Scott from http://www.izzyscustomcages.com/ emailed me and asked some questions about what I did. He wants to build something very similar.

He asked some questions… So I took some more pictures, and here are his answers…

Do you have any detailed photo’s on how you mated the frames?

Yes! See the gallery Below. I have had several Nay Sayers, including a few engineers who have said it won’t work because you can’t weld on a frame… But, they are smoking crack… Frames are welded all the time! Anyways… I used 1/4″ steel for all the pieces between the two frames. The frames are actually mated in two seperate places to provide additional support. A note… My frame is shaped different than most, because I sectioned it a long time ago and removed 4 feet from the middle, brining the back wheels up to right behind the cab. Thus, where the frames mate, the truck frame is at the top of the arch over the rear axle… So, you’ll have to do somethings a little different. To keep things ultra simple (I had 1 month to do the initial graft and I had only a skill saw with an abrasive blade, and a wire fed welder…) I first welded a vertical piece of 6″ x 1/4″ x 12″ on each side of each frame rail at the end. I then welded another piece of 6″ x 1/4″ x 12″ to the end of these two pieces, creating a flat 6″ x 12″ surface that would butt up against the front of the sho frame. I then welded a some small pieces of 1/4″ plate from the 6×12 surface to the inside edges of the sho “frame” (even though the sho is unibody, there are two definite frame “rails” built into the body. These are made from between 1/8″ and 3/16″ steel, so it’s pretty tough I think.) I then welded some more 1/4″ plate pieces from the outside of the sho frame rail to the 6×12 surface. Then, I made the lower re-inforcements that go from the bottom of the truck frame, to the point on the sho “Frame” where the subframe bolts to the unibody / sho frame. These pieces aren’t finished, as I need to put corners back on the pieces so that they actually have some integrity.

How did you run the radiator and fuel?

Just like an MR2 / Fiero I used steel pipe to go from the front to the back. I placed these in the drive shaft tunnel (See pictures below). For the fuel, I used 3/8″ brake line (I had dreams of turboing the engine so I wanted to plan ahead and have enough flow for 300hp+, this is also why I used an F-150 fuel booster pump, good to like 300 HP). This I ran on the truck frame so that it would be seperated from the hot cooleant as much as possible, (since hotter fuel means earlier detonation)).

Any thoughts, experiances or pitfalls to watch out for would be greatly appreciated

Good question… If I had it to do over again, I would have left the radiator in the back, and run it like liquid cooled dune buggies do… See: http://www.duneguide.com/images/ExtremeExpo2007/ExtremeExpo2007-426.jpg

I ran into a problem at the end here, where the wires, cables, hoses, etc… look like a rats nest in the space between the car and the truck, this also makes maintenance difficult. I wish I had thought through this a little more, and made things neater.

Electrical… At first I thought this was going to be a big problem. But once I removed all the extra wires (lights, horn, ABS (ABS has LOTS and LOTS of wires), Wipers, Winshield wiper fluid pump, etc… I was down to just a handful of wires, a dozen or so sensor wires, an alternator wire, a “run” wire, a “start” wire, and an always on power wire to the ECU. (The “run” wire just turns a relay on in the ECU, most of the power for the ECU comes from the always on power wire to the ECU).

But definitly get a FSM. I have the Ford FSM on CD, I can’t seem to get it installed anymore, but I had it running on Windows XP fine at the time. This was invaluable for the electric work.

I left the power steering pump and computer in place, and just welded a bracket on to the steering shaft that has fixed it’s position, this was the easiest way to go, a better way to go would be to make up some arms, and replace the rack and pinion with some fixed arms. But, the rack and pinion is buried under there, and I wanted to keep the possibility of 4 wheel steering a possibility (a very very very slim possibility).

Shifting linkage isn’t quite right yet… I made a little lever that actuates the shifting cable just like the floor shifter did, but the length of the level needs to be longer, the reason being that the angle between the lever and the plastic ball joint changes too much, and the ball pops out of the joint when I go into P sometimes. I would have prefered to keep the original floor shifter, and just get a longer cable, but I didn’t know where to get one, or how to make the ends special, etc… So I just made the lever and created a floor shifter that actuates the lever.

Gas pedal linkage… I don’t like the way I did it, if I had more time / money I would have bought some cable, and made one cable from the pedal to the throttle instead of splicing the two existing cables together under the truck…

Pictures!