WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwe bought this truck for $500 and we're going to race it 500 Miles through the deserts of Mexico but if we want to make it to the finish line or even survive this race we've got a few upgrades to make so we're starting with the most obvious shortcomings of this truck the suspension we want our truck ideally to be able to hit whoops at speed hold traction to the wash power through desert brush and handle just about anything the desert can throw at it so to do that we bought all this now this all may look very complicated because it is but as we go through and install each component we'll talk about what it is and how it works so what did we spend $177,000 on you might ask well we got a weld ofyourself ibeam kit and reverse shackles from giant coilovers rear shocks and bump stops all from King we got dver leaf springs a shock hoop kit limit straps additional Hardware like H joints and of course some raw materials for all the fabrication we'll have to do once you're add in taxes and shipping you're looking at17 $1,000 worth of high-end suspension components for a $500 truck that's 30 years old dude nice now this suspension install isn't going to be quite as simple as a lot of other suspension installs that we've done in the past we're going to have to tear the truck down a little further than normal and this is going to require some fabrication and everything's way bigger than I'm used to so we got some learning to do and up and and rotate pivot two three yeah that was nice all right now before we get too far along I wanted to talk about the suspension on the Ranger and part of the reason we bought this Ranger is that it has ibeam front suspension now what that means is that there are two beams going across the front that basically are responsible for holding the Hub to the car and the wheel to the car but what it doesn't give you is adjustability over camber but for the most part that's not that big of a deal on trucks if it was a track car you'd want to have adjustable determinable camber like you'd have on a double Wishbone setup or even a mcferson strut setup uh so you can dial in your camber and get your handling just the way you want it on the track but on a truck like this we're more concerned with travel so we got an ibeam truck and we're going to be installing longer IE beams so with a short ibeam the same amount of angular range you get this much travel if you make that ibeam longer look how much more travel you get and maybe a disadvantage of twin ibeam setup is that once you weld this thing in place that's it it just goes with the range of the arm and the cambera changes drastically throughout the range but what it gives you is really good contact between the tires and the ground even when the body is super rolled over your outside tire is going to be down on the ground it's going to look cool and it's going to be great to drive it's going to be a ripper all right Dylan what this is a microphone I'm going to place it on your person I'm scared right there little magnet will hold it on this is Dylan test hi everybody he's going to be helping us out on this build he knows a lot more about these trucks than we do Dylan was kind enough to put a whole list of work together for us all the tasks we need to do for this job today what do you think are going to be our biggest challenges for this build front beams and front radius arms for the front end we have to pretty much find find our Cas we Lo where we want going take a lot of trial and a we full bu full Dro centers lots of fabrication yeah that's pretty much so yeah this should be pretty interesting okay we we got the axle diff brakes and leaf springs out of the Ranger and this stuff is all going away because it's way too weak for what we want to do with the truck we're going to be putting huge tires on this thing and hopefully some big power under the hood so with those things we would just snap these axles and explode this diff so we've got much beefier components to replace with and they're pretty sweet every part that we take off is literally one qu the size of the part that we bought how heavy is this thing going to be once all this gets installed we're going to need somewhere to test it good thing today's sponsor is onx Offroad with onx you get access to thousands of trails with detailed information like duration difficulty elevation and more you can track your way points and even build custom routes that you can share with your friends this is an app that all of us at Dona 100% Ed and we highly recommend you download it especially if you're play on driving off-road like us because even if you have no service the onx app works offline so you can always know your exact location and if you become an Elite member you'll gain access to exclusive discounts to top brands like Fox Warn and Method plus Elite members get public and private land data so you'll always know what trails are legal or illegal to explore and for a limited time you can get this sick onx beanie when you purchase an elite membership it's warm it's comfortable and it's all yours if you click click the link below and download all next off-road and S to be an Elite member but hurry up you can only get one of these things for a limited time so come on come on click the link let's go ahead and click it all right it's day two yesterday we got all the suspension removed from the truck and today it's time to start the process of putting the new stuff on the first thing we got to do is assemble and install the mounts for the suspension so today no actual suspension will go on but we are going to install all the points that will allow us to out our new suspensions we got my boy Mike day here to help us with some of the fabrication welding you might remember him from some of the videos I've had him help us out with in the past like the E36 roll cage Dylan's still here we got a lot of hands on deck now we actually have a lot to do so let's get to it okay right now I'm basically just cleaning up the frame rail