Pete M

87-90 trucks are essentially the same. 91-92 are a whole nuther animal since they changed to the Chrysler electronics.

Whoa dude! You might want to locate the CAPS Lock button and tap it. Typing in ALL CAPS makes it rather annoying to try to read. :shake: :fool:

I carry a Jeep tierod in the back. That's how prepared I am. :D

I need time (wanna do my classwork?), energy (sometimes I really hate being me), money (if we're talking about the 88) and a garage that doesn't have a black roof. Dang it's hot outside. :headpop: It's supposed to get cooler later this week so we'll see how it goes. At least I've killed all the hornets that took up residence in the truck.

It a brand new vehicle, yes it should thoretically follow the frame. But in an old rusty vehicle, it can go all over trying to find the path of least resistance. I know guys that have welded to their 4x4s and fried the computer or even caught a ground wire on fire. It doesn't take much to overload a tiny computer circuit. Think of a bolt of lightning. Most of it will follow a single path, but there are a lot of little branches that go off on their own. I always go with better safe than sorry.

Some of it was space concerns, some of it was ease of building, but mostly it was the fact that I didn't have the means to fab up that kind of stuff. Plus I have a 78 axle so the cast steel is everywhere. It was simple to get a local steek shop to cut a piece of steel diagonally, then I trimmed the small one one to fit inside the coil cup and drilled holes for the longer bolts. Now that it's all said and done, I've very very happy with it all. :D (except for the track bar, it still shifts around a bit and makes banging noises when offroading)

My only update is that I'm no closer to having a functional MJ. :cry:

I haven't had any real problems with the routine stuff (not on the trails at least). Failed relays, failed new water pumps, stuff like that can get really annoying cause there's not much you can do about it ahead of time. :headpop: Plus, I carry some stuff that other Jeeps can use too. Ya never know the condition of strangers' Jeeps.

Yes and no. Not everyplace or everything that's grounded on a 20 year old truck can handle the juice from a welder. And electricity has a tendency to"wander" sometimes. It doesn't necessarily follow a single path (especially if the main path is rusty).

Hmmm :hmm: , my theory was exactly the opposite. I'm thinking that the extra weight I have forces the suspension to follow the terrain rather than lift a tire.

It has to do with the forces as they are go from the pinion gear to the ring gear. On identically equipped axles, high pinion fronts are stronger than low pinion fronts and low pinion rears are stonger than high pinion rears. Plus a rear axle has to be stronger than a front axle since there's typically more force on the rear axle when you get on the throttle. Like when climbing a hill, the rear axle has the majority of the vehicle's weight on it due to weight transfer. Plus, the rear axle is used all the time, while the front axle is only used when you're in 4wd so there's a long-term wear thing going on.

That's a key point. Most places I've gone, running back to camp wasn't really a desireable option or my MJ was what I drove there. Plus, I've had numerous things go wrong with my truck and not one has been the typical "wheeling breakage". Mostly just "old truck" problems. :cry:

Unfortunately, the chances of the Bronco brackets lining up with the MJ frame in any significantly way are minimal. I mention the coil buckets because this is what happened when I mounted everything up: side shot: front shot: So to fix that I fashioned wedges made from steel bar stock: http://pic20.picturetrail.com/VOL91/512 ... 251275.jpg[/img] And that resulted in this: side front I tried cutting off the lip of the bumpstop, but it still made some contect with the coil so eventually I just removed the end as a stop-gap: My eventual fix came when I had my rocker guards installed and I cut the bumpstop towers and used some extra DOM tube to angle them out to follow the coil. I can't seem to find a pic showing that though. Be careful about welding the bucket to the radius arm, and the bucket bolts to both the front and rear halves of the radius arm: Oh, and don't forget that the Ford radius arms give about 2.5" of lift just by using them.

The best and worst thing about wheeling with a truck bed. :D There's always room for more.

brackets? mounts? which is which? Do you want a pic of the stuff on the axle or the stuff on my truck? The stuff on the truck are just Ford van radius arm brackets cut and welded to a flat crossmember. What was your plan for the axle coil buckets?

When/if part of my suspension gives up the ghost, I'll let you know. :D Even my Rustys coils have held up great.:eek: I've thought about what I bring along (the 6th tire was just a fluke on that trip since I absentmindedly left the lock and chain for it back at camp) and there's really not much to be gained by leaving every single tool and spare part I have at camp (except I'd always have a spare tire). The vast majority of the weight comes from all the armor I've added on. As long as it fits inside one of the boxes, I find it hard to leave it behind. :shake: I am getting better though. Now I have 2 catagories: -high probability it'd be needed on trail, and: -will most likely be needed back at camp because the repair is too involved and will likely take a back seat to just dragging the truck out. Just to be proactive though, this summer I'll hopefully be swapping in that rust-free set of springs I picked up in Florida. Michigan salt can kill a set of leafs on a stock rig with a blown engine.

It is technically possible to damage the electrical componants and even non-electrical stuff when welding on a vehicle. The most important thing is to pay attention to where you hook up the ground cable so it's as close to the welding spot as possible and that the path of the electricity won't fry something in between.

For me, being prepared is NOT optional. You should have seen the look on the guys' faces when I offered up my floor jack, c02 tank, impact wrench, 4 way wrench, shovel, etc. when all they had was a highlift and factory lug nut wrench to change a blown tire. :D

What? :dunno:

Mind if I upload that for everyone else? :D

Do power brakes count? :D

They likely look really long because the truck is still SUA.

Got one, just haven't put it on yet. :D

I went through and deleted all the recent spammers and banned the email addy they all shared. :hateputers:

Yup, I just went out and measured and the waterpump pully would be inside the 2.8l radiator. There's a reason why the 3.4L swap is so appealing. :brows: