The_Magicians_Eye
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Posts posted by The_Magicians_Eye
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Please tell me you are putting in a different rear driveshaft
Had the factory one extended. It's more than likely going to be replaced at some point though. I wasn't happy with the work they did.
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Front axle is back in. The tires and wheels are on. Need to hook up the coilovers and the front drive shaft so I can do a final suspension and steering cycle. I might have some trimming to do on the front body mount and a little on the frame but so far everything looks great.
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Wheels and Tires
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Since it's way to cold to work in the shop and I'm on a spending freeze, I figured why not get some videos edited.
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Didn't get nearly as much done this weekend as I had hoped. Either way I'm a little closer. Got the exhaust crossover pipe (Y-pipe) made. It's only tacked up at the moment because I plan on TIG welding this together. The welds will be much smaller and cleaner if I do it that way. One of the issues I have with piecing exhaust together like this is that they usually look rough when mig welded together. There is just far to many joint real close together to have larger welds. It's just personal preference though. Everything beyond this point will be mig welded.
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Got my adjustable limit straps in from TMR Customes. Really happy with these and their customer service.
And here is a sneak peek of what she will look like. Granted I still have a ton of work to do. Deadline to be finish is the 26th of the month.
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Other than the shock mounts the rear is all linked up and working great. I still have to finish the axle side track bar mount on the front and the passenger side shock mounts. Once I take care of those few things this will be ready to tear down and start and finish welding everything up. Then address the brakes, ABS wiring to the rear axle, exhaust, and power steering lines for the new gear box. Oh and to paint everything.Smithy should be here next week to help me setup the gears in both the front and rear axles. At that point I should be ready to start final assembly.Oh and I got my tires in today too!
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Thank you buddy.
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More progress pics. And before anyone says something lol. The truss isn't finished. The axle side tie rod mount isn't finished either. Still have a ton of work to do. Hoping to wrap up the front end this week so I can get started on the rear suspension by this weekend.
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The other wallowed and wandered everywhere and felt like I was going to die at any speed above 40km/h.
This is exactly right. There are SOOOOOO many builds out there that have this problem. They ignore critical issues that need to be addressed that dramatically effect the way the truck handles. They just want it to "FLEX". They have no idea that there is so much more to a properly setup suspension than that. People say, "it's a trail rig so it doesn't matter". It does matter though. They just don't know any better because they've never driven or ridden in something that was build properly.
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Lots of people are not honest about what they really spent. Also lots of people hack @!*% together. Just because they can drive it doesn't mean it's right.
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Lots of people are not honest about what they really spent. Also lots of people hack @!*% together. Just because they can drive it doesn't mean it's right.
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If someone thinks they can do this for less they are fulling themselves or it's going to be one hell of a hack job. A leaf sprung sas is cheaper but once you get everything dialed in spring rate wise (front and back) and get the steering, driveshaft, gears, brakes, lockers, pinion angle, and caster setup properly, exc... you can still expect to be well above $5000. And that's without upgrading factory parts to much stronger after market parts. $200 here, $500 there, that adds up real damn fast.
Buying a built rig isn't really as good of a deal as one would expect either. In about 90% of every case I have ever seen, buying a used rig results in thousands of dollars worth of reparing neglected/abused parts and fixing bad work. The really well built rigs tend to get parted out to help recover more of the money spent to build them and or the expensive parts are used on a new project.
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Yeah it happens. That's all part of the process and cost that people don't account for. I don't even want to add up the money spent on this part of the build. I know I'm creeping up on $10,000. It'll be worth it in the end. Everything will be done properly and it should perform great. God knows I'll never get my money back if I choose to sell it down the road lol. "You want how much for a 91 nissan pathfinder?!?!?!?" lmao
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One of the long time Nissan wheelers decided to try and scare me about the high steer setup. He thought it would hit the wheel or tire. So I ended out slapping the passenger side hub on so I could check. As you can see I have plenty of clearance. Mater of fact I have more clearance than I thought I would have. The GM outers made the axle wider than it was with the ford drum brakes. It's about 60 3/4" hub to hub. That makes it about 7/8th of an inch wider than the factory Nissan rear axle. Once I get the other hub on I'll measure to insure my figures are correct.
