I started to fab these arms in fall of ’05 when I took a Manufacturing process’ class. For the class we were allowed to bring in our own designs to the machine shop and set up the processes for manufacturing and then make them.
Well suffice it to say, each student only got 4 hours of machine shop time because of the size of the class. So I talked to the Prof and was allowed to be there for every student group, which gave me about 10 hours.
Of course I wasn’t able to finish them in that time frame so I asked the machine shop manager if I could come back over the brake and work on them then. He said that I would have to get approval from the Dean in order to use the machines outside of classes, so I did.
From the beginning.
I started with a 2”x3” block of steel and started machining using a bridgport mill.
So now all I have left to do is find someone that has the Toyota TRE taper mill and mill it for the TREs. Then press the cylinders into it.
Then comes the fun of converting my 4runner to crossover and praying that my geometry pays off.
