55ovalcharlie
Rock Stacker
I have an addiction
for the build I needed a suitable vehicle to make an extreme cage for.
In walk the Team Raffee / XtraSpeed Land Rover D110 pickup
This is a truly amazing (and heavy) body with insane amounts of detail!
For the time being it's going to run on an MST CFX-W portal chassis.
I won't bore everyone with the details of the chassis build. First impressions are that it is great value for money - again - ordered and supplied by RCMART.
I found a couple of cool looking full size defender based vehicles to swipe some inspiration from
A quick mockup of the chassis to body showed that it should work.
The only modifications needed for a super snug fit was a little bit of creative melting of the front footwell area of the body interior, and 2 little notches cut out of the rear footwells to let the chassis sit high up in the body.
So I quickly welded up some chassis outriggers that the body will be bolted to
The chassis rails will ultimately be lengthened to run to the rear of the body, and the wheel base has now been lengthened to suit using M4 stainless threaded rod for the time being.
I've bought a set of the wider fender flares from DJ Designs here in the UK - super nice product and will give some nice wheel tuck.
Wheels at the moment are SSD 1.9 Steel deadlocks and 1.7 RC4WD IROK Tyres.
Now to start work on the exo cage.
So for the D110 I started off using - FULL exocage mounted from the rockers of the body.
The cage will be totally removable and will slide down over the body once the body has been secured to the chassis.
The cage will be built almost exclusively with 4mm Outside Diameter, 2mm Inside Diameter Stainless Steel tube. Initially tacked together with quick blasts of the mig welder whilst on the body to help get the proportions correct, and then finally finished off with silver solder.
The first evenings work resulted in this.
really pleased with the lines so far!
Next steps are to wrap the cage around the rear screen area and then decide what's going to happen with the front bumper and front fenders.
I might even be tempted to carry on the front fender "cage" by extending it outwards to follow the lines of the wheel arch flares ???
Really enjoying this one - but will it ever see more action than the back yard? who knows!
not much love for the UK Trucks then? :hmmm:
anyway - made a bit more progress on the cage.
Did some more boxing in of the back of the cab section and made a start on the rear bed roll bars.
was a right pain to get all the curves the same size - ended up rolling all the big diameter bends round a hole saw bit of the appropriate size and they all match up nice now.
All the joints have been temporarily mig welded together with little tacks, and will then be tidied up and soldered over.
Then back to Deathproof UK and it's front fender / wheel arch protectors which resulted in the first bits of wastage of stupid expensive stainless tubing! They were a PAIN to make - but I'm happy with the end result - With the 1.9 SSD steel beadlocks and 1.7 RC4WD Iroks you get some perfect wheel tuck in the arches on full articulation.
Also made a start on the front bumper. Still quite a bit to add to it but I will probably end up making a couple of different versions of the bumper as I'm not totally convinced on this yet. We'll see.
bit more tube work - conclusion - I'm really going to need to beef up this suspension :laugh:
the general final layout of the front bumper is now done
The lower portion of the front bumper is your typical style - bolted to the ends of the front chassis rails. - Simple tube work with provision for the Warn winch.
The main cage is designed to literally just slide down over the top of the truck, bolt to the rockers, and then I've also added a couple of tabs to the lower front of the cage which line up with some matching tabs on the front bumper - these will then be bolted together at final assembly making the entire structure super rigid.
Also managed to incorporate a small Onetoomanyrcs light bar that I had lying around.
Really please with the fact that I've managed to somehow get both the left and right sides 99% to match each other bend for bend.
Added a couple of braces to the front screen surround section of the cage too.
Also did a spot more work to the rear end.
Added a couple of side "slider" bits that poke out over the top edges of the rear bed area and join to the C-Pillar section of the cage.
And once that was all lined up did an X brace on the 2 main bed hoops. Also added a mount for 5 x spot lights for the back too
Think I can now say that the bulk of the metal work is now done
Added a couple more braces to the roof area and have added a support mount for the spare tyre too.