After that I broke out the plasma cutter and started to prep the frame for the install of all these damn parts. There are a lot of tough to reach brackets on the frame that need to be cut off and ground smooth. Oh and I finally removed the front diff and what was left of the IFS.Burning Down The House" lmao
More cutting and grinding to do... This part of the job really sucks.Oh and my headers have to go. The driver's side is right where the top link needs to be. I tried to order new mid length headers but they are 5 weeks out. I think I have a deal worked out for some used ones that are the same as the ones I tried to buy new.
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Drilled and cut my high steer arms. Still need to bevel and weld them back together then make a double sheer bracket for the drag link that will mount on the topside of the passenger side arm. Just in case you're wondering why I cut them. The high steer arms do not line up with the factory . Oh and I ordered new fine thread bolts. 50 something dollars later!
Broke my the cup on my TIG torch so I finished the high steer arms up with my MIG welder. It was much faster that way anyway lol.
The "completed" high steer setup. I still have some work to do but you get the point. This gives me 4.5" of clearance over the factory tie rod. And yes I may have to modify my frame to make all this work. We'll find out once I mock everything up under the truck.
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I didn't get much done today. However I did get the hubs blasted.
Lots of mockup, measuring and checking angles. Need to replace that pinion yoke with a flange before I can swap the carrier and gears. I was worried that my diff cover was going to make contact with the tie rod. I think it's just going to clear it. Going to call high angle drive shafts tomorrow and talk to them about getting that flange and my options. Looks like I'm going to be close to 20 degrees of driveshaft angle at right hight. I have some careful planning to do here before any welding can take place. Everything is going to be tight.
Got the driver's side Reid Racing knuckle in today. No more factory parts for this dana 44. Ok well there are a few lol. But not much. Going to the store to grab a 5/8" drill bit so I can drill the high steer arms and cut/rotate them. This needs to be done if you want to run a double sheer setup on your tierod like you see in the picture. As for as a know. No one builds a high steer arm for a d44 that lines up properly with the steering arm on the knuckles.
Got more parts in today for the Pathfinder. Those are the chromoly dana 44 axle shafts. The stub axles are Yukon axles. The inners are made by a company called Wild Horses Four Wheel Dive. They specialize in Bronco parts. There is a massive difference between the stock axles and these size wise.I also got the rebuild kit for the stock rear axle and all the bearings/seals and spindle studs for the spindles/hubs on the D44.
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Quick update. Yesterday after work i noticed significant surface rust on the factory high steer knuckle I blasted the might before. That was my breaking point. I was already unhappy about using it because of the massive difference between that and the Reid knuckle. So the end result was me ordering a new Reid knuckle to replace it. It puts a dent in the budget but that was the weak link and it's not a quick easy part to replace down the road. So...Oh and I also tossed the 10 bolt outside and put the Dana 44 on the saw horses and opened her up. Did some measuring for pinion angle, rotating the inner Cs, planning for the truss and seeing how far forward I can move the axle forward over stock. I also installed my Aussie locker in the open carrier that will replace the factory limited slip in that axle.
Anyway here is more progress.
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So the axles shafts and parts should be here next week. That should give me time to finish cleaning up and painting the used parts. It should also give me time to setup the caster and pinion angle on the front drive shaft. I Need to build an adjustable axle stand that will let me set the pinion angle while sitting under the truck. Anyway that's the goal for the next few days.Here area a couple pics of some of the blasted parts. The factory fight steer knuckle is on the right. The Reid racing knuckle is on the left. There is some pretty big differences size wise in key areas. Going back and forth about getting the driver side reid knuckle now or not.
