I cut my old battery stops and hold downs off the pan. The battery will be getting moved over slightly to make room for some more stuff. Now that I have the lift kit fitting on the pan I can make sure my extras will actually fit!
First up on the drivers side I'm adding a 600W inverter. It has 2x 240V power points and one USB. Should handle all my needs when camping or travelling. It will be mounted roughly as pictured and poke through the under backseat kick panel. I'm also going to have enough room here to fit my dual battery controller.
Next on the other side I will be running a second battery the same as the first to cover my fridge duties. And I also have as ARB air compressor which will be plumbed in the run the locker and also for reinflating tyres after they are let down. Could probably use it to give the car a blow out too maybe.
After this I pulled one of the seats and bases down off the shelf so I could get some measurements and order some new seat belts. Had to space it up the extra to allow for the added height of the lift kit.
I will be making new seat mounts that mount from the tunnel to the lift kit, giving more room underneath for storage.
About the perfect length.
After this I got the pan down off the rolling bench and leveled it up ready to weld the new framehead on.
Getting everything in position.
Then it was off with the lift kit and measure measure measure.
I went and bought an angle finder and used it to measure the castor of the beam. But then I soon realised that this would be wrong due to the uneven spacing of my beam tubes and link pins. So I measured the angle on the spindle itself and am happy to report that with the floorpan level I have about 3° with the top trailing arm level and it gradually increases with more droop. This is due to the uneven spacing. The angle is about 7° between there and halfway to full droop, and around 15° at full droop. This is with no stops in place, I don't think it will be drooped down this far once it's finished.
So all in all I am very happy with the castor.
But then I run into an issue. While measuring the framehead and getting ready to tack it on it seems that the beam is not square there is about 20mm difference at the ends of the beam when I measure back to the rear torsion housing. Turns out that the issue is the beam bolts on one side have cracked and are pulling through from the framehead. When you bolt them up tight they are causing a slight hump where the beam sits in. This is enough to cause a difference of 20mm at the beam ends.
Not sure if you can tell in these pictures but this is the offending side.
Couldn't quite see the cracks under the crud.
Much better.
So I rewelded both sides.
And just to be sure I added a bit of angle to the back to. I never really liked the idea of having those open holes there to let crud in anyway.
Just hit this a little to flatten it so it matches the frame a little better.
And all done!
Now we could get back to the main event!
I got it all back sitting in place again. Took another million measurements then tacked it. Had to tweak it a tiny bit to get the sides even, was out about 2mm. After that I added some more tacks. Then welded it on.
Sat the lift back in place. Starting to look like a whole floorpan again!
I sat the gearbox in place once more and did a little more working out and measuring.
Next port of call with be getting on with the rack setup and dialing in no bumpsteer. Thanks for reading.
Smiley
).