cocco78

stock gears, 3.55's I'm sure. Plans call for 4.88's with 36" tires, maybe...

New update! We picked up the parts bronco, I didn't expect much for $128 but it turned out to be pretty nice. Spent the afternoon cutting out the axles while it was still on the trailer. I'm getting pretty good at this, i've done it several times now. It really helps to have an open deck trailer, lots of strong timbers and good jack stands. The rest of the bronco goes to another guy that wants the trans, I told him he could have the trans for $75 if he took the whole truck! And these are the radius arms that we'll be using... And a few other parts from one of my buddies old projects.

The mounds, yeah thats a waste of time. we have better wheeling on our way to work than the mounds. As far as the 4.5" of lift goes thats too much lift for just lower control arms. I'd say the most lift you can do with adj lower control arms it 3 or 3.5" of lift. I mean it'll work but with that much lift the control arms pull the axle so far back you really need adj uppers and lower to get the axle back to where it needs to be and have proper alingment. We don't do alot of on road driving with this so its ok how it is. If you wanted to build something that worked as well on road as off YOU HAVE TO GO TO LONG ARMS, there really is no way around it. The same goes with tj's, xj,s, zj's, wj's, ect... anything more than 3.5" of lift and your at the point of to much lift for stock length control arms.

The UP, Iron Mountain, right on the MI/WI border...

we ordered the rough country lca's from jcwhitney. I forget how much they were but we were watching ebay and the fs sections on different boards and the used prices for adj lca's were outragous. Plus I don't like running special flex joints, I prefer stock control arm bushings. Living in Michigan rust is a huge problem and no matter how you take care of those joints they don't last a year. The rouch country arms just have poly bushings in them, which kinda suck imo.

4.5" coils from www.ironrockoffroad.com $130 for the pair. Some el cheapo adj lca's, SS braided brake lines, and sway bar disco from rough country, and a slightly used rubicon express adj track bar from ebay... There is probably about $400 into the front end. There is about $20 into the rear SOA, 4 new u-bolts. As far as the bed bob goes, we spend about $25 for all the grade 8 bolts, $50 on the massive bumper, probably $20 in sawzall blades, drill bits, and grinding disks... It may not be the best but its my gf's first Jeep and we are just trying to do this on a real tight budget. Not that we can't spend more on it but its just fun seeing what you can do for the price. I know we are under $2k from day 1 including the $350 purchase price. We completely went through the truck first to make it drivable and safe, u-joints, brakes, bearings, ect..

I've seen a guy run that 44 with the coil buckets flipped around and he moved out his upper spring mounts an 1" and it was really close to straight. He just cut off the bump stop, welded in some 1/4" plate, and welded on the bumpstop an inch further out on each side, then just added some gussets to make the mount strong. Anyway, here are some pics and even a couple video's... The video sucks and it was windy and the strap kept hitting the camera making noise but whatever...

78 and 79 are fine if you want to keep the axles full width, which we are going to do. But if you want to narrow the axle to jeep width then look for the 77 and older with the welded on mounts, so you can cut them off and stuff. The 77 and older early bronco axles are junk, small and weak and only worth money to bronco guys, stay away. A non-disco hp30 with 297 joints is way stronger than that cheesy LP44 in the early bronco's. The thing about the full width hp44's in the full size bronco's and f150's is the coil spring mounts are somewhat offset on the axle, and don't match the stock coil spring mount width on the Jeep. But they unbolt and you can swap them around and change the offset and get it pretty darn close to work, I think within an inch. Makes a nice swap into a TJ, MJ, or XJ...

Well here is a picture... Jaeme wanted me to draw her a tattoo of her Manche. Stupid permanent marker only lasted 2 days.

I actually think I like the wheelbase where it is, should be good with 36's. And man you can't beat those extra long MJ springs for flex, very nice. Well, today I got a massive welders tan spot welding the back of the bed back on, oooh its starting to hurt. Got the bumper brackets welded on the bumper with my friends new Hobart 187 Mig, wow is that a nice welder! We figured out some wiring issues and got all the tail lights, turn signals, brake lights, and fuel pump working We should have some good pics of it posted this weekend... Oh and we bought some axles for it for $128, with a free bronco attached to it, D44/9". We plan on using the stock radius arm ford suspension setup.

yeah its alot of weight, but its still alot lighter than everything we cut off. I looked around everywhere for some 3/16 and the only stuff anyone had was 2x4. whats your idea pingpong? I was just going to fill the area between the bumper and the bed floor with some 3/16 diamond plate for a step...

1980-85 Dana 50 TTB as a rule, 86 and up F350's had the HP60 with kingpins. Somewhere along the line they moved to ball joints, 90 or 91? I have seen some 85's with a HP60 though, it was a mid year change over I believe. Oh and you can't use anything off that without some fab skills...

Yeah, i'm going to figure a way to get some 2" angle iron braces on the bed sides. We'll see how it goes tho, won't really know how to brace it up til its all together. I got some more work done today on the bumper brackets and junk. All the brackets are 1/4" and I cut them out at work with a torch. Then spent an hour with the grinder making them nice. Here is what I ended up with. I really need to get one of those magnetic welding triangle deals to hold my work together! I'm going to drill 2 more holes in this piece so there will be 4 bolts holding it in place. I made a 1/4" thick plate to go on the backside of the frame so sandwich it all together. And I couldn't find any rectangular tubing for the rear bumper that I liked, either wrong size or wrong thickness. I ended up with this monster! 5 and a half feet of 1/4" wall 2x6 tubing! Might be overkill...

