The Baja350 - a Dentside Story

[DesertGoat]

The homie Tom welded up my shock mounts for me.
I feel shameful having to MIG weld them to the truck but it's either a half-decent mig weld or fix my tig welder & drop down a totally garbo tig weld. been so long. Oh well.

 

[Turboyota]

Those look nice! Tomass is a G

 

[DesertGoat]

my next goal is to get the fenders & hood mounted so I can start figuring out how to mount & place everything else that needs to be up front.
Radiator is on the way, but then there's the overflow tank, AC condensor, trans cooler, oil cooler etc etc etc
So i started by trying to figure out fender mounts. Was at first considering just purely sheet metal but it was too flimsy, but I liked the look, so I put some tube structure below it & capped it with the same panel & i dig it.

I wish I had the foresight to beadroll it before I formed it, because now I can't get it into the bead rolling machine with the bent edges, but oh well.
I'll trim & cap the tube structure when I'm done with this & ultimately the front section out to the core support will get a panel too. but only as long as the extra coolers don't consume all that space.

 

[4xFoorOffroad]

Is that 1x.095 for the fender mounts?

 

[DesertGoat]

Is that 1x.095 for the fender mounts?

bingo!

 

[DesertGoat]

Some of the homies pointed out that making this structure removable would be a really good idea... they were for sure right, so a couple extra steps.
Here's what I came up with & bonus, finally had a reason to use cleco's. i'm a fan.
Also I wasn't super thrilled that I had forgotten to bead roll the panel so I flattened it out, rolled it, then put the bends back in & i'm glad I did. Conscious cleared.

plasma'd up some 2-bolt tube flanges & then riv-nuts into the firewall and I think this solution is pretty simple.
I ordered some u-clips for the panel tabs & some weld nuts for the tube flange.
gonna have to work on how to clean up the appearance at the bolted joint up front but I'll figure that out once I package the rest of the engine compartment 'stuff'

 

[85Yota]

Looks good but damn that's a lot of bolts for the splash pans. I would've used maybe 5 on those and outer used fender mounting bolts

 

[DesertGoat]

rattles can go eff themselves.
I think i'm also gonna get some u-trim rubber & line the edge of the panel where it hits the main cage tube.

 

[the bodj]

That looks good! Way better with the bead rolling.

When doing a series of tabs like that, I like to cut them all out of one continuous piece of metal and then stitch weld it on the tube. It's way easier to let the computer define the tab spacing and being one piece, they will all be more or less coplanar. Once the long tab is welded on, I use a transfer punch to knock a dimple into the sheet metal for the holes.

 

[DesertGoat]

that's a neat idea! i'll look for an opportunity to do that next time

 

[the bodj]

that's a neat idea! i'll look for an opportunity to do that next time

I use it anywhere I can, especially mounting multiple lights on front bumpers, tabbing the upper fender section on SUV rear fiberglass...