As a long term fix for my steering, I ended up ordering a Reid passenger side knuckle in the Ford flavor. This is a beefed up version of the stock knuckle, cast and machined for
four high steer studs instead of the traditional three. I figured this would be a great peace of mind after shearing my high steer this winter on my current setup. I also added a new Ballistic Fab four bolt arm to the mix as well.
The Ford Reid knuckles are reamed bottom to top for the standard "one ton" TRE's. I run my tie rod over the knuckle, so I chose to drill out the taper for an insert to convert to OTK. Rather than waiting to chuck the knuckle up on the mill at the shop, I decided to do it the hard way and drill it by hand. Not fun, but it worked.
Tapered insert installed with a little bit of sleeve retainer.
Spindle studs, and new ball joints pressed on. New vs old.
I lost some pictures of the install, but it all went together pretty smoothly...
... until I tried to put the tire on. Reid bases their Ford knuckle off the Bronco D44, which apparently is a bit different than my late 70's D44 (SpecFab might have warned me about this...). The cast steering arm where the tie rod connects is the same length as my stock knuckle, but it's off set further outboard. This then made my TRE for the tie rod contact the inner lip of the passenger wheel (converting to OTK probably didn't help either). My wheels at the time were a 15" with 4" of back spacing so there wasn't a lot of room to begin with (about 3/8").
I could have bought some wheel spacers and called it good. I could have converted to hiems on the tie rod, and called it good. Instead I chose the most expensive option, and used this as an excuse to buy new tires and wheels. :thumbup:
Picked up a set of five Falken MT's from Avanteone at the swap-meet. These aren't available to the public yet, and are made in a pre-production compound. The Ultra4 guys are having great luck with them.
The Jeep is lucky to see one trip a month these days, so I'm not too worried about wear. I can't wait to try them in the rocks!
With tires taken care of I then called up Greg at Raceline Wheels, and picked his brain about some wheels I was after. They did a limited run of some Monster 232's in a 17x9.5 4"BS awhile back. It turns out they had 12 left, so I snagged five from him at a great deal. These are the same wheel we're running on the 4500 MJ, so it'll be nice to be able to swap tires if needed. After a quick FedEx delivery came the job of mounting them. Being able to do this in your living room while watching TV helps the monotony .
About 2.5" difference between my old MTR's and the new Falkens (34-1/4 vs 36-5/8). Just for kicks the old 35" MTR on 15x8" steel wheels weighed in at 90 pounds, and the new 37" Falken on 17x9.5 aluminum Raceline weighed in at 120 pounds.
Got them mounted up, and I'm loving the stance.
Still need to figure out what to do about my wheel studs. Right now I have 1/2" studs, and they're getting about 5/8" thread engagement. Not sure how I feel about that. I'll likely upgrade to a longer 9/16" stud and call it done.
I want to do a test run in the next week or two out to Kingsley Reservoir if anybody wants to tag along.