Customs Laid out, 65 ford f100 56k noway

Even soft criticism is rough for you when your ruffled. Yeah, I don't like your truck, I think the lowest car contest has been over for some time now and to set one on the ground looks useless. Then when you back it up with claims of it's lack of ability to steer and claimed top speeds it just confirms it.

This is a matter of taste, there are those that have strong negative opinions about my truck too but in the end that is what makes this world go around.


I too have never had an air spring rupture. But I have had compressors fail, valves fail, air lines come loose. I have seen plenty of "air bag" carnage just from road use. I have a QA1/Air Ride Shockwave in my showroom that came apart rather violently and did some serious damage to itself when traversing a freeway expansion joint at legal speeds. The driver never lost control and was able to pull to the side with traffic involved.

Shit happens, be prepared.

 

Jeez, every time a kid tries to figure out something on his own I get called out.

Kid, it looks great for trying to figure everything out on your own. I agree that the front mounts are a little weak for the weight of a full-size truck. But I had to figure it out from experience and I am sure you will too. Just don't let these older guys discourage you, they are just trying to stuff years of trial-and-error into a single post on a message board. They mean well, but most of them come off a little harsh. I know most of the qualified guys who posted on tis thread and I would trust every one of them with one of my projects.

I actually think Steve hit the nail on the head when he said "Shit Happens, be prepared."

 

Oh, and I have had an air spring rupture on the freeway. I was in my Sonoma and a guy lost his tool box out of the back of his truck in front of me. I took a 14mm wrench to one of my front air bags (it was still in there when I pulled the bag out to replace it) and the truck went straight to the frame rails at 70 on the freeway. I could still steer because the truck was not over dropped.

It just goes to show that you can do everything right and still not be ready for EVERYTHING...

 

You've accomplished more at your age than I bet 75% of the people here. Including me.
I like it. ALittle too low for my taste but I will tell you your abilities astound me.

 

I agree completely. We all have made mistakes and have learned from them. Even the harshest critical statments made can be taken as a warning when it comes to designs such as this. The rest is just opinion.

The whole point of posting to a message board is to show off and get peoples opinions. The downside is that not all of us have the same tastes and if you just came here for accolades you may have come to the wrong place.

 

I think you're doing an awesome job mate and that truck looks the monkey knackers already!!
However I would seriously consider modifying the mounts in line with what the other guys have said on here.As they said,shit happens.
Helps to be prepared.

Again I am not knocking you,your work( I couldn't weld like that to save my life) or your truck.Just stating my assholic opinion.

 

the taste thing doesnt bother me, i could care a less if people like what it looks like ebcause i love how it looks. But i felt like you where directly trashing me and that pissed me off.

But in just. The design is going to change slightly. Im going to keep my front bag mounts. and the rear isnt going to change at all. But the Ibeams are going to come out for sure. Im going to build my own IFS, using heims instead of ball joints, so if anyone has a good write up on how to do that and/or advice let me know. I was going to do them out of 1 inch DOM 120 wall.
For the bag mounts im going to build an "upper cage" I dont really know what to call it, but when they tube the front of a factory stock car and it has the tube going on the side of the engine and infront of it. Thats what im going to do, but its not going to come from the firewall its just going to come up from the frame infront of the fire wall and wrap around the entire front of the engine bay with a few peices connected to the frame and the bag mounts to add stregnth. I want to move the wheels in about 1 inch so that i can turn it when its lower. and be ok But i am going to try and use the spindles i have since ive invested so much money in them. if thats a bad idea, and there are a cheap set of spindles i should pick up with a power rack and pinion let me know. im just going to modify everything around my factory crossmember because to me its not worth cutting the front half of the frame off and redoing it, unless i can find an insanely cheap crossmember off some other car. nearly free.





im not discouraged, i was just pissed off because i had a lot of positive feedback untill just the otherday when i got all that negative feedback it was hard to take. But anyways, the project will move on i have a few other things going on in the shop right now. 04 ranger i just pulled the front A arms out and wrapped them with some nice bag cups on them and sleeved the frame spring cup out with 5 inch OD pipe and made new bag cups. THe previous owner just had the air bags sitting in the spring cup bolted with 1 bold to a peice of pipe.

anyways heres some pictures from the show

 

looks cool!
there is a guy in arizona, porterbuilt, he does a thing called a dropmember for chev trucks, his deal is www.porterbuiltstreetrods.com I think he is in mesa, and I don't know how close that is to you, but maybe he could help?
If you check the photos section of his site there is a dropped 65 ford.

