more pictures and stuff

put a lockright in my spare 4.88 v6 third and put it on the housing, got the knuckles shimmed and on (rock ring felt guards don't like to clear the creeper knuckle gussets without some trimming), hubs on, painted, tie rod on.

 

Made decent progress today for working alone and having never done this before.

Taking the obscenely heavy rockcrawler bumper off.



The mounting brackets are designed for IFS trucks, they're gonna take some heavy cutting and modifying to make work with the front spring hanger.





The remnants of the accident in the beginning of the thread. A ripple in the crossmember.




Heated up and pounded flat




Pittman arm which wasted a good hour of my afternoon.




Ready to start the cutting




Upper control arms unbolted and torsion bars cut and removed



Lower control arm brackets cut



Typical pile of IFS garbage. Some goodies in there though that will be for sale when I have time to tear it apart... Lock-right 4.88 v6 diff, 1.5" 4crawler bj spacers, ome steering damper less than 6 months old.





Time to start grinding



One side done and motor mount plate welded in. At this point after 13 hours I called it a day.

 

Getting so dirty was never so much fun eh?

I worked on my 85 ext cab Sunday afternoon in the first time in months...remembered why I loved this stuff.

 

Yeah look at the garage floor in the first picture and the last and that pretty much goes for me too.

 

Frame tubes, front hanger, front hanger to frame gussets idea that I stole from another yotatecher out of 1/4" steel, hung leaf springs, hung axle. 1am christmas eve, time to go to bed.



















My broken rear leaf spring that gets ripped off tomorrow.

 

I remember doing my lift on my 85 during the Christmas holidays a couple years ago...only free time I had. I'll probably be working on my 85 ext cab tomorrow doing the same thing.

Looking good!

 

Looking good dude.



Reminds me, I still need to trim my body mount...

 

Yup that's one of the many details left I am leaving for last. I just noticed I have a small chunk missing from the rear driveshaft yoke at the u-joint. I need to find another yoke, anyone got any spare driveshafts laying around they feel like pulling the slipyoke off and selling to me

Anyway made some more progress tonight. Ugh this is a hell of a lot of work for one person.

Suspension gone



Housing ground down



Gas tank drained and pull over out of the way of getting to the frame.



New spring perches on



Springs hung



Locating the spring perches on the housing and setting the pinion angle



Perches finish welded on



Sitting on it's new 4" springs

 

i'll take that ome steering damper off your hands, how much will u get rid of it for?





lookin good btw, it almost looks like it might be too tall..? when i swap a solid in, ima use 3 inch trail gear springs. cant wait to see the finished product

 

I'll take the 4.88 lockrite diff . How much you want for it?

 

Makes you appreciate it more.

You move the rear mounts at all?

Nice to see someone do it right by removing the rear spring perches and rotating the axle then welding on new ones. You will thank yourself later for sure.

 

^ I guess he took my advice, cause that's how I always do it.

 

You'd be surprised how many I've seent that are not...and then they wonder why the rear d-shaft/pinion angle is crap.

 

how do you know what angle to set the driveshaft at??
i mean, that looks heavily rotated, so just wondering when too much it too much...

 

Love the bumper. Where did you get it?

Glad 2 see you got it back together.

 

If you will never go above 35" tire or you aren't worried about hacking the sheet metal and tubbing the firewall, then 3" springs are fine. Personally for a pickup, I like the 4" springs all around. Plenty of lift for bigger tires and it doesn't look out of balance with 35" tires.

Do like he did and put the springs on, put the axle back under it on the jack and then rotate the axle flange until it lines up with the rear output flange. A piece of string or eyeball it. You really don't rotate it but a few degrees, but it will make a difference and it takes so little time to do it right.

 

^ The only thing that doesn't fix is your tcase angle. Then you're looking at dropping the xmember for a few deg, moving the rear shackle mount, or swapping in or having a cv'd rear shaft made.

Speaking of which, you ain't got any rear cv shafts laying around for sale do ya brian?

 

Nice progress. Keep it coming!

 

Sorry Clint, but no.

 

all i want is 35s, on the same rims i have now. eventually i'd prob want 37s or 38s but thats a looong way down the road, by the time the 3 inch springs were worn out and sagging.