Big update I’ve been putting off for too long. New lower pricing, Dad’s down and Dirty update, new Ackerman correction steering arm, customer updates all over the place, and some fun new projects we’re playing with.
New Pricing!
I’m sure the big one everyone is excited to hear about is the reduced pricing across the board. We took a good look at the chassis, how we were building them, and things we were doing that customers just didn’t really care about and found ways to reduce the price and pass the savings onto the customer.
No one really cares if the chassis is 100% TIG welded. Not when it comes to the final price anyway. The fact is there about 10-12 welds on the chassis that take up a significant amount of time just because they are hard to reach with the TIG and it takes additional time to complete these welds. So we’re MIG-ing these hard to reach places now and the time saved turns into savings we’re passing along to the customers. We will still TIG a large majority of the frame because it is faster in several areas thanks to the precision of our custom cut frames. These very tight fits are actually faster to TIG vs the proper way to MIG the same areas so we’ll still TIG these areas. Considering I’ve had several people ask if our MIG welds are TIG welds, I think no one is going to notice this one.
Next is the suspension finishing. For the longest time we’ve finished our aluminum suspensions first in high quality automotive paint then in two stage powder coating when we put in our own system. This makes for a beautifully uniform finish that’s easy to clean and looks even better but its very time consuming not to mention expensive. The number of customers who don’t notice, are not impressed, or point out that they chose to media blast theirs over coating is rather staggering. So, we’re just going to soda blast them from here on out. We already sand blasted them before powder coating, so we just swap the sand for soda and nix the entire coating and powder from the pricing. It will also be easier to assemble because we won’t need to baby the parts as we assemble the Stage 3 Rolling and Stage 4 Turn Key chassis. And if anyone wants us to throw it back into the mix we can do that too.
- Stage 1 DIY Frame Kit
- $3,825.00
- Stage 2 Welded Frame
- $6,525.00
- Stage 3 Rolling Chassis
- $15,595.00
- Stage 4 Turn Key Chassis
- $50,995.00
- Stage 1 DIY Frame Kit
- $3,995.00
- Stage 2 Welded Frame
- $6,995.00
- Stage 3 Rolling Chassis
- $16,195.00
- Stage 4 Turn Key Chassis
- $51,495.00
Dads Down and Dirty Update
Wow, I didn’t realize how bad I was behind. Forgive the mix of cell phone photos. Its been all I could do to keep up with the old dude and the shop work load.
First some refined inner fenders were in order. This time out of aluminum to help shave a bit of weight off the front. There are a few revisions in these photos so if something looks a bit different one to another, its probably Dad scraping a set and moving to a fresh start for one reason or another.
Moving onto getting all the boost tubing mounted. I opted for stainless over aluminum this time for reliability compared to my previous builds. The goal is that the truck will be Dad’s daily so a few things like this are acceptable for the peace of mind if give if you hit a road gator, or small animal that will roll up under the truck and screw something up.
With all the items we need to hook to vacuum or boost references we had to cook up this manifold to have them all functional. Waist gate, Blow off, Boost controller, MAP sensor, Boost Gauge, and Vacuum booster but only one large port on the intake.
Next we finally decided to just dump the whole front core support system and just start over. It was just easier that way for this project. We have a small ish radiator but we have a very large oil cooler with an oil thermostat as well to prevent it from over cooling but we can bump that down a bit if we need to cool the engine off a bit more. The new ZR1 has a smaller radiator than this so we’re not too worried about over heating. The main goal was to block off as much area and force air through the radiators. We might do some brake cooling as well with all the extra real estate under there.
The next thing I wanted to look into was reducing drag and wind noise and the front cross member, sway bar, and frame tubes were a perfect thing to cover up to stop the harsh wind noise from hissing over the sharp edges of these components so Dad started working on a noise pan. I think we’re also going to do a bit more of a belly pan as well when we get it a bit further along.
Finally after having her on the ground for a while I realized how much work we’ve been doing around the shop instead of on the truck so I snagged these for guys who are interested to know what the low stance will look like and this is about it.
We’re getting ready for new toys so the truck is getting a new home in the shop. We should have it ready to rock shortly and I can get back onto the wiring to get her fired up for the first time.