Wishbone Runner's Build

https://www.advanceadapters.com/pro...eed--anodized-billet-aluminum-sport-knob-set/

 

Looking good james! Cant wait to get out on the trails with you and the new atlas

 

It’s alive.

 

now lets plan a new trip to test the beast!

 

So, got the new flange, installed it and no change in the amount of play. Fuck. Called AA back up and went through a host of diagnostics to no avail, including pulling the tail cone to look at the bearings and bearing shim but everything looked fine. They then put me in contact with a local guy does some off their rebuild and builds Ultra4 trucks, and happened to live a few blocks from me. He ended up coming over, looking everything over and reassembling the tail section, and concluded that I was being overly paranoid about the small amount of play and I was just chasing my tail

At least the truck was done then! Put everything back together and went to pull out of the driveway . . . and I can't even turn the wheel, the alignment changes I made pulled the wheel back too far and it was eating the firewall, HARD. Fuck.

I have no intention of doing a tub job at this time, so I slapped my bald 295 rollers on and took her for a spin, success. A few laps around the block trying out all the tcase configurations at verrrry slow speeds

 

After I got back from my slow laps I pulled into the driveway and was looking things over, and I see smoke coming out from under the truck!

Certain I just burnt the case up, I jump under to see what was going on and find driveshaft grease on the exhaust, burning. Whew.

So with everything appearing to be in order, I packed up the truck to head out camping with the little man and the pooch, the plan was to run a track I found in Gaia that goes from Jefferson to Salida through South Park all on dirt, and hit up China Wall on the way to try out the new gears on something a bit harder. Everything went well until I got to China Wall and found a locked gate, found out once I got back that the trail is seasonal and doesn't open for another few weeks, oh well. Made it all the way to the hills above Salida where the pic above is from, truck worked awesome other than a pop in the steering that I couldn't figure out solo on the side of the trail.

 

Really cool to see you out there with your little guy! He looks like he’s having a blast!

 

He had a great time, a bit more seat time than I had planned, but he did awesome.

 

Is the rear locker still funky?

 

The track I was following ended in Salida but I saw some potential trails to connect back north to Johnson Village, so the next morning started exploring my way north and soon hooked up with trails I had been on previously and followed a cool route that I've done a handful of times now down to the river. It was 11 by now and the forecast for the day was rain starting within the hour, I hadn't planned on running Chinaman, but I was less than a mile from the trailhead and the truck had been performing flawlessly so I decided to do a hot lap up the first hill to the Carnage Canyon exit then back down.

I was already aired down and drove past a monstrous group of jeepers that were airing down at the trail head, got do the base of the hill and threw er in double low and walked up the whole section with ease, even on the near bald tires, stupid low gearing is awesome! The off camber turn at the bottom, that anyone that has done the trail should be familiar with, flexes you out hard and usually requires a fair amount of skinny pedal to get a bit of momentum from, I walked right up it barely slipping a tire. Same with this obstacle, one that I have gotten body damage from and can easily result in getting highsided from the breakover.



Up to the top for some lunch, unfortunately no one exiting Carnage to watch, I could see the storm heading in.



Met the group of jeepers headed up and another large group that I had to wait for, but it wasn't too bad. I was almost more impressed with the low gearing heading down, so much more control over the brakes when trying to ease down off an obstacle, took a pic of the above section headed down, coming up I put passenger tire on the pair of big rocks in the middle and did the same going down but driver side this time. You can see the weather getting really close by now.

 

Nope, I was actually going to tag you, I ran it quite a bit just to see if it was working right and it was flawless, no air leaks, no oil out the solenoid. Thanks!

 

Made it off the trail just before the storm hit, heavy hail and rain, so aired up and headed home, met with snow as soon as I dropped into south park. A group of 4Runners and tacos showed up right as I was leaving, some of them were not very built, I bet they had a looong day in the rain.

 

Besides the steering, the only other issue I noticed is what I believe is the body rubbing on the case when twisting the truck, it felt almost like tire rubbing on the body, but lower frequency, I think they are contacting and then shifting/slipping across each other. I did slather the body work with seam sealer so I think that is, definitely not metal on metal feeling. No case contact with the body in uber low that I could discern, I think the poly bushings all through the drivetrain are keeping things in place nicely. I did notice that the body is off-centered from the frame about a half inch to the passenger side, hopefully I can push it back to center which would give more clearance between the case and the body, but even if that doesn't work I'm not too worried about the shifting of the case on the body.

 

I'll need to revert the alignment back to what was working previously to get the 315s to clear, I was hoping to avoid crossing the LCA bushings with the new setup (front all the way in, rear all the way out), but they lasted 5 years like that previously which I can live with.

Put together a list of everything that I have done to the truck over the past 6 months, its, extensive.

• Atlas tcase, crossmember, skids, mounts and sticks
• Poly body, motor, tranny and tcase bushings
• ADD delete
• Rear diff rebuild and air lines
• Fab new body mounts
• Dirt King ball joint LCAs, LCA mount gusset, limit straps
• Welded spindle gusset crack
• Sound deadener
• Body clearance for Atlas
• Rear driveshaft shorten
• New parking brake cables
• Tacse and F diff breathers
• ABS sensor
• Front u-joint
• New CV, boot repair on the other side, and seals
• Poly hood pin stopper
• Wheel spacers in the rear
• Steering shaft extension
• Fender
• Rack fairing
• Front and rear shock eyelet uniballs

I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff, but glad I'm done and back on the trail

 

Holy cow! Nice work!
Now don't break it
Not only do you need to get the truck home, now you need to get the little man home too.

 

So Neapco joints suck, both on the rear shaft have play after 15k. Rocky Mountain Driveline is warrantying them though and replacing them with Spicer on their dime. When those go out, back to OEM.

 

Pretty sure OEM is Spicer but I could be wrong. Funny enough Neapco actually makes some of the actual Spicer joints, Spicer just throws Neapco joints in their "Spicer" branded boxes and sells them as Spicer. Any time you get ujoints check what's actually in the box, the names on the box/ujoint might not match.

 

Interesting, these are what I used in the front which I don't believe are either Spicer or Neapco. I think the taco uses Spicer for OEM, maybe the 4R uses something different. The driveshaft place didn't have OEM when I had them retube it so just had them use what they had.



Goggling a Spicer 1510, that looks like what is in there, so maybe they are the same When I get it back we'll see if they look the same.

 

I've had a couple conversations with the guy that retubes my driveshaft when I dent it. I mentioned I got a spicer conversion ujoint that wasn't actually manufactured by Spicer so I thought it was counterfeit and sent it back to Amazon. I ordered another a couple months later and got the same thing. He said that Spicer was slowly moving away from some of their manufacturing and that might have been one of the things they stopped making themselves and instead just throw a Neapco brand joint in a Spicer box. He also said as far as his experience has been he's found that Neapco is not great, but good enough for most folks, maybe you got a bad batch or something else went wrong with them.

 

Good info, thanks.