Not yet man! I don't want to mount them until the beads are done. Hopefully this week! I wish I could update it more, just haven't had a ton of time to work on it lately. Sucks. I should have the stiffeners welded up this week, I'll def. shoot some pics of that progress.

 

what width and backspaceing do those wheels have in the pic with the 9" under it?

do you think that you could run them on the front without the hubs sticking out past the tire?

 

I haven't measured the exact back spacing yet. I do know they have less offset than my old wheels, which is what i was going for. With the axle being 6 inches wider I wanted the wheels to have less offset than before.

I do know the wheels are 8" wide. Once the beads are welded on they will be 9" wide, plus I'm running a 13.50 wide tire. Here's a pic of them mounted on my buddies Scout they were on, you can see in this pic they do not stick out at all, and those are 12.50 tires.

 

soooo....on a d44, the hubs are actually tucked a decent amount up in the wheels? heck it looks like your only about 3 inches wider then a stock axle with low backspaced wheels.

now you got me wanting to just bite the bullet and hunt up a f150 to rob the axles out of

 

I like how this is turning out!! It's def came a long way from day one that's forbaure!! Sent you a pm btw

 

I'm anxious to see how the wider axles look on it!!! This is a sweet rig man!!! Subscribed!

 

I'm sold, great build... Keep up the good work.

 

so how exactly did you secure the carrier to the rear hatch? i see the set up but did you use bolts or screws? the rear hatch is fiber glass right?

 

Yes, the rear hatch is still fiberglass. There are two plates up top, like 3" x 4" X 1/4" plates with four bolts through them, I opened up the backside enough to get some large 2" washers on the back side of each one to help spread the load. It has worked flawlessly for over a year now.

 

Now for a couple updates.... Things have slowed back down a hair, enough to start putting some more wrench time to this pile of Jeep.

This little guy made his presence known on feb 16th, our 3rd boy.

Kade Cory Nickel, Born Feb 16th, 4:10 AM. Mom and baby still doing great.

 

I found these wheels for sale on a local website for 50 bucks, yes that was for all four. In awesome shape. These should give me a couple more inches of offset.



My buddy finished cutting my new beads on his water jet. Went with a little different design.

 

Started on my arms last night. I got surprisingly far. I've seen on the net some people having problems with the design i'm doing. They cut the slit in the pipe and it weakens it at the end of the factory arm where the pipe slides over. (if that makes sense) I called up one of our pipe suppliers and told them I wanted something in a 2" thick wall, well this is what I got.



2" (2-3/8" OD by XXH wall (.436 inch) which has a 1.503 inch ID, which will be perfect for my tube adapters which are 1-1/2 inch OD.

Plus they gave me a 16' stick for free, so why not. At least I'll never have to worry about bending them.

Cut the factory arms....



Here's the first one.. I was pleased with the outcome.

 

I will be pre-heating the cast arms and burning them in today or tomorrow. Once the arms are done the next update pics will hopefully be of the 44 going in. I now have the cross member done, arm brackets done, arms done, the track bar i'm using is already on the axle, once the axle is under I will just need to build coil buckets (should be pretty easy) and a track bar bracket. I already picked up a pitman arm reamed for my 1-ton tie rod ends, so i'll just need to swap the pitman arm. I will probably have to modify the length of the drag link also, i'll deal with that when I get there.

 

Progress a home has been slower than I wanted, thats what happens when you don't have the proper tools, so Ive been working on solving that issue. Picked this little guy up, Hobart Handler 187 230V. I dig it.



Check out my pre-schoolers school work... I've got him trained well....

 

Congrats on the new baby! We just had our 3rd at the end of January also. Oldest is a girl. Middle is a boy. And baby is a girl. So u just gonna weld the pipe to the cut arms? This is awesome man! I think I'm gonna use ur tire carrier idea!