Bender - 2010 JKUR

[fiend]

So I took the Jeep to a little dirt and tested the lockers. Both work, in a dirt parking lot at least. So that’s nice. 
 

There are still leaks in the air system, but I’m not going to worry about it right now. I needed to get the lockers and sway bar working for the Rubicon/Fordyce trip in August, and I did that.  Maybe I will mess with a different thread sealant later. 
 

This morning I swapped in some different caster bushings. Added about 2.5 degrees of caster. So now I have about 8 degrees of caster and 4 degrees of pinion.  It drives very easily now.  Tracks straight, not a lot of effort to keep it going straight on the freeway.  Slow speed parking lots etc are easier than before given the reduced scrub radius allowed by the 4.75” BS wheels.  The SD60 axle also seems to have a few more degrees of turn angle than the PR44.  So win-win-win.  
 

Remaining items on the punch list are to adjust the parking brake cables (so the parking brake actually works) and change the rear differential oil.  I’m supposed to do a 500 mile break in on the gears, but I don’t have time to get that many miles before the Rubicon trip. I’m at 350 now. That’ll have to do. 

[AJK]

Great news. Yeah the e brake is a PITA easy just PITA.

 

How bad is the leak? Is it purging everything few seconds or minutes?

[Jdofmemi]

Sounds like you are just about ready to go

[fiend]

1 hour ago, AJK said:

Great news. Yeah the e brake is a PITA easy just PITA.

 

How bad is the leak? Is it purging everything few seconds or minutes?

the e brake is a PItA. It’s tough to adjust on the 14 bolt because the jk control arm brackets are right in front of the adjuster window. 
 

The compressor kicks on About every 20-25 minutes. Like before. For lockers it doesn’t matter. But the evo no limits requires constant pressure. It’s workable for now. I’ll maybe try lock tite thread sealant next time. 

[fiend]

31 minutes ago, Jdofmemi said:

Sounds like you are just about ready to go

Yeah hopefully. I wanted to get a dry run in locally first, but that’s not gonna happen. So rubicon will have to be the dry run for Fordyce. 
 

i changed the rear differential oil today, so that’s done. A little glitter but not too bad. Messy job. 

[AJK]

43 minutes ago, fiend said:

Yeah hopefully. I wanted to get a dry run in locally first, but that’s not gonna happen. So rubicon will have to be the dry run for Fordyce. 
 

i changed the rear differential oil today, so that’s done. A little glitter but not too bad. Messy job. 

I like your confidence Greer.

[fiend]

13 hours ago, AJK said:

I like your confidence Greer.

Confident or foolhardy. Time will tell. 

[fiend]

Well ol Bender made the long drive up to Lake Tahoe. I brought along an IR thermometer to check the rear diff along they way.  After three hours at 65 in 95-100 degrees ambient, the diff was at 225. That was the highest reading I got. Most were around 200 or less.  Within spec, according to a little research. And no noise from the gears, at least none that I could hear over the racket from the tires and everything else.   So things seem good with my gear set up.  
 

I’m averaging around 14-14.5 MPG, which isn’t great but is a couple better than what I was getting before the axle swap.  The 5.38s probably helped vs the 5.13s.  Maybe my tire size programming is a little more accurate now too, who knows. I could probably average 16 mpg but for the mud grapplers. They pretty effectively turn gasoline into noise.
 

So this week will be the Offroad portion of the new axle test.  Hitting the Rubicon tomorrow through Wednesday.  Then Fordyce later in the week.  Last night I woke up in a cold sweat, having dreamt of a housing failure.  

 

Anyway, Bender has had Tahoe mode engaged! Always great to get the top off and the half doors on.

[AJK]

13 hours ago, fiend said:

Well ol Bender made the long drive up to Lake Tahoe. I brought along an IR thermometer to check the rear diff along they way.  After three hours at 65 in 95-100 degrees ambient, the diff was at 225. That was the highest reading I got. Most were around 200 or less.  Within spec, according to a little research. And no noise from the gears, at least none that I could hear over the racket from the tires and everything else.   So things seem good with my gear set up.  
 

I’m averaging around 14-14.5 MPG, which isn’t great but is a couple better than what I was getting before the axle swap.  The 5.38s probably helped vs the 5.13s.  Maybe my tire size programming is a little more accurate now too, who knows. I could probably average 16 mpg but for the mud grapplers. They pretty effectively turn gasoline into noise.
 