 

those photos helped gave me an idea. Shockwaves are way different, but i still see what hes doing, more a less what i plan on doing but using my bag mounts just beefing them up some.

 

I'm glad you didn't take my criticism the wrong way. I tried to think out everything I said to get my point across without sounding like a dick.

Anyways, if you have any questions about the front suspension let me know. I am in the middle of building a new bumper to bumper frame with scratch built suspension up front, A-arms, steering, spindles, everything.

 

Still goin strong i see ! and there is some wisdom gained as well ...
Taking all opinions and then deciding what is best for you .

 

i want some updated pics.

 

it would be nice if you lowered it a little.

I like it. You are mixing styles. Take a little traditional with a little modern and mix it all together.

Modern Traditionalism!

I like that you went with steelies as opposed to some 20" chrome abortions!

 

I've read this post from the beginning and here's what I think you need to step back and look at closely...

"Feeling" the front mounts are ok and it "looked stout" is going to lead to problems.It might hop now,but what about the guy that buys it and is showing off to his buddies?

"the rear upper bag mounts seem to be stout as well", up until they fail at 50mph.

"But i have so much invested at this point its not a financially correct decision to fix everything i would like to because ill never get it back out of it."
Now might be the time to suck it up and fix what can/will fail.

"But, it was the first vehicle i ever modified. and this far im happy with how it came out. Live and learn, was anyones first build perfect?"

Probably not,but when you posted on here looking for advice/comments and you get replies from some VERY experienced builders that have "been there/done that/tried that",you might want to step back,and re-evaluate where the build can be modified for safety.
You have built this to sell,hopefully the person that buys the truck is happy with it and doesn't have problems. But what about the "next guy"?
Are you prepared financially/emotionally to have the guy come in with a horror story of something breaking and he loses control of the truck?
Your name is going to be associated with this build for good or bad.
I/we hope it goes well and you have a problem-free build.
It is your build and you have the final say in the outcome.

 

61t I think he understands all this and it looks to be a work in progress. Good advice but ultimately everyone does what they want.

Going to be sharp ride.

 

I agree with you and I'm also looking forward to seeing the finished Truck.
I don't want to come off as a "know-it-all",I'm FAR from that.
I just don't want to see a thread titled "When good builds go bad".

 

Maybe I am a closet mini trucker... but I love that thing... specially the white roof!

 

ME too! haha, i havent touched it since the car show, shops booked full till the end of october.

im going to make it work, then get rid of it, now i know more a less what im doing. this whole truck was an experiment. And now that im working on customer cars its a different story theres more money avialable.

yeah i have tons of questions for you about all that. Did you build your spindles? i know a lot of buggy guys who build spindles and it seems fairly easy. if you have any photos please share. espeically with the A arms, are you using ball joints or heims?

I knew there was going to be shit wrong with it, but i wanted to try it. This is the first thing i ever fabricated and built out side of coupon sculptures in welding school, i was expecting mistakes and i feel as though i came out with less than i had suspected.

Also, im not to sure how im going to make my a arm mounts to the frame, im not sure on how to build that yet, since im going to use the factory frame up front so i dont have to rebuild all my body mounts again. so i figure the bottom will be easy to build and mount just a little higher than the crossmember sits.

But i dont really want to build spindles, that was just for personal knowledge, i have all brand new disk brake parts for my spindles id like to use them.

 

roof


and the bench seat all covered and finished shitty photo

 

For spindle/a arm building advice check out Dezertrangers.com's forum. Their stuff is all heavy duty desert stuff, but i like to take a lot of fabrication ideas from there. I figure if it can make it thru the Baja 1000, then i can take the idea, downsize it a little for on road use, and it should last longer than the car. I'm pretty sure for spindles over there everyone uses uniballs instead of ball joints or heims. Probably overkill for an on road truck but i like overkill. From what i understand, the most time consuming part of building a arms and spindles is getting a good welding jig built so you can make sure all the parts are consistent.

 

Truck looks great, sounds like the advice you got here is starting to sink in. This place is a wealth of experience, try to take it all in even if it doesn't seem to make sense to you when you get it, if you stay in this business it will all start making sense. Love the color scheme by the way!!!

 

After reading this entire subject twice and all the talk about , stress, laterial movement, shear points,I have one question.

What's the fuck is a monkey knacker

 

Hey kid, listen to ElPolacko. He may be harsh but he owns a suspension shop. He's got a PHD from the school of hard knocks.