so that we can in the future weld on our new suspension pickup points so I'm just getting us down to bare metal cleaning up the rusty bits getting all the junk off and we'll be ready to weld on the new stuff see if Dylan has any pictures cuz this seems tweak to me this should be touching right here oh yeah look at that inch Gap yeah so um what I'm going to end up doing is just basically cut it off at this Bend I'm going to fit up the rest of the bracket here cuz that all lines up nice and then I can Line This cut piece off back on this C member and figure out where it fits the best zap it back together and it'll be like nothing ever happened okay so our upper suspension mounts are going to come off that frame rail and come straight up here into this area which means that a lot of the stuff that currently in this area needs to go so I'm working on taking the windshield washer fluid tank and the overflow tank out we're going to have to probably get rid of this air conditioning stuff and probably a handful of other things but ultimately that's okay this engine is going to be out of here in the future so we can change whatever we want we just got to kind of keep it running for now so that's what we're going to do got to make some room so we got all the brackets fit we had to trim the shock mount to fit around the new beam Mount and then uh we're going to tack this side up cuz it fits pretty good we're going to go to the other side make sure it's the same then we'll tack that side in throw the crossbar in and then we can burn everything in for real yeah that's it that I don't you don't need me anymore that was great Jerry's been doing this really fun thing tell him I cross stuff off when it's not done just cuz it's fun and then I was like oh W I was like damn who knocked that out who knocked that out I did all right so while they're working on the front I'm going to get to working on the rear I'm going to clean some things up with the wire wheel and then I'm going to install the leaf spring pickup points which should be pretty easy they bolt into place in existing holes on the frame though we got to find hardware I hear it's missing I'm just making a list of all the hardware we're missing Hardware tabs bungs chock tabs bump mounts everything like that so we can order it all the night Mike has a lot of Runway of things that he can do to the truck and set them up for success you know cuz I'm not going to be here because I'm leaving today's my last day I know it's been a short run but it's been a good one and I I like to burn out fast you know so all right so we got the new ibeam mounts in place these are the stock ones this is where they were mounted uh not literally but same distance uh as you can see the new one is even further out that means the wheel's going to be sitting out further from the fender I mean now we have a much longer ibeam and that's going to give us more suspension travel which when going over whoops and going over jumps is going to give us better contact with the ground to put more power down and go faster Okay so we've got a lot of stuff to do but unfortunately we've come to a bit of a slow spot we're missing hardware for spindle and Knuckles a set of studs that we need to procure we're also missing hardware for the rear leaf spring mounts which there he is in no time flat he's back with the hardware for the leaf spring so that's good that'll speed us back up so we're doing what we can Mike's out there working on building the eye beams we do have some flat pieces that we sort of have to mimic with tubes so Mike's got the Bender out he's going to bend some stuff up to match those flat pieces and then it will all be welded together and we have some big honken eye beams and they look similar that's that's what we're going for Mike has just gotten tacking together the front eye beams and threw the first one on the truck and we thought oh my God that thing looks long and well it is the wheel is in a different zip code from the truck so we realize that these are made to be trimmed basically we got to figure out where we want the wheel to sit we're going to pretty much make the front axle about an inch or two wider than the rear axle and once we figure that out take some measurements we'll cut the ends off these eye beams and then we'll weld everything on from there we are going to need to trim them but before we can do that we need to mock up our radius arms that'll basically just locate the ibeam front and rear cuz obviously you want it to do this but you don't want any of this so the radius arm connects it to the truck back here so we'll get those mocked up then we'll measure and cut the fronts get the ends welded on and be a few steps closer to an operating truck all right so we're going to try to land the radius arm mounts on the frame where they belong and then we're going to get rid of this crossmember and make something as a trans crossmember to tie between them right now I'm taking the leaf springs apart basically so that we can have just one leaf essentially or whatever the smallest pack is and we can put that on the truck and then we can jack it up without lifting the whole truck and see where we're going to you know basically have our bump stops go and get full compression dialed in all right here at the back we've got our giant uh inverted shackle normally you would have to do a lot of math to figure out what length this shackle should be that'll affect your spring rate and your General ride and spring travel but luckily we just bought a kit that goes into the factory mounting points and has all the math figured out for it so all we had to do was put it on bolted right up this is all very important and luckily there's a lot of companies out there that have already figured it out for guys like me more more parts for the pile more parts for the pile we've got a pretty cool little setup here so we've got the axle at full bump full compression and we've got a nice little wooden space up here just to keep the axle gapped away from the frame so that we never