Manufacturing a body lift kit - part four

19th June 2010
The previous weeks have been very busy and I have not had the opportunity nor the weather to get the body lift kit cut down and welded. Fortunately there was a small break in my time that coincided with reasonable whether albeit raining to all all the rails to be cut down and cramped to the chassis prior to welding.

I had previously spent some time trying to neaten up the welding this actually was costly in time. As when I was improving the welds I found that the heat I had applied to the curves had reshaped the curves so they no longer fitted. The only option was to cut new slices into the rails and re weld whilst the section was cramped to the chassis. This worked very well and it appeared both sides had warped due to this clean up. The picture right shows the cuts that were made and welded up to bring the curves back in line. Once the curves were cut the side pieces were cut to length. This was achieved by placing both front and back sections on the chassis and marking their positions on the chassis. This could then be transferred onto the side bars and the cuts where made to match the profile of the front and back sections where they mated. The front sections where fairly square the rear sections approach the side at a slight angle. This required a 5-6mm angle to be cut onto the side rail. A friend came by who uses a MIG welder and wanted to try ARC welding As I new the outer sections would need flushing I let him try his hand. Fortunately he made a pretty good job.

The welds where soon completed and the body lift frame was left on the chassis to cool down in preparation to a clean down with a grinder. Four end plates where cut out and cleaned up so that they could be welded into the ends of the body lift kit tubing. This would keep the moisture out of the tubes and make the section solid. The perimeter holes would then be needed to be marked from the underneath the chassis and the center punched and drilled. Once the welds where cleaned up the whole body lift frame would be prepped to be taken to be hot zinc sprayed and then blacked. This process was the best way of stopping the steel from rusting as it was used successfully on bumpers and roll bar parts to keep them clean. The process was original developed for 4x4 bumpers as the knocks ride of the zinc coating and the item can just be re blacked to bring it back to the same finish.

The most important thing I found when building this is that the curves cannot be made my bending the tubing. If you try this yourself you will find your body will not fit on top as the top of the tubing curved radius will be different to the bottom. Originally I thought I would have this manufactured at about £150.00 . The materials cost £50 for the 75mm box tubing 3m length. 20 cutting disks £20.00, and 100 welding rods. I would imagine having completed this it would have cost me £350.00 - £450.00 to have had built from the same materials.