Local Legend Vital Designs Regular Cab Ranger

[Turboyota]

Optical illusion..

You old bitch! Lol

1. Fuck you
2. If it’s perspective, and it’s an illusion, Fosters tall cans on me(whenever you have a dezert truck again, of course…)

 

[GahnRacing]

(whenever you have a dezert truck again, of course…)

You better hope they still make Fosters tall cans by then.. they may be vintage

 

[RW81]

Kinda funny finding a build thread on your own truck guess I should chime in. The last 3ish years with this truck have been so fun. Driving it to and from the desert it has never left me stranded once. Excited to post more of what we have for it!

Appreciate all the comments, I had an old build thread on DR back when we did the front. Glad to see another forum around again!

 

[ChristianEwing]

Finally some full size pics of this bish. Looks great.

Barely enough room to get back window out?

And did I read that right? 8" narrower in rear?

Yeah back window clearance is tight. If it doesnt actually come back out whenever it breaks ill just get a 3/8's peice of plexiglass or something similar, throw some tint on it and build a nice peice of trim for it that seals it off to the cab.

Its 6" narrower total, 3" per side. Its more offset than id like but the front end is already having issues with it being so narrow as it is, I needed to get all the width out of it i could

Am I seeing this correctly? Are the left and right link pockets different?

Its 100% an optical illusion haha

 

[85Yota]

Looks great and I'm glad you offset the link pivots outside the frame. That's one this I wish i would've done on my current truck build but it's too far along to change it now. It'll work but makes certain things a pain to work on like the t-case or stuff inside the frame.

 

[ChristianEwing]

Truck was turned around and then front got torn down. Old camburg kit and steering was pulled and sold, the 2.5x14” coilovers are gonna get freshened up and revalved/sprung for the new setup along side the bypass, and the last thing on the front of the truck was the engine. Since the truck got to this point, Ryan and I decided it would be a good idea to pull it and have him freshen it up a little bit so it atleast stops leaking for a bit and just make sure it’s good for the next while. This was the only thing left at this point not getting touched so figured fuck it it also helped me alot having it out because I knew I was gonna box the entire rest of the frame rail in from where it got cut off in the rear up to the front factory boxed section. I did it in sections to break up the plate work as well as be able to add internal ribs every so often throughout the frame rails.

If I know a trucks getting to this point again in the future, I’m ditching the factory frame rails and just gonna start from my own with link geometry and front suspension pivots/steering built into it. At this point it was more of a pain in the ass and more time consuming working around the factory frame than it would be if I started with symmetrical boxed frame rails from the jump. Another one of those live and you learn deals. Once I got the frame boxed, it was onto smaller other stuff while I was waiting for my brother to get the beam kit drawn up.

Because of the way I laid the A pillar/Dash tube out I couldn’t drop the cage, so I cut little squares out on the roof to be able to weld the tops of the A pillars up 360*. Also got the A pillar tie in plates made and silicon bronzed in

 

[GahnRacing]

Nice build.

 

[ChristianEwing]

Next was starting on the spare tire setup. I didn’t want to run the conventional Y-strap with a couple tabs and I wanted to try and push myself. I decided to do a hold down all made out of 1” .095 tubing. Radius’d the tire for the cradle portion to catch the tire and make sure when you’re loading it you never can smack the filler neck or fuel lines/vent right in front of it. That is welded to the fuel cell hold down and everything unbolts from the chassis to be able to get the fuel cell out of the top of the backhalf still. The top hold down portion pivots off 2 5/8’s heims and then I built the lock arm that pivots on bronze bushings with a ODI Lock-on BMX grip as the part you hold onto. Came out pretty cool for just wingin it the spare is locked down in the center with a rubber isolator that is adjustable to be able to account for different wheel offsets and If you get a flat tire.

Here’s a video on the last couple posts including this spare tire setup

Wings World Episode 7

 

[ChristianEwing]

This one I’m pretty proud of. Once we confirmed the truck was getting a proper beam kit my brother and I went to work. I am 100% against using some generic WIY/DIY parts on anything I build, so we designed and built our own kit from scratch. Basically everything I do is on my own and by myself day to day, but with bigger cad projects like this I commission my brother on it. I just don’t have the patience to sit at the computer for that long and draw something up like this, but he’s super efficient at it and does a great job!

This kit is utilizing our preferred geometry for camber and caster, running center mounted radius arms to minimize caster change, this kit specifically is built around the camburg uniball spindles that Ryan already had purchased to run with the unequal length kit. With everything being drawn in the computer, we fixtured every part to make sure it was exact to the drawings. All the plate work was laser cut and bent by SDLC and it all went together like a big Lego set

 

[Klever]

Super bitchen Christian and Jake! You guys are killing it! I also watch your YouTube videos.

