BUILD THREAD “The Juggernaut”
- Thread starter Rktpwrd
- Start date
Tunnel looks beautiful Donovan. I hope your hand heals up quickly Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your family.
Firestone has list of every airbag they make with dimensions and fastener diagrams. You can cross reference to Hendricks or whatever other brand you need to find to buy them. Might be worth a look as it sounds like those might have internal stops in the bag.
I found a peterbilt air ride cab bag this way.
I found a peterbilt air ride cab bag this way.
Well, my plans to go hard on the car this week between Christmas and New Year’s got shot all to shjt. You see, I work for a 24 hour service company, and I was unlucky enough to draw the short straw for on call over the break. Despite us being technically closed.
I’ve been averaging around 3-4 calls a day, which is unusual given that many businesses are closed over the holidays.
What this all translates into is that it’s been incredibly difficult to get in any real time on the car. Pretty hard to run the compressor and do a bunch of banging and grinding when you need to be able to hear the phone ring, not to mention leaving everything at the drop of a hat to go do a call in -30 degree temperatures and drive shjt roads.
But despite all this adversity, I’ve still managed to keep driving forward on the driveshaft tunnel. There’s not really much for me to add in text here, so I’ll just let the progression of pictures do most of the talking.
I started by sanding the mill scale off the new tunnel, then shortened it up a little and widened the opening in the floor for its initial test fit.
Next I scribed the sides of the floor onto the sides of the tunnel, and Mike and I made the bends around a piece of 3/4” sched 40 pipe and started tacking it in place.
I got the transmission tunnel fully welded to the driveshaft tunnel and Mike got the sides tack welded to the floor. It was really starting to look like something now.
The back of the tunnel had to transition into the factory shape, and this is where it gave me some real grief. I couldn’t make the metal move and conform to the shape I needed at the back, so after a couple of failed attempts, I cut the whole back section off where the side flanges ended, and built a whole new separate section.
I started by matching up the shape at the back first, then just continued around the edges moving it where it needed to be, tacking it roughly every 1/2”. Thankfully this worked out.
Tonight I burned the midnight oil pretty good, neighbors be damned and not much likelihood of getting a call this late. Back seams are fully welded out and ground down, next will be the seam to the main part of the tunnel itself.
The tack welds to the floor are temporary and are going to stay as-is for the time being, I’m not happy with how we did the rear floors so that’ll get addressed when I re-do them once the driveshaft tunnel is done.
And as for clearance inside the tunnel now? Plenty of room for larger driveshaft activities now! Overall I’m pretty pleased with how this is all coming along, and with the rate of progress.
I’ll post up again once the DS tunnel is completely finished. Thanks for the interest and for following along gents. Till next time.
D.
I’ve been averaging around 3-4 calls a day, which is unusual given that many businesses are closed over the holidays.
What this all translates into is that it’s been incredibly difficult to get in any real time on the car. Pretty hard to run the compressor and do a bunch of banging and grinding when you need to be able to hear the phone ring, not to mention leaving everything at the drop of a hat to go do a call in -30 degree temperatures and drive shjt roads.
But despite all this adversity, I’ve still managed to keep driving forward on the driveshaft tunnel. There’s not really much for me to add in text here, so I’ll just let the progression of pictures do most of the talking.
I started by sanding the mill scale off the new tunnel, then shortened it up a little and widened the opening in the floor for its initial test fit.
Next I scribed the sides of the floor onto the sides of the tunnel, and Mike and I made the bends around a piece of 3/4” sched 40 pipe and started tacking it in place.
I got the transmission tunnel fully welded to the driveshaft tunnel and Mike got the sides tack welded to the floor. It was really starting to look like something now.
The back of the tunnel had to transition into the factory shape, and this is where it gave me some real grief. I couldn’t make the metal move and conform to the shape I needed at the back, so after a couple of failed attempts, I cut the whole back section off where the side flanges ended, and built a whole new separate section.
I started by matching up the shape at the back first, then just continued around the edges moving it where it needed to be, tacking it roughly every 1/2”. Thankfully this worked out.
Tonight I burned the midnight oil pretty good, neighbors be damned and not much likelihood of getting a call this late. Back seams are fully welded out and ground down, next will be the seam to the main part of the tunnel itself.
The tack welds to the floor are temporary and are going to stay as-is for the time being, I’m not happy with how we did the rear floors so that’ll get addressed when I re-do them once the driveshaft tunnel is done.
And as for clearance inside the tunnel now? Plenty of room for larger driveshaft activities now! Overall I’m pretty pleased with how this is all coming along, and with the rate of progress.
I’ll post up again once the DS tunnel is completely finished. Thanks for the interest and for following along gents. Till next time.
D.
Looks really nice to me, Donovan, nice work! Are you planning on an OEM type carpet for the interior or are you going spartan race car type set up? Just curious.
Master of fabrication! looks awesome, keep up the top notch work.
Good job as always 👏
And it's good to know the economy up north is doing well also. Trying to look at any positive things in our crazy lives these days.
And it's good to know the economy up north is doing well also. Trying to look at any positive things in our crazy lives these days.
Thanks Mike.
What I’m envisioning for the interior of the car is luxurious meets high tech. Black leather wrapped on the door and interior panels as well as the rear firewall. Carbon fibre and brushed aluminum accents, ergonomic and contoured dash and console, with nice plush carpet and copious amounts of DynaMat or similar sound deadening.
All business on the outside and the mechanicals, yet feel like stepping into a new Mercedes on the inside. I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull it off, but that’s what I’m going to attempt to achieve.
Thanks brother!! Appreciate the compliments as always.
