A Custom UJOR-Sportsmobile Build

[notmiller]

As I mentioned, we got a full-floater Sterling 10.5 locally for about $500 from an '03 Excursion. The van already had a Dana 60 with 4.10s, but why would I run something stock? We want this van for the long haul and we tend to go places like Yukon and Northwest Territories where we get a few hundred miles from civilization. A full-floater gives you a nice sense of assurance.

With the help of my brother, we swapped the 3.73s and LS out of the Sterling and put in 4.11s from Yukon and an ARB locker. This is probably the 4th or 5th axle my brother has done, so it was nice having him in charge of this portion. If anyone is interested, I have tons of pictures of this work.

Stock Sterling set-up:

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Checking backlash on the new gears:

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The stock diff cover is a thin, stamped piece of steel with a big neon signing flashing "Rocks, please destroy me!" Coming from a rockcrawling background, I wanted a nice piece of armor to protect everything. I opted for a DIY cover from Blue Torch Fab. They make a weld-it-yourself (WIY?) kit for the Sterling axle. The main pieces are 1/4" laser-cut, formed steel plate and the flange is 3/8" thick.

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Compared to the stock cover:

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I spot-faced the bolt holes on the top side because the weld bead ends up getting too close to accommodate the flange head bolts. I also fly-cut the mating surface after welding to ensure a good seal.

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When I went to install it to the Sterling, I found a big problem. The cover hit the copper tubing for the ARB and I couldn't bend the tubing enough to feel safe about running it. The cover slopes over too drastically right near the tubing in the below picture.

HPIM0709.JPG

So I ended up scrapping all the work I put into this cover. I was able to sell it on Pirate4x4 and make a couple extra bucks to offset my time investment. After doing more research about cooling issues, I opted for ju$t going with a Mag-Hytec cover. I've always been hesitant about aluminum covers since they're cast and consequently brittle, but apparently covers are shot-peened nowadays which should make them stronger. Plus, if I do manage to crack it, I can always use my Atlas and run strictly FWD!

So this gets me to where I currently am today. Yesterday I pulled the rear leaves with the help of my wife. It's nice that she loves the van as much as I do, otherwise she would not be happy with this marathon van build I've been doing. Today is Day 4 of straight 10-12 hour days! I plan on welding on the rear spring pads provided by UJOR and mounting up the rear Deavers and setting her down on the ground. We'll see how it goes!

Here's a nice comparison pic of the 12-leaf Deavers compared to the OEM 4-leafs.

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[Gonejpn2]

Awesome! Subscribed.

[notmiller]

So yesterday I cut the fuel tank to fit with the new Atlas. I used the UJOR kit for this with some adjustments. With the UJOR kit you make your cut about 10-1/4" from the front vent hole. With the Atlas, I could make it closer to 10-7/8" and squeeze out that extra 1/8th of a gallon or whatever it equates to!

Cut line to front vent hole:

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All welded up and leak tested:

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Anyone curious about what the inside of the diesel tank looks like (gasoline tank may be the same?):

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Today I mounted the tank and it fit perfectly, which is good since I never did a test fit before welding! I have a little over an inch of clearance to the growth on the back of the Atlas that I think houses the shifter detents.

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If I really wanted to, I probably could have left on another 1.5 inches and just notched the side flange on the tank to clear the Atlas in that region. It would be a PIA to undo the filler hose on the Atlas though.

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And for those who wonder, like I did, what the hell my tank is hanging from when you drop it for the first time, it's those two semi-rigid fuel lines and an electrical connector, presumably for reading fuel level.

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I also finished up the front brakes today using Chris' brake line kit. I had to switch to his 8" kit because of the longer travel I had in the front.

Here's the portion you have to grind down for the new fittings to allow the clip to fit from behind:

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And a final shot, minus the ABS wiring:

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For those of you with a keen eye, you'll notice I'm not running the OEM sway bar. I didn't like how the sway bar mounts to the rear of the axle and then runs the endlinks up to the frame. I felt like it left a ton of stuff hanging low and wanted to eliminate it. I went with a Hellwig sway bar that mounts to the stock sway bar location from the old twin I-beam suspension (don't remember the p/n offhand, but could let people know if interested). I did have to notch the stock UJOR hangers and included some additional notching just in front of the sway bar to make sure the limit hoops on the springs don't hit the hangers during full compression. I haven't completed the endlinks because I'd like to get the interior conversion done and get the van sitting under its final weight before I weld on tabs. I plan on doing a u-bolt flip and making my own u-bolt plates with integrated shock mounts and bump stops, but that is still in the works.

And the big news.... I welded on the rear spring pads, mounted my 4" lift Deaver springs, and bolted up the axle.

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But wait, something's wrong here. Why the hell am I so tall???

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Ummmm, Houston, we have a problem...

[SWbySWesty]

subscribed!

[lstzephyr]

Nice! Lots of work and some awesome components to boot.

[brettf]

Subscribed!

[notmiller]

Nice! Lots of work and some awesome components to boot.

