Long arm upgrade!

I got my long arm upgrade (lift kit without the springs and a couple of pieces). This is all part of my plan to put in my rear axle. So here is the stuff. I was disappointed that the stuff wasn't painted and that the general fit and finish was a bit crude. It can be tough to switch between working on an import performance car and an american jeep and the difference in quality of the finish and fit of the parts. BUT, the beefiness more than makes up for any shortcomings. Very beefy and well built in addition to the fact that I really like the design.

The UPS guy chuckled when he showed up to deliver the 8 packages that this whole mess came in. The first one he gave me was the skid plate below. If you look closely, you will see the UPS sticker on the plate itself. The guy was laughing pretty hard when I opened the garage and there was already an axle sitting in there stripped down and ready to be worked on.

And yes, I will be posting bike pictures when I work on them too. Unfortunately I haven't even gotten to really ride in 2 weeks due to vacation and then a cold. Tomorrow should be good for a ride though, so that will be nice.

A bit cleaner now

I have gotten the rust and all the paint off the axle now. The truss has been modified to fit the axle. Now all I need to do is to pull the old axle out of the Jeep and use that as a model to measure where to put all the brackets. Here is another pic of it.

Yes, I get pretty excited about axles. The other great thing about this is that if I screw it up real bad, I only paid 150 for the axle. If you read the 4X4 magizines, they would have you believe everyone is running around with 6K worth of axles. Seems a bit steep to me. Plus, building it is probably 75% of the fun.

Axles!

Alright, here we go, I will start it off right talking about axles. I am finally starting on my project to put new (used) Dana 44 axles in my Jeep. I found some info on line about using a rear axle from a Isuzu Rodeo and a front axle from a Jeep Wagoneer. I know kind of oxymoronic using those two vehicles in the same sentance. So, here is my Jeep:

It does spend to much time doing housework and not enought time on the trail, but I am trying to even that out here pretty soon. So, over a year ago, I found a pair of axles in a junkyard out in Shelton. I called my friend Rob to see if he would like to go junking with me (he loves this stuff, and he had a big truck). Rob was ready to go. We cruised out to Shelton and got the axles and a couple of interesting stories. Fast forward a year or so, and I finally start working on the darn things. I am focusing on the rear axle first. I have all the brackets cut off, and got started cleaning it up.