actually crash the axle into the frame especially if you imagine that our delin at the end of our Bump Stop is worn out this thing will continue to get shorter and shorter so we want to make sure that if this is at its shortest even without the delin we can't crash the axle into the frame and then we need to mount our cans here for the bump stop so that they can hang out here so what we got going on is can hovering thank you I've got 2 in of tape sitting on top hovering this here because that 2 in is what we need with this at full squish so that's just kind of thank you kind of holding that there in space so that we know where to mount it and we're in the process of trying to mount it that's why this is all cleaned up we're going to do some tubing across the cans and straight to the frame here so the bump stop will live basically exactly where it is but eventually it will be connected by metal so we're getting pretty close to some stuff bump stops should be able to go in soon so I'm working on these little guys that are going to go here here and Mike is working on Crossing up the uh shock Hoops here for a little bit of structural support between the two so this is just adding a little bit of uh reinforcement for the bump stops this is where the bump stops will live and that's going to take a lot of Force if we bottom out our suspension so we want to make sure that they are properly reinforced so that they don't bend or Worse twist our frame in or you know ruin anything else so extra tube there that'll make that nice and strong we'll get an X going through there that'll make that nice and strong and look cool and then we can re really put the suspension on yep nailed it what are you doing what we are currently estimating ride height and basically we're just putting the axle to what will be halfway through the travel of the shock all the way open they are 42 in Long all the way closed 26 in so we're targeting about 34 in of B basically distance from the upper shock mount to where the lower shock mounts will go and we'll call that ride height weld on the shock tabs and then once everything comes back together we'll know for sure what ride height actually is but halfway through the travel is a good place to start all right so now that we're at our ballparked ride height we're going to set the pinion a couple degrees down from the trans and that's because with leaf springs the pinion is going to wrap upwards underload so we're trying to compensate for that now so we're going to attack these mounts that'll get us in our ballpark place if we have to shim it later we'll have that option too now that we got the shock on we're going to lift the rear end all the way up to the bump stops and see if they're happy stuff doesn't hit each other cool hot dog oh yeah tell me where to go uh down down yep yep okay now twist left your left feels good we got a wheel on the truck and a shock and a lot of other stuff it's coming together all right the upper stuff is all fully welded so now it's time to take the axle and the leaf springs back out of the truck so we can put the leaf springs fully back together they're full stack and we'll finish welding up the stuff on the axle while it's out of the truck and then we can put it all back in and we'll be able to put this thing on the ground in the back which is exciting that's a neat noise job that's my alarm clock in the morning all right boys come on okay looks amazing guys how's the front looking Jimmy all right since these are cut to length beams I'm using this piece piece of wood just to like bump up against the frame so I have a straight edge and then I'm measuring off of that so that I can cut the beams in the same spot so the track width is the same on each side I'm going 13 in off of there and that'll let us find a spot where I can line up this spindle I'm going to line it up by the bottom and then we're going to set the camber and then trace this out cut it so it fits and then do the same on both sides all right we got some stuff to cross off the list here job uh let's see install SL mockup Leafs re that's totally gone well done shock tabs and Hoops cross that sucker yes sir boom okay two big crossw yeah let me get one of these back to work so I have the I beams all welded up I'm starting to mock them up onto the truck I'm going to check my Camber I want to make sure that it's pretty even either side we do have camber uh adjusters here for the upper ball joint and we have a degree basically either direction but I was shooting for even either side so that's what I'm shooting for but it'll be fine with this much adjustment also ignore this whole Hub break spindle assembly that's for a later episode all right right now our radius arm is a little bit too long causing it to interfere with the end point of our other ibeam okay the cross member that is interfering with our passenger side ibeam is about to get cut please clear woo that's close that's good though okay we've got the passenger side beam and radius arm pretty much all done so now it's time to make some room for those beefy ass wheels and tires we got going to start with removing all this then we'll throw the Wheel and Tire on cycle it up and if we need to make more room I'll cut more and if we don't need to make more room we'll have a party so I got to get to cuton so we can get to the party yeah that's going to be a problem and this is about as far as we can trim before we get into the firewall okay so we have more clearance but we still don't have quite enough we're close but we're still biting in here and we're going to have to make some room down here I don't know if this is the best solution yeah I don't think it is either so since there's a bunch of clearance issues with the tires I'm going to add 3 in to these beams we already cut them so that's kind of a bummer but I've made these sleeves here so I'm going to sleeve it inside so we'll get the space we need and it'll be plenty strong there It Go whoa baby that's a big one there's a red star next to it wow okay we've got clearance on the passenger side so we've taken a first pass at clearance on the driver's side so now we're going to pick the wheel up and see how close we are we're definitely going to have to do a little bit more bashing but I want to make sure everything meets up real nice so I want to get this clearance knocked out tonight that'll be the last thing for the evening then we'll come back tomorrow finish some things up and hopefully get them big boys in the truck uh it is hopefully the final day of suspension install so we're jamming we're trying to figure out how to get the shock in there so we got to put some lower shock mounts on the axle and we've also got to figure out the bump stops we've got the rest of the day and I think that'll be enough time we're going to have to put Jimmy to work yes it's true I had this whole speech in mind I was going to make and rally you guys dude round it up guys I just want to say this has been a fun roller coaster of 7 days of work I'm very proud of all of you Mike thank you for coming all the way out here welding the out of this truck really appreciate it without you we probably would have been Sinking by now like this has been more insane project than high low so like Pops to all of us okay okay on three Baja Blast get the in here one two three Baja Blast about to throw the first front suspension into the truck hopefully everything lines up and works out out what happened our big ass suspension doesn't fit runs into this upper bar on the shock mounting Tower well well all right we've got a new plan and it's a good one and it's what we really wanted to do from the beginning but we're concerned about clearing the tie rod and the steering linkage we are going to put the shock mount the lower shock mount at the front of the ibeam which is going to pretty much solve everything which is great gives us a better shock angle we've got clearance up here we'll have more clearance down there and the only thing we're going to need to do is modify this tab a little bit wow we've got radius arms beams and our suspension in place those are three big things just like the big three our new podcast coming in March every Wednesday it's Automotive news baby take a deep dive all right I'm working on installing the last can for the last bump stop so that means I have to weld the can to the truck where it's stationary and the strike plate to the beam so that you know the bump stop has something to land on the end of The Bump Stop is basically the thickness of these two hockey pucks that's why I have them there to simulate the bump stop if full bump the only minor concern is that we'll catch this bolt head on the way down but I think we'll be clear and if we're not we can make clearance so I'm going to tack this in place right now then check that clearance whoa we didn't clear it so we're going to have to grind the edge of that bracket which is no big deal okay we've got clearance for our bolt head and our strike pad so that's good that's one more thing hope y permanently off the list after all that battling with the torch and the polar and everything we finally got off our stock pitman arm right here this is what connects your steering linkage to your steering box we did all that so we can install this guy a new pitman arm with a 4-in drop because we're adding such a massive ride height increase we need our steering linkage to be more in line with our tie rods with the steering linkage and the IE beams that front-on view is going to look insane you're going to be able to see Mike's handiwork and uh craftsmanship on full display it'll be awesome now that Nolan's got the 4-in drop pitman arm installed now it's time to deal with our steering linkages now we are going to try to reuse our OEM steering linkages but they're too short so we're going to try to use them by cutting them up sleeving them making them longer then throwing them in the truck whoa who the hell did that not me and we forgot to film it but it's already done looks great they're lengthened and uh the truck should be able to you know go left and right all I got to do is throw this very last ball joint in and then we are in business okay one of the last things that we need to do for the suspension is install these limit straps I've got the tabs down here ready to go onto the I beam like so this upper hole is going to meet up with this hole up here you'll notice that right now it doesn't and that's on purpose because we want the limit straps to limit the suspension before they reach full droop where everything's maxed out so we're basically going to weld these on then we'll pick the suspension up about an inch so as we lower this down onto the wheels and tires the suspension will start to compress and we will eventually have the right distance between our lower Mount and the upper hole for our limit straps we'll throw the hardware in it and then we will be limited once we get the limit straps attached then we'll pick the truck back up and if we did everything right they should be taut at full droop cuz they will be limiting the down travel of the suspension and if they don't become taut I'm jumping off the roof I'll catch you thanks Jimmy wow look at that that's solid solid crazy we built a Civic then we crafted a beautiful painting of that Civic then we made a shirt of the beautiful painting of the beautiful Civic we made and it's available now at donut media.com check it out all right this truck clearly looks radically different than it did just a week ago and we've completed everything on our stupid little list over there we put $177,000 with a suspension into a $500 truck not to mention like 20 lb of welding wire the thing is awesome but it doesn't run and it doesn't stop so we're going to fix that in the next episode so we can get this thing out to the desert so make sure you subscribe to the channel so you don't miss it and make sure you follow bikee on Instagram at Mike the day check out his X5 build on ECS tuning's YouTube channel and check us out next time when we get this thing running stopping and driving