BTF Cross-Over Steering Knuckle, install write-up

[reson46]

Nice job. :thumbup:

The img tag works nice for pictures instead of url.

I just finished my over the knuckle heim steering set up. I looked at BTF's bracket and Off Road Only’s U – Turn steering and others. I actually purchased the BTF bracket and it hit on the spring and the original track bar bracket. It would have been way too much modification to make it work, so I chose to return the bracket to BTF with no problem.

Then decided to fab my own set up. I found using 1 1/2 x 1/4 wall chromoly tubing over the knuckle that there were a lot of interference issues. It seemed the easy way was to get the tie rod and drag link mounting points forward and in slightly.

Driver side bracket-

Passenger side bracket-

The brackets are attached at the original tie rod end hole (drilled out to 5/8”), at the two forward wheel bearing bolts and an additional attach point on the out side of the bracket directly to the forward arm of the knuckle.

Here you can see the original tie rod location and the new location, driver side (forward and in).

Here you can see the original tie rod location and the new location, passenger side (forward and in).

The result of this was the tie rod is forward 1 ½” and 3+/- above its original location.

I used ¾” heims from Dan @ Ruff Stuff and 1 ½” x ¼” wall chromoly tubing and ¼” steel plate purchased at Competitive Metals locally.

My total cost including tubing, heims w/ bungs & spacer, steel plate, f911 and grade 8 bolt and nuts, including a complete second set of fasteners…$175.00

I took it out and it drives great. In fact the steering has never felt this good since before any lift.

 

[beakie]

well since this write up got delayed, then hi-jacked and delayed some more... I figured I may as well finish it once and for all.

My buddy got a parts Waggy, so I grabbed the pitman arm off it (1" less drop than XJ)
I wanted it to get better angles on my steering, you can see it in this pic.

Then I built a new trac bar mount (frame side) which moved the trac bar 1" forward and 1" down.
Rusty's 3/16" piece on the right... home fabbed 1/4" on the left... 1" forward 1" drop

As stated before, if your tie-rod has some beef to it, coupled with a dif cover like th RS one I run... there is some clearance issues. Since I don't expect to see many rocks hitting high up on the cover, and the tie rod is 1/4" wall anyway I decided to cut into the cover and re-plate with 1/8".
Sizable slab cut out, new 1/8" bent and welded in.

Finally I got everything bolted up, double sheer on each side, the only single sheer joint is the pitman arm. My last idea may be to put the XJ arm back in, heim over the arm and weld a bracket on top to make it double sheer. But first I want to drive this thing again, its been 6months off the road.

Here's the final angle setup. The knuckles are a few pages back, so this is just one pic to show how well the angles turned out. Drag link is 32" long, trac bar is 29"... close, it will do for my needs.

 

[MG2000XJ]

On applications where there is a lot of droop, specifically on the passenger side is there any possibility of binding the pitman arm and passenger side heims? If so would putting bends like these in the draglink make sense? Or would this be completely unnecessary?

 

[beakie]

I flexed this setup out last weekend, and I did notice bind at the pitman arm when at full droop of the pass side. see pic

I have all the thread on both heims to play with on the drag link, so I may be doing exactly what you have mentioned to combat the angle.
The bend at the pitman arm will be needed, but at the knuckle its not necessary, although it may be after the bend at the pitman arm comes into play. Realistically tho the angles at the axle were never even close to maxing out.

I had thought of the same thing, but am trying to find a way of putting a bend in .25 wall 1.5"DOM.