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It's now winter again and time to tweak a few things. First up is the front suspension: moving the track bar again and gaining some up travel.
This time I decided to move the track bar in front of the diff and below the drag link. I had to make new mounts on the axle and on the frame. I lengthened the track bar 4" to match the drag link, and kept the bends as it helps it clear the pitman arm.
In this picture you can see how I placed the frame mount far forward on the p/s box bracket to clear the pitman arm throughout it's travel.
The front shocks were limiting up travel, and to bring them up higher I had to get rid of the upper mount adapter I made and push the shock up through the mount. I cut a square hole in the shock tower and welded on a piece of square tubing with a 1/2" hole for the bolt. This raised the shock 2 1/2".
As functional as the bump stops I made were, the center bolt would hit which makes bottoming out very harsh and loud. I made the rubber stopper hole 1" deeper using a hole saw and pliers to rip out the center. The center tube needed to be cut down too, and I cut an extra inch off the hole bump stop to gain up travel, now that my shocks weren't a limiting factor.
I had left out the rear corner body mounts as the boxes on the tub were rotten. I decided to connect the frame mounts to the roll cage as I did with the other body mounts. I started with the passenger side which was straightforward, but when I got to the driver's side I had to extend it far to get around the gas tank filler hoses. Regardless both will function the same. Here they are, driver's side on the left and passenger side on the right, and below is the passenger side mounted.
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More to come...