The Baja350 - a Dentside Story

[DesertGoat]

Making some progress on radiator mounting.
Gonna have the homie come weld these out for me next week once i'm done with the mockups & test fits. I gotta make sure I can still lift & wiggle the radiator out with these wings on it.
Also trying to get the hood mounted to double check clearances but that's requiring some fussiness, more on that later.



for this one, I just held it up there with a trick tab to show the idea, but I'm going to have to make my own steel tab that actually fits better than this

 

[DesertGoat]

pivoting off the radiator mount a little bit & working to get all the front body panels mounted so I can mock up all the front end coolers & things for packaging work.
A buddy helped me get the hood mocked up, then decided I need to get the fenders back on so I can cycle everything & see how much space the tires consume.
then realized that somehow I didn't plan the fender mounts correctly. I built them to pick up the bottom flange of the autofab fenders with the fenders mocked up with proper body gaps & never went back & checked tire clearance.
like an idiot.

So I notched the fender mounts. and had to put a small notch in the fiberglass lip at the wheel opening & a matching notch up top where it would have mounted to the factory inner fenders.
Then I went to go check the opposite side & the interferences were totally different.
Caught that the wheel base was 1/2" different. Fixed that, and the tire is still hitting the lower front edge of the fender on the passenger side where it's all clear on the driver's side.

So now I need to double-check my left/right body mounting alignment. We had set all that previously during the tack-up of the fender mounts but something definitely seems off. maybe we picked bad reference spots or something.

also got the custom front driveshaft installed from Adam's. Double cardan - 1330 BC

 

[DesertGoat]

Went to cycle the suspension with the tire on to plan for oil cooler clearances & discovered that the fender mounts were built asymmetrically.
Andrew & I had picked up a feature on the body & a bolt hole in the grille previously but it turns out that we picked some unreliable features. it was off to one side by ~3/8.
Figured this out by going back to a body seam line on the windshield frame & then down to a center mark on the grill.

So fixed the left/right fender + grille alignment to discover that the tires no longer clear the fenders at full stuff & full lock.
Passenger side needed to shorten the wheelbase by 1/2" for starters
but ultimately just needed to trim ~1" off the wheel opening. So I got after 'er with the body saw following the original molded-in body line around the wheel opening.
I didn't cut 'er perfect, but i'll fix that with sanding later - overall i'm okay with how it turned out.
Hood here is just plopped on.


Then i actually bolted up the hood to check for clearances - radiator clears by a long ways, which is great.
Got the hood struts on to check for that operation.
I'll need to take the hood in to a fiberglass shop & ask them to re-beef up the hinge area from my alignment butchery cause it makes me nervous but it does work right now, no prop required.



Next up is the shock-mount center cross member. Designed this in fusion 360 & cut on the plasma table.
here's some of the first test-fits:



also mounted up the coolant overflow tank from summit.
ordered up the oil coolers & condensors & pre-built a surge tank mount for the passenger side to match this one on the driver's side

 

[85Yota]

Crossmember looks good. If welding it all you will want outside corners to weld since how it's fitted now the welds will suck unless planning on grinding smooth to make look like a solid piece.

 

[DesertGoat]

you're talking about the bent filler plates, right?
i agree - those need some better fits for the welds. When i take it apart to actually weld I think i'm going to just bevel the bent plate. maximize the space available for the bolts (you'll see what i mean later)

 

[DesertGoat]

Looking for feedback.
last night i tacked up 1/2 of the mounts of the AC condensor located right in front of the radiator.
I realized as I was cleaning up for the night that I may have made a mistake - but I want everyone's opinion.

I'm worried that the location I picked precludes me from adding an x-brace to this front structure of the cage.
for the existing location, pros: really close to the radiator, so AC performance will be good. No other tubes to block radiator airflow.
cons: no x-brace means the cage isn't as strong as it could be.

would you move the condenser forward on the truck & add x-bracing out of 1" tubing (or something else) ? sacrificing AC performance
or am i worried about nothing and the cage will be fine once I brace it forwards & backwards?




ps: yes, the condenser is bent. yes, it showed up that way as-shipped. No, they won't warranty it. yes, i'm pissed about it.

 

[the bodj]

I don't have that front X. Wish I did, but it hasn't proven to be an issue (yet)

 

[exp24]

You can run smaller OD tube, 3/4" would be fine. And you could have the X behind the condenser with smaller mounting tabs

 

[FasterNU]

you could get an x on there with big tube... just bend the ends.... so the x protrudes forward.

 

[DesertGoat]

I decided to err on the side of more structure instead of less.
Staring at it some more - it was also going to make the hose routing a bit easier anyways so the hell with it. I wanted to re-do the condenser mounts anyway.
and then i ran out of tubing - so i'm still missing a tube here.

also finished welding up the shock brace crossmember thing. Got it fitted - it does clear.
It's heckin' close to the intake manifold though.
I'm going to look at scooting it back a little more to buy more clearance and if that still freaks me out then i'll just re-do the mounts off the cage & raise it up.
Y'all agree? it's too dang close to the motor right? I'm picturing motor torque on "used" motor mounts and it tapping that cross member

 

[the bodj]

Without solid/poly motor and trans mounts, that's close enough to have some love taps. Looks like you have room to grind the bottom lip of those external tabs down, letting you raise it all up another 1/4-1/2"

 

[Tree trunk]

it’ll self clearance…..

I’m thinking redo the mounts to raise it up a bit, I think if you scooted the crossmember back it would still be close. And I’m guessing you don’t want to notch the crossmember to clear the intake.

 

[DesertGoat]

yep - i agree with ya'll. it was too close for comfort. Fortunately since I drew this whole thing in fusion it was pretty simple to raise it up 1/2" with some new tabs.
it's less coplanar now with the tubes, but by the time I box everything in it'll be plenty strong enough to deal with the little bit of bending

 

[85Yota]

Nice. And a plasma table at home makes changing that stuff easy as well.