Rotating Bar Pin Eliminators

I'm in the process of installing a 4.5" lift on my 1999 XJ. Unfortunately all four of my upper rear shock bolts broke. I had even taken people's advice a soaked them a couple of times with PB-Blaster in the days before trying to remove them.

Anyway, I don't want to go through this again. I had heard about using the sway bar mounts as bar-pin eliminators. However, it sounds like I will have to rotate them 90 degrees or risk breaking shocks.

How are you mounting the sway-bar mounts as bar-pin eliminators without using the original bar-pin bolt holes? Can I simply drill and tap holes through the same metal the original holes are in? Can they be welded on?

Thanks,
-Brian

BTW: For those of you that turn up this thread later in a search you might also want to look at these threads:

Modified Par Pin Eliminator Question
upper shock mount bar pin: grrrrrr

Back in the day, I welded mine on. HTH

Sean

Did you just weld it to the body where the bar-pin was bolted to (only turned ninty degrees). How well did it hold up? I would be asking a friend of mine to do the welding - is there anything I can do or tell him that will make things easier for him? Thanks

OneTonXJ said:

Back in the day, I welded mine on. HTH

Sean

Click to expand...

I bolted the shock to the lower mount and then put the bracket on the upper part of the shock and held it up to where it looked comfortable and tacked it. Pulled it apart and welded it in good after that. It never broke off, so I musta done something right. Make sure he cleans the area well on both the bracket and the body, then just shoot it with some primer afterwards.

You won't "break the shock" by using the sway bar mount in the stock location as the BPE. The shock bushing has some torsion put on it, but it is by no means excessive.

I've run the Rocky roads BPE's at 4 inches for over a year, and my shocks are more deformed at the bottom from the rotated axle of my SYE.

Granted, my mounting area in the belly of the XJ is in fine condition. With yours's being seperated, some of the results will depend on how you repair the mounting situation. Drilling and tapping is probably your weakest option as the stock location isn't simply drilled and tapped - there is a nut welded in up there. If you were to weld, you might consider welding in an orientation that allows the shock eye to rotate instead of flex, but that will depend on the material being welded to. If welding in the stock position welds them along an exisiting brace and rotating them welds across it (I'd have to climb under mine to see), then I would also go with the stock position.

bburge

I was thinking about simply welding the bar-pin eliminator at the same location as the old bar-pin. Only rotating the end of the shock 90 degrees from where it would be if I had bolted the sway-bar mount/bar-pin eliminator using the old shock bolts.

It seemed like the frame would be strong enough there. I had wondered metal in the body/frame would separate unless a bolt was put through all of the layers.

-Brian