pigeonfarmboy
Official Scale Nazi
Hi kids remember me? Probably not, it's been too long.
Had my eyes on a Cruiser kit and got one in a trade recently. No reason to bore you with the stock kit buildup. I really only built up the stock kit to get the axle locations marked on the frame. Never built any of my previous trucks with spring-under leafs so I decided it's time. Also pardonmynoob's build really inspired my motivation to build this so it'll follow that direction in true copycat form. Going to weather it as well to prove I'm a cool guy too. (Mostly to hide my poor painting skills)
Robbed the spring hardware from a TF2 kit I'm building with links for a Blazer. For the spring-under I filed a flat spot on the underside of the axle. You can control the angle of the pinion using this method too. I need to bring mine up a bit. The bolts just pass through the holes in the leafs for alignment and the fuel tubing hopefully will help the springs from getting bent up.
Still need to cut the u-bolt studs shorter
Milled out pockets in the frame rails for the leaf mounts.
Front mounting was a bit tricky. I used the leaf mount from a Tamiya Semi kit.
Decided to bend the shackles in the front to fit inside the semi mount. The screws straddle between the frame rail and bumper mount which is not flush but will hold fine with some force. I'll eventually deck out the whole rig with scale hardware. As stupid as that is, it really does make a difference on the look of a truck to me.
The semi mounts add a bit of ride height to the front end but makes it much easier to mount the shackles. I may have to add a bit of height to the rear end as it sags in the back. I'll probably go with the 1.9 MTZ as they look dead-on for this truck. These are just a bit smaller OD.
Big issue with dropping the axles is the front driveshaft now hits the transmission and limits suspension travel.
There's about 1" of clearance to the underside of the hood from the top of the shock hoops. I'm thinking of swapping the driveshaft over to the other side of the t-case and re-mounting the trans in this location. Higher and more forward gets it out of the way of the axle. I've got an R4 trans coming in the mail so I may wait to see how that looks before fabbing something for the 3.
Had my eyes on a Cruiser kit and got one in a trade recently. No reason to bore you with the stock kit buildup. I really only built up the stock kit to get the axle locations marked on the frame. Never built any of my previous trucks with spring-under leafs so I decided it's time. Also pardonmynoob's build really inspired my motivation to build this so it'll follow that direction in true copycat form. Going to weather it as well to prove I'm a cool guy too. (Mostly to hide my poor painting skills)
Robbed the spring hardware from a TF2 kit I'm building with links for a Blazer. For the spring-under I filed a flat spot on the underside of the axle. You can control the angle of the pinion using this method too. I need to bring mine up a bit. The bolts just pass through the holes in the leafs for alignment and the fuel tubing hopefully will help the springs from getting bent up.
Still need to cut the u-bolt studs shorter
Milled out pockets in the frame rails for the leaf mounts.
Front mounting was a bit tricky. I used the leaf mount from a Tamiya Semi kit.
Decided to bend the shackles in the front to fit inside the semi mount. The screws straddle between the frame rail and bumper mount which is not flush but will hold fine with some force. I'll eventually deck out the whole rig with scale hardware. As stupid as that is, it really does make a difference on the look of a truck to me.
The semi mounts add a bit of ride height to the front end but makes it much easier to mount the shackles. I may have to add a bit of height to the rear end as it sags in the back. I'll probably go with the 1.9 MTZ as they look dead-on for this truck. These are just a bit smaller OD.
Big issue with dropping the axles is the front driveshaft now hits the transmission and limits suspension travel.
There's about 1" of clearance to the underside of the hood from the top of the shock hoops. I'm thinking of swapping the driveshaft over to the other side of the t-case and re-mounting the trans in this location. Higher and more forward gets it out of the way of the axle. I've got an R4 trans coming in the mail so I may wait to see how that looks before fabbing something for the 3.
