Rebuilt rear end

I took the Jeep to J&S Gears in Huntington Beach last week to get the rear axle refurbished.  I'd done a drain and reseal on the front and rear diffs before camping, but when I got to the campsite I noticed that the rear was leaking where the left axle tube joined up to the pumpkin.  Not good.  It wheeled fined for our light stress trails, even including the choppiness of Jacoby Canyon, but I don't like leaks and I don't like weak points, so it had to be fixed.

Here's the grease ball from a while back, before the leak got even worse.  Note the plug weld holes on either side of the pumpkin that hold the axle tubes in place.  Also, you can see the slight bend in it as the tubes at the wheel hubs are higher than they are at the differential housing (and this pic is from five years ago).  Yikes.  Never noticed it, but at least in my defense I can make a point of saying that I haven't driven it more than a few thousand miles between this pics and the "after" shot below.

After shopping around online, I discovered the bad news that FSJ Dana 44s are in demand as a swap-in axle for smaller Jeeps and this are not cheap and often not local.  Paying $750 for a used axle with 100K miles, give or take, is a waste of money, especially when I'd had to drive to Lancaster to get it, hoping that it'd be better than what I have.  I also toyed with the idea of buying a Dana 44 with disc brakes from an Isuzu Rodeo (or Honda Passport) for $150, but I would have to transport it back here from NorCal, re-gear both axles to match, and convert from SAE to metric brake lines.  And there's a chance the calipers wouldn't fit around the leaf springs without the lift blocks, which i have but don't want to be married to.  So that would still run me in the high hundreds, cost-wise.

For about that same price as either of those two,options, J&S stripped mine down, replaced all the bearings, ground out the old plug welds, straightened the housing, put it in a jig to assure alignment, welded it up, sealed it tight, and re-installed it.  This might as well be a new axle.  I'm pleased, if poorer, with the axle, and I have faith it will hold up to the moderate wheeling I will put the rig through.  This was a classic example of how money spent on experienced labor rather than new-to-me parts can often be the best way to go.

And now the finished product.  Note the lack of gapping plug weld holes and the dead-straightness of the tubes.  This will last me quite some time unless I abuse it like the DSPO clearly did.

A bit more lift

One of the discoveries I made on the wheeling trip around Big Bear (especially on Jacoby Canyon, the roughest of the trails we traversed) was tire rubbing.  I knew that I was pushing it with 32" BFG's on only four inches of lift (five really with the body lift), so I needed to get a little more vertical so that I have better articulation without body contact.

Rather than throwing money at new springs front and rear, I went with a simpler and cheaper approach.  I went with 2" lift blocks from Rusty's Off Road in the rear (real solid cast iron blocks with new u-bolts) and a 1" shackle lift in the front.  No blocks in the front (only morons do that), but out back they are plenty safe if you exercise a few moments of thought and precaution.  First, new and heavy blocks are better in every way than used and/or aluminum blocks.  Get them from a reputable source like Rusty's, and get them for your specific axle and vehicle so that they help keep the pinion angle in the right ballpark, at least.  These get the job done right:

Installed:

The front shackles are a different matter altogether.  I've heard of some Ford rigs coming from the factory with four or even six inch blocks in the rear, which seems nutso to me.  The shackles, however, can only go so long.  In order to get a 1" lift, the newer shackles have to be several inches longer than stock, and with that length comes a need for thicker/heavier gauge materials.  Here are the new ones compared to the old ones:

The old:

The new:

It took a bit of finagling to get both blocks and shackles installed, requiring some BFH persuasion, but all in all, an hour or so from start to finish.  Here's a pair of shorts, before and after in the back.  If you following the body line of bedliner, you can see how much of a lift there is:

Before and after in the front:

Just as before, if you follow the bedliner body line, you'll see how the tire before were slightly higher, while the "after" image shows how it's now even with the body line.

Master cylinder install and radiator burping

The master cylinder has a leak.  You can see where the fluid has been eeking its way around the piston and out into the engine bay and the vacuum booster.

 This is the new part to install.  I've worked on brakes before, but not terribly successfully (just the caliper upgrade and some new brake lines, one of which was bad and beyond my ability to fix).

The instructions and the plugs that came with the master cylinder were largely a waste of time.  The plugs didn't even fit the ports.

So I had to improvise my bench bleeding procedure.  I started with the fingertips from rubber gloves, but they didn't hold pressure.  Painter's tape did the trick for me.  There was very little leakage, so I was able to get the bubbles out of the cylinder prior to mounting it in the rig.

Mounted up.

 Old parts out.  My wife will never get that turkey baster back.

This is where the leakage occurred.

My bleeder bottle.  It was a cheap buy, but it got the job done.

That is some dark, nasty stuff.

 Ditto.

Here's my helper.  She really wants to learn how to drive, but she's only eleven, so she'll have to wait at least a year.

 Filled and finished.

Mechanical fan install, oil change, radiator install