in the desert see you thenwe bought this truck for $500 and we're going to race it 500 Miles through the deserts of Mexico but if we want to make it to the finish line or even survive this race we've got a few upgrades to make so we're starting with the most obvious shortcomings of this truck the suspension we want our truck ideally to be able to hit whoops at speed hold traction to the wash power through desert brush and handle just about anything the desert can throw at it so to do that we bought all this now this all may look very complicated because it is but as we go through and install each component we'll talk about what it is and how it works so what did we spend $177,000 on you might ask well we got a weld ofyourself ibeam kit and reverse shackles from giant coilovers rear shocks and bump stops all from King we got dver leaf springs a shock hoop kit limit straps additional Hardware like H joints and of course some raw materials for all the fabrication we'll have to do once you're add in taxes and shipping you're looking at17 $1,000 worth of high-end suspension components for a $500 truck that's 30 years old dude nice now this suspension install isn't going to be quite as simple as a lot of other suspension installs that we've done in the past we're going to have to tear the truck down a little further than normal and this is going to require some fabrication and everything's way bigger than I'm used to so we got some learning to do and up and and rotate pivot two three yeah that was nice all right now before we get too far along I wanted to talk about the suspension on the Ranger and part of the reason we bought this Ranger is that it has ibeam front suspension now what that means is that there are two beams going across the front that basically are responsible for holding the Hub to the car and the wheel to the car but what it doesn't give you is adjustability over camber but for the most part that's not that big of a deal on trucks if it was a track car you'd want to have adjustable determinable camber like you'd have on a double Wishbone setup or even a mcferson strut setup uh so you can dial in your camber and get your handling just the way you want it on the track but on a truck like this we're more concerned with travel so we got an ibeam truck and we're going to be installing longer IE beams so with a short ibeam the same amount of angular range you get this much travel if you make that ibeam longer look how much more travel you get and maybe a disadvantage of twin ibeam setup is that once you weld this thing in place that's it it just goes with the range of the arm and the cambera changes drastically throughout the range but what it gives you is really good contact between the tires and the ground even when the body is super rolled over your outside tire is going to be down on the ground it's going to look cool and it's going to be great to drive it's going to be a ripper all right Dylan what this is a microphone I'm going to place it on your person I'm scared right there little magnet will hold it on this is Dylan test hi everybody he's going to be helping us out on this build he knows a lot more about these trucks than we do Dylan was kind enough to put a whole list of work together for us all the tasks we need to do for this job today what do you think are going to be our biggest challenges for this build front beams and front radius arms for the front end we have to pretty much find find our Cas we Lo where we want going take a lot of trial and a we full bu full Dro centers lots of fabrication yeah that's pretty much so yeah this should be pretty interesting okay we we got the axle diff brakes and leaf springs out of the Ranger and this stuff is all going away because it's way too weak for what we want to do with the truck we're going to be putting huge tires on this thing and hopefully some big power under the hood so with those things we would just snap these axles and explode this diff so we've got much beefier components to replace with and they're pretty sweet every part that we take off is literally one qu the size of the part that we bought how heavy is this thing going to be once all this gets installed we're going to need somewhere to test it good thing today's sponsor is onx Offroad with onx you get access to thousands of trails with detailed information like duration difficulty elevation and more you can track your way points and even build custom routes that you can share with your friends this is an app that all of us at Dona 100% Ed and we highly recommend you download it especially if you're play on driving off-road like us because even if you have no service the onx app works offline so you can always know your exact location and if you become an Elite member you'll gain access to exclusive discounts to top brands like Fox Warn and Method plus Elite members get public and private land data so you'll always know what trails are legal or illegal to explore and for a limited time you can get this sick onx beanie when you purchase an elite membership it's warm it's comfortable and it's all yours if you click click the link below and download all next off-road and S to be an Elite member but hurry up you can only get one of these things for a limited time so come on come on click the link let's go ahead and click it all right it's day two yesterday we got all the suspension removed from the truck and today it's time to start the process of putting the new stuff on the first thing we got to do is assemble and install the mounts for the suspension so today no actual suspension will go on but we are going to install all the points that will allow us to out our new suspensions we got my boy Mike day here to help us with some of the fabrication welding you might remember him from some of the videos I've had him help us out with in the past like the E36 roll cage Dylan's still here we got a lot of hands on deck now we actually have a lot to do so let's get to it okay right now I'm basically just cleaning up the frame rail so that we can in the future