the drive line the header that's going to be fun to deal with this side no big deal wide open over here balancer right where i needed it to be just got to start piecing together now we'll get this built i'm thinking two by three square tube off of here on an angle up over barely missed that come across the top level out that's what i got to build then i'll put two crossbars in the front of it it should be every bit as tough as it was probably tougher we'll get after it all right i've been staring at this for a while now that i've cut it off and i think i've dreamed up a better way so we're gonna cut it off again in that order right there and then i'm gonna taper it so it comes up and barely misses the bottom of that and then i should be at the level i need to miss everything i'm gonna cut that out of there and then we'll go see what we can do plasma cut both sides voila that's done cut this other side and we'll have it this point of no return now we've either ruined it or we're gonna make something so we need a piece that's roughly 15 and a half inches i think all right settled i'm going to cut some pieces so the material i'm using here is 2 by 3 by 3 16. we're going to cut 16 inches of it [Music] now we just got to figure out man we're not gonna have to come up much well that's not quite as low as i want it i think that's a little too low oh well that's all gonna come up so we're gonna be okay we gotta cut this on an angle a little bit i'll go figure these angles out i will get these things cleaned up and ready to weld i love this thing they're cut up ready to go we're going to tack these up make sure they're exactly the same and weld these things together and then put them in the old frame and weld them up in there that's the game plan let's see what we can do here [Music] trying to make these air tight so [Music] get these gobbed up good where we can grind them back down smooth so they look good but we don't want them to leak that'll be enough on them behind off and make smooth i don't think they'll probably leak as is you can't be too careful they won't break and i'll be able to grind them back down to where they're smooth you won't be able to tell [Music] all right frame pieces are built all ground up gonna look good now the struggle is to get this perfectly straight in line with that get her tacked in place i still have to weld a plug in the end of it but i got to get the angle figured out on this end where it has to drop back down and over i got a bunch of stuff to do but i got to get those tacked in place first and then i can figure it out there's one all right now we just got to figure out if they're level that is the gist of what we're doing hopefully we can get that all tied in all right so i didn't bore you guys with all the welding got my ori mounts welded together they are cooling down i'll figure out how they tie in on the top of this piece right here and uh i'll just continue building some frame here all right we'll give you the the one silver i got a little done there is what the frame is kind of going to look like you got some stuff left to do as you'll see these ones aren't welded solid yet because i got to mock fenders up and see if my measurements were correct for where the grill has to set and everything so yeah it's turning out didn't get as much done as i'd hoped to today but good thing about it is there's always tomorrow all right back in the shop this morning today we are going to make the shocks work so they're just setting in here roughly got to figure out how to make everything clear it's going to be hard to get this clearance right here it's going to be pretty rough actually so as you can see it's pretty tight and we're going to have to flex it up and see but that's full compression too that's as close as it's ever going to get right there except no it's not when it articulates down the other way it's going to hit i have to do something different i've got some hurdles to tackle today i gotta i gotta figure it out all right we're doing a little testing right here we're trying to see what's gonna hit when it twists up and i'm sure those are going to compact we're just trying to figure this out yes yes they do contact interesting or not to do something with that all right so we got some problems going down here so when i articulate this up it's coming up under here here is the problem we're contacting right there that's what i'm thinking we're going to take somewhere like right here notch the frame bend it over to where it almost touches this pulley but not quite then we'll come back up we'll notch it up here bend it back over notch it like right here somewhere bend it back over to where we need it and uh maybe that'll fix my problem the fun of custom building stuff so we're going to cut that out of the frame and it should bend right over out of the way and miss everything it looks like that is gonna do it cool now if i can just make it happen on the other side we'll be done well uh i forgot to video a little bit of this i got involved but we got some stuff tacked back together we're at the point we're gonna go ahead and lift this up a little see what it looks like that's full stretch right there now we just got a hook strap on the other side twist it up make sure everything functions and i think we're gaining okay well [Applause] i dig it nothing hits everything looks proper i think that's zeroing in on wind right there now i just got to do the whole other frame rail so if you can see that i made that dip in that thing so that it would clear all of this yeah all right [Music] you would think i'd have it figured out by now but the other side i'm not 100 satisfied with so i think we'll tack those into place right there and then deal with the rest of this all right we got a little little measure taping to do here see what we got 26 to the outside of the frame interesting radiators got to set out there so we got some stuff that ain't panning out here this from here to here is not wide enough for the radiator to set in i may have done a whole bunch of work for nothing at this point these hoops may not work i may be bending some hoops out of pipe all right so i've decided i gotta add five inches to this and lift it up higher so i can put it on this angle which will straighten my orey up some and it's going to make life just way better i'm going to have to go to kanab see if watermens can continue bend a piece of this this stuff right here just continue it on down five more inches i'll weld it together problem solved all right so i didn't run the kanab i decided to do this on my own i built that all right pop dar showed up at the shop i had to weld up intercooler for a semi it needed some tabs on it so we did a little tig work put those on but of course my argon bottle was empty so he had to go grab his but that's not what everyone cares about this right here front suspension is suspensioning so we can push this button [Music] that's full lift right there that's all 14 inch ories have got i had to put the hood on so everything would clear and we're right there we're tight but everything's clear it's gonna work now i got lots of sheet metal work to do lots of finish work to do i still got to tie the frame pieces in these are going to get bent up and tied in so it looks all natural all the links need welded but we're gaining suspensions handled i got a lot of finish welding to do and cleaning everything up but it's coming together so until next time thanks for watching

Channel: Fab Rats

Views: 402,494

Keywords: fab rats, fj45, land cruiser, toyota, fabrication, rock crawler, toyota land cruiser, vintage, old truck, rare, classic trucks, vintage trucks, off road extreme 4x4, off road, rock crawling

Id: lHHGaUC1yG4

Length: 15min 53sec (953 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 10 2021