Ms Piggy. Black and Blue!

[Bronco Biff]

Nice work!

[broncosbybart]

Thanks!

Ben, the Dynatrac uses their own ball joint knuckles. The brakes are 3/4 ton Chevy 4wd front calipers, similar to the ones I'm using for the 14 bolt brackets that I got from Barnes. The Ruff Stuff brackets use the same caliper as it is pretty common. They are single piston but are decent sized.

Here are a few pics of the outer on the front. They are kind of at a funny angle. Why? Cause I removed the whole front axle...

[broncosbybart]

Had a hair-brained idea that I came up with. While working on the motor, I couldn't help but notice that the bolt for the heim steering on the pass side knuckle looked a little wonky.

I removed it and noticed that the hole in the knuckle was beginning to oval. That got the thoughts running in my mind, so I thought I'd try and make that bolt double shear, as the knuckle has provision for using a high steer arm. I contacted Dynatrac and ordered a blank high steer arm (no hole drilled in it for the 3/4" bolt). It arrived a couple days ago. I mocked it up and guess what? The arm was too short. The 3/4" bolt was located beyond the end of the arm. It was an inch too short. Sooo, I decided to pull the axle completely and take the it up to Chris at Mars Fab to see if he could cut an arm for it with his fancy computerized plasma table. He said it would be after the 1st of the new year before he could get to it.

Well that wasn't going to work. So, out came the plasma cutter, grinders, welder, and drill press. I only had some 1/4" plate here, so I had to make 2 identical pieces and sandwich them together. After cutting and forming them, I beveled the edges that faced each other so I could weld them together. I also cut some holes in one of the arms so that I could plug weld them also. The end result was an arm that is 1/2" thick. Having 1/2" stuff here would have been nice...

Just got this done tonight. I'm happy with the end result. Granted it isn't as fancy as the Dynatrac unit that I have to return, but it will work just fine and is a ton cheaper.

Oh, and the whole thing with the tape and all is that I used a 1/4" drive socket that fit snugly into the holes on the Dynatrac arm to mark the locations that I needed to drill into the new arm. A tap or two with a small hammer is all it takes to mark the tape enough to determine accurately where the new holes need to go. Worked great.

[wepuckett]

Looks nice, guessing an endmill and a mill would of made it a lot faster to fabricate that. Thats too funny actually as for the CNC plazma table I will taking a class in the spring to learn how to use one of those.

[ParadisePWoffrD]

Putting a vertical rib under that arm will strengthen it a ton. If you need an idea I've got one to keep it bolt-on

Those knuckles look really similar to 90s ford knuckles. The built in factory brake naivety looks very similar. Might be 99-04 also. The machining and high steer pattern is 1 off.

[broncosbybart]

Thanks for the reply. I'd like to see what you have in mind for adding some strength to it. I'm not sure where they got the knuckle design from. I do know that the 99+ SD axles have 4 studs for the unit bearing assembly. Can't say anything more beyond that.

[ParadisePWoffrD]

Here is what my 90something d60 looked like. The caliper mounts are different.



& here is the 99 d50 i had which looked closer.


looks like they are using a ford spindle (5 bolt) with a redrilled chevy hub and shaft?

My idea for the arm, I hope it is clear:
- make a plate that follows the contour of the knuckle from the bottom of the arm at the balljoint to the tierod hole.
- weld it to the underside of the arm
- put a vertical plate (triangle) between the arm and new plate. Could"box" it in vs single plate in center.
- optional, Cut a piece of tube to weld to the rib that is captured by the heim bolt.
- could even move the draglink to the top side of the steering arm if it helped geometry.

If this is gibberish I'll try to draw it.

This is a decent amount of work but will help tire the cap into the tierod. You can also drill out the knuckle a little and press in a steel sleeve that is the right OD.

[broncosbybart]

Yeah, the 99+ knuckle looks closer though I'm not sure how close they actually are.

Makes sense on the arm. I might do something if I get around to it. For now it should be fine as is. It isn't doing a whole lot.

Got some more work done on her. Jumping around a bit, I finished the disc brake brackets for the rear axle. These were weld ons from Barnes 4WD. They weren't even close to working as is. Had to cut them, modify them some and weld it all back together. They do make a bolt on kit but I doubt they'd work with these rotors. Rotors used were standard disc rotors for the 76+ Bronco. Calipers were 3/4 ton Chevy 2wd pickup from 75 to mid 80's. They're single piston but the pistons are pretty big.

While there, I pressed in the grease seals for the rear hubs and bolted the hubs down using new 4 slot style hub nuts. The retainer that goes between the nuts needed to have the 4 ears ground off, per the picture. There is 1 as packaged with the ears on it and one that I had modified already as well as the part number. These are just standard D60 axle parts. They thread right on the 14 bolt axle.

As well is a sneak peek at the new shoes. Found some 37" military MTR's and bought some cheap steelies from Summit Racing.

Sorry, for some reason pics are way out of order. The 5th pic shows what I started out with.

[chuzie]

Where is the build sheet fir this project? I want to see if you broke the $30k threshold yet!

So what is your time line / desired finish date? Would love to see it in April!

Sent from my GS3 on Cyanogenmod with the older / better version of Tapatalk!

[broncosbybart]

Ha. I do have a spread sheet going with totals. Not exact. I've sold some things that I haven't kept track of. I'm in it a tad under 20k right now, including purchase price/shipping from the west.

Realistically I don't see her being done in April. I'm hoping to try for my birthday in August but even that is uncertain. Plans are to be done by the Nov run. Got plenty of things I want to do to her. I could have her going by Aug but maybe not with all the things I want to do. A lot of it now is pure time/labor not really purchasing stuff/spending money.