The BAD AST Project - Faze II

[astroracer]

I want to bring this to eveyone's attention.
I had posted in the Fabrication Forum about bushing sleeves I was working with A&A Manufacturing to produce.
The thread is here...
https://www.pro-touring.com/showthre...ushing-Sleeves
These sleeves will make using the Moog #K6176 upper control arm sleeves real easy for any suspension fabricators.
Check out the thread.
Thanks
Mark S.

[astroracer]

I had my wife pick the control arms up at EVI after they had finished welding them for me... All I can say is, OH MY GOD!!!! They did a heck of a job on these arms! If anyone needs welding done give these guys a call... http://www.engineeredvictories.com/ Their fab shop is in Davison, Mi. for you Michigan guys. Check 'em out.

I think I did well having the arms professionally welded. I wish I had the time to be half this good...

There should be no issues with arm strength.

Killer job EVI! Thank You
Mark

[astroracer]

We got a lot more done this weekend even though it was really hot. Kept the fans going and worked through the sweat.
I was out in the shop at 6:00am to try to beat the heat and Mel showed up late at 7:30 or so. I'm not to worried about it though. We don't punch a clock around here and he doesn't take smoke breaks so it's all good...
We knocked off at 6:30 with all of this stuff done:
1) Lower shock mounts fit and tacked
2) Upper shock towers fit and tacked
3) Body mounts fabbed.
4) RH Lower arm brackets fit and tacked
5) Suspensions mocked up to verify fit
6) A little cleaning
Mel worked on the lower shock brackets and I got the upper towers jigged up and tack welded. These will be another welding project for EVI...
This is one of the lower shock tabs. Mel made these last weekend. EVI had the arms so he went a "bit" over size just in case and didn't put the tube notch in until we had the arms back....

Mocked up and ready to tack. You can see the rear tab which wasn't as big because it didn't stretch out to the LBJ cup.

The uper towers took a bit of set-up to be comfortable with the location and alignment to the lower mounts.

After tacking. EVI will get the job of finish welding these dudes. I know my limitations...

I mocked up the shock (no spring) and control arms for thr RH side. What do you think?

The lower arm brkts are not in place here but they were next on the list.

While I was working on the RH lower arm brackets Mel was making body mounts. The out brackets are shown in place. The two inners , seen to the right in the pic, needed to be fit to the center angled tube. I'll get better pics if anyone is interested.

Body mounts prior to cutting the mount hole

Thanks for looking
Mark

[astroracer]

Today we were finishing up the body mounts and LH lower arm brackets.
Here is Mel cleaning up a body mount after cutting the mount hole.

In preparation for chassis to body marriage there were a few crossmembers to notch.
We laid out all of the cuts and got out the plsma cutter.
In the center of this pic you can see a clear path all the way to the rear bumper.

It took about 45 minutes to clear out all of the crossmembers and channels for the new rails
In this pic you can see the path right above Mel's hands. He is cutting out the old rear spring hanger. This is the first time he has run a plasma cutter and was CHOMPING at the bit watching me cut the xmbrs...

We had a good weekend. Lots of little hurdles completed and we are on to the engine and trans mounts. I will be laying out some xmbr ideas and looking for a final engine placement. I took this pic with an oil pan set in place. I will be setting an empty BBC on the table along with a trans to do the final mount designs...


Thanks for looking
Mark

[Tig]

Wow, everything looks great.
Keep it up man, lookin forward to updates.

[astroracer]

Wow, everything looks great.
Keep it up man, lookin forward to updates.

Thanks a lot for the kudo's! I still find it hard to believe the van is actually getting built. I worked on this thing so long on the computer that it is almost falling together by itself! Doing the actual fabrication and having everything hit my design numbers is blowing my mind!!!
Got motor mounts from JEGS yesterday and went over to a buddies "yard" and picked out a 700R4 to use as a core for rebuilding and as a mock-up mule. Hit it with a wire brush and some Simple Green to knock off most of the grunge and it's ready to go on the table. I'll be bolting it to the back of an empty 454 block to get everything positioned.
I'll be paying special attention to the "engine to seat" interface while positioning the powertrain. I figure I may as well bolt on the heads and hang the headers while I am designing the xmbr so we'll get a good look at the final engine layout by the end of the weekend.
Thanks for looking
Mark

[astroracer]

Got a lot of work done this weekend. Mel pulled his camper out and stayed in my backyard all weekend. Well, I say back yard but we spent more time in the shop than anywhere else!
Friday morning I dropped the shock towers off at EVI. Brett will work his welding magic on them.
Friday afternoon Mel and I spent setting the engine and trans in place and making a plan for the mounts. I had thought about the mounts and done some rough models in the computer but never really solidified anything. I really couldn't do much until I knew where the engine was sitting.

Right now the oil and trans pans will have about 4" of ground clearance.

Swap meet headers look pretty rough but they do the job.

Saturday we got the mounts built. Mel worked on a set of plates and down tubes for the engine mounts.
This is a first look at the down tube. Here you can see the engine mounts I got from Jegs and the plate Mel made bolted to the lower mount.

