Figured I would start a thread with some of the stuff I’m doing. Won’t be anything fancy and it is budget oriented. Working on the back half first. This week was trailing arm mount gussets.
Took the back half to work and spent 3 hours washing it until I had a spotless frame to start with.
The side plates are scrap 3/16 mild steel I had. I beveled the backsides quite a bit to get them to seat flush against the factory welds.
I fully welded the sides first. Took awhile moving around from side to side and letting them cool.
The top plates are made from scrap 1/8 chromoly plate I had.
Next project is plating the frame in front of the motor.
I tear it down pretty far at the end of each riding season to go through it. However this year when I dropped the skidplate I found a missing weld on the front half I hadn’t noticed before. Polaris sent a new front frame half under extended warranty. Since I had to go down to the frame anyway I decided to fix a bunch of stuff. After 2.5 years and 1,699 miles I had some visible damage to the frame from rock impacts.
@SNWMBL ... Hell of a tear down ...major commitment!!
I have been following your posts and questions for a while , and I really look forward to seeing more on your build
I needed a less ghetto way to bend steel gussets so I made a break to use in my shop press. Built it out of scrap steel I had. I need to find a couple short stiff springs to help return it but otherwise it works great.
It got late tonight but I wanted to try it out quick. This is a piece of 10 gauge (.135) mild steel which it easily bent. I specifically built the break to bend the next gusset I’m making which I’ll post when it’s done.
Nothing wrong with a ghetto break. I built one very similar. You can find the springs on Amazon. Also converted my HR 20T press to air over pneumatic, that's a game changer.
Yes it is, and with a wife and two young kids there’s a lot of it in my shop haha.
I found a couple springs at work that we’re obsolete and fit absolutely perfect. My break is 100% done now and I can bend up my gusset. The springs are stiff and it easily returns to full height after bending.
So this was the main reason for building the brake. I bought a 10 gauge remnant from the local steel shop and had them put a 1” bend on the long side(bend is facing down against the straight crossmember). That only cost me $47 total but I wanted to do the two outside bends myself so I could match the bends on the crossmember below the engine. The two 1.75” drain holes line up with the holes in my Trail Armor skid plate. I still need to sandblast it and weld it.
The narrower straight crossmember that my plate butts up against is bent slightly from hitting rocks which is why I wanted to plate that area to keep it from bending more.
You may want to reinforce down tube below rear sway bar mount to prevent crack as shown on my XP4. Sway bar brace since added until I get it welded. Close proximity to fuel tank.
I’ve read about that. I use the IMS aux fuel tank which relocates the battery in front of the motor and has a heavy duty steel battery bracket that bolts to the swaybar mounts. It’s a very well constructed. Just as an added precaution though I bought a set of Rock Ready swaybar mount gussets that are sitting on the shelf waiting to go on, so my swaybar mounts will actually be braced in two different directions.
Sway bar mount will help take some of the tension stress out of this tube. Sounds like the aux fuel tank will help with lateral loads and stiffen the sway bar mounts to boot. I’ll end up fitting a split DOM tube that has 1.75” ID to decrease the stress in the tube. I’d like to see the FEA on the frame structure.
FEA is Finite Element Analysis. I’m not an engineer so I won’t try to explain it but it’s a computer simulation of the chassis. It will show weak areas of the frame. Google will explain better than I can.
I appreciate that but I’m just good at taking pictures that don’t show the bad welds ?.
Finished the fit up and sandblasting on my plate and got it tack welded in tonight. I’ll add about twice as many tack welds tomorrow and then start welding it up.
Can't wait to see it back together. Got about 6 weeks left before riding season. I'm scrambling to get my 800 back together then have a Sportsman with a front diff problem to tackle.
A pic of the next project I’ve been working on. Should have everything cut to final length, sandblasted and welded this weekend. I took this pic after finagling everything in to measure and mark the cuts for my coolant lines. Took a couple practice bends to figure out the springback on the 1” tube, I ended up having to bend to 27 degrees to get the tubes to relax at 22.5 degrees to match the frame tubing. Also took a bit getting the 1.75 tubes notched just right so everything lined up.
There were a couple things that spawned this project.
I wanted to get a lot more support for the skidplate in this area but I did not want to plate the whole thing. The front tube is leftover 1.75” oem tube from my cage chop, the back tube is 1.75” x .120 DOM I had.
I did not like the thin aluminum coolant lines floating between the skidplate and fuel tank. The new coolant lines are 1” x .065 4130 tube that run thru the 1.75” tubes and will all be welded together.
I wanted additional support for the oem fuel tank and also my IMS fuel tank.
I took measurements of the coolant lines when I dissembled the RZR. The new coolant tubes will be the correct length for the hoses at the rear. At the front I will have to cut the aluminum tubes and use short rubber couplers. They are the same distance off the side of the frame tube as well so everything should line up perfect
The DOM tube has an additional 1” hole on the right side. This will get a short tube welded in and will allow the fuel hose to the IMS tank to pass thru.
Any thought to adding details for floor jack lifting points and jack stand points? I always cringe a little when jacking up the machine at both front and rear using the relatively weak plates under front drive unit and engine area. With full skid plates, solid supports for jack stands is also tedious.
I use a 16” long 4x4 block on top of the floor jack for lifting and then put 2x8’s across the top of my jack stands to spread the weight out on the skidplate. I make sure the 2x8 is underneath the steel frame tubes or crossmembers. Haven’t had any issues yet.
Cut some rings out of 1-1/8 x .058 tube, fused them to ends of the 1” and then sanded them smooth.
When I test fit the gas tanks I realized my oem tank has a slight taper down towards the front inside corner so I had to put the front tube in my press with a shaped piece of metal and press a slight taper in to part of it so the gas tank wouldn’t have pressure on it.
Finally got it all tack welded in place tonight.
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