weld on our new suspension pickup points so I'm just getting us down to bare metal cleaning up the rusty bits getting all the junk off and we'll be ready to weld on the new stuff see if Dylan has any pictures cuz this seems tweak to me this should be touching right here oh yeah look at that inch Gap yeah so um what I'm going to end up doing is just basically cut it off at this Bend I'm going to fit up the rest of the bracket here cuz that all lines up nice and then I can Line This cut piece off back on this C member and figure out where it fits the best zap it back together and it'll be like nothing ever happened okay so our upper suspension mounts are going to come off that frame rail and come straight up here into this area which means that a lot of the stuff that currently in this area needs to go so I'm working on taking the windshield washer fluid tank and the overflow tank out we're going to have to probably get rid of this air conditioning stuff and probably a handful of other things but ultimately that's okay this engine is going to be out of here in the future so we can change whatever we want we just got to kind of keep it running for now so that's what we're going to do got to make some room so we got all the brackets fit we had to trim the shock mount to fit around the new beam Mount and then uh we're going to tack this side up cuz it fits pretty good we're going to go to the other side make sure it's the same then we'll tack that side in throw the crossbar in and then we can burn everything in for real yeah that's it that I don't you don't need me anymore that was great Jerry's been doing this really fun thing tell him I cross stuff off when it's not done just cuz it's fun and then I was like oh W I was like damn who knocked that out who knocked that out I did all right so while they're working on the front I'm going to get to working on the rear I'm going to clean some things up with the wire wheel and then I'm going to install the leaf spring pickup points which should be pretty easy they bolt into place in existing holes on the frame though we got to find hardware I hear it's missing I'm just making a list of all the hardware we're missing Hardware tabs bungs chock tabs bump mounts everything like that so we can order it all the night Mike has a lot of Runway of things that he can do to the truck and set them up for success you know cuz I'm not going to be here because I'm leaving today's my last day I know it's been a short run but it's been a good one and I I like to burn out fast you know so all right so we got the new ibeam mounts in place these are the stock ones this is where they were mounted uh not literally but same distance uh as you can see the new one is even further out that means the wheel's going to be sitting out further from the fender I mean now we have a much longer ibeam and that's going to give us more suspension travel which when going over whoops and going over jumps is going to give us better contact with the ground to put more power down and go faster Okay so we've got a lot of stuff to do but unfortunately we've come to a bit of a slow spot we're missing hardware for spindle and Knuckles a set of studs that we need to procure we're also missing hardware for the rear leaf spring mounts which there he is in no time flat he's back with the hardware for the leaf spring so that's good that'll speed us back up so we're doing what we can Mike's out there working on building the eye beams we do have some flat pieces that we sort of have to mimic with tubes so Mike's got the Bender out he's going to bend some stuff up to match those flat pieces and then it will all be welded together and we have some big honken eye beams and they look similar that's that's what we're going for Mike has just gotten tacking together the front eye beams and threw the first one on the truck and we thought oh my God that thing looks long and well it is the wheel is in a different zip code from the truck so we realize that these are made to be trimmed basically we got to figure out where we want the wheel to sit we're going to pretty much make the front axle about an inch or two wider than the rear axle and once we figure that out take some measurements we'll cut the ends off these eye beams and then we'll weld everything on from there we are going to need to trim them but before we can do that we need to mock up our radius arms that'll basically just locate the ibeam front and rear cuz obviously you want it to do this but you don't want any of this so the radius arm connects it to the truck back here so we'll get those mocked up then we'll measure and cut the fronts get the ends welded on and be a few steps closer to an operating truck all right so we're going to try to land the radius arm mounts on the frame where they belong and then we're going to get rid of this crossmember and make something as a trans crossmember to tie between them right now I'm taking the leaf springs apart basically so that we can have just one leaf essentially or whatever the smallest pack is and we can put that on the truck and then we can jack it up without lifting the whole truck and see where we're going to you know basically have our bump stops go and get full compression dialed in all right here at the back we've got our giant uh inverted shackle normally you would have to do a lot of math to figure out what length this shackle should be that'll affect your spring rate and your General ride and spring travel but luckily we just bought a kit that goes into the factory mounting points and has all the math figured out for it so all we had to do was put it on bolted right up this is all very important and luckily there's a lot of companies out there that have already figured it out for guys like me more more parts for the pile more parts for the pile we've got a pretty cool little setup here so we've got the axle at full bump full compression and we've got a nice little wooden space up here just to keep the axle gapped away from the frame so that we never actually crash the axle into