i've been getting bored with "that other site" so i'm gonna update this thread and hang out with you guys more. sound good?
lots happened, as you can see from the pic above. Built an axle: used TG's +3" shafts to make an IFS width axle, then used IFS hubs to gain an additional 3", but used stock offset wheels to bring the tires back in... its roughly the same width i was at before, but without wheel spacers and almost ZERO scrub radius...
Cut off all the mounts and tabs by the knuckle and saved them for later.
Tried the Harbor Freight pipe cutter and it broke after less than 5 minutes, so ended up using a cutoff wheel
Test Fit of the Mayem Metal Works 3" spacer (
Widening a front axle the right way. - Pirate4x4.Com : 4x4 and Off-Road Forum)
Clearanced the bottom of the axle. Stole the idea from 4Crawler (
4Crawler Offroad Products - High Clearance Kit for Toyota 8" Axles)
Made my own 1/4" slide plate
Before burning it in, i welded some nuts inside for the bottom stud holes, since they will be converted to bolts. This step was probably overkill, but i hate stripped threads!
then:welder:
Also burned in the spacer and ground everything smooth:
Short side knuckle ball welded back on. Set it at 9* of rotation from stock. I'll explain more later.
I cut a 3/16" grove to get a deep weld, then did a 2nd pass
then I moved on to the spring perch. Got it cut off (short side is a real pain since it sits on the side of the diff housing)
and then ground everything smooth:
Then prepped the new spring perches. I've been disappointed with many of the popular spring perches on the market since they sit so high off the axle. I really want to keep this thing as low as possible, so I went with rock-tactics low-profile perches. (
New! Low Profile Spring Perches - Pirate4x4.Com : 4x4 and Off-Road Forum) They are cut very well, but require a little welding since they do a relief cut to get the low-pro design
took me a couple hours to get the short side perch in position. Even though i relocated the perch 1.5" toward the short side, I still ran into the same issue as above where the spring perch is mounted on an angle where it rides up on the diff housing. Because of this, i had to cut the perch a little to get it to set level, but all-in-all it wasn't too bad.
red line shows the stock location of the perch. Moved it 1.5" toward the knuckle to account for the spacer
I don't know how guys rotate the knuckles without relocating the spring perches, it would have been much harder if i had to put it back in the stock location since the closer you get to the diff, the housing flattens out on the front and the perch rides up on the diff housing, causing all kinds of crazy angle issues.
Here's how I set the pinion and caster angles: knuckles 9* more than stock, spring perch 6* more than stock (pinion angle). So the difference (3*) will be added to the caster angle. I only did 6* on the pinion angle so that i can run a hp someday if i stumble across one for less than a million dollars.
Side note, these spring perch's sit about 1/16" LOWER than the stock ones! (7/16" lower than the stock short-side perch since it sits 3/8" higher than the long-side one) highly recommend them.