So this week will be the Offroad portion of the new axle test.  Hitting the Rubicon tomorrow through Wednesday.  Then Fordyce later in the week.  Last night I woke up in a cold sweat, having dreamt of a housing failure.  

 

Anyway, Bender has had Tahoe mode engaged! Always great to get the top off and the half doors on.

Very nice to hear and I think you're mile per gallon is the free Spin front end I went up in gas mileage as well going from 37 to 40s on 60s.

 

Rid looks really good Greer.

[Dave]

Good job & have fun this week.

[Jdofmemi]

Great work Greer!

 

Glad to see you and Bender back on the trail again. 

 

 

[fiend]

Well all the mods I recently completed were put to the test on Rubicon and Fordyce last week.  I had new axles, new lockers, new brakes, new steering, new springs, new lower control arms, and a new switch panel.  Everything worked well.  I passed up some of the harder obstacles on the Rubicon (Soup Bowl, Old Sluice) because I was still in the confidence building stage.  I'd done Soup Bowl before anyway.  In retrospect I should have done Old Sluice.  It will be there for next time.

 

The Rubicon was awesome, as usual.  Perhaps the best yet, since the weather was perfect, the lake/river water was warm, and the place was mostly empty.  Great wheeling, great camping, great company.  

 

Later in the week we ran Fordyce at the Cal4Wheel Sierra Trek event. Those guys put on a fun event. Hats off to all the volunteers that get the trail in such good shape and are stationed at the main obstacles to spot folks through.  Aside from getting turtled near the beginning and needing a little tug, I made it through everything without issue.  The Jeep did great.  Happy to report that the ARBs worked flawlessly.

 

In addition to wheeling, my son and I did some lift-served mountain biking at Northstar resort before the Rubicon. What a blast.  Then, between the Rubicon and Fordyce, we took some floaties and "rafted" the Truckee River between lake Tahoe and the River Ranch restaurant. So much fun.  I was a fantastic week with family and good friends.  I'm bummed to be back home working, but stoked that all the work on the Jeep over the past 7 months paid off.

 

 

 

[KevinG]

Nice Job Greer!  Who left the shovel there?

[fiend]

1 hour ago, KevinG said:

Nice Job Greer!  Who left the shovel there?

Thanks!
 

I didn’t even see the shovel until I watched the video.

[AJK]

Just watched the video. Jeep looks great and smooth. Awesome job Greer.

[fiend]

16 hours ago, AJK said:

Just watched the video. Jeep looks great and smooth. Awesome job Greer.

Thanks Alan. I pretty much just followed the spotter’s directions.  Another person in our group did that and crunched a couple of fenders. So I got lucky.

[Jdofmemi]

3 hours ago, fiend said:

Thanks Alan. I pretty much just followed the spotter’s directions.  Another person in our group did that and crunched a couple of fenders. So I got lucky.

Oh, I think more than luck was involved. 

 

Good driving on display

[Gruff]

Cool video - nice driving! Looks like such an awesome trail. Someday.....

[Jdofmemi]

3 hours ago, Gruff said:

Cool video - nice driving! Looks like such an awesome trail. Someday.....

You should come out the week of Sierra Trek. It's a yearly event. 

 

 

[Thor]

On 4/16/2022 at 5:38 PM, fiend said:

In with the new …

I've been 4 wheeling four years, but slowly getting into more mods, just put 37" Pro Comps and KMC Grenade Beadlocks, but I have no idea what this orange housing does? I mean, I do know a tire attaches to it, and it looks badass but what are it's advantages? N00B here.. bare with me.. lol

[fiend]

6 hours ago, Thor said:

I've been 4 wheeling four years, but slowly getting into more mods, just put 37" Pro Comps and KMC Grenade Beadlocks, but I have no idea what this orange housing does? I mean, I do know a tire attaches to it, and it looks badass but what are it's advantages? N00B here.. bare with me.. lol

Haha no worries. The orange things are called knuckles.  These are made by Reid racing. When retrofitting a 2005+ ford superduty Dana 60 to a JK, one of the things you need to deal with is steering. You want to raise the tie rod (so it doesn’t hit stuff) and also raise the drag link (so you don’t get bump steer).  There are various ways to approach this, including welding high steer arms into the stock knuckles, having the stock knuckles machined flat on top to accept a bolt on high steer arm, or using aftermarket Reid knuckles.  For various reasons, I went with the third option. 