the frame especially if you imagine that our delin at the end of our Bump Stop is worn out this thing will continue to get shorter and shorter so we want to make sure that if this is at its shortest even without the delin we can't crash the axle into the frame and then we need to mount our cans here for the bump stop so that they can hang out here so what we got going on is can hovering thank you I've got 2 in of tape sitting on top hovering this here because that 2 in is what we need with this at full squish so that's just kind of thank you kind of holding that there in space so that we know where to mount it and we're in the process of trying to mount it that's why this is all cleaned up we're going to do some tubing across the cans and straight to the frame here so the bump stop will live basically exactly where it is but eventually it will be connected by metal so we're getting pretty close to some stuff bump stops should be able to go in soon so I'm working on these little guys that are going to go here here and Mike is working on Crossing up the uh shock Hoops here for a little bit of structural support between the two so this is just adding a little bit of uh reinforcement for the bump stops this is where the bump stops will live and that's going to take a lot of Force if we bottom out our suspension so we want to make sure that they are properly reinforced so that they don't bend or Worse twist our frame in or you know ruin anything else so extra tube there that'll make that nice and strong we'll get an X going through there that'll make that nice and strong and look cool and then we can re really put the suspension on yep nailed it what are you doing what we are currently estimating ride height and basically we're just putting the axle to what will be halfway through the travel of the shock all the way open they are 42 in Long all the way closed 26 in so we're targeting about 34 in of B basically distance from the upper shock mount to where the lower shock mounts will go and we'll call that ride height weld on the shock tabs and then once everything comes back together we'll know for sure what ride height actually is but halfway through the travel is a good place to start all right so now that we're at our ballparked ride height we're going to set the pinion a couple degrees down from the trans and that's because with leaf springs the pinion is going to wrap upwards underload so we're trying to compensate for that now so we're going to attack these mounts that'll get us in our ballpark place if we have to shim it later we'll have that option too now that we got the shock on we're going to lift the rear end all the way up to the bump stops and see if they're happy stuff doesn't hit each other cool hot dog oh yeah tell me where to go uh down down yep yep okay now twist left your left feels good we got a wheel on the truck and a shock and a lot of other stuff it's coming together all right the upper stuff is all fully welded so now it's time to take the axle and the leaf springs back out of the truck so we can put the leaf springs fully back together they're full stack and we'll finish welding up the stuff on the axle while it's out of the truck and then we can put it all back in and we'll be able to put this thing on the ground in the back which is exciting that's a neat noise job that's my alarm clock in the morning all right boys come on okay looks amazing guys how's the front looking Jimmy all right since these are cut to length beams I'm using this piece piece of wood just to like bump up against the frame so I have a straight edge and then I'm measuring off of that so that I can cut the beams in the same spot so the track width is the same on each side I'm going 13 in off of there and that'll let us find a spot where I can line up this spindle I'm going to line it up by the bottom and then we're going to set the camber and then trace this out cut it so it fits and then do the same on both sides all right we got some stuff to cross off the list here job uh let's see install SL mockup Leafs re that's totally gone well done shock tabs and Hoops cross that sucker yes sir boom okay two big crossw yeah let me get one of these back to work so I have the I beams all welded up I'm starting to mock them up onto the truck I'm going to check my Camber I want to make sure that it's pretty even either side we do have camber uh adjusters here for the upper ball joint and we have a degree basically either direction but I was shooting for even either side so that's what I'm shooting for but it'll be fine with this much adjustment also ignore this whole Hub break spindle assembly that's for a later episode all right right now our radius arm is a little bit too long causing it to interfere with the end point of our other ibeam okay the cross member that is interfering with our passenger side ibeam is about to get cut please clear woo that's close that's good though okay we've got the passenger side beam and radius arm pretty much all done so now it's time to make some room for those beefy ass wheels and tires we got going to start with removing all this then we'll throw the Wheel and Tire on cycle it up and if we need to make more room I'll cut more and if we don't need to make more room we'll have a party so I got to get to cuton so we can get to the party yeah that's going to be a problem and this is about as far as we can trim before we get into the firewall okay so we have more clearance but we still don't have quite enough we're close but we're still biting in here and we're going to have to make some room down here I don't know if this is the best solution yeah I don't think it is either so since there's a bunch of clearance issues with the tires I'm going to add 3 in to these beams we already cut them so that's kind of a bummer but I've made these sleeves here so I'm going to sleeve it inside so we'll get the space we need and it'll be plenty strong there It Go whoa baby that's a big one there's a red star next to it wow okay we've got clearance on the passenger side so we've