KP_wag

School holidays project with the boy, super fun building this kinda stuff get to channel yet inner 8yr old. Still needs iron and a few other things, but mostly there: View from the top deck, stoked with the pulley scored it off TM as salvage from some old ship

I pulled the roof off the BJ tonight - it's farken hot and have no AC obviously. Any reason this isn't legal? It's a factory setup but obviously reduces the integrity of the cabin... Am also wondering about going further, the windscreen folds down and whole midsection of the tub comes off on these trucks, but would then lose the shoulder height seatbelt mounts. Would quite like to build a rollbar outside the cab but closer to the body than the existing one so could pick up some new mounts off that, I assume there are rules about where those would have to be relative to where they are currently? The mounts might work off the position of the current rollbar but would be 20-30cm further back... Cabriolet lyfe

So good, fizzing for a sound check when you got it going...

Congrats on getting this running and driving, bloody awesome project. Must be looking fwd to doing some work with it

Shit this is looking good, is there a baffle in the bottom that forces the flow to do a loop in the main chamber? Ie is that the reverse flow bit? Re the inlet vent, if you have trouble with minimum temps you could put a felt seal between door and firebox, big green egg has replacement seals that I was looking at to try and get my kamado more air tight

Looks great man, I wouldn't worry about ugly welds/fab the grease/soot/BBQ smeg will soon take care of that. Using an air compressor is a good idea, I was looking at making one of these a while back and eyeing up old LPG cylinders on trademe as the donor vessels, butnot having to worry about blowing yourself up when cutting into them would be nice

Ah yeap, might give it a crack with my multitool then (since I don't have an orbital sander). Previously I've just used the flapper disc which is OK but always leaves the surface rougher than I'd like and the 'grain' ends up messed up when you have to come at the workpiece from different directions

Nice. How did you finish the flat surfaces? They look sandblasted? Whenever I try and buff aluminium (to hide scratches from welding prep) I never seem to be able to get a uniform finish. Was making some brackets yesterday that needed that treatment...

Did a nice job on the cam covers man, 3mm ali sheet with welds ground back?

This is what I did for this one that I built for my old cruiser, did all the metal work made it strong AF and then took it to a pro towbar place to mig it up and make the tongue. Got a load sticker that way too

Loving the period steelies, and loving that looks like your still using the truck for work.

And other rad stuff such as corroded chrome tapware, yesteryear newspapers and wooden boxes of oldschool AF who knows whats

Is the transfer case mounted handbrake factory on these? I have the same (factory) on the BJ and look forward to one day ridding myself of it

Yeah would be kinda pointless anyway, unless you put mud tyres on it and made it offroad hill climb trike

Looking trick as usual, is it a solid axle? Two motors two chains could operate each wheel independently for manual torque vectoring action

Shit you've put a lot of work into this, and really showing now too... Would have to be one of the fastest moving projects on this site, your work rate/motivation is something to aspire to!

I have one that I'll be looking to move on, will be replacing with the 8.8 that as of last weekend have finally pried out of the explorer. Has discs, is LSD and came out of an AU allegedly

Gas or charcoal? A pork butt would be a good (forgiving) first outing. What used to be in the drum? Big fan of the low and slow, lotsa room in a UDS could cater a badass party with that!

Lovin the exhaust, what ya got planned for the christening?

So awesome, and loving the snorkel - you should swap the top for a copper downpipe elbow for max future patina. How does she handle highway speeds?

This guy is definitely keeping it oldschool. Next level cro magnon projects

Beautiful, what's the timber?

That'd be super cool, matching walnut swirl knob for yer walnut trim dash... Do you finish those on a lathe or do they come out of the mould like that?

That's pretty cool, how do you make em? Reminded me of this youtube video saw the other day, which is ridiculously awesome

Ah yeap, different length axles is another thing that dawned on me today re these diffs. I was under the assumption they were centre pumpkin style but after having a measure up the passenger side is ~100mm longer than the drivers side (as measured from the yoke centre to the leafs). This is not so bad in my application as gas tank is on passenger side and driveshaft in old setup was touching cloth so this would give a bit more clearance there, am wondering what impact this might have on harmonics though? The Hilux hanger (is a 2 piece d shaft setup) is actually also 30mm offset to the drivers side, but still not enough to allow front and rear shafts to run on the same axis... Any comments from you diff gurus whether this is likely to cause problems?