here's some updates

keep in mind I have been working on this since may, so some of the stuff is old





I sold the 44 to some guy to put it in his Cherokee So that'll help finance approximately 1/3 of what I've spent on 3 link and 60 parts so far

I wanted to start working on the 60. When I built the 44 I put it on jack stands and it fell off at least once and was generally unbalanced and unsafe. With the extra bulk of the 60 I wanted some better stands to put the axle on. I’ve got a nice little wheeled stool so I built these stands to be a decent working height from the stool. The base and the horizontal upright is 2x2 .120 wall and the top part where the axle will sit ix 3x4 .120, all the finest used steel from Sims



They worked out quite nicely and are pretty stable. Notice how clean the floor is…



After a solid hour and a half of grinding I had a bare axle, notice the floor now

The cast leaf spring perch on the drivers side sucked to remove. The tubes press into it so I had to cut the circumference of it first and then cut pieces out. Crappy work!




I think I went through 6 cut off wheels and an entire grinding disk today. Dirty and totally not fun work. But good news it’s done and I have more exciting projects to look forward to. For example… a little teaser of what’s to come



I soaked the kingpins in penetrating for a good 2 hours and tried to remove them with the 7/8 allen key I bought and 3 foot breaker bar. Nothing. I’ve heard horror stories of removing these things, so I’ll let them sit in penetrating fluid for the next week, maybe hit them with some heat and see if they come off.





Back at it this weekend. Made some good progress today. I did the cut-the-base-of-the-kingpin-trick and it worked beautifully. I cut about ¼” in across the base.



Got real nice and close, which I think is the idea.


After making the cut, I put my big allen key on it and wacked it 4-5 times with a hammer and it came loose real easily. This is def the way to go, I want to tell everyone I know with a kingpin 60 to do this, there is no other way!

I welded the whole truss off the axle and then put it on the axle. It warped slightly doing the bench welding from the heat so I stuck it in the 20 ton press and got it back in shape, did a little grinding to make it fight the axle real nice, then started burning it onto the axle.



I was doing a lot of pausing with the welder, both to keep from warping the axle/truss and also to let the welder cool as its rated at 30% duty cycle. In between welding I was unloading new goodies, lots of boring brackets and such, but the ballistic fab joints are worth looking at, beefy!

Done with a coat of primer

This truss was probably 2 hours of weld time. I went through an entire 2 pound spool and dented one of the big 11 pounders. Then I turned to starting suspension work. The frame was swiss cheesed from 2 sets of spring buckets and some of the goofy factory holes.



I welded this plate in

And then started welding up the lower tabs for the adjustable coil buckets I got from ballistic



With some heavy tacks, I put the upper piece on to make sure it was fitting and level



The top mount is notched so you can slide the plate back and forth a good inch. I’ll leave this unwelded until the axles under the truck so I can dial in exactly where I want the spring on the axle.



I moved the spring buckets basically as forward as possible without having to hack out the frame hump for the steering box and rebuild all that. It’s about 1.5” forward from where they were which was about an inch forward from stock. I was hoping to move it forward about 2” to keep the tires out of the body and help with approach angle but I think this is good and I wasn’t ready to do major frame re-construction. The passenger side has a weird hump that I’m planning to cut out and fill in with flat plate then gusset / fish plate as necessary.

I’m happy with the progress, but there’s a lot more to go! And the fun part is coming up… it’s about time to start making the important decisions about link bracket placement, track bar brackets, all that fun stuff…

This post was edited by KoJ on Aug 21 2013 12:28pm

Started with the passenger coil tower. Blank canvas…



On the top of the frame in this picture theres a black sharpie mark where the front hanger needs to sit. As you can probably deduce, the odd hump in the frame is going to be a problem.

So I did what any rational person would do and cut a hole in the frame.



Prepped, primed and ready for weld

Burned this in





Had to address this little gap

More steel and weld!



Mocking up the spring hanger.



Both set with heavy tacks

I slid the axle in place and measured from the top of the coil bucket to where I think the spring will sit on top of the axle and though I kinda knew it already, it was instantly clear that the remains of the giant TTB cross member was going to be a problem. Fire up that grinder again…




Removed a little bit hahaha All kinds of room now!