From owner-fsj-digest-at-digest.net Tue Sep 13 05:12:54 2005 From: fsj-digest fsj-digest Tuesday, September 13 2005 Volume 01 : Number 2506 Forum for Discussion of Full Sized SJ Series Jeeps Brian Colucci Digest Coordinator Contents: Re: fsj: Re: Ratios fsj: reverse 180 goes turtle... fsj: turtle project gets interesting... fsj: 6" Lift disaster, need input Re: fsj: 6" Lift disaster, need input FSJ Digest Home Page: http://www.digest.net/jeeps/fsj/ Send submissions to fsj-digest-at-digest.net Send administrative requests to fsj-digest-request-at-digest.net To unsubscribe, include the word unsubscribe by itself in the body of the message, unless you are sending the request from a different address than the one that appears on the list. Include the word help in a message to fsj-digest-request to get a list of other majordomo commands. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2005 22:34:21 -0700 From: "Jim Blair" Subject: Re: fsj: Re: Ratios I'll have the early TH400 and QT with 16% O/D out soon. Just waiting to get a Dodge NP208 to put behind the modded 727 lockup I have. (then it will feel like overdrive on the highway when the converter locks up and have better low end for pulling) I just towed my son's '83 Cherokee Ultra Wide Trac (Chev front axle and Ford D61 rear) to his buddy's place where they will work on it in a shop over winter. Wouldn't I love to have that overdrive. I've been watching Gear Vendors on E-bay, but I drive so few miles a year that I'm still better off paying $3.00/gallon for gas. We just bought my wife a used sedan to drive to work and it gets twice the mileage that the previous rig did. It'll still take 4 or 5 years to break even on the expense of the vehicle purchase, assuming $3.00/gallon. Ben In a message dated 9/11/2005 10:32:51 AM Pacific Daylight Time, john-at-superdawg.wagoneers.com writes: 3.31's would have been a VAST improvement over the 2.72s that came on old blue... superdawg had 3.31's, being replaced with 4.10's, was going with the 4.0l, but going with the 6.2L Diesel, 3.73s would be ideal, but 4.10s will really make the dawg scamper and the 700r4 should give me free way speeds, or I'll have to go with larger tires... john ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:22:56 -0700 (PDT) From: john Subject: fsj: reverse 180 goes turtle... got a call from my son yesterday. seems he rolled an xj yesterday doing a reverse 180... :) no one hurt, used his xj to put the turtled xj back on it's feet. see what happens when I hide the sawzall? :) john ---- - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ** http://JohnMeister.com **** http://wagoneers.com ** Snohomish, Washington USA - where Jeeps don't rust, they mold ** http://freegift.net *** http://greatcom.org/laws/languages.html ** - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2005 21:19:23 -0700 (PDT) From: john Subject: fsj: turtle project gets interesting... as earlier reported, my son went turtle with an xj... turns out that the xj is now going to be a donor for an FSJ... my son is going to attempt to mate the 4.0L to a 727 in the '88 fsj. we know the bellhousings will mate up... flex plate is an issue, he doesn't have one... we'll see how this goes... he may be the first one to put a 4.0L from an XJ into an SJ (unless it's already been done...) then the axles from the turtled xj will go into his '87 (he found out that welded diffs aren't real good) and he'll take the turtled xj and make it an open top desert runner... :) like I said, see what happens when I lock up my sawzall? :) john ---- - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ** http://JohnMeister.com **** http://wagoneers.com ** Snohomish, Washington USA - where Jeeps don't rust, they mold ** http://freegift.net *** http://greatcom.org/laws/languages.html ** - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 00:08:30 -0500 From: JeepNut Subject: fsj: 6" Lift disaster, need input Hi all, I really need your ideas, so if you think I'm windy, and want to cut to the chase, go to the bottom and look for "my questions"... Been in lurk mode. Too busy, working 10-12 hour days, all of 'em for several weeks now... took a 3 day weekend finally... specifically to do the BJ's 6" kit and it has of course become a minor disaster... I don't intend to bash BJ's here, as I've never done this before, but I got told (and I'm sure it is true) that these conversions are done "all the time without problems". Why is it always me? I got it fully reassembled and ready for test driving late Sat night, having started it late Friday. Air tools paid for themselves again this weekend for sure. Test drive reveals bad noises and clicking/vibrations. Not driveable. Put it on jacks, dropped it in drive and jumped under. hmmm. D/C joint... binding, too tight, is angle too much? How could it be? These are done all the time without problems... ok, no biggie... Sunday run to parts store, rebuilt the front shaft, both u-joints and the ball/socket of the D/C joint and a new front u-joint. Discovered the cause of the vibrations in the ball/socket section of the D/C joint and modified as necessary, reassembled and all felt really smooth, worked great, got the drive train spinning again and no noise in the front shaft at all now, seemed fine. Another $110 -at- NAPA