Figures, a worthy thread pops up after I sold my truck lol.
Should've planned for the Mickey 43! No, the 40s will work well. I run the 43 on another crawler I have. Those tires bite and are really soft for a DOT tire.
My tires are not DOT.
You pushed the limit a lot which your 4R, now I will do the same with mine.
You pushed the limit a lot which your 4R, now I will do the same with mine.
My mistake on the stickies. Yeah man, I too had the plans for what you have going on. Acquired a 14 bolt for it but ended up selling before things got going. I'd love to have felt the 5th swapped.
it's something for sure, especially with these monster tires. I can't wait to get it back out for the second time finally in a few weeks. I took it easy my first time out and it was amazing. Still a lot to get used to, but I have plans to go lots of places next year. I'm to close to a lot of great wheeling places in eastern TN and have lots of customers who wheel in SoCal and Oregon that I want to go out with too.
The 14 bolts are awesome. I have the "new" version of the 14 bolt axles on my Ram 3500, so maybe in 20 years when it dies with 400k+ miles, I can use those for my project at the time.
Extended bump pad so when compressed, the bump will stay on pad.
Plated entire frame from rear doors back on both sides: much stronger now.
Also have lighter of two springs out and will figure which weight to order and do so Monday. Now that we know the weight of the truck hopefully this time we nail it. It was just a bit to soft before.
Also wire brushed and painted everything which hadn't been touched before and second coat on all after that.
Last week while working on some small things we found that we had bad o-ring on one of the shocks. That was replaced yesterday and shocks put back on truck. Also after a misunderstanding with Howe we have drastically increased the length of the hose from reservoir to pump from less than 2' to nearly 9'. It's all done and just need one more fitting to have it driving again.
Plan is to have atlas installed very soon and go back to windrock around end of January. So very soon some more action videos.
Did some wheeling today on a friend's property in Lenoir, NC. Some fun rock gardens and big wet rock climbs. I hope to put a video together tomorrow.
Sadly and no cause known when done today and driving back the shaft on passenger front shock broke. These are my 16" Radflos and only the third time out with them. Very confusing and highly disappointing for us for sure.
Yesterday was our first shake down run after fixing bad o-ring in shock and changing springs to 350+300 in front and 300+300 in rear. Ride height is a little higher than before with lighter springs but a much better ride. Today was really about making sure everything works well together before going out on a much longer run. we are very close.
If you are going to watch here and just want to see final successful climb jump to about 4:45 mark.
I hope to have some more videos up soon to of what we did yesterday.
You're probably going to break something about every time out as you try and do things that you normally would'nt.
Maybe, this is why we are doing these test runs. We confirmed yesterday that under maximum compression the spring is just barely touching the steering knuckle. This was enough.
We believe after watching the one video on the rock climbing several times at the very end where the truck is flexing a lot back to back and up and down to get up, we believe once I stop you can here the shock breaking.
Nobody said putting the first 4 link in a 5th gen was going to be easy, but we are very very close to being done. It is unbelievably capable, and yes I'm 0-2 so far in terms of breaking. It would be unreasonable to expect perfection from beginning on something like this.
Below you can see the evidence of the spring where it hit the steering knuckle. We are investigating a taller bottom retainer which would clear the knuckle under compression pitched to one side or the other.
Ended up still requiring the two piece front shaft. Otherwise would of had to drop the atlas 5" and that is just not going to happen.
Right now it's clocked 23° and next rotation is 16° but it looks like it will be too much as the 1410's are about 2" larger than stock.
Now that it's just about in we can get the driveshafts ordered.
In separate news both front shocks sent out for rebuild just to be 100% certain. They will be rebuilt with the taller lower retainers to avoid hitting steering knuckle.
Sorry it's been a while but progress is happening.
The front shocks are back from being rebuilt and now with taller lower retainers. Even with them we have moved the lower shock mounts in just a little to be 110° certain we had zero issues. We thought we had zero issues the first time and the ever so slight interference of spring with steering knuckle, which barely nicked the paint on the spring, broke a shock shaft, and we don't want to do that again.
So that is all behind us and now finishing up the atlas install and awaiting driveshafts to be remade now that atlas is in. Today working on getting the triple sticks situated.
I'm very hopeful to be back out soon. I should have it at the Shamrock Shakedown in mid March at Windrock and in TX for the Toyota Jamboree the end of April.
Just a quick update as I have not done in a while and sorry no photos today. I went up Budbuilt on Friday and today. Since the photos from above about 3 weeks ago we have done the following:
1. installed the atlas and shifters. had to cut a hole in the front of the cab to route two cables in and then back to shifters.
2. installed new crossmember (actually made for LX460) just behind under the back of the atlas and made a skid plate to protect the atlas
3. Installed a skid if you will around the fuel pump on the frame rail. this is actually a recycled part from an LC200.
4. Rear drive shaft and stub shaft with carrier bearing came back this morning from Carolina Driveline and have been re-installed. The rear was shortened due to the atlas and 1410 put on atlas side. The stub shaft was also shortened and 1410 put on the atlas side.
5. Most exciting; I installed my new washer fluid bottle. I haven't had one for a while. I found a bottle from a plastics mfg in the midwest. I have it mounted on the passenger side between my remote oil filter and power steering reservoir, or in other words right behind the headlight.
If I'm healthy enough I will definitely have it out at Windrock this Saturday and Sunday. We have GoPro mounts set up for both axles and another somewhere else on top, so I should have some great videos to post soon.