One of these days, I’m going to get trained on this water jet and make some cool stuff.
Torque jig
When I put the control arms back together, one of the most important things is to make sure that the jam nuts on the flex joints are torqued down VERY well. Rock Krawler specifies 300 ft.lbs. of torque. This is needed in order to keep the jam not from backing off. Once it does the threads will start to wear and eventually the joint will just pop out of the control arm.
I built this jog from some 1/4″ steel. It’ll keep the one end clamped to the workbench. The other end is slipped into another jig into a vice, keep then flex joint properly oriented. I’ll then be able to get the wrench on the jam nut and crank on it. Should do the trick.
Reinforcing the engine skid
My engine skid has taken quite a beating over the years. It had a well defined frown in the steel. I used the oxy-acetylene torch to heat it up and hammer it as flat as I could get it.
To try and prevent future warpage, I took some angle iron and welded it to the top side of the skid. It won’t interfere with anything, and should keep it a bit flatter for a while.
I think I could have lowered the wire feed speed just a little here
I think I could have lowered the wire feed speed just a little here, or maybe moved a little faster. Practice, practice, practice.
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Put these Artec lower control arm skids on a friends Jeep.
Put these Artec lower control arm skids on a friends Jeep. It’s amazing how good my welds look in bad lighting and black paint. 😂
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My axles haven’t looked this good since this picture was taken about 3 years ago.
My axles haven’t looked this good since this picture was taken about 3 years ago. But I am taking some time to clean them up and give them a fresh coat of paint before heading out to Moab for EJS 2019!
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I took a couple of the old control arms joints and made my own thread chasers.
I took a couple of the old control arms joints and made my own thread chasers. I wanted to clean out the threads in the ends of the control arms and track bars. Ground a few grooves in them, got them good and hot then quenched them real fast to harden the threads.
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Clearing threads
Once the control arms were back from the powder coater, and before I started reassembly, I wanted to make sure the internal threads were clear. I would imagine there was some surface rust at least in there.
I didn’t have a tap that big, and no way I was going to spend that kind of money, so I diced to make my own thread clearing tool from the old control arm ends. I ground some slots into a decent example of each size, used the torch to heat it up for a heat treat to harden it, and then was able to use it to clear all the internal threads. Worked like a charm.
I put this little strip light in the underside of my Tuffy Security Cover.
I put this little strip light in the underside of my Tuffy Security Cover. It may not be much, but it puts out enough light to see what’s in there.
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