 

[ChristianEwing]

Super bitchen Christian and Jake! You guys are killing it! I also watch your YouTube videos.

Thank you for the support dude! And thank you for following along, its been a journey so far to say the least haha

 

[ChristianEwing]

Getting the beam kit on took some time, making sure everything was square, wheelbase was correct, track width was right, etc. Because the kit was drawn in the computer based around a frame rail that was hand measured there was a few things that needed to be tweaked to get everything to work right. Nothing major, but next time the frame will be 3D scanned before hand to make the process a little more seamless. The end goal with a lot of the stuff I’m doing and the reason why I want to build all the big components myself is to eventually offer all of the parts for sale to the public. This beam kit needs a little more tweaking and fine tuning before i offer it as a kit but this was a big step towards that’s for these rangers!

Once the kit was on the truck, I got down on steering. I started with cutting the steering arms off the camburg spindles, the steering arms need to be decently long to keep all the tie rods straight with no bends in them. When I’m mocking everything up and trying to find all the right pivot points for the steering arms and swingers I cut plates with a bunch of holes in them that are grouped together and tack them to the knuckles and the frame rails and just start cycling stuff and moving the pivot points from hole to hole until I find the sweet spots. It really cuts down time for me, I used to make a mock up tab with a single hole in it and then cut another if it wasn’t right, etc, etc until I found the right spot but this saves a shitload of time. Once all the geometry was figured out, I built the swingers to match the same design as the beams, final steering arms were built off the knuckles and final tie rods were made out of 1.25”x.250 wall 4130

 

[marcytech]

oh yea. thats the stuff

 

[dwphoto]

THAT ODI GRIPPPPPP dudessssss.... This thing is such a rad build.

 

[the bodj]

That spare hold down is awesome, but how does it do with a flat? It looks like there is a small range of where it will apply pressure while being locked. That's something that has kept me away from doing a solid hold down like that instead of a Y strap

 

[ChristianEwing]

THAT ODI GRIPPPPPP dudessssss.... This thing is such a rad build.

Gotta throw some homage to the bmx background ODI lock on for all the things. I also did one on a hand brake I made a while back too

That spare hold down is awesome, but how does it do with a flat? It looks like there is a small range of where it will apply pressure while being locked. That's something that has kept me away from doing a solid hold down like that instead of a Y strap

It locks in the center of the wheel with an ORI poly mount that’s adjustable. So this setup can be ran with any size tire, any wheel offset and be adjusted down to hold a flat tire if needed with just loosening up a nut real quick and threading it up or down. Most of these style hold downs that ive seen have a pedestal under the center of the wheel that has some sort of hub centric ring on it that the wheel sits on, but depending on how the hold down/latch is done, you are limited to whatever wheel/tire combination you originally set it up with. On the one I did, there is no adjustment in the latch, all the tension is set through this center peice to hold the wheel/tire down so you can run whatever you want

 

[dwphoto]

Gotta throw some homage to the bmx background ODI lock on for all the things. I also did one on a hand brake I made a while back too View attachment 12137



It locks in the center of the wheel with an ORI poly mount that’s adjustable. So this setup can be ran with any size tire, any wheel offset and be adjusted down to hold a flat tire if needed with just loosening up a nut real quick and threading it up or down. Most of these style hold downs that ive seen have a pedestal under the center of the wheel that has some sort of hub centric ring on it that the wheel sits on, but depending on how the hold down/latch is done, you are limited to whatever wheel/tire combination you originally set it up with. On the one I did, there is no adjustment in the latch, all the tension is set through this center peice to hold the wheel/tire down so you can run whatever you want

View attachment 12138

I've been wanting to do this on the dual case shifters in my shit box... ODI will even do Custom grip locks... you could do Wings World or Vital Designs

 

[the bodj]

Smart! Good info

 

[Cleandezert]

i am freaking blow away by the quality on this build. Thanks for making the rest of us look like kids.

 

[ChristianEwing]

I've been wanting to do this on the dual case shifters in my shit box... ODI will even do Custom grip locks... you could do Wings World or Vital Designs

I did not know you could do that!! I am gonna have to look into that more for future stuff

i am freaking blow away by the quality on this build. Thanks for making the rest of us look like kids.

Thank you Adam! Trying my best to push myself daily and progress as much as possible. Its cool to step back every once in a while and appreciate how far I've come since i started doing all this stuff. Still a long way to go but we are on the right track!