[Thor]

I'm not worthy! 

[Thor]

On 8/27/2022 at 7:04 PM, fiend said:

Haha no worries. The orange things are called knuckles.  These are made by Reid racing. When retrofitting a 2005+ ford superduty Dana 60 to a JK, one of the things you need to deal with is steering. You want to raise the tie rod (so it doesn’t hit stuff) and also raise the drag link (so you don’t get bump steer).  There are various ways to approach this, including welding high steer arms into the stock knuckles, having the stock knuckles machined flat on top to accept a bolt on high steer arm, or using aftermarket Reid knuckles.  For various reasons, I went with the third option. 

The advantages are obvious, once you explained the knuckles, I mean it only takes one rock. My last trip to Walker Valley, I hit a rock and broke my steering stabilizer mount and had to wire it until I could get over to Truck Toys in Sedro Woolley, so they could weld it. Luckily, we had made a midweek trip on a Wednesday and they were open and willing to jump right on it. 

[fiend]

I have one of those tailgate tables. It’s great for food prep etc on the trail.  After a bunch of camping trips with it, it occurred to me that some lighting would be handy. I came across the American Adventure Lab tailgate table and saw they offered an LED strip light for it. I decided I could replicate that and maybe improve upon it. I sourced all the parts from Amazon (see links below). I used a white LED cut-to-length strip inside an aluminum channel with a diffuser cover. The channel orients the light strip at a 45 degree angle to both the tailgate and the table surface, so it doesn’t shine in your eyes. The channel adheres to the tailgate with some double sided 3M tape. I haven’t had a chance to do the permanent wiring, but here it is mocked up for proof of concept.  
 

 

In case anyone is interested, here are some links to the components I used. 

12V Waterproof LED Flex Strip -... Amazon.com

3M VHB Heavy Duty Mounting Tape... Amazon.com

Xings V-Shaped Aluminum Profile... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09SPZDG5D?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Okerny Customize Toggle Switch... Amazon.com: Okerny Customize Toggle Switch Panel 2 Gang Rocker Light Bar Switches Waterproof for Pickup Truck Car UTV Off Road Marine……… : Industrial & Scientific

[fiend]

So as noted earlier in this thread, I DIY’d a SD60/14 bolt swap during the first half of 2022. The goal was to have it done for my annual Rubicon/Fordyce run in early August.  I started getting short in time, so I got it all together and functional but didn’t have time to work out all the imperfections.  
 

One of those was the PSC ram set up.  On my old PR44, the ram body was mounted to tabs on the track bar bracket and the piston rod extended toward the driver side and connected to the tie rod.  On the SD60 I found the best setup was to mount the ram to tabs on the differential cover.  But out of laziness or oversight, I first mounted the ram body to the tie rod and the piston rod to the differential cover. That meant extra motion and flex of the hydraulic lines while steering. Maybe not a huge deal, but when I got back from my trip I decided to implement WCJ’s recommendation to flip the ram around.  While doing that I decided I didn’t like the stock ram fittings that PSC provides (45 and 0). They cause the hoses to point up, which made things very crowded at full stuff as the hoses were pushed up into the drag link, track bar, and AT lines.  So I replaced the fittings with 90 degree fittings pointed toward the passenger side. I looped the lines back toward the driver’s side and zip tied them to the track bar. So that reduced hose flex while steering and also took care of the crowding problem.  

 

Another issue was the front track bar.  I had reused my Synergy track bar because it was just long enough and still in good shape. But it had a funky bend that, in certain flex situations, could pinch the PSC hoses against the drag link.  So I replaced it with an RPM Steering TB that has a different shape and provides more clearance for the hoses. It also uses Johnny Joints, which are better for my particular situation than the “dual durometer” bushings on the Synergy TB. 
 

Finally, when I installed the SD60 and did all the flex tests with the coils removed, I found that if the axle was fully stuffed (both sides) and the steering wheel was turned hard driver, there was interference between the drag link and the tie rod on the driver’s side if I ran 3” bump stop like I had on the PR44. In all other flex scenarios the 3” was fine.  I reluctantly added another inch of bump stop, which addressed the issue but obviously cost me some suspension travel. After swapping in the RPM track bar and doing some more flex testing, I decided that the odds of a full stuff/hard driver scenario are low enough that I could safely go back to 3” bump stop.   Hopefully that turns out to be true. 
 

Heading to Big Bear this Saturday to trail test the latest mods.