let me first say i miss this site, and i miss working on the trailduster, that being said man this jeep is fun, and its really nice you can build custom stuff by ordering off the shelf parts .... new thing for me being a dodge guy all my life


well i am past the point of no return .... the frame and plasma got in a fight and the plasma won

this is the final version of the truss with the upper control arms mocked in place, they will get gussets before i am done we just wanted to check clearances before we got to carried away



its new home under the jeep



this is hopefully going to be about ride height, still need to cut off the factory track bar bracket and the clayton bracket, turns out parts designed for a dana 30 no longer work with a dana 60, so reworking the track bar is a must



and the 14 bolt next to the dana 44

got a bunch more done this weekend, started by test fitting my new used poison spider corner armor



took all the shit out of the back of it

(compressors are for sale pm me if your interested)



then i proceeded to cut a big ass hole in the tub, i originally set out to try and avoid this but it had to happen to make the suspension work the way i wanted to and actually get some up travel



then i decided the emissions crap was to close to the tire b/c i planned to do some cutting but i did not want to re work all the factory lines, so i took it all apart and realized more cutting needed to happen, i am only posting this in case anyone else sees this and wonders if they can move all the crap

moved it all back a little over 2 1/2 inches



shock hoops welded in, the rear foot ended up over top of a hole in the frame and me and nick decided we did not like that so we plated a section of the frame with 3/16



took the plasma to the frame, still needs some trimming but its close



shock installed this is full drop



this is full bump



everything is just tacked in place right now i am getting my tires this week so that will be the real test to see if the tires contact the coil overs at full bump if they do its back to the drawling board

 
 

ok so i have been working on the jeep for a few weeks now without any real updates, that changed...  me and my friends worked 16 hours straight on it sat into sunday morning ... got a lot done for one days work

let me start with last weekends work nick and i made the lower track bar bar bracket, originally i planned to use the ruff stuff bracket but with my truss it just was not going to work



after the track bar bracket went in i could flex the axle and started to mock up the coil overs



full drop


put the hubs on made the steering, turned the wheel to see if it all worked, i knew it was gonna be close


better not have a bugger weld on this one


drag link and track bar are exactly the same length and they are within 2.5 degrees of each other so i am hoping that it will steer good on the road



put some springs on it installed the tripple rate sliders, tender coils (wow what a pain in the ass, have to figure out how to add oil to the shocks now) by this time it was about 12.30 am and we were running out of steam, we put all of the springs on backwards so they all need to come off



its now 1 am and we just realized that the hummer wheels wont fit over the hubs, i knew it was a problem but i had just forgot about it .... bust out the router wake up the neighbors we got wheels to machine :lol:



and we had to put the hood back on to give good visual effect

not bad for one days work

Nice job Tim!!!
JIm

Good to see ya still building!! It would be nice to see the CTD TD going soon . But I bet it is nice taking a little rest from it.
Jim