 

damn nice truck...... welcome to the hamb

 

Brandon
First off I will say that I dig the truck man... cool project and you do have some talent for a youngen. Now I will give you the advice column Twisted left you some pretty damn good advice as well as several others so I will try to not be as redundant as possible.

front suspension.....
Good execution, bad idea. Keeping those brackets the way they are will result in you eventually replacing the brackets and filling the holes in the frame where your tubing rips from the gusset and the frame. If you are going to keep the design up there, all you need to do is build you a reinforcement bar... kind of like a big shock hoop on a 4wd truck. I would run that gusset laterally and attach to a fender/ strut brace bar. like what you would see on a strut style pro mod car. That will help distribute the sheer load over a much broader surface.
If you are going to try to fabricate an IFS into the front of the truck ( which is the ultimate way to go because i beams suck twinkies) I would suggest that you fabricate it off of a known platform. That way you can base it off of proven existing geometry. You can get into so stupid wicked problems when you start screwing with bumpsteer and ackerman issues and essentially make that truck not worth driving. Believe it or not, if it were me, I would base the front suspension off of a 63-87 Chevrolet C-10. These trucks actually really descent geometry plus there is a plethora of aftermarket and relacment parts available for it. To top it all off... those crossmembers are a complete bolt on front clip which makes them easy to modify and you have companies like Porterbuilt out of Phoenix who are making aftermarket crossmemebers that you may be able to fab in there as well.

rear suspension...... The way you built and double stacked your tubes, is rockin -roll and you will probably never have an issue with it. Like twisted said, ideally you would want the peak of your truss to be direcly under your load path. You also want to keep those bars with no lateral bends in them ( keep em straight ) The bends look cool but that load force is going to play hell on your bushings because it is going to constantly trying to preload one side of the bar. Even when you do a straight bar, you want to keep your airspring plate as centered over the bar as you can get it. This keeps the load evenly distributed across the whole bushing.

Airsprings....
Whenever designing and airspring suspension you primarily have to focus the airspring parameters. Max height, minimum height and most importantly ride height. Your suspension paramemters need to be based on your ride height of your airspring. We all know that you can delfate from there and inflate from there.... thats just the happy coincidence. If you want everything to live a long happy life though.... that is what it needs to be considered. When you are designing your mounts ... again with the airspring at its proper ride height... you ideally want your upper and lower mounts to be on the same parallel plane as each other and you want them to be as centered with each other as possible. Who cares what it does deflated or inflated all the way. One of the fastest ways to tell a rookies is to look at his mounts... they are usually square and parallel with the vehicle deflated all the way.

last but not least.... the show whole show truck line.... You cant live by that man. Someone else may own it someday plus more than likely, you will eventually get in the thing and make a blast down the street.... dont make yourself a statistic just because you didnt want to take the time to figure it out man....

Props to you man... keep workin and keep learnin.....

 

truck is lookin good, lovin the mix of old and new thats what im doing on my 69 gmc thats bagged & doored with a full frame and all that stuff... but never stop learning from people that have already made and learned from mistakes... us young guys (im 22) have a problem being told about a design problems, the remarks here are 99% positve criticism and aimed towards your safety as well as others.

With all this talk of Nathan at Porterbuilt, I have done business with nathan and he's one of the coolest people ive talked to lately. Never has he not help me out on something that ive had a question on.

 

haha these guys have never driven in tucson....theres only one freeway and who the hell uses it? stick to broadway and speedway right?

 

this was a pleathera of great information delivered in a nice package, thanks for not being a dick about it and explaining it. This is positive information, the kind that actually has an effect rather than just telling someone they suck.

I Dont want to buy a crossmember from a company, fuck that, to much money, and i could build it myself if i sat down and thought about it, Alot of the guys on the ford site where saying to use an LTD front clip. I still havent decided, but im out of money for now, so the trucks collecting dust and a good amount of scratches thanks to people being careless around the shop. all that time into painting it and its all fucked up already.

i still havent put a whole lot of thought into it yet, when i have a nickle to spend on it, ill think about it, untill then, its just going to collect dust.

 

just an idea..
that guy on here with the super cool kaiser (I think he is from arizona as well - wierd-) ,said he solved some of the money problems with sponsorship/donations from some prevalent companies.
posting pics with a well placed sticker, or a namedrop on several different sites or at shows might get you a decent discount.

 

i need free right now. Im super broke, and almost 6 grand in the hole on this truck. So untill i get out of the gutter its just going to hang out in the shop or maybe itll move to my front yard. anyways, mom suprised me today, her friend sold her a 66 coupe deville for 300 bucks. and it turns over which is a total score.