Ms Piggy. Black and Blue!

[blazinchuck]

nice work bart, that looks like the traction bar i used on fbg...cant wait to see this rig!!!! And hear it

[broncosbybart]

Appreciate it all!

Ben, you beat me to the punch on the truss idea. I had already fabbed something up. Not quite as involved as you mentioned, but should be good enough.

First thing I did was weld the axle tubes to the center section. There is a lot of conflicting info out there on what the center section is cast from. I can tell that this one is some form of cast steel. I had to drill the bulk head fitting in the housing for the ARB. When I did, the material did not chip but it drilled like a piece of steel usually does. That said, I had a job keeping the welds from cracking around the axle tubes.

My first attempt was without any kind of preheat and using standard 70 series wire in the MIG welder. I ran a couple small beads and they cracked right away. Second attempt was to preheat a little with the MAP torch and run a few small beads. They cracked too.

I ordered some 308L stainless wire. There are a couple options for wire but this was the most affordable. When it got here, I loaded it up and got to welding. First though, I used a propane heater to heat the housing up to 200 degrees and then went to it. I welded small sections at a time, on opposite sides of the housing and alternated sides to keep the thing from warping. After each weld, I used a sharp pointed slag hammer to 'peen' the welds to help keep them from cracking. It took a little while to get it all done but it came out pretty good.

Next, I fabbed up a 'truss' using C channel. I will be mounting my center brake flex line to it, so I drilled a hole in it and welded a nut to the back side for a retainer bolt.

Then, came fitting the whole mess up, making some extra gussets, and finally a removable brace to the rear diff cover.

Used a few pieces of C-channel for a truss mount and to make some 'flats' for the bump stops to hit on. Figured it would add some strength to the housing.

The inner plate for the traction bar is welded directly to the center section but is heavily braced to the other plate, which is welded to the axle tube as well as to the truss. Fingers crossed that none of it goes anywhere. It should take a lot of force to break it free.

[chuzie]

I'm diggin the piggy porn. Keep it coming. That axle is sexy!

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

[broncosbybart]

Ok then! Next up was the housing rebuild and ARB install.

Cleaning up the inside of the housing was NO FUN! Weather has sucked and motivation has been low. Got out the scrub brushes, the solvent, and the gloves.

After an afternoon of that, it was on to the work bench. I did it in stages, a few hours each night and got it done.

The 14 bolt is very much like a 9" and is very easy to work on. I did add a solid shim pack in place of the preload crush washer and did use a new u bolt style yoke in place of the stock metal strap style drive shaft yoke.

One hiccup was the ARB itself. The holes for the ring gear were too small and had to be reamed out some for the bolts. Nothing is ever straightforward...

[broncosbybart]

It is all set up, gears are good, and axles are back in. I had to use 1/2" allen head bolts on the flanges as the hex bolts were too big to allow the wheel to fit over them. Even with the allen head bolts, I had to grind the head diameters down a bit for the wheel to fit over them.

These are the only pics right now. More to follow. The weather has really kept me from wanting to work on it.

[chuzie]

Nice patterns.

So the wheel didn't supply bolts? What are the allen heads rated to?

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

[broncosbybart]

Hope everyone got out there today and got something done! Beautiful weather!!!

I knew that my description would be hard to follow. Here are the pics. The allen heads are for the axle flanges. Full floater baby!

Put some new poly bushings in the leaf springs, cut down the extra length on the new center bolts and Barnes HD U-bolts, and got it back under the frame. After that, I put the body back down on it to get ready for some more body work. Taped off the excess body fat that needs to get trimmed off to match the remainder. Should get some more stuff done tomorrow as the weather is supposed to be beautiful once again. Don't forget to set your clocks back!


Hmmm, Hmmm, Hmmm. Hey Beavis, he said floater.

[nhopman]

Don't forget to set your clocks back!

Don't you mean forward??

Nice work by the way.

[broncosbybart]

Thank you. And I guess it is forward if you want to get all technical about it. But, I'm loving the extra hour of daylight.

Got all the areas I wanted to cut marked with masking tape to make guide lines to follow and got out the cutting discs.

While I was there, I closed up the antenna hole and the marker light holes in the fenders. She's a 67 and wouldn't have come with the marker lights. These fenders were from a later model. The fenders that came off were ok, but these were much better.

I used magnets on the back of the fender to hold the patch panels in place and tacked them in place. Magnets do mess with the welding process, so they were removed for finish welding once the panels were tacked in place.

[broncosbybart]

Been busy installing some stamped steel upper quarter panel guards. They needed to be cut to length and I am planning to install them by bolting them to the quarters and have started locating the holes for the soft top along the bed rails.


Started on another project too, got the WH warflares fit up and installed. Those flares don't come with any dimples as a guide for drilling. I ended up using masking tape as a guide and marking off 3" spacing for the screws, which turned out pretty good. They were all longer than what I ended up cutting the body at. Nothing the angle grinder couldn't fix. The residue that came from cutting them looked exactly like spider webs.