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a slight tweek on the front

5636 Views 42 Replies 14 Participants Last post by  sleepsontoilet
just a slight 3.5" stretch on the front of my heep and a much needed 3 link conversion with fox 14" CO's.
parts used where a combo of Clayton, Genright, some home fab stuff, and a ton of ingenuity, welding skill and patience on my brothers behalf
so on to the show
off with the old





frame and axle cleaned up and prepped for a tack party tara high steer knuckle installed frame side 3 link mocked up




track bar, drag link, tie rod and 3 link bridge mocked up





so started out with 5" stretch at first but of course the radiator and pitman arm wasn't having it so ended up with a little over 3.5 after trimming the living crap out of the pet **** on the radiator and notching out the frame also had to notch the tie rod to clear the diff cover at full lock on the steering i was able to get a bit more steering out of the new set up just about 35* at lock any more and the u joints start to bind. CO hoops mocked up we did a 15* out ward kick on the hoops and mounted them rear ward towards the motor mounts to get a good attack angle an the CO's the outward and forward rake gives the rig allot more stability.
roughly ride height

full compression --gonna have to cut the frame. that's the nice thing about working with my brother he went the extra mile to get all 14" of travel out of the shocks. nothing worse than spending 1000 buck on shocks and limiting the travel

full droop -

cutting the frame to clear the drag link



every thing good to go time for a burn party





simple truss to tie in the axle end CO mounts and the bridge together as well as stiffen up my weak ass 44


all welded up ready to go back under the rig

tie rod notched out and boxed in

driver side hoop burned in

passenger side and frame side pan-hard mount burned in

hoop tie in complete


out on the fork lift to make sure everything clears
driver side good to go

passanger side @#$* magic -- love it when a plan comes together


all that was left at this point was a bit of finish work
gonna need high lines

was going to do rokmen and don't get me wrong i'm a big rokmen fan, but after seeing their high lines in person i just wasn't impressed i didn't think they would last a day at the hammers or other places out here and since i'm not going to run inner fenders Genright was the way to go for me.
the biggest pain was locating all the under hood crap but in the end it came out to my liking
on the passanger side i cleaned up the wiring a bit mounted the relay box to the grill strut using a piece of round stock laying around the the shop welded that sucker on and hose clamped the relay box

for the battery i used a ballistic battery tray we welded some bolts with big fender washers to spread the load and have more weld surface , tray mounted sideways on the fire wall. the bat. temp sensor magically slid right in the slot for the optima carrying handle the only other wires are from the winch and they where just zipped to the frame



left side oe pump mounted sideways to the fire wall via a very trimmed inner fender bracket my ARB pump was mounted to the inside of the fenders and can be accessed easily from both sides of the fender


so now i need to figure out how to get rid of my air conditioning crap and throw my new steering wheel on other than that I'm gonna get some new aluminum corners with no flare and do a mini boat side or something similar to mushroom-max
oh how could i forget a real cage will be the next priority :lildevil:
real axles will be coming next year still collecting parts. so there ya go
2 hours later (re post)
forgot to take pics of my bumps you can kinda see em here mounted rearward with the contact pad on the lower CA



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Looks like a lot of fab and prep work went into your final product. Nicely done. Any regrets or done differently?
yea dont let the time lapse fool you it took 3 weekends working well over 12 hours a day to get it done alot of staring measuring remeasuring moving crap around spacing out forgetting where i put **** and attempting to get things semi perfect. my only regret is while you where doing your right up i was destroying my hood like a moron in a hurry!!! i just cut 3 frakn inches off a perfectly good aev non hi line hood and im paying the price
didnt even take it off. one of us held in place the other cut. the wind catching the hood at any given moment realy determined the cut line :agrue: in hind sight not a smart decision.
the hood is not as rigid as an OE hood so it bowed outwards we had to bend and tweek the crap out of it, i was in such a hurry to go wheeln i just measured marked and went to town with a cut off wheel the passanger side looks good but the driver side well leaves alot to be desired. other than that I'm 100% happy with what we did it's a world of difference off road suspension wise very stable very flexible completely happy with all components used i war gamed collected parts and mocked crap up for about 2 months before pulling the trigger
your rig is looking great as well
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Well done! Looks like it flex's out nicely. Whats your wheel base at right now?
RCH said:
Well done! Looks like it flex's out nicely. Whats your wheel base at right now?
104.5
Looking GREAT


Decided not to go with the sway bar up front? Looks like the arms might of hit the trackbar mount. Just guessing here, it happened to me.
yea no joy on the sway bar for that exact reason I'll put one on the rear when i get new axles under it
i never drive it the street any more so i'm liking it without the antirock at this point its very stable in the rocks without it
well, I wonder if I should of done mine, the antirocks. They would of funded allot of a trailer, I would of still needed to store it though.

