A finely tuned machine- Eastwood Employees makes us tick
We want to share the great Eastwood staff with you, our customers! We have asked them to fill out the first five questions, and then pick 5 random questions from a “Wildcard” section of questions. We allowed them to answer these however they’d like. You’d be surprised at what some of us have to say!
1. Name and Title at Eastwood?
Evan Soda – Product Engineer
2. What the heck do you do all day?
I have a multitude of tasks at Eastwood mostly involving bringing new products to market including ideation, development, testing, and finally making the product available to our customers. The job doesn’t stop there though as I also strive to control quality of all of our products.
3. Did you come from an automotive background before Eastwood? What did you do before Eastwood?
I have always been involved with motorsports as I started riding and racing ATV’s and dirt bikes at a young age, worked at power sports dealerships throughout high school and college, and then graduated college with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and came to work for Eastwood.
4. When not talking cars, tools, and restorations all day, what are a few of your hobbies?
I love the outdoors more than anything, well maybe not more than motorsports, but I always make time for hiking, camping, and just enjoying seeing new things in the outdoors.
5. What’s your favorite Eastwood product? Why?
I’m not sure I have a favorite since I use many of them and have never had any bad experiences, but if I had to choose one it would be the Eastwood TIG200 Welder. I had some brief experience in TIG welding in my past but was never good at it. I was able to afford a MIG welder when I was younger so I had a lot of experience in MIG welding but could never afford my own TIG welder till now. After a lot of practice I was able to lay down some amazing looking welds and now I am nearly unlimited in my possibilities in welding due to the versatility of the TIG welding process.
6. What’s your favorite thing about working for Eastwood?
My favorite thing about working for Eastwood is being able to talk ‘cars’ with your coworkers. It’s great to come in Monday morning and talk about all the hard work you completed on your latest project over the weekend.
7. What’s the first tool you reach for in the garage (what do you use most often?)
The tools I reach for most often when working in the garage is a set of 3/8” drive metric sockets and a ratchet. There aren’t many general mechanical tasks you can perform without a set of sockets and a ratchet.
8. Do have any prize possessions? What are they?
My prize possessions are my family, friends, girl friend, and go fast toys. Life just wouldn’t be as great if it were missing any of these.
9. Do you have any projects going right now? What are you building, restoring, or a job you are tackling next?
I always have ongoing projects that actually never seem to end. I am currently working on a 1990 Nissan 240sx in which I swapped the motor to an inline 6 with a larger turbo. The car was a rust bucket when I got it so I had to do a lot of rust repair and body work and then finished it all off with our Moonlight Drive Metallic Blue paint. My other project which is almost done is a Honda 450r ATV, which I have owned since 2005 but it needed a complete overhaul so over the past few months I rebuilt the entire motor and blasted and powder coated nearly every part on the chassis.
10. You have one wish, what is it?
I would like to win the lottery as it would help me fulfill many wishes but realistically I want to race in the Baja 1000. I view this as being one of the most physical, mental, and mechanical demanding races there is.
In the last entry we showed you how to disassemble the front suspension on the S10 chassis that sits under Project Pile House. Once we had it all apart we began fitting the front air suspension. Air bags will allow the truck to drop all the way to the ground and lift to almost stock ride height. This will give us the looks AND function I want out of the truck.
A warning for anyone starting an air ride build–it will NOT be a bolt-on job! It can be nearly “bolt” on with some of the expensive kits out there, but most won’t get you much lower than a set of drop spindles and some lowering springs/drop blocks. To get the “slammed” or “laying frame/body” look that many want, you will need to cut, weld, and fabricate. But for me, that’s the fun of building a custom car or truck!
I started with a cheap eBay S10 “bolt-in” front air ride kit with the larger 2600 bags. They really use the term “bolt-in” loosely, as the lower mounting plate for the lower control arms were completely wrong and I binned the idea of using them pretty quickly! Regardless of 2500 or 2600 series front bags, you will need to cut the spring pocket to make room for the bag when deflated. If you don’t cut the pocket the bag can rub the opening and put a hole in it quickly, not something you’d want to happen on the highway! I set the bag and upper mount (which mounts through the OE shock hole) into the truck to get an idea what needed to be cut. I then pulled out the Eastwood Versa Cut Plasma Cutter and made quick work of the frame notch.
Once I found that the cut around the spring pocket was large enough to tuck the air bag inside, I moved on to fitting the bag to the lower control arm. This is where it was evident that the lower bag mount plate wasn’t going to work and I decided to plate the control arm myself. I first outlined the bag so I had an idea of the minimum area I had to plate to support the bag. Next I cut out the “humps” in the control arm with the Versa Cut (mini truck guys call it “dehumping”) and welded in a plate to make the top of the lower control arm more flat. A plate was then added to cover the top of the lower control arm and welded it in with the Eastwood MIG 175. Lastly I drilled a hole in the plate to mount the bag to the lower control arm. The final outcome is now a bolt-on job.
With the hard fabrication work done, I moved on to removing the old tired steering components. These were just as bad as the suspension components! Pile House will never be a daily driver, but I plan to take it on long drives and it may even double as a tow vehicle once in a while. For this reason I want the suspension and steering components to stand up to a lot of abuse and function well with the lowered stance and added power it’s getting. I decided to call up the folks at ProForged Severe Duty Chassis Parts and see what they had to offer. Zack and crew came back with just what I needed; severe duty replacement steering components, drilled and slotted rotors to help stop the truck better, and my favorite, extended travel ball joints. These ball joints are right up my alley, they were designed to eliminate ball joint binding when a GM chassis is lowered. Ball Joint binding can happen on vehicles that are lowered (even with small drops!) when they hit a bump and the suspension compresses (lowers) and the stock ball joints go past their optimum point of travel and bind. All of this GREATLY decreases the life of the parts and can cause them to fail prematurely. Best of all ProForged offers a Million-Mile Warranty on all of their parts!
From here we test fit all of the parts and made sure the truck was sitting how I wanted when dropped. I did have to cut the height of the upper bag mounts to get the truck to sit flat on the ground in the front, but only a minor job compared to the all the other work that’s been done thus far! Now that all of the major fabrication was done, we could move on to installing the ProForged parts and begin cleaning and detailing the front suspension. Stay tuned for the next entry where we detail and assemble it all.
-Matt/EW
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