Evilution V2.5.5-R (Resurrection)

[cambo]

ya,i think an ls is way more than i am looking for,a turbo on the 1.6 would probably make me happy. i would love a vitara v6 but have no money. have you thought about cutting the back of the kick door assembly to weld back on your truck? would look cool and give you easy access to behind the seats and then you could do a small tube deck out back? i thought about that years ago before i got my 4 door.

[MudKick]

LS motors are actually fairly inexpensive (relative term used) if you are on a lookout and you're patient. I mean they will not be as cheap as the 200 - 300 dollar 4.3s but you could find one for around a grand plus minus couple of hun. Shogunator did.
Seriously. Turboing your 1.6 may cost you just as much. I wouldn't do it specifically that you would open just another can of warms in the reliability department. My 2.5 cost me around 1300 by the time I had to buy some additional harness pieces I was missing and a few other odd bits. In retrospect I probably couldda had a V8 for the same money.

But that's water under the bridge for me. Like I said earlier. Going with a totally different engine option would have cost a lot more in replacing most of my drive train pieces (gears, adapters etc).


Yes. I briefly considered an addition of another set of doors but when I thought of the details such as where to mount them (rigidity) and how to lock/latch and then seal the custom door and door well it just isn't viable time wise. I will use a door skin in the back part to maintain a consistent cab look.

[cambo]

as far as the rear goes what i meant was to take the part that is sitting in front of you truck and trim it down to only the door and then weld it back on the short cab so it is super bobbed.

[MudKick]

Oh. So it's 3 mdoor not 5 door.

Well if so that's precisely what I'm doing.

[Tmax]

now that you are here (opned and cut up), have you considered making the wheelbase a bit longer? would make for much more comfortable rig.

[MudKick]

uhhh....


Did you miss the first post? LOL! I guess I didn't indicate how long it was in my first post ...

Well. Considering I'm at 94 incches as it sits and stock was 88:




So yes. Good call! I concidered it. LOL

[Tmax]

haha. ok. sorry i just looked at pics. LOL

[ANDYrew]

Cool, I'll enjoy watching it all come together. This time you'll have to keep away from the Fords.

What's up with shoguns rig of old? Is it dead?

[MudKick]

It's not dead. But it's not alive either. It's very - I guess - "Twilight" which is apparently in vogue nowadays.
It's still around. I always admire this rig when I'm at Daves. It's such a shame it never saw day light yet. In my opinion it was one of the most "ahead of its times" rigs ever.
It's now what? 12 years! ... and the design (functionally and esthetically) has not really aged much. I mean you could finish it tomorrow, hit a tail and people would be all over admiring.

I don't wanna speak for Dave but I understand a lot of underlying factors in why it's not done. I kept insisting he just finished it and we could go wheeling. But few things have changed in over a decade (as one could expect) and I even changed my tune. Dave's building an (uhhmmm.... that's kind of eery in this thread) Exploder for daily wheeling and plans are shifting as we speak. So now I even tell him to get rid of the Sami and start fresh. But he's kinda attached to it. It's sort of like his old dog. LOL!

[ANDYrew]

Building an explorer? Things have really taken a turn for the worse. It's a shame, but I understand.

Anyway...are you going to have any body on the rear? I like the wheelbase stretch.

[MudKick]

Building an explorer? Things have really taken a turn for the worse. It's a shame, but I understand.

Not really. Don't worry. Exploder is sort of a solution to open room/time for things to come on a real project down the road...

Anyway...are you going to have any body on the rear? I like the wheelbase stretch.

Again. That's the plan:

[ANDYrew]

Ahhh! Well I don't imagine your going to get into the details of a tail gate but if you do I have a Tracker one laying around I can donate.

[MudKick]

OK.

So... spent another day and a half in the garage. Things are moving slow. But the Christmas brake allows me to spend some time here and there on steady basis so the thought flow stays consistent at least.

The good news is that I shifted from destruction to construction.

Trimmed an excess vertical rise from behind the front seats. Brought the new floor level down to the height of the transmission tunnel. That's about 4 inches deeper than stock floor. You can see on this pic the "new" floor level is below the "old" frame.
Also finished up the lower corner of the inner floor.




When I cut the sheet metal I made sure I staggered the cuts of inner and outer skins so when I weld it all back up the welds will be staggered across many different lines. It should be stronger that way.



I moved the body mount hole temporarily by 13.5 inches on the old frame. This will serve as a jig for now to finish the structure of the body. 13.5 inches is the total I'm cutting out. All the staggered sheet metal cuts are either 13 inches to overlap panels or 13.5 exactly to butt weld. All depends on access and placement of welds.

[MudKick]

Here you can see the inner corners filled in. The seam sealer outline where the old wheel well was so there is even some bonus gains in space directly on the bottom floor.












....
















and.... drum roll please....



the first test fit of ALL these cuts and careful trims. Hoe it lines up!!!!


...








BINGO!

[MudKick]

The roof is 1/2 inch overlap. In case you were wondering why I trimmed it 13.5 inches it's pretty evident here.

The roof line and the window lines are sort of teardrop shaped on a side profile of the vehicle. The front of the truck is a bit wider and taller than the back. Hard too see but when you measure it's easy too see stuff will not simply butt fit. Everything will be misaligned if you remove a section from the middle.
I found a sweet spot just behind the B pillar where the truck only narrows a c-hair under 3/16ths and drops only a nudge over 1/4 inch over a 13.5 inches of length. After that it escalates drastically so that was my final decision on how much to take out.

I actually calculated that instead of fighting some of these misalignments I'll use them. The top of the roof narrows and drops enough to sort of "slide" into their own ribs:







I lined up the sides so they would just but weld. they were cut the extra 1/2 inch longer. The dots indicate where I'll drill out holes and spot weld to the plate on the inside. Note he alignment already even though the back is simply resting in place without any support or persuasion: