It has been a long undertaking, but I am about half way through the swap. With the help of Jeromy at Pendleton Racing & Fab in his spare time, we got the old 30 out of there. Several hurdles have been thrown at us that have slowed the progress a bit. It took a little longer than I had hoped to get the new gears cryo treated. Once we got those back, Jeromy went after the rear gear install.
Then we got the bases of the coil buckets positioned where I wanted and tacked in place. Also checked the clearance of the truss, as we knew it would be a little too wide with the massive coil buckets.
After getting everything tacked in place and we were comfortable with the placement of everything, Jeromy did his magic with the finished welding on the rest of the truss, the inner C gussets and the lower control arm skids. Then we gut it hung under the jeep with a little finesse, and while Jeromy worked on getting the new 5.38 ring gear secured to the new Ox air locker, I threw a coat of paint on it. I should add, Jeromy also machined some sleeves to further beef up the housing.
From here, along with finishing up with the gear/locker install, I need to get the steering, brakes, and axles assembled and in place so we can get it down on its own weight. Probably the biggest hurdle of the project is figuring out the track bar. I roughly know how I want the brackets designed, but we need it sitting on it's own before we can finalize that. We'll also fab some sway bar tabs to go in place at that time as well. There was also a mishap with the new yoke for the JK pinion to the TJ 1310 joint. I was given a tcase cv shaft yoke (the oposite end of what I needed) even though my order was for the pinion yoke. So a couple more days delay and another $100, we're shooting to have the project all completed next week.