Thanks! It's been fun. I haven't done much fab work in awhile as I've been preoccupied with my fixer-upper house, so this is a great change of pace!

[notmiller]

Well, I took a break from 4 straight days of building and spent some time in Vegas and 3 days houseboating and wakeboarding on Lake Mead. My wife and I definitely commented multiple times how nice it would be to have the van with us, but not quite yet. It was a nice vacation and now back to work and the build. I'm supposed to have this thing to SMB West in less than 2 weeks, so I've got my work cut out for me!

So as for those leaf springs, I measured the van height under its own weight sans any interior, gas tank, or exhaust and it's sitting at 8" taller than stock in the front and 10" in the rear, much higher than my intended 4". I know it will settle once fully loaded, but will the rear really settle 6"? I spoke with Jeff at Deaver who spec'ed them, and he was as perplexed as I was. He said the rears are exactly what he's done for SMBs in the past, but he's never done a van completely empty before. The fronts are based off of Chris' UJoint specs plus the intended end weight of ~9000lbs, which seems to be typical of SMBs. I'm hoping that these things will just settle into place once the entire build is complete.

In other news, I ordered my driveshaft from Jesse at High Angle Driveline. He's big in the rockcrawling community and I've used his driveshafts before. I've got a shaft on order about 58.5" long with a 1410 non-CV up top and a specially-modified 1410 at the axle. It's "specially-modified" because I screwed up and thought I had a 1400-series flange on the Sterling. Turns out it was a 1300 series, and so he's building me a 1410 that will mount to this flange. I didn't really want to run mis-matched yokes.

A sneak peak of what I'm hoping to do this week/weekend: Tru-Cool trans cooler, a whole bunch of sound deadening material, modified Atlas shifters for a rotating driver's seat, custom rear shock mount cross-support, finish steering, and install new rear brake lines.

[notmiller]

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By the way, I was surprised to see absolutely no baffling in a 30+ gallon tank. Does anyone know why they don't or when you don't need to have it? I was thinking about welding up a high capacity aluminum tank to replace the stock one and assumed I'd have to figure out how to do internal baffling to prevent all the weight transfer. Maybe they just assume we burn through gas so quickly there'd be no time for it to move around...

[notmiller]

Got a few things finished this weekend:

Steering is finally in after a few issues with having the wrong pitman arm/ball joint combinations. Chris at UJoint was a big help in finally getting it all sorted out.

Stock exhaust is back in. I was originally thinking I would put in a Diamond Eye 4" exhaust, and so just Sawzall'ed the stock exhaust out early on. Now I've decided I'd probably prefer a custom routing, but since we're short on time right now, my dad and I pieced the stock exhaust back together today with some finesse and MIG wire.

Last week I figured out that I could fit 12" travel shocks in the rear to accommodate all the travel of the Deavers assuming they end up settling to the correct height after the SMB build. If they're still too tall, I'll have to get them re-arched and would lose a little bit of travel but not a huge deal. Unfortunately, to get the 440/85 valving for the rear that Jeff at Deaver recommends, the lead time is 3-4 weeks for custom valving from Bilstein. This would definitely not work for our June 20th build date with SMB and so I started trying to figure out what I could do. Fortunately, Jeff did some scrounging around his shop and found a used set of 23" shocks that he gave me for free to run in order to get me to Fresno for the build. He has definitely been very helpful throughout this process! So I used the set of Sterling shock mounts Chris provided me in his kit and mounted the donor shocks to the stock upper mounts. All this will come out after the SMB conversion and I'll build some custom upper and lower shock mounts to accommodate the 12" Bilsteins at that point. In the meantime, this'll have to do.

rear temp shock.jpg

I also started playing with the rear brake lines and e-brake cables. I had switch to the 8" brake line kit from UJoint because of the longer travel Deaver springs, but I found even that wasn't enough to handle the rear springs at full droop. So I had to cut and flip the bracket at the frame where the flex line meets the hard line, which can be seen in the upper left corner of the last picture in primer gray. I also found out that the Sterlings in the Excursion have the T junction block further toward the diff than the F-series. This meant that I couldn't run the standard line that Chris includes in his kit for the driver's side caliper because it was too short, but I figured I could use it for the passenger side and ordered a longer driver's side line from the same manufacturer. I've kind of figured out how I'm going to retrofit the emergency brake lines, but I sure wish Chris had a simple kit for this since I know he does it in a lot of vans he puts Sterlings into (hint, hint)!!!

In parallel, my wife has been assigned as queen of insulation for the van. With the help of my dad, she put down two coats of Spectrum sound dampening coating on the floor. I ordered 3 gallons and this wasn't quite enough to get two full coats on, but it'll do.

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She also put an additional layer of insulation into the doghouse.

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We bought a few of the kits from Quietride in order to save time, although today we figured out they forgot to send us some pieces and so she couldn't start on the walls yet. It's nice having her in charge of this aspect because she definitely has more patience than I do to take the time with this stuff and do a thorough job. But I suppose now I won't have the excuse that I can't hear her over the engine noise when she's talking my ear off on those long drives.....