Varg In Jeep's Clothing

That’s a good question, and I wondered that myself. I don’t know the math it would take to figure it out, so I just laid it out in 1:1 scale.

I cut two strips of 3 1/8” cardboard to imitate the axle tube. I taped one strip to the edge of my counter top. I laid the other over top to total 31” (the length of my long tube) and taped the bottom left corner to the first piece.





I slid the bottom right corner up 1/8” to simulate the shrinkage in the welded area, then I taped the top left corner to keep that from moving. Then I removed the tape on the bottom left corner and brought the bottom right edge back down flat to simulate the flame-straightening. The end result?
Less than 1/64” of overall loss.

 

Something I saw back in the early 1980's while working in a shipyard is what sparked my memory and curiosity. We built an large structural tank section for the ship we were constructing from heavy plate steel that was approximately 40ft square. The deck was heavily oil canned from all of the welding. A crew was sent to work to straighten the deck. With their torches they shrunk all of the distortion out of the deck. They also reduced the size of that deck by 1 inch.

 

One step closer to “done.”

The shocks are now 1 7/8” from the tires. If they still rub, oh well. The only thing left is wheel spacers, and that’s not happening.



Driveshaft angle is much better. No more vibrations. I still need to droop the axle and see if I need to make any alterations to the limiting strap. Tilting the pinion made the upper joint angles worse at normal use, but it effectively shortened the strap at the same time, so any issues with maxing the CV joint angles at droop might have cancelled themselves out.

 

I checked droop... when the axle is suspended by the strap, I can feel the CV joint make contact where it’s maxing out, but it causes no resistance. I’m going to leave it and see if it gives me any issues.

I strapped my helmet cam under the center crossmember to see what’s happening with the axles. Everything looks pretty good. I see a little wobble in the right rear wheel; looks like the Rodeo axle is bent a hair. I’ll pull the wheel at some point and see. Luckily it's the long side; a junkyard replacement should be easy to source. Also, there’s weird movement at the trans mount, I need to check if something is loose.

I know I've said it before, but I am so, so pleased with this thing. It handles like a sports car on the road, and it somehow has gobs of traction offroad, even with 26psi in the tires and the sway bar hooked up.

Some video highlights....
Start in 2-high -
0:49 - washboards
2:50 - got a little squirrelly on the ice
4:30 - if I did that with my car, I would’ve crashed
5:15 - Sasquatch sighting
Switch to 4-low -
6:25 - some twisties that test the LSD
7:18 - the hill @Fireball and @47v6 were referencing; no idea how this thing just walks up it
9:55 - back into 2-high to check axle wrap

 

Nitpick much?

 

Well, the transmission mount bracket was loose.

 

Did you jump it and bend the axle?

 

Not yet.

 

DO IT !!!!

 

amazing how much pinion movement there is on the rear axle. Cool to watch!

 

I just got an appointment to get the title work done for this and swap the tags from my car. April 29th was their first opening.

 

Totally cool!!~

 

There. Are you all happy? They match.

 

Nice

So how do you like the coil spring set-up so far ?

 

MUCH better!

 

So far, it’s pretty incredible, but I haven’t had a chance to drive it much but around the property.

 

Having ridden in it once, it rides and handles like a car and has great traction climbing the hills around his property. Seems to flex well even with the front sway bad hooked up. You can get a tire off the ground but it takes some effort.

 

x2

 

I like! They look great.