Project Snowball: My daily driven LJ crawler / hot rod / wanna do all build / IDK what to tittle this , "My LJ"

[D's Jeep Wrld]

Gonna be posting my axle up for sale
Do yall think 3.3k for everything sounds reasonable once i replace just the diff? The whole axle&brakes&savvy arms,Trackbar

I was thinking of offering the option to install the locker of choice to the person that would buy my axle

 

[lBasket]

OPINIONS:
Should I just do a semi triangulated 4 link (uppers triangulated) ?
OR
Do a triangulated 4 Link? I don't mind making a cross member but I've been thinking this through a little bit and It was obvious that a semi triangle suspension would suit me better because the crossmemeber for triangulated lowers would hang low!
not only that but the arms ofcourse would hang quite a bit too! Along with the crossmember it would be low hanging fruit that's in the middle of my jeep (lower than my skid apart from the DS)

I'd like to do a double triangulated setup since I'm already gonna be chopping stuff off and starting fresh. But I can see the complications and cons of a double triangulated setup

Edit: Damn now that I typed my thoughts out and am looking back I think I have my mind set on just a semi triangle.....yeah,personal diary moment
I think I just needed to type my thoughts out to make some sense in my head

Anyways Here's a quick mockup of my truss
I gotta shift it about an inch to the passenger side tho so no biggie !
View attachment 661781
Gonna start taking the read end out and going on from there tomorrow

Sometimes defining the question is like 75% of the way to the answer

 

[D's Jeep Wrld]

Sometimes defining the question is like 75% of the way to the answer

Well said!

 

[Unique Username]

Gonna be posting my axle up for sale
Do yall think 3.3k for everything sounds reasonable once i replace just the diff? The whole axle&brakes&savvy arms,Trackbar

I was thinking of offering the option to install the locker of choice to the person that would buy my axle View attachment 661835

Any chance you confirmed the axle shafts are good? No chance the end of the shafts got twisted up? It’s hard to put on a price as the next person needs to buy a carrier, gears and maybe even shafts. They would essentially just be getting a housing, brakes, arms and a track bar. If it was me, it would have to be $1,000-$1,500 for consideration and I would still try and get you down. But that’s why I have not purchase axles yet . To cheap and waiting on a good deal.

I wouldn’t waste time installing a new diff as you never know what gears the next guy wants to run or the type of carrier.

 

[D's Jeep Wrld]

Any chance you confirmed the axle shafts are good? No chance the end of the shafts got twisted up? It’s hard to put on a price as the next person needs to buy a carrier, gears and maybe even shafts. They would essentially just be getting a housing, brakes, arms and a track bar. If it was me, it would have to be $1,000-$1,500 for consideration and I would still try and get you down. But that’s why I have not purchase axles yet . To cheap and waiting on a good deal.

I wouldn’t waste time installing a new diff as you never know what gears the next guy wants to run or the type of carrier.

That's why I'm gonna include a installed locker of choice for someone that wants my axle.
I'm not gonna sell the thing broken lol

 

[SkylinesSuck]

Subbed. Because race car

 

[D's Jeep Wrld]

Subbed. Because race car

Hehe
Boring jeep on the outside (seemingly)
Racecar stuff on the inside

Learned how to do safety wire the other night total of 9 tries,so 10 ring gear bolts 5 sets of wires
I'll post more progress on my thread,Been posting progress pics on the "What did you do to your TJ today" thread

 

[D's Jeep Wrld]

Alright yall I've made some more progress on the Lj in prep for the midarm/ford 9" swap

Got the control arm brackets Chopped off and the welds being ground down to the frame to where you cant tell !

What yall know bout Dat tree inch homedepoo body lift .....jk it's temporary,did it to give myself space to cut the spring perches inside the frame !

Found it satisfying how the metal coiled up as I chiseled away

Cutting the welds off the spring perches and track bar mount,And good lord did this side take quite a while to grind flat man...

