Official Crawlbox BS thread!

If that makes you comfortable and will yield a clean result, it’s not stupid.

I cut a small hole first. To see where I am. Then i trim a bit here and there to get it right and final.

 

This is what I did. I'm doing triple sticks so I just did the crawl box without the tcase to make it easier to manage. Bring a friend.

 

I may be in the minority for this but I originally started small but it was so hard to reinstall the shifters I just kept cutting it bigger and bigger. I’m to the point I’m going to have a huge hole and I’ll just make a new filler piece to cover the entire thing but makes installing/removing the shifters way easier.

 

Well, its in. I'm actually pretty happy with where the spline coupling landed after I modified it.




Only problem is I have no bolts on the bottom. I assume I was supposed drill out the threads on the tail housing for the missing bolt on the left where my finger is and thread it the opposite way into the adapter plate?

The bolt on the right is bottomed out. I need a much shorter one. I will have to remove the trans mount to deal with both of these.

 

Yeah one of the bolt holes has to be drilled out, I forget which one, looks like you found it.

Removing the trans mount is how I dealt with everything the second time. Just pull it out completely and leave it out while you work. Add some support some where under the pan so all the weight isn't on the engine mounts and do everything like that. The crossmember just gets in the way the whole time.


Dry fit the OEM case, you're going to have to clearance the shit out of the driver side of the trans tunnel for when it kicks in LoLo, if you use the poly mount it might not move as much but I would still hammer the shit out of it.

 

Thanks for the advice. This is what I was thinking too. I have a 1 inch body lift and put some work into the tunnel already. I have tons of space right now so we will see how much it kicks

 

You're getting close. Yes drill that out for the bottom holes, merlin doesn't know how many holes our transmission to transfer case bolts have, in addition to not being able to count splines, write install instructions, or provide customer support. As for the clearancing the tunnel, here's the best I can give you, godspeed

 

I honestly dont think I need to touch the tunnel thanks to the body lift. Does it move that much? I have a solid 1.5"



How terrible would it be if I ran it for a little while without those two lower bolts in?

Also, my speedo is not working. I swapped it over, extended the wires, made sure there was a worm gear on the output shaft...I am at a loss. Is it tied into the 4wd ecu that i hacked out?

 

Its not the Tacobox that will hit, its the OEM driverside drop extension that will twist upwards and clockwise(when viewed from the back) under Lolo torque. If you've got 1.5 inches between the OEM case and the "diagonal" part of the tranny tunnel you will probably be OK.

I wouldn't leave any flange/mounting bolts out, especially the bottom ones.

 

@Prayn4surf

 

Here's some gratuitous dual case LoLo porn.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B22Cgi8Ayrj/?igshid=7vcimhxexpv1

 

That looks so much easier when standing up.

 

Gotcha. As I'm sure you can understand, the thought of taking this thing out and putting it in again is daunting. I will have to make that call tomorrow.

 

Oh I know, I literally did the same thing a month ago.
I got everything put in, thought it was "good enough", went a ran a bunch if trails and found out I had interference in 2 or 3 places. I had to drain it out after the initial break in anyway, but redoing all that shit wasn't fun.

If it's already in, I'd say fuck it, you can do like I did and pull everything apart when you change the oil for the first time if you have any issues. It'll give you more than enough time to find any problems.

 

Maybe yours is more, but where me and Craig did ours, I clocked the OEM case a few degrees I think 10 or 15 so it sat flat with the frame rails. That put the t-case about ass to face with the body, needed to be cut, massaged and painted back over. You'll know if you need to clearance after wheeling with it, it moves more than you'd think.

Mine haven't had those two lower bolts in 7 years

The speedo does not input into the 4wd ECU harness, are you sure you have the worm gear installed the right way and a fuse isn't blown somewhere?

Dang that got tight at the top

A lift makes everything working on the truck that much more fun

 

You can see where I clearanced the body, I also have a 1" body lift so the t-case moves quite a bit especially under doublin low gear hammer down time. My favorite gear is crawl box low gear and transmission in 3rd, rev engine and dump clutch and hammer down. It's at least the torque of 2 honda civics and the sound of a raspy cobalt.


Here was my "fix" when I forgot those two bolts, I later put them in.

 

Gratuitous indeed.
As previously stated, looks like it got damn tight at the top. I'd love to see how it ended if you've got more.

 

There's another short video after that if you open the link for it in a web browser

 

It ended just fine. Winch Hill 5 is a different story though. lol

 

Well that settles it for me. I'm headed to Moab tomorrow without the bolts. I'll double check that worm gear though...maybe it's not seated properly. I could not find any bad fuses. I did get a CEL for it which led me to believe there is no signal at all. My original logic was that if the worm gear wasnt seated, it would just read 0mph with no CEL.