It's been a year since we made progress on this axle. 😲 Yesterday we nearly completed it.
We decided that if we're gonna convert JK hubs to TJ pattern, we might as well get a new set of JK hubs to ruin.
The first step is to buy some new hubs for a JK. Then you cut that brand new speed sensor off. We don't need the speed sensor, but we do need something to plug the hole in the hub for that speed sensor.
Then we bolted on a hole pattern drill thingy made for us by Carl
Then we built a jig to hold these suckers in place on my drill table. You'll note that I did not say mill. This is Hickeybilt Fabricobblecations, not some fancy place with good tooling and shit.
No pics of said jig. It was adequate for our needs and no one was injured other than mildly bruised and burnt hands. I don't need to incriminate myself more than that.
We drilled pilot holes in both hubs, then removed the pattern plate and started drilling and drilling. We slowly increased the size of the drill bit until each hole was the correct size for the studs. Most of the drill bits were even sharp. A few were straight, too.
After pressing the studs in we felt pretty awesome. I don't have a press. We also drilled the JK rotors for TJ pattern and cleaned up the parts and piles of shavings before pulling the TJ in the garage to swap out the Camber-Boi WJ parts.
We started slapping the parts in and ran into a snag. The new long side shaft is 1/2" too long. We buttoned everything back up with all the new parts except that long side shaft and pulled the TJ out of the garage at midnight. It is frustrating to be so close to finished, but all it needs now is that shaft shortened and the locker wired up to be done.