The driver side I got done super quick,Matter fact I was was listening to "Shine bright crazy diamond parts 1-7" by Pinkfloyd and it was still playing heck I got done priming the frame before the song got done playing lol

I will say the frame isn't truly flat,But on the pass. Side it's flatter since I was blending that side for over an hour trying to get the welds flat to the frame!

not too pround on the passenger side as i added a nick with the grinder wheel where the trackbar mount used to be but hey the rest came out damn good ! And it's not even that deep&long I just quickly weld it up grind it and it'll get covered up by the new spring perch relocation brackets so not too bad !!!

Bottom center of the pic you can see the new spring perch bracket I'm gonna use

But yeah I feel like got alot done today Temporarily Primed the frame with some weldable primer since it looks like it's gonna rain and I certainly don't want flashrust ! So there is some runs (you can see them) but that'll all get sanded down again so I aint trippin on that

 

[D's Jeep Wrld]

Slightly nicked&used spring perches for sale ?
I did do my best to cut right where the welds were and they came right off with a bfh and 2 cuss words later Heck I could reuse em but I got new genright units I got for cheap so why not

 

[SkylinesSuck]

I've not heard of many people putting a 9" under a TJ/LJ before. Other than the obvious strength advantage launching it with 33's, what are the pros/cons over a Dana 44?

 

[D's Jeep Wrld]

I've not heard of many people putting a 9" under a TJ/LJ before. Other than the obvious strength advantage launching it with 33's, what are the pros/cons over a Dana 44?

From what I'm seeing/dealing with
Pros
My was Lj equipped with it
It's a "stout axle"when you crawl with big tires&no launches
Cons
It's heavier
Weak when launching,Been through 3 gearsets and a Eaton trutrac (it grenaded itself)
Small tubes even tho the walls are thicker

Pros of the ford 9", 3" tubes with a 3/16ths wall (with my current currie housing),lighter housing,double shear pinion,easy as heck to setup,very very modular and I love it!

But yeah I really haven't seen people move to a ford 9" coming from a Dana44 but I already had a currie ford 9"&3rd member and a wilwood brake kit I was gonna utilize on my C10 (but that aint going anywhere anytime soon) So I'm putting it to use on my Lj

Also Look at the size difference on the pinions too! Ford 9" on the left,Dana 44 on the right
I'd greatly benefit from the stronger&bigger pinion from the ford 9" since I kept murdering pinions on the Dana 44 even on numerically lower gearsets

 

[SkylinesSuck]

The 9" is lighter? That's surprising. Of course I find this out right after I order a built Dana 44 with a TruTrac just like you had to replace my 8.8. And I definitely plan to continue drag launches

 

[D's Jeep Wrld]

The 9" is lighter? That's surprising. Of course I find this out right after I order a built Dana 44 with a TruTrac just like you had to replace my 8.8. And I definitely plan to continue drag launches

Edit: Yeah its lighter ! I did standing shoulder presses with an empty housing&empty 3rd member! With a bare Dana 44 housing I actually need to think on how I gotta move it around so I won't hurt my back,The bare ford 9" housing&3rd member I can swing around! Not easily but still easily movable compared to the Dana 44

But Damn man.....that sucks....Can you cancel your order on that axle? Or is the thing already in your garage ? Fusion sells a nice ford 9" setup !
I've heard of trutracs blowing up on camaros pushing 900 hp...."but I'm not pushing not even 200? at the wheels N/a" I said to myself so that won't be a problem......But lookie here it's a problem now...Granted it's probably seen 400whp with ghetto rigged nitrous a handful of time's but that's the most my trutrac has seen and still driven perfectly fine for thousands of miles

The 3 gear pinion/worm gear setup on the trutracs seem to be a weaklink?,on my my ford 9" it has a 4 gear pinion/worm gear setup on it so it should help?!

