A good friend of mine, Ryan (owner and founder of the shop), his wife Jen, and I run a small fab shop in crystal river FL. It started with Ryan doing mostly drag car stuff; roll cages, turbo/headers, 4 links, etc. Then we designed a hydraulic suspension system for old air-cooled vws, and it really took off and got us a large vintage VW clientele. Custom suspension type stuff is definitely our favorite genre of fabrication, and we're huge fans of using hydraulics. We get to work on and build some pretty out of the ordinary stuff, so I thought I'd start a thread where I can just post stuff as it comes up. I apologize in advance for what will probably be a lack of drift related content, not much of it comes through the shop, but I'll do what I can to include drift stuff whenever I can lol.
I'll start things off with some lowrider content!
One of our customers sold his beetle (which we had previously built on our hydraulic suspension kit) and picked up the caddy! It was already on juice, but needed some refining. We built new front upper control arms, resealed the front cylinders, changed the front springs, correct some suspension geometry in the rear, rebuilt the pumps, rewired the batteries, and (what's pictured below) installed a chain bridge setup. The chain bridge is used so the car can achieve a standing 3 wheel.
Pics didn't exactly load in order lol, but you get the idea haha.
This guy is cool and his cars are cool 😎
damn that slammed bus is a splitty. Ballsy and profound. Love it.
Jeez that rad/condenser setup is fancy as hell. Doin some race car type science on a lowrider (idk what to even classify that truck as tbh) is real neat haha
Got the body pulled off the panel this week. I'll get some detailed pics and videos of the hydraulic suspension in action up soon but the basic info is; fully handmade chassis, c5 zo6 drivetrain, qa1 coilovers connected to custom hydraulic cantilever setup, and some fancy ITB intake the customer sent over lol. Got to finish a few things, then I'll put the test pump on it and cycle the suspension and get some video, it's wild.
It's all in the details lol. We won't need the speed sensor in the diff, so I made an aluminum plug on the lathe to replace it.
This box holds the radiator and condenser and mounts under the car within the chassis. We didn't want to mount it up front because it blocked the view of the hydraulic setup (which can be seen through the grill). It's all sealed and runs a mustang fan that pulls air from the bottom and front of the box through the radiators.
Not exactly car related, but here's a giant clevis I had to fix for the hydraulic repair shop in our plaza lol. Our band saw was made was made in 1914 and didn't even flinch at cutting through that thicc boi material (though it did take a minute... About 45 of them to be exact lol). Then notched it down, laid a shit ton of weld around the threaded area, ground it back flat and added one final dress up pass around the top cuz it gotta be pretty lol.
We had to move some cars around the shop today, so grabbed a couple pics while these were out in the sunlight. The body drop bus and an old Chevy panel truck that has a total wild custom chassis we built. We're pulling the body off the Chevy this week to finalize a few things on the chassis before it goes off to powder coat and the body goes to paint. That project has been around for 8 years or so, so it's cool to be at this point in the build! I'll post some chassis pics as soon as the body is off
Definitely need to post more of the Winnebego. Such an insane project lol
This is the shit I like to see!
Here's a bus I hope to post a bunch of as we finish it. Tons of work into it so far with a 3.75" stock floor body drop along with our hydraulic kit. Here's some glamour shots of the custom header. Total pain in the ass to make an equal length header for a boxer engine that basically sits on the ground lol.
The Winnebago pictured is also on hydraulics lol, it lifts back up higher than stock, 5.7 hemi powerplant, and way more work than any reasonable person would put into such a thing lol. It's Ryan's personal project, and I'll try to get some info about it in here as well.