The tailgate rusted away a long time ago! When I build the bumper out of 2x5" tubing I'm going to have a 4" wide piece across the top of the bumper that goes back over the frame so there is some kinda step and to make it all look neat...

I figured there is a bad ground somewhere, time to get a book or 2 with some wiring diagrams. The wiring harness and all the connections look real good, so who knows. Well, the outside of the bed is swiss cheese, but the inside and bottom are in great shape. I don't think I'd do this with a nicer truck! Just a fun time waster on a nice day. I think it looks damn good bobbed!

We have an 88 MJ, long bed with way to much overhang. We ended up taking out 16" of bed, and from where we cut the frame to the end of the bumper was over 24". We are not done yet tho, lots of work to re-attach the rear portion of the bed and build a new rear bumper/x-member. So here are a few pics to get you started, probably won't have more til next week. Oh and we found out if you disconect the wiring harness for the tail lights the fuel pump won't work. Strange.... Step 1: take before pics... Step 2: Don't actually measure anything, just give sawzall to girlfriend and take more pics. Step 3: Show her how to do it wrong so she can do it right... Step 4: take pics of the destruction and bask in the glory of making a mess. Step 5: Buy big @$$ sawzall blades to cut the frame! Step 6: Take pictures of the excess parts. Step 7: Test fitting :roll:

All you need to SOA the rear is a few inches of 2" square tube. I cut a couple pieces about 8" long, drilled a hole in the top for the spring center pin, and then just ground out a half circle... I tacked them to the axle tube parallel with the original mounts with my 110v, brought the axle down to a truck repair place and they burned them on for $15... For the shocks I welded some grade 8 bolts to the axle tube, works pretty damn good for now. For the front we just pieced together some 4.5" coils, an adj trac bar, adj lower control arms, some cheap shocks, and extended brake lines.. Cut some fenders and for $300-$400 you can spend the money you save on big tires! LOL, this truck was built on a $1000 budget, including the price of the truck. I think we had a pretty decent wheeler for the price. I believe we have about $1500 total into by now.

I might be wrong but I just remembered that the disk brake 8.8's came with 31 spline shafts and the older ones with drums only had 27 spline. So go with the disk brake one.

I always drive by ghey but never go there :D Went up to the tip out on high rock road (something like that anyway) in early Dec (or was it late nov?) anyway its nice up there. I'm down in Iron Mountain... You ever check out the UPJeeping site? http://upjeeping.informe.com Anyway, if I could find the pics of that trip I'd post them for people to see what it looks like with no snow...

I ran for 2 years on a D35 and 33" tires, both open and with an aussie locker. The D35 gets a bad rap, its fine for the type of wheeling that you'd do with 31-33 inch tires. My gf's MJ is running 32" race cut mt/r's and she beat the crap out of it with the D35 still holding. Going to upgrade to a 9" soon tho. But, the 8.8 is a great axle. I can pick up a complete D35, I can not pick up a complete 8.8, they are very beefy compared to a 35! Disk brakes are nice but not really needed on a pickup with a light rear end... Properly adjusted rear drums work great. But if you find a disk brake one, great! They do come with 4.10 gears stock, but most of them have 3.73... They sell for 200-300, I'd pay even a little more for one with disk brakes and 4.10's...

Well here is our Comanche! I say ours buts its really my girlfriends truck. I have a TJ on 33's and she wanted her own Jeep to wheel with me. We found a 1 owner 1988 Comanche, 4.0L, auto, with 230,000 miles on it. Got it for $350! Had to put all new brakes and lines on it to make it safe. Its got 4.5" cheapo coils up front, RE adj track bar, Rough Country sway bar disco's, Rough Country SS braided brake lines. Rear is just a basic SOA with a nice overload leaf and an exteded rubber brake line. Got rid of the rear prop valve and will be putting in an XJ one soon. All this riding on 32" race cut goodyear mt/r's, CORR racing around bark river, mi. and Crandon, WI... There is a grand total of about $1300 into it, this includes everything from the purchase price, taxes, brake work, lift parts, all the way to the tires. The day we got it! After most of the work was done, this is with my 33" mt/rs on it. They proved to be a bit to big for the tired motor and stock gears. And some more recent pics: These are from this weekend, here you can see the 32" MT/R's cut for off road racing. Got the set of 4 with about 15 minutes of track time on them for $250.

Ok, looks like the Ford injectors are pretty close to the stock ones, so they shouldn't be causing the problems. Yeah, looks like i'll be checking vac lines :cry:

89 MJ, high mileage 4.0L, originally had a bit of a rough idle and a stalling problem, and leaky injectors. Would always restart right away if you wiggled the last injector. We swapped in some ford 19# injectors. Cured the stalling problem... Huge difference in power! But it idles worse and seems to be running pretty rich I guess, smoke from the exhaust that'll burn your eyes :P I imagine its getting to much fuel now, maybe these injectors are to much for it. Any idea's what to look for? Its got new plugs, cap and rotor needs to be replaced but are good enough they should work ok. I disconnected the O2 sensor and absolutely nothing happened, it didn't run any worse or any better. Would a properly working O2 sensor figure out its running to rich and adjust for it? I'm seriously getting ready to rip out this renix junk and put a carb on it. Mark