The 'Savage' build thread

[K3LAG]

It's been quite some time since I posted an update. We have been working on various miscellaneous things, but most of our time has been on the headlights.

I have been working on my design for the front of the center console I will build. One of the things I am installing in the center console is a ham radio. Ham Radio Outlet had a sale on Kenwood TM-D710G radios that I could pass up so I removed my older 710 from the Jeep and installed the 710G in it's place. The older 710 will go in the 818. I wasn't liking the idea of the display head stick out of the dash or center console so I wanted to find a way to mount it more flush. I designed and 3D printed a 'socket' that when flush mounted with the face of the console will only show the front 1/4" or so, plus the knobs, of the face plate. Here is one of the prototypes of the mount:

IMG_1109.jpg

I want to print the final version in ABS instead of PLA so it will withstand the heat in the car better so I've been working on some upgrades to my printer to make it perform better with ABS. You will all have to wait to see the center console when it's done to see the final result.

I posted an update to the thread I started over in the body subforum and here is most of the same information:

After two months of fiddling, fitting, refitting and changing a part or two, plus a week in Ireland, I finally have the headlights fitting to my satisfaction.

My initial problem was definitely the shape of the top of the fender above where the light mounting tab is. That point was too low and wouldn't allow the light and fender to fit because of the lack of clearance. After sharing a bunch of pictures with FFR and having a few phone discussions with Vinny, FFR decided that the best course of action was to make me a new fender. We picked up the new fender at the open house (sort of, but that's another story)

Once we got the new fender, we started fitting the passenger side over again. The new fender had the same clearance problem that the first one did. In fact it might have been a bit worse. However, since the fender was just out of the mold a few days, we were able to use a bit of heat and clamps to get the fender into the shape it needed to be and we ended up with about the same amount of clearance above the mounting tab on each side and had pretty good gaps around the lights.

We weren't able to get the inside corner of the fender down as close to the front bumper as we wanted, but the application of some more clamps and heat, plus a few adjustments and we ended up in a happy place. Here are some pictures:

IMG_0978.jpgIMG_0977.jpgIMG_0976.jpg

A few tricks we learned along the way:

1. It's important to get the light far enough outward so that the 'tip' of the fender clears it to get the gap as small as possible. You may also need to clearance the back of the fender tip if it is thick there.

2. If you can't get the 'tip' where you want it double check your fitting of the two bolts where the fender meets the nose at the wheel well. We removed those two bolts and adjusted the 'tip' to where we wanted it. Then we discovered that if we adjusted the bolt locations for the fender to nose connection by just a little it improved the fit of the 'tip' quite a bit.

3. Also, you can make slight adjustments in the position of the light by loosening the bolt in the top bracket of the light and moving it around a little since the hole is a good bit bigger than the bolt.

4. Wait to drill the bottom hole that attaches the light to the bucket until after you are happy with everything else. Small errors in the location of this bolt can significantly effect the fit of the light.

Now that is all is fitted. We have no need for any trim at the top of the lights and a fairly small gap at the bottom. The bottom gap varies from close to 0 to 3/16 at the worst. The headlights aren't wired yet, but I'll let you all know how the aim looks once I get to that point.

Larry