My latest Jeep Upgrade(s)
Or, how one thing leads to another.
By Steve Friend
Member of West Coast 4 Wheel Drive Club, Inc.
Back in Sept of 2001, my
wife and I, with some friends, headed over to do the Montrose, Co. trails. We meet more friends there that were coming
from
The Montrose trails are very
different than a lot of trails. I think because they are not necessarily built
like the Hammers trails, but are made by Mother Nature. The rocks are large and round. And there is water under them, at least there
was for us. I am not making excuses,
just comments. As you might guess, I had
some difficulty.
Where I normally walk over things, I struggled and was constantly hung
up.
My Jeep is a 79 CJ7. I had a 4 National Spring Lift, with 1 body
lift, 35 tires, 10 Steel Chrome rims, so I was up there in height, I
thought. My Tcase is/was an IH300 from a
Scout. My crawl ratio was 72:1.
Well, after seeing what
100-150:1 gears can do, more lift, and the larger 38.5
tires, I was hooked. I had to do something.
So, on the way home, I
stopped by Alcan Spring in
The project was broken into
two sub-projects. The
lift and tires, and then the Klune installation.
The first thing to install
and try out was the lift and the tires.
The new Alcan springs arrived about 2 weeks after I ordered them, and
the tires about the same time. Of
course, you cannot have new tires without new wheels, and my wheels were pretty
well thrashed anyway. So I ventured into
the unknown with aluminum wheels to try to keep the weigh down. When I went to pick up the 5 tires and
wheels, they completely filled the bed of my Dodge pickup, Ύ ton. Wow.
When I got them home, I weighed them to see if I had matched the weight
of my 35s. As it turns out the 38.5s
mounted on aluminum wheels weigh the same as the 35s on steel. Nice.
Still darn heavy at 110 lbs. each though.
Installing
the springs was pretty straight forward.
Of course the U-bolts were too long and the nuts were trashed, but that
is common with changing springs. I finished in time to do an easy run out to
Morongo Valley Days, after being invited out by Harry Robinson from Link Arc
and Premier Power Welder. The Jeep did
really good and I was about the tallest out there. My wife and I had to learn how to get into
this beast as it was tall. I never felt
top heavy and the springs performed fantastic.
The ride was really nice and stable.
And, I only rubbed a bit on the rear quarters, so new TJ flares were going
on and some cutting of the body was going to happen.
Next,
installing the Klune V.
All of the adapters, Klune,
etc arrived and was time to start.
After all was said and done, the length of the drive setup grew
10.5.
The installation for this
phase was going to be significant with some pretty interesting re-engineering
of the skid plate, rear engine (tranny) mount, anti-torque bracket, linkages,
etc.
Acme and included an
intermediate shaft. This adapter was a
bolt up and no problem. Fitting the
Klune V to the adapter is actually pretty kewl as you can use the Klune to
clock the Tcase to most any angle you want.
I wanted it as flat as possible.
Then, I needed an adapter from the Klune to my Scout Tcase. This was provided by Klune Industries and
again was a bolt up and included the intermediate shaft. Now, I had to play with various patterns of
skid plate designs, starting with the obvious and trying to use my existing
one. Quickly, it became obvious that
this was not going to work. I worked and
worried about this phase until I decided to try a little work strategy and
step out of the box and think of some non-traditional means of protecting the
Tcase as well as supporting the
transmission.
I ended up using some Ό thick, 8wide by 2 construction channel
suspended frame rail to frame rail. I
then ran another section of this same channel forward to capture the
transmission mount, using two 1 thick rubber pads (like body mount pads) as
the cushion between the mount and the channel.
This section ended up about 8 long.
After welding this together, I dropped the skid plate about 2 until I
had a reasonable amount of droop for the driveline. After everything was 
mounted, I
pulled the assembly down and using my plasma cutter, I narrowed the 2 sides
down to about 1. I then drilled some 2
holes in the bottom of the channel to provide drainage and to lighten it
up.
For the Anti-Torque bracket,
I used some 2 angle and captured 2 of the Tcase mounting bolts and came out
parallel to the skid plate. I added two more of the rubber cushions top and
bottom of this angle, tightening a through bolt just
enough to keep get the bracket, skid plate, and the cushions in contact.
Now for the shifting linkage. I run the Currie Twin Sticks, I had to provide shift rods from the
shift levers back 10.5 to the shift rails on the Tcase. I machined two flats on one end to fit into
the Tcase levers and then two more flats at the levers,
only I clocked these flats to insure that the levers were running straight up
through the floor. I did the same for
the primary mount for the levers.
