My 2-ton paperweight

[jps4jeep]

Drivers side all cleaned up.  Was running out of time ( and desire to hold a grinder for another minute) so I did not start the passenger side. I did start mocking up some of the brackets for the coils and track bar. I should have enough room to keep the stock front cross member. If not I brought some 2x2,stock over to build a new cross member if needed.

[jps4jeep]

Got some more work done.







Got both side outer frame rails plated.  From what I have read in my research, when you SAS these trucks, specifically with leaf springs, the frames can develop cracks right where the frame tapers out under the fire wall. From what I understand this is due to;
1. how the vehicle weight is supported off the front of the frame.
2. need to drill the frame in this area to mount the swing shackle.

Obviously I am not running leafs, but as a preventive measure, I plated the outer rails anyways, I also plan on plating the inside of the frame rails when I pull the motor and trans to add more beef for the cummins.  this plating will go from about 6" in front of where (I think) the motor mounts will end up all the way back to the trans cross member.

[jps4jeep]

Also tacked together the frame end balistic coil mounts, appears that the amount of trimming that will be needed to the inner fender will be minimal.

[Axle]

 

[Ian]

nice dude!

[Krome]

daz cool yo

[Posimoto]

Nice!

[jps4jeep]

Between the holidays, family, and work, I am not getting time to work on this as much as I would like.  Last week I addressed some things, finally got the pitman are and drag link off.  I had a couple pitman arms to try out, stock 93 XJ, stock 98 Durango, and I believe stock 97 ram 1500, I ended up going with the XJ, it offered the best drop as well as slipping onto the sagnaw box with out a single mod. It actually was clocked exactly the same as the stock arm.  The axle is about 2" over ride height so tie rod angle should be very tolerable that I can package the track bar easily and reduce bump steer to nothing.





I also got the rest of the brackets tacked together, and started mocking up where the coil buckets will go as well as the axle end.  Still need to weld on a spring retainer for the upper mounts.  Got some stock TJ spring isolators from Jeff at Crown and they should work awesome. the center bore on the isolators is about 1.90" so some 1.75 scraps will work the nuts to center the spring and keep it in place. depending on how long this needs to be, might use it for bump stops similar to a stock jeep (tj, zj, xj, etc)





I have the week off between christmas and new year, hoping to be able to get 2 dedicated days to get the front mocked up, start making links.

[jps4jeep]

Isolators from Crown, $10, this was a great deal, plus off the shelf parts means things will  be easily serviced in the future.

I also screwed up, I had in my head that the 3/4" ruff stuff heims I am running would be 2 5/8" wide when I actually got them together and measured, they were only 2" wide.  The only place that I found that sold the 5/16 spacers was Balistic, so I called and ordered up 8 of them and now the heims should fit the mounts perfectly.



Amazingly, I ordered these and actually got them at my door in 2 days, perhaps Balistic finially got their squared away.

[Twisty]

Great progress, John!  If you need a hand with anything between Christmas and New Years, let me know!  I'd be down to hang out and fab. 

[jps4jeep]

Did stuff, frame mounts tacked on, finally figured out the link mounts and will still be able to service the trans cross member. Oh and all the links are made but not finish welded, ran out of welding gas. Got the gas then had beers at the 99s, so nothing else got done.

Didn't take pics, I'll get some tomorrow.

[jps4jeep]

As mentioned, I got the links all tacked together, so I have no cross section photo's of the links, but they are 1.75 -.120 DOM sleeved around 1.5 - .25 DOM. This is just a pic of some of my scraps to show thickness.


I was having issue with where I wanted to mount the frame end link mount, I initially thought I found a good spot on the frame where the front box frame meets the C-channel frame, but hte surface is not flat and the lower link would have been 23" total.  I made a link at this length and was very displease with how it looked.  So I figured that if I enlarge the one of the holes in the mounts and offset it 1/2" (was a 1" hole, used a 1.5 hole saw to offset.)  that would allow me to off set the mount slightly to line up with the axle mounts (non-flex joints at the axle end) and allows for the trans cross member bolt to be accessed and the corss member to be easily removed.  this also allowed me to change my link length to 35.25"


You can see where the one link was lengthen from 23" to 35".

[jps4jeep]

Upper radius arm links are 12.75" center to center and are just 1.75 - .120 DOM.


Here are pics of the mounts after hogging out the hole and a rough idea of where they ended up

[jps4jeep]

Mounts mocked up for final measuring.


and a picture of everything tacked up, ready for final measuring, any needed tweeking and burn it home.


After I took this picture, I sat looking at the links, The upper link heim is bottomed out, which will limit my adjustability to dial in the front end, So I am going to cut off the mount, unthread a couple turns and re-tack it.  The other side is at the same point as this side but I have yet to mount the upper to the lower, I ran out of time, had to run home for a family issue.

Another thing I will need to do is, those upper link mounts on the lower links, I will cut about 1" off the top of them to ensure they do not contact the frame during compression. It looks like they will hit the fram in the pic, but the frame kicks in several inches at just about this point.

[jps4jeep]

A quick to-do list:

re-ream the knuckles and pitman arm
steering links
track bar
front shock mounts
cycle suspension to look for binding
brun it home
re-assemble
mod rear drive shaft
install and modify catalytic converters (in stock location, front driveshaft hits it)
new tires
tighen eveything up, fill fluids, double and triple check everything