71 Wheeling Rig

That literally made me bust out laughing!

 

I've been waiting to use that.

 

Oven Cleaner.

 

Yeah, once I get the case stripped I think I'm going to do that then hit it with the pressure washer.

 

Beat me to it. I was gonna say hit it hard with oven cleaner (let it sit) then pressure wash it. Worked great for me

 

I have been running 1" longer than stock shackles on my 3B for close to 50 years now and they work fine. Two things: 1) the bushings need to be in good condition, and 2) it helps to have welded, rigid shackles like Roy's. That should eliminate any roll for all practical purposes. I am using grease-able delrin bushings I made and the shackles are 3/8's x 2" with a tee welded in the middle.

 

Shackles painted all purdy like:


Installed and properly torqued:




The Jeep sits much more to my satisfaction now:


The old shackles were really bad. Look at those ovalized holes:


They did a pretty good number on the bolts:


I took it for a 45 minute drive to fill up all of our gas cans:


The drive covered gravel roads, a paved back road with lots of Frost heaves, and a 60mph highway. It did pretty good. It does have a little of the roll steer Rich M was talking about. If the Jeep rolls to one side, it gently steers away the other direction. It's noticeable but slow and not annoying. It doesn't drive as well as it did with the stock length shackles due to the roll steer and camber loss, but it still drives pretty good. I'm going to leave the 1" shackles on. It has actually helped my bumpsteer. With the stock shackles and the BDS springs, my drag link was uphill from the steering box to the knuckle. Now it's almost level again.

 

Glad it worked. I think mine is exacerbated by soft springs, low tire psi ( for contact pattern) and a PTO winch with 150' of 3/8 cable.
On paved road it's awesome. Hit some low spots on a secondary road it gets frightening oscillations almost like death wobble. A 12.7-1 steering box doesn't help....

 

Agreed. I notice it more on gravel and bumpy secondary paved roads. Drives great on the smooth highway.

 

do you steer in seconds of angle?!?

 

Didn't actually do any work on the Jeep today, but we went for an hour long family drive. It's hard to make time to work on it when it's more fun driving it around.

On the way home, I crossed it up in the ditch again. The longer shackles seem to deal with it fine:




I took some pictures of the compressed springs to get and idea of what bumpstop length I need. The compressed side in the rear:


The compressed side in the Front:


I didn't have a tape measure with me, so I'm guessing I need a bumpstop between 4-5" on both ends. I orderde four of these XJ bumpstops last week and they showed up today:


The are just over 4". I may need to make a 1" or less spacer to go with them. I need to crawl under Jeep and figure out how I'll mount them:

 

Installed the XJ bumpstops today.

They are the same idea as the stock ones, just a little wider and a lot taller:


I used the old one to mark and center punch the holes on the new one:


Started with a drill:


Then turned them into slots with the angle grinder. Not pretty, but it will work. I used grade 8 washers when reassembling to bridge the gap:


I needed to use the angle grinder and make some bolt head clearance notches in the rubber. That stunk up the shop:


And installed. Front:


Rear:


The lengths look really close to what I need. I'll have to flex it out again to see if I need to trim them. If I do, the Sawzall should take care of it.

Then it was time to disassemble the T18. Started by draining:


Top cover off. Some of the shift fork plastic inserts have broken but the transmission is in nice condition:


Pulling the front bearing. I had a bear of a time getting the small bearing retainer snap ring off the input shaft. It kept slipping off the pliers. I finally got it but chipped the grove it sits in. I have a spare shaft so I'll probably use it:


The rear snap ring came off with no issues and the bearing pulled out easily. Cluster ready for removal:


This cat:


Cluster out:


Next was the counter shaft. It pounded out without too much effort. I need to make a dummy shaft out of dowel or something for re-assembly:


Unfortunately, the reverse idler shaft doesn't want to budge. I sprayed it with some penetrating oil and stoppped for the night. Tomorrow, I'll use the propane torch to heat the case around the shaft to see if it will come out. Once that's out it's cleaning time:

 

Woodford if I recall, great progress!

 

Yep, Woodford. Named after the great bourbon whose color he matches.

 

That transmission is in great shape

 

tis indeed

 

Tried to get the reverse idler out with propane torch heat, penetrating oil, and lots more pounding. It didn't budge.

Then I got creative with hooking an angle iron in the notch and using screw drivers to wedge it out. It didn't budge:


The I made an inverse puller (pusher?) with a 1/2" bolt a nut and a socket. It didn't budge:


Then I used a fine thread 1/2 bolt from the bearing splitter to get more pushing force and it didn't budge.

I gave up. The only reason I wanted the gear out was to clean the case with oven cleaner and the pressure washer. I'm sure I could get this out with the real torch and making a custom C-shaped arbor for the press, but the cost/value proposition was declining rapidly. I decided to hand clean the case without contaminating the in-place gear.

I started with the scraper, then mineral spirits with a wire brush, and a final wipe-down with brake cleaner. It's cleaning up pretty quick. I've got one-side, the back, and the bottom done:




Still have the last side, the front, and rinsing out the inside to go:


There was a decent amount of metal stuck to the magnet in the bottom of the case. Makes me glad I'm throwing in a rebuilt kit while I have it apart for the D18 adapter:

 

I forgot to credit ITLKSEZ for the XJ bump stop idea. He told me there were some Jeep ones that looked perfect for the task and I hunted them down. They seem like a nice near bolt-in solution for only $17/ea. They can be trimmed to length if needed.

 

XJs had like 5 or 6 different rear bump stop varieties over the years. I have the 3.5” versions on my 3b that are narrower and more wedge-shaped. There was also a foam version that was around 4”, and a few different angled versions.

 

Yup, I have the exact same Bumps on my Cj. I used a Saws-All to cut down the fronts by about an inch - no problem.

For mounting - I used one of the stock CJ mounting holes for one end of the stop and used a big-ish 3/8" self drilling screw for the other end.