 

[SkylinesSuck]

It's probably about to ship I'd guess. Fusion is actually who I bought it from. I guess I could always reach out and ask if they have even started on it, but it was a black Friday order so I'd guess so. One important thing for me is the length of the pinion i.e. how long is the drive shaft going to be. My current 8.8 is about 1-2" longer than a Dana 44 and mine being a TJ, I need every inch I can get (that's what she said). I already have a super short SYE on my np231 but I have a 241 sitting in the shed I want to swap in, and that's going to lose me an inch or so of drive shaft length, hence the Dana 44 on order.

 

[SkylinesSuck]

One other thing I just realized is the Dana 44 I ordered has the larger JK 8.9" ring gear. What size is a stock TJ Dana 44 ring gear?

 

[D's Jeep Wrld]

One other thing I just realized is the Dana 44 I ordered has the larger JK 8.9" ring gear. What size is a stock TJ Dana 44 ring gear?

Good point,the tjs use a 8.5" ring gear!
I wonder if the pinion is any bigger,I've seen Jk Dana 44 pinion and I don't remember them being any bigger either

It's probably about to ship I'd guess. Fusion is actually who I bought it from. I guess I could always reach out and ask if they have even started on it, but it was a black Friday order so I'd guess so. One important thing for me is the length of the pinion i.e. how long is the drive shaft going to be. My current 8.8 is about 1-2" longer than a Dana 44 and mine being a TJ, I need every inch I can get (that's what she said). I already have a super short SYE on my np231 but I have a 241 sitting in the shed I want to swap in, and that's going to lose me an inch or so of drive shaft length, hence the Dana 44 on order.

That's another good point,I have an lj so I'm not too worried about DS length....I may need a new driveshaft? I'll find out later

 

[SkylinesSuck]

It never ends!

 

[D's Jeep Wrld]

It never ends!

Never money wise? Oh that sht ends.....and fast

 

[D's Jeep Wrld]

Throwback to December 24th of 2023:
Back when a simple Harmonic balancer change turned into me relooming my jeep,doing a cam swap...then me doing a head with LS valve train cause why not since the head was already off (it destroyed port velocity tho)....to then me saying "well since I'm here I might as well" paint the frame rails.....then the fenders...firewall engine and other bits and pieces on the engine So yeah, Then Mr.NashvilleTj said I should name my jeep "Snowball " because of how one thing snowballed into a whole project lol
So as a reminder,That's why this thread is called "Project Snowball"

40k miles later and it has aged to say the least.
I will say I do miss the dual cast manifolds! The 6to1 header from American Racing Headers makes it sound less like a v8 and more like the 6 cylinder that it is lol But the power i got from the 6to1 header is nice

Before pic*

Posting this because I found these pics buried in my camera roll

And this might happen again once I go with some high line fenders upfront giving everything a once over

 

[D's Jeep Wrld]

I'm going Oldschool
White headers and a white rear axle
Jk it's just weld through primer,I'm now on a time crunch to get my Lj running

And my Lj is a piece of junk too...According to the city,I'm sure one of my neighbors reported me.... Me and a good chunk of the neighborhood are into cars except for one new house/neighbor that's in the middle of us,So? We're gonna make some of our cars louder My Neighbor already deleted his resonators on his Benz,my jeep will remain at its volume I'll probably bring it to the volume it was at (it used to be loud,To me) lol and sooner or later I'm gonna be doing a Whipple setup on a escalade for one of my other neighbors so that puppy will be loud too. That one party messed with the wrong neighborhood
Im not the only victim of getting reported for having a junk vehicle. So we've chalked it up to one house,Why? We've never had a single report up until said party of that one house moved in....we've gotten treated like we're in a HOA since they moved with their personal complaints

So yeah...My lj will be louder,Tastefully louder since I'm temporarily gonna be running a single muffler after I'm done with my triangulated mid arm. I'm gonna wait till I get a tig rig&some practice to make the exhaust I actually want