taken a first pass at clearance on the driver's side so now we're going to pick the wheel up and see how close we are we're definitely going to have to do a little bit more bashing but I want to make sure everything meets up real nice so I want to get this clearance knocked out tonight that'll be the last thing for the evening then we'll come back tomorrow finish some things up and hopefully get them big boys in the truck uh it is hopefully the final day of suspension install so we're jamming we're trying to figure out how to get the shock in there so we got to put some lower shock mounts on the axle and we've also got to figure out the bump stops we've got the rest of the day and I think that'll be enough time we're going to have to put Jimmy to work yes it's true I had this whole speech in mind I was going to make and rally you guys dude round it up guys I just want to say this has been a fun roller coaster of 7 days of work I'm very proud of all of you Mike thank you for coming all the way out here welding the out of this truck really appreciate it without you we probably would have been Sinking by now like this has been more insane project than high low so like Pops to all of us okay okay on three Baja Blast get the in here one two three Baja Blast about to throw the first front suspension into the truck hopefully everything lines up and works out out what happened our big ass suspension doesn't fit runs into this upper bar on the shock mounting Tower well well all right we've got a new plan and it's a good one and it's what we really wanted to do from the beginning but we're concerned about clearing the tie rod and the steering linkage we are going to put the shock mount the lower shock mount at the front of the ibeam which is going to pretty much solve everything which is great gives us a better shock angle we've got clearance up here we'll have more clearance down there and the only thing we're going to need to do is modify this tab a little bit wow we've got radius arms beams and our suspension in place those are three big things just like the big three our new podcast coming in March every Wednesday it's Automotive news baby take a deep dive all right I'm working on installing the last can for the last bump stop so that means I have to weld the can to the truck where it's stationary and the strike plate to the beam so that you know the bump stop has something to land on the end of The Bump Stop is basically the thickness of these two hockey pucks that's why I have them there to simulate the bump stop if full bump the only minor concern is that we'll catch this bolt head on the way down but I think we'll be clear and if we're not we can make clearance so I'm going to tack this in place right now then check that clearance whoa we didn't clear it so we're going to have to grind the edge of that bracket which is no big deal okay we've got clearance for our bolt head and our strike pad so that's good that's one more thing hope y permanently off the list after all that battling with the torch and the polar and everything we finally got off our stock pitman arm right here this is what connects your steering linkage to your steering box we did all that so we can install this guy a new pitman arm with a 4-in drop because we're adding such a massive ride height increase we need our steering linkage to be more in line with our tie rods with the steering linkage and the IE beams that front-on view is going to look insane you're going to be able to see Mike's handiwork and uh craftsmanship on full display it'll be awesome now that Nolan's got the 4-in drop pitman arm installed now it's time to deal with our steering linkages now we are going to try to reuse our OEM steering linkages but they're too short so we're going to try to use them by cutting them up sleeving them making them longer then throwing them in the truck whoa who the hell did that not me and we forgot to film it but it's already done looks great they're lengthened and uh the truck should be able to you know go left and right all I got to do is throw this very last ball joint in and then we are in business okay one of the last things that we need to do for the suspension is install these limit straps I've got the tabs down here ready to go onto the I beam like so this upper hole is going to meet up with this hole up here you'll notice that right now it doesn't and that's on purpose because we want the limit straps to limit the suspension before they reach full droop where everything's maxed out so we're basically going to weld these on then we'll pick the suspension up about an inch so as we lower this down onto the wheels and tires the suspension will start to compress and we will eventually have the right distance between our lower Mount and the upper hole for our limit straps we'll throw the hardware in it and then we will be limited once we get the limit straps attached then we'll pick the truck back up and if we did everything right they should be taut at full droop cuz they will be limiting the down travel of the suspension and if they don't become taut I'm jumping off the roof I'll catch you thanks Jimmy wow look at that that's solid solid crazy we built a Civic then we crafted a beautiful painting of that Civic then we made a shirt of the beautiful painting of the beautiful Civic we made and it's available now at donut media.com check it out all right this truck clearly looks radically different than it did just a week ago and we've completed everything on our stupid little list over there we put $177,000 with a suspension into a $500 truck not to mention like 20 lb of welding wire the thing is awesome but it doesn't run and it doesn't stop so we're going to fix that in the next episode so we can get this thing out to the desert so make sure you subscribe to the channel so you don't miss it and make sure you follow bikee on Instagram at Mike the day check out his X5 build on ECS tuning's YouTube channel and check us out next time when we get this thing running stopping and driving in the desert see you then