Safari Ary said:
It's a HP. brand new housing, never had any brackets on it. Just from eyeballing it, it looks like the caster/DS angles should work out pretty well.
Yeah, that;s what I thought too. I have a D60 front and about 7-8" of lift and the atlas tucked up another inch and I rotated up 13* on the pinion. I just went thru what JeepFreak21 (billy) said. I had to cut ALL of my custom bracketry off, cut and rotate the knuckles and spend 1.5" hours last night with the angle grinder cleaning up the axle tube so I can fab all new bracketry. Do yourself the favor and rotate your pinion up now. It's pretty easy to do.
1) Get a home depot protractor. Will work fine.
2) Raise the front of the vehicle to where it will ride.
3) Place new axle in place with the desired caster. I would shoot for 5-6* neg for proper steering and road manners. You can take a measurement for the caster on the flat spot of the bottom of the inner c
4) Place one part of the protractor along the horizontal plane of the pinion. On my ford D60 this was nearly flat stock. Now take the other part of the protractor and aim it at the output shaft of the transfer case.
5) Read the amount of degrees of the angle on the protractor. Mine was 13*.
6) Grab a 12 pack and and angle grinder and cut thru the welds around the inner c's. Cut just a little bit into the c's to get into the weld penetration. As you make your way around the knuckle you will see a thin hairline where the tube and the c meet. Once you see this hairline, you are ready for the fun part.
7) Let the 12 pack wear off, you will need your aim and concentration for this. Ratchet strat the axle to a set of jackstands and ratchet strap the pinion to a 3rd jackstand.
8) Grab you Ace hardware $9 magnetic angle finder and get your reference measurements to start with on both sides. I left my axle assembled to do this, so I measured off the flat areas from my high steer arms. Alternately you can use the flat surface on the lower ball joints for reference. My reference measurements were 25* for a start point. I wanted a 13* rotation so my end point would be 38* on the reference measurement.
9) With a punch, mark the c and tube so you can have a visual refernce to see how much, if any, the knuckle has moved.
10) Start swinging that BFH. I hit mine squarely on the top of the C towards the back of the vehicle so it would rotate. It takes a lot to get the knuckle moving so work out those agressions.
11) After you see the knuckle move, take a measurement from your reference point. IMPORTANT: YOU MUST MEASURE EACH SIDE TO MAKE SURE THE AXLE DIDN"T MOVE ON THE JACK STANDS WITH ALL THE ZEALOUS BFH SWINGING. If the other side is still at the same measurement (mine started at 25*), then take the measurement on the side you just hammered and see if you are close to where you want it.
12) If the other side reads different, then you need to add or subtract this change to the amount on the side your are working on in order to meet your goal. Make sure all the ratchet straps are as tight as possible.
13) Once your have finished the one side. Repeat the steps above to do the other side, always measuring the already completed side to make sure the axle didn't move on the stands. By measuring both sides after each hammering session, you will be assured that you will end up with matching angles on both sides.
14) Even though you are sure that you got the angles right, just tack weld the c's into position. Then move the axle under the vehicle and set it to where you want the caster to be.
Making your brackets:
15) Assuming that you are using adjustable uppers and lowers (which is a MUST), you can then attach your lowers to the axle. This is an inexact procedure, but you want the bolt of the lower to attach somewhat below the center of the axle tube. If it is too high then you have a lot of force on the upper to control caster under accel, decel, and articluation. If they are too low, then the get knocked by rocks too much.
16) Fab your mounts. I used 5/16 steel to fab my mounting brackets. Interestingly enough a can of Progresso Soup is the same diameter of the D60 tube and made it easy to transfer the semi-circle of the tube to the cardboard for the mock up. Yes, you can grab a caliper and compass and carfully spin the semi circle, but I just traced. Cut your tabs out of the card board and bolt the tabs to the lower bushing. hold the CA up to the axle and once you are happy with the mock up, transfer the design to your steel plate and fire up the torch or plasma. repeat for both sides.
17) Uppers. Once your wheelbase is where you want it, you can now start on the drivers side upper. This is where you get into compromises. You have to fit the coils next to the knuckles and behind the tie rod. The tie rod needs to clear the trackbar. The track bar needs to clear the DS upper and the DS upper needs to clear the oil pan. There is no right answer here. Just tack everything together and expect to make revisions. On my D60 which has a cast steel housing, I just welded the upper mount to the pumkin and put some webbing on it to reinforce it. I preheated and post heated my mig weld and it turned out fine. D44's have a cast iron pig that you will need to make a truss for. RE sells a nice one to save the fab time.
18) Once the drivers side upper is done, make a little tower for pass side upper that matches the same height of the DS. Remember that you need to clear the oil pan here.
19) Track bar mount. I made a separate tower for my trackbar mount. This sits a bit forward on the axle tube than the upper CA. The track bar will be a function of the draglink angle to avoid bumpsteer issues, so make sure you know how to do this.
20) Coil buckets. You can build up some life into the coil buckets by making them higher. You can also use spacers to make up for the difference between the front and rear lift if it comes out. Coils were a huge problem for me as the just wasn't enough room for them and my shocks. I am now going Coil overs for this reason.
21) Grab a cold beverage and look at your handiwork. Does it look like the suspension will cycle up and down with our interference or binding? If so, pull the axle out and burn it all together. Building suspensions and steering for our rigs is an iterative process, so expect that at some point in the future you will need to re-do some or all of it.
back to work...
SeanP
