Ms Piggy. Black and Blue!

[scbronco]

care to come off those bronco script valve covers for a pre-owned price?

[broncosbybart]

Sorry, motor is sold and gone.

Chuzie, I'd love to be able to pay myself to work on my own stuff. I'd be a millionaire. The lumber yard wanted me to stay on so I'm working for them from the house. It allows me to arrange my hours so I can work in the garage some but not full time

[chuzie]

U da man. Teach me!

Sent from my GS3 on CyanogenMod with tapatalk2

[broncosbybart]

Got some more work done on it. The front end is heavy! Got it set into place for now and tacked the new radius arm brackets on. Right now, it has 8 degrees of caster and still has a good pinion angle. Being a high pinion axle helps as well, but I'm sure it is going to create problems with the large oil pan on the 4BT. That is down the road though. I don't plan to burn any welds in until I know all the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle fit together.

The new coil springs are 4.5" WH rock crawler coils. I'm thinking with the weight of this thing, they will compress more than enough. Might even need 5.5" coils, or a F250 coil or something. For now, they're just sitting on the radius arm brackets. I plan to fab up some lower coil buckets, and yes, the frame mounted brake brackets will be relocated to the front axle like they should be.

[broncosbybart]

The weather has been miserable. Haven't gotten much done.

I did fab up some lower coil buckets and thought I'd post them up here. The band saw and plasma cutter make the project a lot easier.

Here are some pics of the process and some weldz. Sorry that the pics didn't post in the correct order. Just go from right to left

[chuzie]

Nice. Pretty crafty!

Sent from my GS3 on CyanogenMod with tapatalk2

[broncosbybart]

Got some more work done on the front end. The front spring buckets are located and tacked on the radius arm brackets. I will drill the coil buckets and use bolts when I'm sure of the locations.

Also worked on the lower track bar mount, using a WH track bar riser. I made a box bracket out of 1/4" wall 2x4 to give the bracket additional support to rest against.

Then, fun and games drilling the provided bolt for the cotter pin. Always a good time.

Now, the track bar is parallel with the drag link, albeit a lot shorter than the drag link is.

[BucknEB]

The track bar and drag link look perfect. Nice!:xyxthumbs:

[blazinchuck]

nice work!!! hope to see it in person soon

[broncosbybart]

Thanks guys! Got some work done on the 14 bolt rear axle. Clay and I pulled the axle I'm using a while back from a late 90's Suburban or something at the pull-a-part. All I remember is it was about 90 degrees in the shade (ie- under the vehicle). Far cry from where it is right now. This axle is metric and there are some differences between it and the earlier years, though I'm not sure what all those differences are.

For sure one is the lock rings on the rear hubs. This design uses a circlip and key to hold the retaining nut in place. Had to use a magnet to get the key out of the keyway. The retaining nut is some funky 6 pinned thing that I don't have a tool for. A punch and hammer knocked it loose though. From what I understand, they can be replaced with the standard D60 lock rings with the 4 tabs and I'll get those for sure. No sense in messing with these things..

To get to the hub retainers, 8 bolts hold the axle flange onto the hubs. With those removed, the axles slide right out. I'm digging the full floating idea for sure!