Next job is to try and use my friends vapour baster to clean up the cage and bumpers.
for the build I needed a suitable vehicle to make an extreme cage for.
In walk the Team Raffee / XtraSpeed Land Rover D110 pickup
This is a truly amazing (and heavy) body with insane amounts of detail!
For the time being it's going to run on an MST CFX-W portal chassis.
I won't bore everyone with the details of the chassis build. First impressions are that it is great value for money - again - ordered and supplied by RCMART.
I found a couple of cool looking full size defender based vehicles to swipe some inspiration from
A quick mockup of the chassis to body showed that it should work.
The only modifications needed for a super snug fit was a little bit of creative melting of the front footwell area of the body interior, and 2 little notches cut out of the rear footwells to let the chassis sit high up in the body.
So I quickly welded up some chassis outriggers that the body will be bolted to
The chassis rails will ultimately be lengthened to run to the rear of the body, and the wheel base has now been lengthened to suit using M4 stainless threaded rod for the time being.
I've bought a set of the wider fender flares from DJ Designs here in the UK - super nice product and will give some nice wheel tuck.
Wheels at the moment are SSD 1.9 Steel deadlocks and 1.7 RC4WD IROK Tyres.
Now to start work on the exo cage.
So for the D110 I started off using - FULL exocage mounted from the rockers of the body.
The cage will be totally removable and will slide down over the body once the body has been secured to the chassis.
The cage will be built almost exclusively with 4mm Outside Diameter, 2mm Inside Diameter Stainless Steel tube. Initially tacked together with quick blasts of the mig welder whilst on the body to help get the proportions correct, and then finally finished off with silver solder.
The first evenings work resulted in this.
really pleased with the lines so far!
Next steps are to wrap the cage around the rear screen area and then decide what's going to happen with the front bumper and front fenders.
I might even be tempted to carry on the front fender "cage" by extending it outwards to follow the lines of the wheel arch flares ???
Really enjoying this one - but will it ever see more action than the back yard? who knows!
not much love for the UK Trucks then? :hmmm:
anyway - made a bit more progress on the cage.
Did some more boxing in of the back of the cab section and made a start on the rear bed roll bars.
was a right pain to get all the curves the same size - ended up rolling all the big diameter bends round a hole saw bit of the appropriate size and they all match up nice now.
All the joints have been temporarily mig welded together with little tacks, and will then be tidied up and soldered over.
Then back to Deathproof UK and it's front fender / wheel arch protectors which resulted in the first bits of wastage of stupid expensive stainless tubing! They were a PAIN to make - but I'm happy with the end result - With the 1.9 SSD steel beadlocks and 1.7 RC4WD Iroks you get some perfect wheel tuck in the arches on full articulation.
Also made a start on the front bumper. Still quite a bit to add to it but I will probably end up making a couple of different versions of the bumper as I'm not totally convinced on this yet. We'll see.
bit more tube work - conclusion - I'm really going to need to beef up this suspension :laugh:
the general final layout of the front bumper is now done
The lower portion of the front bumper is your typical style - bolted to the ends of the front chassis rails. - Simple tube work with provision for the Warn winch.
The main cage is designed to literally just slide down over the top of the truck, bolt to the rockers, and then I've also added a couple of tabs to the lower front of the cage which line up with some matching tabs on the front bumper - these will then be bolted together at final assembly making the entire structure super rigid.
Also managed to incorporate a small Onetoomanyrcs light bar that I had lying around.
Really please with the fact that I've managed to somehow get both the left and right sides 99% to match each other bend for bend.
Added a couple of braces to the front screen surround section of the cage too.
Also did a spot more work to the rear end.
Added a couple of side "slider" bits that poke out over the top edges of the rear bed area and join to the C-Pillar section of the cage.
And once that was all lined up did an X brace on the 2 main bed hoops. Also added a mount for 5 x spot lights for the back too
Think I can now say that the bulk of the metal work is now done
Added a couple more braces to the roof area and have added a support mount for the spare tyre too.
Next job is to try and use my friends vapour baster to clean up the cage and bumpers.
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