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Project Unicorn - a light duty trail rig

So... Strange question. There's a lot of impressive fabricators in this thread so seems like the one to mention it in.

Has anyone used 2 wj steer knuckles (left and right hand drive knuckles) to get the tie rod up on the drag link knuckle provision? That would be some true high steer.

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So... Strange question. There's a lot of impressive fabricators in this thread so seems like the one to mention it in.

Has anyone used 2 wj steer knuckles (left and right hand drive knuckles) to get the tie rod up on the drag link knuckle provision? That would be some true high steer.


People have tried it, but it does not work. The ackerman is all wrong and you end up with incredibly poor handling and always dragging one tire around corners.
 
Thank you Cal.

Looking at that, I am thinking I should simply spring for an angle plate. Need to troll ebay for a decent old one. I need to measure the knuckles I have and see if 10" will be adequate or if I need 12". And it doesn't really have to be full height. I could make an adapter plate to attach to the angle plate and gain a couple inches that way if need be.

I can see why Dallas would fab something like that. If you have the tools to create that in short order it makes sense. Lacking the fancy tools I think it makes more sense for me to just spring for an off-the-shelf, most-of-the-way-there solution.


I don't have a picture that shows it, but there are 2 sets of holes in the face - one for WJ knuckles and one for XJ knuckles, timed to put the steering arms at 0*.
 
It's been one of these kinds of days.

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good progress on this car though. i think dallas is getting tired of every single part not fitting and having to be custom made.
 
That is why I prefer to receive my parts bare. Certainly not powder coated. All too often I have to grind, cut, weld or otherwise molest a new part to make it fit. Seems a shame to ruin a nice finish.
 
Started the weekend off by (watching Dallas) designing some shock mounts.

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They seem kind of huge - but we wanted to be able to weld them to the coil buckets in such a way that we could cleanly cut them off later if we change the shocks or lift the car taller. Putting the welds in an accessible spot meant making them a lot bigger than we would have otherwise.

Once design was done he hit print and warmed the room up.

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The plasma doesn't really make clean (or truly round) small holes, so he just has it cut pilots and we drill them.

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Dallas keeps handy dandy spacers around in all the common sizes. One of the reasons I love working on cars at Stinkyfab is he's already got all the shortcuts worked out and well organized.

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Here you can see the small lip at the front of the axle where we plan on welding, and again at the rear, so we can easily remove them later.

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Stinkyfab offers a trackbar mount for the XJ, the old setup used a 2.65" joint with a 9/16 bolt thinking that would be pretty standard.

Turns out that it's not all that standard, so he redesigned the mount to use a 2" wide joint with a 1/2" bolt, which is what most trackbars use. You can get off the shelf Currie joints for that in a 3/4" shank or a 1" shank.


My trackbar at the axle uses a 7/8 rod end, and I'm a bit OCD about having the same threads on both ends of a link. Turns out Currie doesn't make a 7/8 shank joint in a 2" width, but they have one in 1.6" wide that uses a 9/16 bolt. I like bigger hardware so score.

When the first production run of the new trackbar mounts was done, Dallas accidently had them cut with a 9/16 bolt hole, so they went into the scrap pile. He pulled the bottom half of one of those out for me. With my trackbar setup and having pushed the axle forward 2.5" we ended up grinding the tabs off and rotating it a couple of degrees to make things fit better, so I ended up with a very custom mount made of mistake parts. ;)

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The plan has been to make a custom spacer and maybe tig it to the johnny joint for easy install, but for the time being a couple of .120" washers fit pretty damned good.

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Time to make a new trackbar out of 1.5" 7075. Recently the bandsaw got replaced with a cold cut saw, loud as hell but its faster and takes less space.

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The threads turned out to be a little tight, and there were no wrench flats yet - so we had to use an oil filter wrench to thread it onto the rod end. Once we finished test fitting he put it back in the lathe and cleaned the threads up to make it hand tight.

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Geometry is looking pretty good.

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Maybe a little snug here.

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Added a washer behind the heim and that gave us enough room.

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Spacing the heim forward made the draglink a bit tight with the extra large head of the grade 9 bolt, so a little flapdisk work to add clearance.

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I ended up grinding just a hair on the steering arm now as well, although you can't see it here. I'd worry about strength, but we did the same on 4643 and that was never a problem there.

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@XCM set this axle up for me last year. 4.10 Motive gears with a Motive Grip Pro limited slip.

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Pattern looks pretty good. Ignore the edge of the teeth being clean, that's from grabbing it.

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Going together with new Ten Factory 4340 shafts and Spicer 760 ujoints.

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They come way better packaged than axles used to.

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Going in with new Prime Choice bearings recommended by @Lowrange2.

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I'm kind of tired of dealing with factory 13 point rusted out bolts, so I ordered up ARP 12x1.75 x 90mm bolts. They come in 5 packs, so 2 packs gave me enough for the car plus a fresh set to go with my spare unit bearing.

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If you've never installed an ARP bolt, they have rounded transitions from the head to the shank, and a beveled washer to go with it. The washers have to be installed with the bevel toward the bolt head.

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If you install the washer backward it will not sit flush against the bolt head.

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I didn't have axle nut hardware, and since I had to buy something I thought I'd try something new.

