who's dunnit?? 9" and HP44??

[Confedneck]

i have been contemplating a HP44 and 9" swap into my MJ... who's done it? did you go radius armed or 4 link?? the rear will stay leaf... show me whatcha got!

[Pete M]

Ford radius arms. :D

 

 

 

I designed my own radius arm crossmember and kept the stock Ford rubber C-bushings (the poly ones kill all hope of flex).

 

 

The coil seats on the axle don't line up with an MJ's towers. Here you can see some of the adaptations around the coils. I made wedges to tilt the base back a few degrees and stop the bowing of the coils and angled the bumpstop towers out to line up with the base.

 

 

 

Shocks lined up beautifully though.

 

 

 

In the rear I went SOA (with an extra MJ main leaf) and stuck the shock mount between the leaf and axle and had it welded there. Those are stock MJ shocks in the photo. They cost me about an inch of up travel and an inch of down. Better ones are on the way.

[Confedneck]

pete, do you think you have more or less travel now than you did with the stock suspension style of 4link? did you use the ford coils? also, i read somewhere that if you swap the coil buckets from one side to the other on the axle, that it gets the springs closer to lined up.... and what did your axles come out of? an EB? f150?

[Pete M]

78 big Bronco.

 

Rotating the coil buckets did help a small bit, but what you see is what I got after doing it.

 

For truck coils are too stiff for little trucks. I used 3" lift MJ/XJ coils. (using the ford radius arms setup gives about 2" of lift because the coil buckets are higher than the Dana 30 stuff).

 

I have no idea how much travel I had before. The truck was 2wd. :D Heck, I've never owned a "normal" lifted MJ. All I know is that I have plenty of travel for what I need. :brows: Just remember that the poly bushings suck.

 

 

[TNT]

I'm in the process of doing this and will be using a custom mid-length 3-link with a track bar. The lower axle mounts will be even with the botom of the axle tube so nothing will hang below the axle tubes. I'm also rotating the inner C's for the proper caster and pinion angles. The coil spring mounts will be raised 1" and moved back 1" so the axle will sit 1" forward for more fender clearance. The frame mounts will tuck up as much as possible.

 

My inner fenders will be extended forward so the curve ends behind the headlight. I will move the battery and run a different air filter. My flares are raised about 5" and fender openings are cut as much as possible.