The Klune comes with a cable
shifter that can be mounted to any convenient position in the cab for shifting
the Klune into or out of gear. I decided
to mount it to the front of the Tuffy center console. It was strong enough and the sloped front
face was perfect for this mount.
Front Universals
I worried about all this new
torque and these large tires on the front universal joints. I knew I was going to break them, even though
I was running the best of the best in the stock design. I finally contacted CTM about picking up a
set of their new Billet Design universals.
Man, these things are beefy. I
installed them and have not had one bit of trouble since.
Trial Run
Now it was time for the
trial run. We headed out to the Hammers
to try a ½ day run across Aftershock. I
played with all the gears and all of the shifting combinations. I had to make myself a cheat sheet to see
what gear I could get into. See my
options!
T-case HIGH,
Klune High
|
|
|
6.32 |
27 |
|
3.09 |
13 |
|
1.69 |
7 |
|
1.00 |
4 |
T-case HIGH,
Klune LOW
|
|
|
6.32 |
74 |
|
3.09 |
36 |
|
1.69 |
20 |
|
1.00 |
12 |
T-case LOW,
Klune HIGH
|
|
|
6.32 |
71 |
|
3.09 |
35 |
|
1.69 |
19 |
|
1.00 |
12 |
T-case LOW,
Klune LOW
|
|
|
6.32 |
193 |
|
3.09 |
94 |
|
1.69 |
52 |
|
1.00 |
31 |
I found that the 94:1 is a
terrific gear, for most moderate stuff, and then shifting out into the 71:1
were my most used gears. But, there are
a couple of nice obstacles on Aftershock when I dropped to the lowest ratio. The first time, my wife was watching my face
and said I had the biggest smile across it.
I felt like I was cheating, it was too easy to take the obstacle, and
let the big tires and grip do their thing.
Going very slow is great! I nary
slipped a tire.
The next day, we did Outer
Limits. This is one of the tougher of the tough trails at the Hammers. I had 13
rigs behind me by the time we made the trail head. I made it over the trail without a hitch, no
damage, no worries. That could not be
said for a lot of the rest of the group as we had broken tires, axles, birfield
joints, drive lines, universals, etc. broken by the time we crawled out late at
night. I, on the other hand, could not
be happier.
But, with all this, and
after several other trails, some hard and some not so hard, I ran into two
problems. One was that I kept going
through rear universals. We finally
figured out the my rear end output to the driveline
need to be rotated 4°. The other was
that I had a heck of a time steering.
Time for a
long range trip. Good news, no bad universals, anywhere. Bad news, I really broke bad going across
Judgment day out of
We finally figured out that
during the process of trying to steer the Jeep, going forward and back 12 at a time, I finally
locked up the rear drive shaft universal through some tremendous axle wrap, and
transferred all of the available torque to the transfer case. Man, when it broke, it made quite a
loud. Jason said he had seen this in
the past in some of the competitions he has attended and that he is making a
new Anti-wrap bar that welds to the rear end, keeping the axle inline with the
drive line, while still allowing the rear end to articulate.
New and Unexpected Phase
Well, the
Tcase was toast. And the Scout cases are
very hard to find, so, my friend John Brezezicki gave me his spare Jeep D300
and I intern had Jason go through it, sealing it and adding the newer high strength
output shaft. Of course I again had to modify my skid plate, but only a little
this time. The shifting rods, rails, and
mounts were all reusable too.
In the mean time, I decided
to step up and improve the steering. I
contacted Brad Kilby of Onboard Air. He
has just started working with Lee Manufacturing in Van Nuys. Lee has been building and modifying steering
components since Henry Ford was in business I think. All I saw them do was steering components,
from very small boxes and pumps to Semi size.
The rebuilt my pump to put out 1500 psig at idle (normally 1500 at
speed), rebuilt my steering box and added two -6 pressure ports, and then made
me a ram of the length that I needed. I
installed made a clevis on the axle differential cover that uses 3 of the
differential cover bolts to help hold it in place. I then temporarily used the steering
stabilizer bracket that secures around the tie rod for the ram portion,
modifying it only to add some strength to keep it from bending. It works.
Is that enough? No, of course not.
I added the anti-wrap bar
from
Phew, that is enough. Now,
to go out and wheel and not worry, I hope.
SF