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First install, I think its a hair too deep. I installed it without a washer this time.

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Added a washer and I like this better. You'll notice I marked the end of the axle in sharpie to mark the cotter pin hole.

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And pinned home.

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In retrospect I should drill these and install a cotter pin. I may or may not do that.
 
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Even though Blaine says not to run drilled and slotted rotors ...they were on sale.

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Stinkyfab makes a cool template to redrill WJ rotors to 5x4.5. Only problem was finding 3 5/8 bolts to bolt it up. ;)

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Once the 1/4" pilot holes were drilled remove the template and go 5/8". Initially I thought 5/8 was too big but Dallas insisted. Turned out 5/8 barely fits over the knurls on the wheel studs, I had to use a rubber mallet to seat one of the rotors all the way (bolting a wheel on would have done it too).

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And installed.

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When i ordered, you couldn't get the zinc plated Centric calipers that Blaine likes anywhere.. so I went with the red coated Power Stop calipers I used on 4643 again. They are made by Centric so probably close enough in quality.

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Black magic WJ pads

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WJ calipers use a special bolt to bolt the bracket to the knuckle. It comes with loctite, a serrated flange, and is supposed to be one time use. Many people have used off the shelf grade 8 hardware and had calipers come off on the road, so I take it pretty serious. I bought new Mopar stuff and keep new ones in my spare parts box.

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The preinstalled dry loctite does not work as well as liquid, at Blaines suggestion I wire brush it off and apply new liquid.

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Cut the hell out of my hands installing the pads on those stupid little clips.

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Much dislike!

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Some fresh loctite, and you can see the serrates on the flange.

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Install and torque the mounting bolts. Spec is 66-85 foot pounds, I did 75.

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The calipers came with new crush washers which was good, I didn't think to buy some.

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And they bolt right up to my fancy custom brake lines, which I ordered extra long anticipating today.

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All great shit right there and it's looks like your getting close to this running! :yelclap:
 
Bolted up some off the shelf SFR links, aligned the car and took lots of measurements. Basically every link (except the draglink) is too short and needs to be custom made.


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The lower link mounts we used push the axle forward ~2" over stock, so I'm using his standard length lower links but had them machined out of 2" 7075 to use 1.25" shank johnny joints i already owned vs buying the 1" shank stuff he uses in his kits.

To compensate for that my upper links ended up being 2" longer than his production ones.

For my tie rod, I didn't want to use the offset TRE's from Barnes that are really popular - I would rather have my steering rub the diff cover at full lock and have parts I can buy at any parts house. I went with Moog ES2010L/ES2010R - but they have a shorter shank. (And don't forget that I widened the housing a bit when I did the knuckles). Tie rod ended up being about 2" longer than stock too. And then, since Dallas makes links in pairs to sell as kits, he ended up building me a custom draglink anyways - just so the production shelf didn't end up short a draglink.

Anyways once we had it all bolted up on off the shelf parts and aligned and got measurements, time to take the whole car back apart and start building links again.
 
So a bunch more machining and painting.

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You'll notice all of the links are shrinkwrapped - keeps them clean and pretty until we're done working. Also means I don't have to worry as much about overspray when painting.

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Never got around to making the spacer, i think this is just going to live this way.
Cut down a 4" F911 bolt so that I have shank all the way across and the first thread is just before the bracket on the nut side.

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The ES2010 TRE's come with these shockingly nice and heavy duty boots. I pulled them off thinking to install the SFR ones just to fly the house colors, but after comparing the sizes ended up putting them back on again.

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Originally I had a ZJ pitman arm on which put my angles dead on at droop, but they were off at ride height. Went back to a stock XJ pitman arm which makes them off at droop but dead on at ride height.

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Ground a bit on the UCA tower that we welded on backward to make it fit better.

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And for good measure just a bit on the bolt head.

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And then work on reinstalling everything.

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Lots more fancy F911 hardware for everything.

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While I had the coils off I compressed the axle and measured for bumpstops.

Pulled these out of the old 4643 pile and went to remove the fancy hard bumps Dallas had made, but they wouldn't come out. Had to break out the power tools.

Hard to believe this bumpstop only has 1 trip to the hammers on it. Granted we did 120 miles at speed with no brakes, so we were hitting it .. a lot.

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And some hand tools

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Cut about an inch off the hard stop, 1 ring off the new prothanes, and reinstall.

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I should have about 3" of uptravel before hitting the prothane and about 1.5" of compression in the bump before hard stop.

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Back assembled and on the ground.

Set the wheelbase to 103.5 and caster to 6* at ride height, which gives me 8.2 at full droop.

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Angles are looking great.

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The AT3W's have a nice white line through the center which makes adjusting toe way easier.

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And then back in the air to charge the shocks and button things up.

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Discovered there's a bit of a diff cover bolt broken off in one of the holes, so I need to bring my extractor kit on the next visit so I can fix that and install a cover, and fill the diff.

Started making a list.

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I have another pair of 10" shortbodies for the rear still to do, rear bumpstops, and we can't forget this..

Air actuated dual rate swaybar from G2. ;)

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Designed for a JK but it looks like its going to fit just great.
 
What are your prothanes hitting on the bump tower side? I've got mine sitting on the bench for when I do the SFR long arms.
 
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