And it all begins to come together.

Well, now that all the parts are here and the frame has been boxed it was time to put legs on the jeep again. The plan was fairly simple. Use YJ leafs for an SOA, mounted outboard on the front and right on the frame on the rear.

Luckily a friend of mine who is a far more experienced weldor than I offered his services for the project. This was a god send, my welds are ok, but certainly not certifiable and his are. On the first evening we assembled the rear end. Basically we measured half the spring distance of the spring and used that length to create the centerline under the stock bump stop locations. The hangers were welded on first then the leafs were mounted. Once all of that was done, we placed the axle under the jeep and used a jack to tilt the pinion up and tacked the hangers on. We can't get a completely accurate angle till the tranny is in but we estimated after a few measurements.

We ran into a couple special problems on the rear. Since I'm using a stock D18 transfer case I had to use a axle with an offset pumpkin. This caused us to weld the spring perch on the housing on the passenger side, just like on the front axle. Not a huge deal, but I did have to get another u-bolt and u-bolt plate custom made for the application. Once that was done and the axle bolted up, I put the shafts back in and the brake hardware on and put the tires on, I was so tired of looking at it on jackstands. Once that was done we measured out the front and welded 3x3x ¼ " angle iron to the frame to start the outboard hangers. By this time it was getting late so we decided to stop for the night. We picked up again a couple nights later and finished the outboard hangers and hung the axle. Basically we welded stock CJ7 rear hangers to the angle iron then braced the whole thing up with a piece of ¼ " plate to gusset the hanger. Then hung the springs and repeated the same process as we had done on the rear to line up the front. When all was said and done the caster was pretty much right and the driveline angle shouldn't be too severe.

Basically this completed the suspension, that just left rebuilding the front outers and putting the tires on her. This process included all new bearings, seals, and joints. Eventually I plan on putting in Warn's new front axle shafts which are beefier and use snap rings to retain the u-joints instead of c-clips, which I hate. Now that all of this is completed the tires went back on and I truely got an idea of the size this will be in the end. I also tried to use my 48" hi-lift to jack up the rear enough to change a tire and it wasn't tall enough, so off I went to pick up a 60". Now I just have to find a place on a CJ5 that's long enough to stow it.

Outboard spring hanger

Below are details of the shackle and the spring perch.

Outboard shackle hanger	The perch on the diff housing

Back