I like the new twisted pitman arm. Great build
Forgot to ask, are all brackets Gen-Right, poly p, clayon, etc?

Custom arms or moved the brackets forward?

Never heard of anyone notching the front frame, are your towers kicked in a pinch for stability?

What are the benefits of the twisted pitman? Wanna make sure I get mine right the first time.

Love it, ready to see the cage. Factory add on like mine or full cage replacement like poly p, gen-right, sniper fab, etc?
most excellent !!!
:appl:
sleepsontoilet said:
Forgot to ask, are all brackets Gen-Right, poly p, clayon, etc?

Custom arms or moved the brackets forward?

Never heard of anyone notching the front frame, are your towers kicked in a pinch for stability?

What are the benefits of the twisted pitman? Wanna make sure I get mine right the first time.

Love it, ready to see the cage. Factory add on like mine or full cage replacement like poly p, gen-right, sniper fab, etc?
the bridge and 3 link bracket is clayton the truss is home fab the pan hard mount frame side is a combo of home fab and butchered genright parts, genright high clearance CA mounts, genright axle end pan-hard mount, poly tabs for the CO'S there better than a fixed bracket because they are single tabs that can be welded in the optimum position to keep the CO heim in a neutral position.
my lower CA's are the original Clayton arms with the radius mount cut off with the combo of weld in bungs for the JJ'S and the high clearance axle brackets made my arms about 5" longer the upper arm is thick walled DOM can't remember the size off hand with JJ's on bolth ends
the towers in front are kicked out 15* to mount the CO's on the inside of the towers since the stock axle is so narrow that's what we had to do to achieve the desired rake on the shocks with a full width axle its easier to achieve and wont be too hard to reto fit when the time comes
the pit-man arm is great its twisted at an angle to keep the heims in a neutral position through out the shock cycle i have zero binding
all front components are using 7/8 heims with a 5/8 threw bolt, the pan hard is a 3/4 through bolt every thing is in double sheer except for the tie rod and knuckle side drag link i'm using safety washers
for the cage I'm looking at the Genright fast back in design at least, I'll probably have one costume made out here and skin the top with aluminum

sleeps if you need measurements or pics of anything specific let me know
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looks good. I can't see from the pics but did you add any holes in that Truss to let dirt water drain out?
that thing is full of holes :? actually not yet i'm gonna put tube in the holes to keep crap out eventually. i was ready to be done so it is what it is, not really concerned with water or dirt i can just blow it out with a shop compressor. I rarely if ever see mud or water i live and wheel in the desert
murphy said:
yea dont let the time lapse fool you it took 3 weekends working well over 12 hours a day to get it done alot of staring measuring remeasuring moving crap around spacing out forgetting where i put **** and attempting to get things semi perfect. my only regret is while you where doing your right up i was destroying my hood like a moron in a hurry!!! i just cut 3 frakn inches off a perfectly good aev non hi line hood and im paying the price
didnt even take it off. one of us held in place the other cut. the wind catching the hood at any given moment realy determined the cut line :agrue: in hind sight not a smart decision.
the hood is not as rigid as an OE hood so it bowed outwards we had to bend and tweek the crap out of it, i was in such a hurry to go wheeln i just measured marked and went to town with a cut off wheel the passanger side looks good but the driver side well leaves alot to be desired. other than that I'm 100% happy with what we did it's a world of difference off road suspension wise very stable very flexible completely happy with all components used i war gamed collected parts and mocked crap up for about 2 months before pulling the trigger
your rig is looking great as well
We shall see how I did on my hood...I didn't have my hi-lines available to check. My project feels like the "never ending" one. This weekend I am driving up to Montana to get my Solid/Rockcrusher front center section and various other parts for the front build, and the 14B for my rear...plus a truckload of other "parts... :D "
What do you have for a fuel cell? That will be my next project is putting a RCI or similar in the back, ready for a stretch.
right now i have a genright 10 gallon alien tank I'll be switching over to a fuel cell shortly
Excellent work Murphy-don't check this area much, after seeing your trip report, was curious if you'd done a build thread. This answered a bunch of questions. Thanks, looks great!

Best of Luck,

Mike
thanks, my brother is the one that works the magic
Murphy, did you need the twisted pitman arm removal tool they sell for $50?
am i the only one who doesnt know where this is going
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