Neat stuff this week at work
as of thursday, we are swapping a different dana 44 (scout) into a customers YJ on Black diamond Coils.
He already had a scout 44 under there, but with 0* caster and 0* of pinion angle. Needless to say, He was very wary of the front drivehsaft. In spite of the fact that it all had less than 1000 miles on it, the ujoint was very loose.
so some weeks ago, my boss was cutting the knuckles off the housing along with the ds spring perch (we are narrowing the axle too for reasons that are not apparent to me-but, its not my place to worry about it.)
I must say that I like the setup on this suspension. we had the axle dissasembled and on the floor in 2 hours. They look kinda funny 5 feet in the air with all the links and shafts and everything dangling off em :mrgreen:
the new brackets came and i started welding them to the new housing. (so apparently Im on the short list of welder/fabricators for this 4 technician shop) My boss is the other. :t:
Friday, we put the new hosing up into place, and made new brackets for the upper link points. I welded them on, and we had it setting on jackstands adjusting the upper spring buckets for the new suspension- because we rolled the axle forward for better pinion angle (single CV type shaft) we also moved it forward about 3/4 of an inch. we had to move the upper buckets accordingly. they were somewhat angled back when we started, and we ended moving them forward about 3 inches. we beat the knuckles on and realized that we needed to align them for caster.
so a descussion with my boss and his father (both ASE Master certified) we devised a simple tool that goes through the balljoint holes on the inner C. its a 3/4 inch rod with big lugnuts. We bored them both out in a lathe, and pressed and welded the lower one into place. THen i Turned the other end down so that the top cone would slide on the shaft. Then I turned the very end down so we could put a 5/8 nut on it. There is a Gm350 valve spring between the nut and the and the upper cone so we only have to snug the nut up and it does the rest. I was pretty proud of that little tool. Its sleeping next to the Hi-zoot snap-on tools. Schweet.
We beat the knuckles the rest of the way on and to 6* caster. and then i buzzed them on.
Im over simplifying this, and im sure leaving out some stuff. cause that covers two days.
During this time, the owner orders up a 16.5k winch because he got stuck last weekend. :?:
Monday we put it back together.
Very cool.
