Xj88

I think he was/is a tard.

sreeb

Got the crossmember cut off.

3 of 4 captive nuts have a busted bolt in them. Could have been worse, he was 8 for 8 of the back bumper bolts.

I'm going to soak them with kroil for a few days before I do anything to them.

sreeb

Looks like I have a little rust in the floor pan. I hope to spend some quality time with my mig this weekend.

This is pretty much the extent of the problem. Either the muffler/cat interfered with getting a good undercoat installation or they cooked the undercoat which promoted rust.

The previous owner obviously knew about this but didn't say anything. I actually the thermal insulation above the muffler but didn't connect that it was supposed to be installed above the floor pan, not below it.

I also have those convenient access holes for the cross member nuts.

sreeb

I haven't posted for a while.

Floor is now welded up. Root cause of the rust may be a water leak under the dash. Hard to tell which side it started from since so much of the floor was cut away when I got it.

I haven't fixed the leak but it is summer so I probably have a few months before it rains again.

I suspect the cowl fresh air inlet is the leak source. I need to fix the AC so I'm going to confirm the evaporator isn't the source of the freon leak before I try to fix the water leak.

Carpet and interior is now back in. I found a recommendation to power wash the carpet while it was out of the car. This worked great. I wondered about adding soap but my carpet sudsed up nicely when I first hit it with water.

sreeb

I see your point here. I also wasn't too sure about jacking using the bumper which looks like the only place to use my farm jack in the rear.

I opened up the sheet metal on the back, welded up some extra bumper supports from 1/4" plate and welded them to the back of the bumper. These replace the existing nut strips. Kind of crude (my freehand plasma cutting leaves a lot to be desired) but I think the jeep will rip in two before the bumper comes off.

Note that you can see the end of the shackle bolt through the hole. I think it should be possible to spray penetrating oil on it through the existing slot for the factory nut strips if it is hard to get loose.

sreeb

This weekend I installed hd engineering low profile shackle relocators in hopes of fixing some of the problems associated with the sucky RC 4.5" leaf springs.

I had already dealt with the nut strips when getting my rear bumper mounted so no problems removing the bolts.

I have been planning to do this for a while so I also drilled an 1/8" hole so I could spray penetrating oil on to the upper shackle bolt nut. After a month of spraying a little oil in every time I walked by the jeep, the shackle bolts came out with no problems.

I used a plasma cutter to remove the original box which made the job quick and easy but was a little scary given the location of the gas filler line. However none of my fears of the jeep going up in flames were realized. Probably 15 minutes of cutting and grinding total for each side.

Fit looks good except for the bumper bolts. I had already removed the captive bumper nuts on the back edge in favor of 7/16" bolts. The bolt heads didn't clear (and I don't thing the captive nuts would have either) so I am going to have to notch the brackets a little.

sreeb

I notched both sides for bolt clearance.

Right side pretty much mirrors the left.

The cage tie ins need a little trimming to fit flat.

sreeb

Everything bolted in OK until I went to install the shackle bolts. The included bolts are 9/16. The original bolts are M14x2.0. So the new bolts are 10 thou bigger. Not much but they would be a press fit in the factory shackles. Given that I want to be able to try different holes in the brackets and may change shackles in the future, I'm not pressing them in.

I don't have a 9/16" drill bit (and may not have a portable drill it would fit in).

So I'm stuck until I get a couple of M14 bolts.

sreeb

Got my M14 bolts and immediately realized I had overlooked a couple of things.

First, the gas filler shield blocks access to the back of re-locator. It has to come off.

And I didn't finish grinding the cut edge on the side with the captive nut flat because there was lots of clearance between it and re-locator. Lots of clearance but not enough so I could insert the nut.... I had to pull both re-locators off and do some grinding.

Now all reassembled and torqued down.

The M14 bolts fit perfectly. It should be back on wheels tomorrow.

sreeb

Shackle is in the 2nd (back from the engine) lower hole.

I put it back on its wheels.

At first glance, shackle angle looks excellent. However, when I try and bounce, there is no compliance.

Looking closer, the shackle is binding in the relocator.

It looks like the stock shackle needs to be placed in the 3rd hole back or I need to clearance the relocator some.

Next step is to move the shackle to the 3rd hole. If that doesn't work then probably move to a new set of shackles.

sreeb

Shackle now relocated to the 3rd hole. This yields and angle of ~25 degrees. Not perfect but much better than it was.

Dr. Doom

I was ready to order those this week. I'm glad i saw the problem with the stock shackle. How much trimming do you think is needed to get optimum shackle angle. Also gain loss of height? Thanks

sreeb

Unless you have longer than stock shackles that are currently at near 0 degree angle, I don't think you will reduce the height in any significant way. Remember that each inch at the shackle end only changes the axle by 1/2".

Mine went from about -25 degrees to +25 degrees resulting in no change in height.

I do expect my rear suspension to function much better now though.

Note that what I got was with my jeep and my set of RC 4.5" full pack springs. Your setup will likely be different.

I'm not sure I would improve anything by trimming. Mine bound at right around 45 degrees. If they hadn't bound, my angle might have been greater which would be too high.

Mine may well be about perfect once my hatch is fully reloaded with the crap I take everywhere and a full tank of gas. Now that my springs can flex, I may also get some sag.

I think the stock shackles are simply too short to work well with a highly arched spring so I intend to get longer shackles. I anticipate that I can install them without changing the lift height now that I have more adjustment options.

To answer your original question about how much trimming, very little and nowhere that looks like it would seriously weaken the bracket. If you go that way, take your shackle off so you can fit it before installing everything on the car. There is no way you will be able to use the first hole. The 3rd hole works OK without any mods. The 4th and 5th holes don't change the bolt location much so it would be pointless to install the brackets if you expect to use them. The whole top row of holes is hopeless with the stock shackle.

This only leaves fitting the 2nd bottom hole as something you might want to trim for.

sreeb

Now with RC adjustable shackles installed. The suspension seems to be working much better at this point

sreeb

I tried flexing it a little in the front yard.

It immediately became apparent that I can now stuff the rear tires.

Tires, installed by the PO, are Goodrich 33x12.5 AT on the stock rims. On the level, there is very little clearance between the tire sidewalls and leaf springs.

But very little is enough since it can't go anywhere right? Actually the clearance does disappear when you flex it some. I am going to get some spacers for the rears and do some trimming of the rear fenders.