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So the plan has always been to run the stock axle shafts until I can afford a set of RCV axles. So last night I pulled the inner axle shafts out of the bronco d44 with the intention on cleaning them up and mating the 10 bolt stub axle to them. That's when I noticed a couple major issue.These early bronco axles had two different sizes of u-joints in their axles. One works with the 10 bolt and one does not. Unfortunately I have the smaller 260 u-joint axles in the bronco d44. The 10 bolt uses the larger 760 joints. The other problem is that the inner shafts on the bronco axles are significantly smaller in diameter than the 10 bolt axles. So that plan has changed again. I'm going to put all the IFS back in and forget about this SAS...
Yeah right lol. The new plan is to order some chromoly shafts that run the 760 joints. If these last I'll be very pleased. If they don't, then hopefully by then I have the extra money to buy the RCV axles. Mater of fact I just ordered the axles and new bearings/seals for the spindles/hubs.
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So now that my shop is cleaned up I spent last weekend working on the Pathfinder. Well kind of lol. The corporate 10 bolt I got for parts was on the chopping block. I had plans to do more but things changed as I battled it out with rusted parts trying to get them apart in one piece.Some of the parts I removed will be used on the Bronco D44 front axle that is going under the pathfinder. And since it's been forever since I updated this project I remind you of a few things. The bronco axle is 5 lug with drum brakes. The stock Pathfinder uses a 6x5.5 bolt pattern. The 10 bolt axle matches that. It also gives me disk brakes and one high steer knuckle for the driver's side. I have a brand new Reid Racing High steer knuckle for the passenger side.Here is the 10 bolt ready to tear down.
Fighting to remove the spindles!!! This wasn't nearly as bad as removing the high steer arm!!!
With a lot of heat and some abuse I was finally able to get both spindles off.
Removed the ball joints from the knuckles. There wasn't much left of the lower ball joints lol.
So the high steer arm was a nightmare. I lost my patience and ended out tryings that may or may not make since to others lmao. In the first pic you will see mean heating up the that was sliced into in multiple areas. The idea was that I could spread the metal apart and get it to release the conical washers. That didn't work. My next idea was to run really hot beads of welds down the arm to hopefully get the arm hot enough to free it up. And in a worse case scenario I could place that weld on the lip of the welding table and beat that damn thing with the BFH I made lol. That didn't work either. So that's when I welded the nuts to the studs and used the impact to try and extract the studs from the knuckle. That work for 2 or the 3. The third one wouldn't budge. That's when I used the BFH to beat the hell out of the arm and spin it free now that there was only one stud left.
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Getting some work done.
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Ok it's been a min since I updated this thread. The sas is moving forward very slowing. I have two projects going on at once and unfortunately one is more important and cheaper to finish than the SAS. I'm building a tow rig for the Pathy so I can tow it to events but more importantly so I can haul steel and other supplies to my shop. It's a 1998 Ford E350 Ambulance that I've removed the box and I'm building a sleeper/short flat bed to replace it. Here are some pics of that.
As for the Pathy, the H1 wheels are sitting waiting to be finished. It's not easy to get that military paint off of them lol. Takes time and the tow rig got my attention first. Anyway here is a picture of how they will look on the Pathy. They will be painted or powder coated Black with Red rock rings. I'm going to run two sets of them. One with Military take offs for the road. The other set will have some bias ply tires for wheeling.
I'm currently waiting one some parts from Rugged Rocks. I ordered in both their 3 link brackets and the 4 link brackets for the rear. I also ordered their pitman arm. Outside of that I have parts stacking up here and there. I wanted to be finished with this by June but that's not going to happen. It will be later in the summer due to a kid graduating, wife and a kid's birthdays, Mother's day and my wedding anniversary all within the next two months. Stay tuned but if you are truly interested in updates you should be following me on Facebook Youtube.
Search "Alvarez Metal Works" and you'll find me.-
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A Tail of Two Sisters - Build Photos and Videos
in Solid Axle Swaps, Hardcore Custom Fab
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Given that someone blocked me from the FB group I'm not sure why I'm even posting here anymore... I guess I'll be the better man though and continue to update my build thread.