and I was just sure there would be no more problems. This all had to happen on Sunday amongst the other goings on that I had to be involved with... resulting in a late-in-the-day bash around the yard to "settle the springs" and test drive the thing. All seemed well, liked the ride actually, kinda bouncy going through some shallow cuts/ditches, but not bad at all. Cool. Gotta work tomorrow... Drove out the driveway this morning and got past 20mph and man-oh-man did the dance begin. I shoulda went home, but I really couldn't miss work. Just could not. Very bad vibrations, shakes the whole truck through about 35mph when it smooths out some but still very rough. Didn't want to drive it past 40-45mph or so. Still feeling, thinking, driving, wondering, got to work, talked to BJ's today and told them what was going on. Of course this is not generally what they run into... but they had some ideas for t/s and trying to figure out where the problem was. Unfortunately the rear drive shaft dropped out of the yoke in the back, 15 minutes from home tonight at about 8:30pm... this day started at 0530... Of course I called home, got the wife to bring my 8mm wrench, pulled the rear shaft, dropped it into 4HiLock (Thanks Rez for the Quadratrac!) and drove it on in. That satisfied 2 of the tests that BJ's suggested. 1. I now know that the rear shaft was the major issue this morning. 2. I now know that there is still some (much, much less, but still some) vibration being felt, so now this must be all from the front shaft. Maybe a little bit is "normal" and tolerable by the components, but after putting $110 worth of parts into that front shaft, I'd really rather it not be destroyed right away. So now,... what the heck to do? My questions: Having dropped the rear shaft, I would of course replace the Ujoints and assume that they just didn't like the newly created angles; they were not accustomed to that wear pattern, this caused the vibrations and they broke?? What are the chances that the rear shaft is somehow damaged by having been bouncing off the asphalt while still attached at the front? (until I could get pulled over and stopped) Can I just "roll check it" and see if it has any wobbles or is this stupid and I need to have it examined by somebody? I would think that if it doesn't wobble (not bent) and the ears aren't buggered up too bad to accept a UJoint then shouldn't it be alright? It was suggested and perhaps I should use the driveshaft from the Rez Runner. I've got most of the rest of the drive train. It was suggested that both the front and rear driveshafts from the Rez should be used with the rest of his drive train. I didn't simply because those driveshafts are rusty has heck from salt use, and the one's from my 88 were nice.... were... Does anyone else think there is any validity to this idea of the drive shafts "going with" the axles and xfer case? I don't like the idea of UNbuilding one front double cardan joint so that I can REbuild another old rusty shaft and double cardan joint... they're really not all THAT much fun to rebuild... and it's all rusty... does the rust matter really? Maybe I should just get over it with the rust? I understand that you really DON'T want to shim the front axle to flatten the driveline angles... causes driveability issues, so what do we do? I've heard of "drop transfer case"?? is that an adapter, or just what? Oh, and of course we're down to one car until I get this thing road-reliable. My wife is really "giving me the business" you can rest assured. I love the lift, how the heck do I make it work? Thanks all! JeepNut - -- This mail subject to change without notice. Text is slightly enlarged to show detail. No substitutions allowed. - ---------------------------------------------------------- '87 Street Comanche #24/100 '88 Grand Wagoneer '92 Cherokee Laredo '87 Grand Wagoneer (parts) '81 Wagoneer (parts) ...and they say there's only one... - ---------------------------------------------------------- Registered Linux user #287453 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 05:03:27 -0700 (PDT) From: elliott sydnam Subject: Re: fsj: 6" Lift disaster, need input U-joints blowing is to be expected if they are old. I would would definately install whatever steel shims are required with the kit on both axles. Did it come with shims? Should be 6* IIRC. Make sure that your axle U-bolt straps are torqued to spec to ensure you don't have any potential play there as well. Also, I'm pretty sure that going above a 4" lift requires new/longer drivelines and your's are probably so far extended that you don't have enough spline engagement to be stable. If you have slip joints popping apart and you aren't even articulating then you definately need longer drivelines. Check out Tom Woods Drivelines or High Angle Driveline. Elliott - --- JeepNut wrote: > Hi all, > I really need your ideas, so if you think I'm > windy, and want to cut > to the chase, go to the bottom and look for "my > questions"... > > Been in lurk mode. Too busy, working 10-12 hour > days, all of 'em > for several weeks now... took a 3 day weekend > finally... specifically to > do the BJ's 6" kit and it has of course become a > minor disaster... ------------------------------ End of fsj-digest V1 #2506 **************************