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Yeah, I'm going to pair those up with Bilstien 5100. The bastard pack and DoetschTec shocks I had were fine on the rocks but got on my nerves around town. Hoping for a good ride and end to bump steer. Will post up after next weekend.
Looking forward to it. Ive been driving my bosses 2011 JK with 3.5 re kit, and its not a good ride. Bad shocks and the bump steer is almost dangerous on the freeway.
In working with the geometry of this conversion the one number you can't change is the length of the drag link. With the wheels and gearbox centered the length from knuckle to pitman is fixed. So to achieve the equal and parallel outcome the track bar for me needed to be 33 1/2" +/- 1/8".
Originally I had the axle end TB bracket much taller with the mount hole almost 7" higher and about 1.5" outboard of it's original location. That caused problems and I ended up shortening the bracket with the mount being just less than 5" higher than stock and only about 1/2" outboard to avoid interference at full left lock. With that final I then just held the TB parallel to DL and fixed the frame location at about stock vertically but about 1.5" outboard of stock location.
So at this point with the axle centered and both the TB and DL parallel at my ride height both will have 3/4" slope from the driver side to the pass. I also have the sway links worked out and will post up pics and better measurements soon.
An expected gift of this conversion is flex. Holey excrement the does it droop now. With the sway links disco'd stock coils would fall out. The 3" OME springs come very close to going right in without a spring compressor.
There is however, something I discovered that I didn't expect as I was wrapping up last night admiring my work. As I was flexing the axle up and down checking for clearance issues and problems I realized I missed something earlier on. If I droop the axle from my expected ride height to fully flexed the wheels turn left. This is with the everything centered and key out of the iginition so the steering wheel can't move. From the leading edge of the wheel it's turned a bit more than an 1" left at droop.
It appears that with this setup the arc of the TB is still increasing the distance of the DL length causing the wheel to pull left. I didn't expect this and hope to hear from someone who's done this that I'm not missing anything and that bump steer will be undetectable under normal street driving.
Sounds like its going well. For the bump steer, the more horizontal at ride height the better. The less length change it will see. Also the parallel and length of the DL/TB. At that much flex some steering angle would be ok as long as you still have left and right to turn, Not like it forced the knuckle in to a full lock situation.
I know it's been a while. Endless distractions. Almost done or at least the wheels are on and it's on the ground. I'm sitting at 4 1/2 lift just as I expected. I had similar problem as others with OME leafs coming in with the plastic guides broken. Have to get replacements.
The toe is set and the axle and steering wheel are centered. Caster is only at 1 degree and I need to adjust LCAs. The TB and DL are 34.625 inches and as parallel as it gets.
The clearance at both ends of TB are really tight but do clear.
Believe it or not the DL does just passes under the TB bracket. At full left lock the knuckle DL arm just hits the TB bracket at the same time the stop engages. The tabs sticking up are for a cut down sway link that still uses a disco. You can see it in the top pic with the spindle nut welded to it.
I fear this side more. I initially had more clearance between sway and the TB bracket but after centering the axle it got closer. It worked better with the disco on the inside.
Does the axle side trackbar bracket have any other points of contact to the axle?
Can't wait to here how it drives.
MH
I'll get a pic from bottom. 1/4 plate that starts at bottom of old TB bracket and extends up with approx 30 degree bend at the spring bucket. A gusset on the inboard side that runs to top of axle. The outboard side has nothing above the spring bucket. If I whack the top of the bracket with a ballpeen it rings like a bell. Seems pretty sturdy but will gusset to top of C if it shows any sign of movement.
Here's a pic from earlier stage. This setup had numerous issues. While it did allow for the TB length without having outboard frame side and did get the axle end up out of the way of the knuckle arm it also was a problem at full stuff. Everything hit including the TB into the oil pan. This might however work with 6+ inch lift
The red line is approx where I cut it off and cleaned it up. The TB stud is a 3/8 bolt welded in from the back side. After cutting top half off I repositioned where it is now (now double 1/4) just barely clearing knuckle arm. I drilled a hole big enough in the existing plate for welded head of the bolt to sit in and welded flush on the back side. Was too close to coil and didn't want anything sticking out to rub.
After that I added the gusset on the inboard side and with the shortened height it seemed rigid enough.
Well time to close this one out. After I got it back on the road I ran into some issues (some self inflicted) and took a while before I could give a final report.
At first the steering was disappointing. Bump steer was gone but it was wondering pretty bad. I've had an issue with my steering box mounting due to steel plate welded to uniframe for the plow that was originally on the Jeep. Should have addressed it long ago and almost had a catastrophic failure. Fixed now after it pulled two bolts thru the uniframe and of course the wander got better but still needed more.
Another dumb thing was I forgot to put back the coil spring hold-down clips. I realized it when I went over a speed bump pretty quick and heard the coil snap back into its seat. The coils can move around quite a bit even with normal street driving. Once that was done things got a bit quieter which was a relief.
I also had bad vibes in front shaft because I got overzealous with the positive caster. Backed the caster down until vibes went away. At this point I was at 7 degrees so I dropped the drivers side down to 6.5 degrees and left the pass side alone. The cross caster helped more than I expected and now pretty good.
I believe I still have very minor front shaft vibe that I can barely pick up. I'm going to drop the caster a little more but would rather throw universals at the front shaft every year than give up handling.
Overall it's way better than it was before. Could be better but probably about as good as it gets with a lifted Jeep. The ride quality with the OME springs and Bilstien shocks is excellent. Highly recommend these. Was surprised at how nice the WJ brakes felt even though I had no issues with the XJ brakes but did run into another problem here.
I didn't discover this until a rainy day but my rears are locking up before the fronts. Harder to make happen on dry road but there if I brake hard enough. Trying to decide on adjustable proportioning valve or rear disk conversion.
Kinda burned out on mods for the time and just want to have fun for a while.
Engine: 4.3L with headers and full 3" exhaust system
Hi again. Sounds like you are almost there. As for the rear brakes, I am surprised they lock up before the front being medium size drum brakes. You would be better off with rear disc brakes. I used WJ rear brakes by making a bracket for them and welding it to the axle since I couldn't use the one off the donor vehicle. Not sure if you can use the bracket off the WJ D35 and have it fit. However I love my brakes. Nice balanced system and they stop so well with 31s that it can be almost a little too fast
Any updates on this? I finally got my lift parts, now ordering rest of the stuff for knuckle swap. Did you have to space the calipers out cause the WJ bearings? I have to read back threw this thread, but the 01 XJ bearings were longer making you not need to space caliper out if memory serves.
03-20-2018, 01:56 PM
