Lotrat's Budget Baja Build

Lotrat · Post by **Lotrat** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 10:36 am

bajaherbie wrote:i'll give you 23 bucks for it and you pay the shipping

Give me a few more days at being mad and I may just take it... Maybe I should start taking bids to help me along.

CopperBaja · Post by **CopperBaja** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 10:41 am

umm....trade you for a transmission.

Lotrat · Post by **Lotrat** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 11:04 am

CopperBaja wrote:umm....trade you for a transmission.

Well played Mr. CopperBaja, well played.

Post by **Hedrock** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 3:00 pm

Is there any way to loosen the gen strap and the two shroud bolts on the side and bump the whole shroud assy. toward the back of the car?

If not I'll give you 23.81 and I'll cover shipping

Lotrat · Post by **Lotrat** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 3:04 pm

Yeup, tried that. Got nothing. The fan shroud sits in the cylinder tins, there is no play there. All I can think of at this point is that the shroud bowed in. I'm gonna tie a rope from the generator nut to my jeep and give it a yank to see what happens.

Lotrat · Post by **Lotrat** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 3:11 pm

Hedrock wrote:...If not I'll give you 23.81 and I'll cover shipping

How many do you need?

Post by **Hedrock** » Fri Nov 14, 2008 4:27 pm

Lotrat wrote:
Hedrock wrote:...If not I'll give you 23.81 and I'll cover shipping
How many do you need?

One is for my 'vert and one is still to give away. The other would be the first part for my next project

.

Lotrat · Post by **Lotrat** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 11:38 pm

I guess I'm once again a member of the "Baja's not running " club. After breaking my baja on my birthday out at Ocotillo Wells the day after Thanksgiving, the car sat in my garage until all the Christmas stuff got put up. I decided to work on it a bit tonight and discovered that my steering rod is bent because my beam is bent... I dropped the wrenches and called it a night. Sigh... I didn't think I ran it that hard.

rickosuave1987 · Post by **rickosuave1987** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 11:50 pm

Sounds like the perfect oportunity to go Link Pin to me....

Lotrat · Post by **Lotrat** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 11:56 pm

rickosuave1987 wrote:Sounds like the perfect oportunity to go Link Pin to me....

Everything on the front end is new... except the beam. Gotta think about it for a while. No spare funds for a while, so what ever I do it's gotta be on the cheap side. Then again, it's always on the cheap side.

Lotrat · Post by **Lotrat** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 6:27 pm

So today was the day to take the front end apart.

Steering was tight because the thrust washer was up against the steering rod orifice (yes, I made that name up). I was hoping I could just slide the steering rod down and that would be it.

I couldn't really tell if the beam was bent all that bad. It's hard to tell laying on your back.

I thought long and hard about leaving it in and trying to adjust the steering and tow to compensate. I decided to pull it out. When I took the arm out on the bent side, the torsion leaves sprung forward and hit the front of the tube. They should be dead center. It didn't take long to get it out. Everything was only 8 months old. Noticed one of the 8 month old ball joints was easy to move around while the other 3 are still tight. I'll probably replace it since it's out.

Looks like it bent just past the frame head:

Crisis68 has a freebie up in Yucaipa, but that's a 200 mile haul. I found out my buddy has a beam in his back yard, but he likes to rip me off... There was a Thing beam for sale, but 3 bills is out of the question right now. I was told this week that my company is forcing me to take vacation Christmas week til after New Years, so I would be nice to get a trip to the desert in. Tick tock tick tock...

birddog1148 · Post by **birddog1148** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 6:45 pm

I got a beam that looks like that due to a deer, not the one in the pic, I have wondered if it could be straightened.

Lotrat · Post by **Lotrat** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 8:59 pm

A buddy of mine tried to straighten a beam once. He left it on and tied a strap to his truck. He ripped the beam off the car and stripped out all four frame head bolt holes. The beam was still bent afterwords.

I gotta call the beam store and see what the going rate is.

bajaherbie · Post by **bajaherbie** » Sun Dec 14, 2008 5:39 am

is that isle 3 of "Beam-R-Us"?

birddog1148 · Post by **birddog1148** » Sun Dec 14, 2008 6:05 am

Since I quit drinkin I quit doin stupid stuff like doing it in the car, I was thinking you could use a press and some blocks.