I built the trans xmbr out of a piece of 1 5/8" dia tubing. I actually got the bends in and kept everything flat and square!
Here is a shot of the tangent lines laid out. These are used as start and stop points for the tube bender. I got all of the dims from my computer model.

[astroracer]

Bending the 1 5/8th's was no harder than bending the 1 1/4. Of course the bigger tubing was a thinner wall, .093 compared to .156.

One more bend to do. I took my time doing this to assure the bends were flat to each other.

All bent up. I did a little sweetening after this pic was taken but this is the trans xmbr.

Here are a few pics of the motor mounts. All fit and ready to tack!



The tube will get welded to the mnt plate and then gusseted.

[astroracer]

The trans xmbr turned out great! Today i made the frame mounting plates out of a couple of pieces of 3/16th's x 2" stock. I made them long so I will have room to move the trans xmbr if the need arises. Mel built the xmbr tabs out of some 2x2 x 1/8th angle I had laying around.

Once we got the xmbr trimmed to length and squared I tacked it to the trans mount to stabilize it. We mocked the tabs into place with some scrap angle and tacked those to the arms

Once we had those in place tacking the frame brackets came next. All of this stuff will get finish welded when the frame goes on the rotisserie.
\
At the end of the morning we actually had the engine and trans BOLTED into the frame! This is major progress on this project! Next weekend the frame goes into the van!

Thanks for looking at all of my stuff.
Mark

[astroracer]

Here are some teaser shots of the van at approximate ride hgt. The front is too high as the van is level on the hoist and the actual stanch will have a bit of rake built into it.



What do you think? Look okay?
Mark

[johnny68]

mark it looks very cool nice job lots of work also
john

[Bryce]

Mark, Great progress. This will be very cool! awesome fab work.

[astroracer]

mark it looks very cool nice job lots of work also
john

Thanks John!
I'm glad to you took the time to post. I don't get a lot of feedback here for some reason... It IS a lot of work. If ANYBODY wonders why custom fab work costs so much, just drop a line here. I'll fill you in.
Thanks for looking
Mark

[wellis77]

Looks GREAT!!! Can't wait to see more. I'm so glad to see progress on this.

[devwil68]

shaggin waggin!

[astroracer]

Thanks for the support guys. Progress has been fantastic! My wife is telling me I'll be oweing her big time after this is done... Not that I don't already, she is one great woman.
Mark from EVI called me today to say the shock towers were done. Kool! I swung through Davison on my way home and picked them up. They look great! No problem showing these off. Thanks Brett!


These will get welded in this week sometime.
I am working on a fixture for the dropped Astro spindles I am using. In order to work with my Corvette steering rack and revised geometry I need to move the outer tierod point a bit. I am designing a fixture to use while bending the arm. The fixture will glove over the lower ballstud and locate the "bend to" point. I am talking to a guy in Flint that says he can bend it no problem.

Mark

[astroracer]

Worked on the spindle fixture lhe last couple of evenings. Wednesday I got a start with the two base plates drilled and centered to the LBJ.

I had to do a bit of redesigning on the fly due to the actual steering arm being in the way of my fixture. You can see the arm running right thru my intended fixture arm.

I changed one piece to a 1/2" dia. rod and continued forward. This actually worked out pretty well as I was able to make the "hit point" bracket one piece (for LH and RH spindles) and simply bend it to the right angle and tack it on.

hopefully this will make it fairly straight forward to get these dudes bent up...

The bottom of the aluminum tube spacer is where the top of the arm needs to go. A little over an inch outbrd and an inch upward. To bend the RH spindle the fixture simply bolts in place and we will use the opposite hole and angle to bend to.

Thanks for looking at my junk
Mark

[wellis77]

You've obviously thought through this but that seems like a lot of movement for that steering arm. I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes.

[astroracer]

Will, You were right. To much movement to heat & bend. I talked with a few people in another thread about this also and the end decision was cut and weld. Ideally I also needed to invert the ballstud (ballstud pointing down, rather than up, as the stock Astro was oriented) so cutting and rebuilding was beneficial. I also talked with the owner of Iron Mike's (Mike) in Flint and after looking at my situation he ultimately recommended the cut and weld solution.
That is what I've been working on.

I had yesterday off so I broke out the sawsall and grinders and modified the two spindles.

You can see in thes pics I have ground the existing support ribs down to the base web thickness. I did this on both sides.

This will give the new support plates a solid foundation for welding. Everything has been ground down and chamfered for good weld penetration.
I did a LOT of grinding yseterday. It was hot and I was sweating and my arms were ORANGE...


Making the fishplates to support the new tie rod position. The plates are 3/8 inch thick and will be plenty stout when welded in.

If you look back at the first couple pics you can see that the old arm "hung" out in space. I am taking the new plates all the way in to the lower ball stud area. I think these will be plenty strong.

I have the RH spindle ready to go to Mike for welding and just need to make the fishplates for the LH spindle.
Once this is all welded together the modified portion on the spindle will be stronger than the unmolested part... As you can tell I left the plates a little oversized. After the welding I will grind everything down and make it look purty.

[wellis77]

I hadn't seen a post from you in a while and I was wondering. Looks like you got it straightened out. Nice work.