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Rumble and Shake in 4WD?


QuasarDecimari
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I wonder if the torque bind was trying to turn the whole housing, screwing up the pinion angle vs the driveshaft, and that's where the vibration was coming from? Either way, good to see you tracked the bugger down in the end!

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I wonder if the torque bind was trying to turn the whole housing, screwing up the pinion angle vs the driveshaft, and that's where the vibration was coming from? Either way, good to see you tracked the bugger down in the end!

EXACTLY what I think was going on. I feel lucky nothing else was damaged as far as I can tell. That sort of thing could have easily damaged my diff or transfer case.
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  • 3 weeks later...

Finally got around to setting up the diff mounts with polyurethane bushings. These are temporary. The plan is to cast offset units to help my rig with CV bind at 6" of lift.

 

thIDtNa.jpg

I was considering something like this. How are you planning to go about the design? Are you going to also lower the control arms about an inch or so, if that’s possible?

I was worried that by dropping the differential down any further, it could hit the control arms, and the driveshaft angle would be bad.

A transfercase drop isn’t all that simple either, given that the engine would need to be lowered, I assume. That’s not the bad part, I think the line-up of the engine bay and everything connected would be an issue...

What’s your plan? I’m very curious!!

 

 

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Nothing but the bushings would be adjusted. Everything came down with the SFD so its a minor adjustment in relation to all other components except the driveshaft. I opted to keep my OME springs instead of going with the AC coils but still go for 6" of lift with 1.25" of spacer lift and 0.75" of coil lift. To avoid the bind ill drop the diff .5 or so for a total.of around .75 of geometric lift at the cv's

Edited by TowndawgR50
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  • 1 month later...

Nothing but the bushings would be adjusted. Everything came down with the SFD so its a minor adjustment in relation to all other components except the driveshaft. I opted to keep my OME springs instead of going with the AC coils but still go for 6" of lift with 1.25" of spacer lift and 0.75" of coil lift. To avoid the bind ill drop the diff .5 or so for a total.of around .75 of geometric lift at the cv's

This is a really cool idea. Let me know if you get around to it and if it was simple, I’d like to try and do this myself

 

 

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  • 8 months later...
On 4/1/2018 at 2:28 AM, TowndawgR50 said:

Finally got around to setting up the diff mounts with polyurethane bushings. These are temporary. The plan is to cast offset units to help my rig with CV bind at 6" of lift.

 

thIDtNa.jpg

Did this ever make it onto your truck?

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Apparently these bushings are more age related than miles. My 03 only has 89k miles, but I’ve been trying to track down an intermittent front end clunk and decided to check the diff mounts tonight. Sure enough, the rubber is cracked and dry rotted and the diff can easily be moved all around with just the pressure of a screwdriver as a pry bar, replicating the clunk I’ve been hearing/feeling. I decided to take the easy way out and order new arms with bushings installed instead of messing with pressing in/out the bushings. Each arm is about $80 for a genuine Nissan replacement so I didn’t think that was too bad.


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I ended up finally getting brand new 33" tires, and even adding some hubcentric rings to the hub spacers (since I still haven't gotten wheels with more backspacing) and my 4WD has still been playing nice since the resolution. Dropping the subframe down another couple inches to compensate for a 6.5" front end lift helped a lot with CV binding and overall smoothness. If anyone's running spacers, and isn't using hubcentric rings (or their hub spacers aren't hubcentric) I highly recommend them. I got mine on Amazon for $7 and it was actually a really nice upgrade for overall smoothness, and just peace of mind altogether.

I'll likely need to change the control arm bushings for the front, which I'm not entirely looking forward to given how hard the brackets are to get back on that hold them into place, but it'll certainly need to get done soon. If anyone has any tips, fantastic. Otherwise, I'll do some homework on the forums. 

14 hours ago, TowndawgR50 said:

Works great. The bushings for the differential are not available in polyurethane.  I machined these from oversized bushings.  If you are interested I can machine another set. 

Are they really worth the extra time and trouble? With mine being over 17 years old, and almost 180,000 miles on them, I don't see them wearing again anytime soon... but if it helps a lot with anything in particular I'd be curious if it's something you'd wanna roll out as a potential upgrade ?

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4 hours ago, QuasarDecimari said:

I ended up finally getting brand new 33" tires, and even adding some hubcentric rings to the hub spacers (since I still haven't gotten wheels with more backspacing) and my 4WD has still been playing nice since the resolution. Dropping the subframe down another couple inches to compensate for a 6.5" front end lift helped a lot with CV binding and overall smoothness. If anyone's running spacers, and isn't using hubcentric rings (or their hub spacers aren't hubcentric) I highly recommend them. I got mine on Amazon for $7 and it was actually a really nice upgrade for overall smoothness, and just peace of mind altogether.

I'll likely need to change the control arm bushings for the front, which I'm not entirely looking forward to given how hard the brackets are to get back on that hold them into place, but it'll certainly need to get done soon. If anyone has any tips, fantastic. Otherwise, I'll do some homework on the forums. 

Are they really worth the extra time and trouble? With mine being over 17 years old, and almost 180,000 miles on them, I don't see them wearing again anytime soon... but if it helps a lot with anything in particular I'd be curious if it's something you'd wanna roll out as a potential upgrade ?

I need to look into getting some hub centric rings like that. I’m also running non hub centric spacers and I’ve learned that when I take the wheels and spacers off, I really need to go slow hand tightening each lug nut a little at a time to make sure it’s all smooth and balanced. If I run one lug nut even semi snug before tightening the others, then it isn’t quite centered right and I get vibrations. Are you just using the ring between the spacer and the original hub, or do you also have something to center the wheel onto the spacer? I like running the spacers because it opens up the wheel options a lot.

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8 hours ago, QuasarDecimari said:

Are they really worth the extra time and trouble? With mine being over 17 years old, and almost 180,000 miles on them, I don't see them wearing again anytime soon... but if it helps a lot with anything in particular I'd be curious if it's something you'd wanna roll out as a potential upgrade ?

I thought you replaced your diff bushings with OEM rubber in an effort to solve the rumble? 

My bushings were shot and the poly bushings made a pretty noticeable difference but I cant say they are dramatically better than a new set of OEM rubber bushings because I don't have any wheel time with a fresh OEM rubber set to compare to. 

Like all polyurethane bushings they transfer more road "feeling" into the steering wheel which I like. Even with the front Lokka its not harsh and there are no vibrations but a very crisp and firm translation of the front drivetrain to the steering wheel when going down the road or a trail. Doubly so when wheeling in 4-low

Edited by TowndawgR50
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Are you just using the ring between the spacer and the original hub, or do you also have something to center the wheel onto the spacer?


I highly recommend them. Only took a couple hours to do each hub (mostly because I use red loctite on the studs holding the spacers on, so they were a huge pain to get off). The only reason I didn’t get any for the wheels themselves is because with the spacers, there’s no hub in the center anymore for the wheels to center onto, just the lugs of the spacers, so having rings on the wheels would make no difference because they can’t be centered around a hub.
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Like all polyurethane bushings they transfer more road "feeling" into the steering wheel which I like. Even with the front Lokka its not harsh and there are no vibrations but a very crisp and firm translation of the front drivetrain to the steering wheel when going down the road or a trail. Doubly so when wheeling in 4-low


That’s awesome dude, that’s really the point in mods like that anyway. If it makes you happy, feels better for you, and prolongs the life of the vehicle down the road, the work pays off!


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