Colinb17's kinda sorta build thread - now with 4-link and long travel

got the boat out for some spring leaning. first time towing it with the new setup. The hitch works great. 16'' of drop is the perfect height. the roll center of the truck is actually higher than the hitch ball, so with a trailer on the back, the truck stays flatter in corners than without it. It's a double axle trailer which means a lighter tongue weight, but i was still surprised at the minimal suspension sag when i put the boat on.

Unexpected benefit is that with a near stock ride height, and the cage being lower profile than my old roof and bed racks, my truck fits in the garage! no longer have to push the boat back the last few feet, and now i can work on one end of the truck at a time if it's raining. it's the little things sometimes







sound clip of the boat's V8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsncj0v3Z8s

 

been working on creating something new with the brakes.
-removed the ABS module completely.
-added a willwood adjustable proportioning valve on the rear brakes.
-installed line locks on each of the rear brakes.

Line locks are used primarily in drag racing, to lock up the front brakes only for burnouts. However, while not specifically designed for it, they have played a part in custom off road braking systems for a long time. the line locks serve two purposes for me. the way i had to route the factory parking brake cables required a pretty tight turn for one of them, making the parking brake unbalanced and therefore a little stiff to both engage and release. I really only ever use the parking brake at the boat ramp, and when I need get out of the truck when it's in a precarious spot off road. in both scenarios, the truck is left running, so electronically actuated line locks should be a good solution. the other benefit is that now when I'm off road, I can lock up the just the inside rear tire for tighter "dig" turns.

 

Any electronics causing problems? Been following the discussion in the long travel thread. Curious how you are going about it.

 

With the ABS unit removal?

If you pull the unit completely, as in unplug it, you won't have speed, and your odometer will stop racking up miles. 4 small screws and the computer art of the ABS unit separates from the mechanical portion. So I just plugged the computer part back in and secured it under the hood. Now everything works like it should, but I don't have ABD to worry about. And of course I had all the room in the world to add all this new valving and hard line

 

Awesome. Sounds easy enough. I’ll still have to relocate wheel speed sensor to the transfer case regardless for that to still work. Thank you!

 

So do you still have the sensors plugged into the wheels, which are connected to the ABS CPU?

 

I do, but I can lose those at this point. I've had one of the front sensors going bad for a while. All those should do if you remove them is throw the abs light. Won't affect the speedometer or odometer like pulling the entire computer did.

 

I'm not sure you can though, with one gone I disable ABS, 2 gone the parking brake light comes on, and with three or more the spedo and odo go out. Try unplugging them and let me know what happens.

I was asking bc I woudl like to ditch the sensors and the ABS unit, but I think it is going to have the above mentioned issues if the ABS isn't seeing a certain #/type of signals.

 

I'll give it a shot and report back. Worst case, just pull the sensors out entirely while leaving them plugged in, and then just coil up the wires somewhere under the truck.

If that still throws it off because it never gets a signal that the wheels are actually rotating, you could potentially just keep.one sensor, and splice them all into that sensors. Unless each sensor operates with a different resistance for some reason, that would just tell the computer that all 4 are perfectly in sync.

 

Would the other option just be wiring to the tcase and ditching all sensors?

 

Without digging into it, I'd be inclined to say it's not the same. But I could very well be wrong. The speed sensor you can add to some transfer cases likely sends back a varying voltage to the computer that correlates with speed. I believe the wheel sensors just send back constant voltage pings. Again, this is mostly speculation, since I haven't actually tried to read anything coming from the wheel sensors.

 

I’m not entirely sure. I’m trying to find an idiot proof “here’s what to do” as my end goal is to swap out the axles in my truck and by passing the electronics is kinda hard when you don’t fully understand it.

believe most of this here is from “the beasts” thread when he one ton swapped his truck

from my understanding this is just giving you speed from the transfer case which makes everything happy. Sets an auto truck up like a manual.

from the thread

now I’m not sure how this will all play out without the abs module, but by keeping the abs computer there and just removing the large abs module like you did, you should be good to go I presume.

Like I said, trying to navigate this my self for a hopeful axle swap in the future.