'93 Sport Expo/ trail rig build

[410Fortune]

very nice! With the tie rods in phase with the beams like that and a good alignment it should drive like a dream compared to most lifted TTB's!
With the BII on 35's I set my camber at 0 and my toe at 1/16" in per side, works out really well. I like your alignment "machine" I have always just used jack stands and string....your setup looks alot easier to setup

 

[Dzrtcj7]

very nice! With the tie rods in phase with the beams like that and a good alignment it should drive like a dream compared to most lifted TTB's!
With the BII on 35's I set my camber at 0 and my toe at 1/16" in per side, works out really well. I like your alignment "machine" I have always just used jack stands and string....your setup looks alot easier to setup

It drives so much better! I used to say it was like a fat lady riding a bar stool. All of that vagueness is now gone.

The bars I'm using for my alignment are just large bar clamps from harbor freight 60 in. Aluminum F-Style Bar Clamp.

My camber went slightly negative after the addition of the winch and bumper. I'm not going to mess with it until I've got the rear bumper, storage boxes and rock sliders done. It seems like any weight changes affect that camber. For castor, I just put in as much as I could get and still get camber to work.

 

[Dzrtcj7]

Time to start working on the booty of this thing. Goals here are going to be:
- High and tight
- Departure protection
- Rear quarter protection
- Swing out spare tire mount
- Exhaust tip protection
- Mounts for hi lift and shovel. Maybe mounts for fuel, water and chainsaw.
-; Receiver hitch for light weight ie; moving empty car trailer, moving boat around the property.
- Minimize weight as much as possible.
- License plate mount with light

That's a pretty long laundry list. Let's see what I come up with.

 

[timtimtimajim]

I knew having a twin would be a bad influence

So I’m thinking about going to the 5.5” lift on my Explorer and running 33s. Figured since I’ve already got most of the kit with the 2.5”, it’ll be as easy as new coils, shocks, pitman arm, and probably shackles in the rear.

Wanted to pick your brain a bit...

What’s the setup like in the rear for you? Looks like you’re still spring under. Do you know how much lift the leaf springs gave you and how much the shackles gave you? I’ve got a nice set of 3” lift leaf springs and want to keep them, so hopefully just shackles will do the trick.

Also which pitman arm are you running?

How’s the tire clearance? What are the specs on your wheels?

Your build is looking really good!

 

[Dzrtcj7]

I'm always good at being an bad influencer. If funny as I continue to adjust my plans from other ideas I see on rigs, my wife keeps saying "What changed, I thought you already had the figured out" ... she doesn't get it

For the rear I'm running the spring under Deaver leaf pack that came with the Duff kit. I'm going to assume it's a 4" pack because after I installed it sat too low. When I called Duff, they realized they forgot to send me the extended shackles. The shackles they sent are 7.5" from center to center of the bolts, so approx 3" over stock which would net 1.5" of lift. I'm not a huge fan of the extended shackles because they're likely to get hit if I drop off a ledge, but they are about the best solution for my setup.

I'm running the drop pitman that came with the Duff kit. I'm pretty sure it's equivalent to the FA400 Skyjacker arm. As installed, it's not enough drop to get the drag link/ tie rod level. When I did the knuckle swap with the flipped TRE's, that got my rod ends up another 1"+ and leveled everything out. If I didn't do the knuckle swap I would have gotten the FA600 pitman arm.

Tire clearance in my opinion is perfect. The tires net out real close to a true 33". The wheels are 15x8 with 3.75" backspace. If the wheel is turned at exactly the right angle with one of the front corners stuffed I can just barely kiss the back corner of the fender. With stock wheels at 4.5" backspace, I rubbed my radius arms and shocks hard at full lock. After getting if flexed out this weekend and stuffing all 4 corners, 35's would have required quite a bit of fender cutting to make work.

Regarding stepping up to 5.5" from your 3" lift, I'm not sure your drop brackets will get you low enough to adjust all the camber out with adjusters. F150 coil spacers might be just enough to keep you from having to buy new drop brackets. Or it could be your opportunity to do cut and turned beams ... I'm pretty sure with correct length bump stops you can run 33's with 4.5-5" lift.

Thanks for following along with my build! Let me know if you have any other questions.

 

[timtimtimajim]

I know how that feels! And that sounds like my wife too

Thank you for the detailed response! You definitely answered all of my questions that I have right now. I might be back with more though

Looking at my kit, and with what Duff told me when I bought, it’s got holes lower down on the drop brackets for the 5.5” kit. I think they sell just one bracket to make it easy. That’s part of the reason why I’m thinking more lift!

 

[Dzrtcj7]

Ah ha! That would explain why my drop brackets have 2 sets of holes! Sounds like you're all set!

For what it's worth, I'm not entirely happy with my ride quality. Aired down at 10-15 psi it's great. But at road pressure of 30-35psi, it's really harsh on anything choppy, like wash board, pot holes, gravel roads, etc. I'm not sure if it's shocks or springs. I'm going to try pulling a shock out of my dual shocks up from to see if that changes anything. If I can determine its the shocks that are stiff, I'll consider some Fox 2.0's or something.

 

[timtimtimajim]

You know right at first with mine I wasn’t impressed with the ride either. A lot of it was the custom leaf springs I got. And my front coils sag a little at the upper wraps which I think makes it a bit harsh... but with that being said, after everything wore in real well (like 10,000 miles) it’s rode really nice since then. I do keep my tires around 30psi and tools in the back all the time to help keep things soft.

I do like the Duff shocks because of how they’re valved. I’ve had my eyes on the new Duff shocks, which I believe are actually Bilstein’s. But I’ve thought about possibly getting away from the Duff shocks when I go more lift, so I’m curious to see what you find!

 

[RangerX]

But at road pressure of 30-35psi, it's really harsh on anything choppy, like wash board, pot holes, gravel roads, etc.

Have you done the chalk line test on the new tires? That psi sounds right for stock size tires, maybe not 33’s.

 

[Dzrtcj7]

Back to work on the Explorer. Just did new Dutchman axles to do away with the adapters. Also replaced the lsd clutches with a set of carbons.

Also got the front end professionally aligned. Had to work through a couple things but am pretty happy with how it's driving.

Now I'm getting after that back bumper build!

 

[Dzrtcj7]

Okay, here's some more fun fab pictures. Making steady progress on the rear bumper. This will also have a swing out tire carrier