Mn Mountaineer V8 SAS

[johnny499]

Tom:
I didn't think the truetrac actually locked, i thought it was a helical gear based limited slip that has a higher bias then the clutch type limited slips. Which means it just takes a little more throttle before you go no where with one tire in the air. I see the advantage of not having the wear parts problem and the higher bias before losing traction. But i think if i was going to spend that much to upgrade i might spend more to get a selectable locker, which i agree you have to control and think about but am already doing that with the lockouts and transfer case and the locker affords you 100% locked.
I am still undecided at this point i think i may just rebuild the LSD till i can scrounge together the funds for what ever i decide is the best route for how i wheel and that thought could change after this has been on a variety of trails.

 

[2TimingTom]

Yeah, it doesn't "lock", but if you keep your for in the throttle, it'll effectively lock. As soon as you let up, it'll release.

I wheel with guys that have lockers. They'll go into a spot that flexes them out while open and they spin to a stop. Then they engage the locker(s) and try it again. Me, I just roll right through on the first try.

In all honesty, having the SAS and Trutracs has almost taken the fun out of wheeling. Before I would have to plan my routes through stuff to make it. I'd get a sense of accomplishment after I got through. Now, I've only had to readjust my line once and that was because I ended up trying to climb the vertical face of tall rock that my tires just couldn't get traction on. Everything else it just goes through/over/up.

 

[johnny499]

Ah! o.k. that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation. Now more info to ponder on the situation.

 

[johnny499]

This weekend i finished cleaning the garage and work bench so i can work on things comfortably again. The air conditioning in the garage made it bearable, almost pleasant on a really muggy hot weekend.
With that done i was able to work on more pieces of the puzzle. I was able to finish grinding the flanges on the radius arm ends so the tube fits now.

Once the tubing is notched it will slide all the way to the rear surface area of the "C" bushing.
I set that aside and tore the steering gear apart last night.

Once it was apart i started looking at different options for the fitting locations for the ram assist modification. These are the common locations for the DIY guy's.

One of my concerns is clearance at the forward end by the radiator hose.

Even though it has been done this way in several right ups i was also concerned about the hole damaging the wear surface in the housing and tearing up the piston seal. So i bottomed it out marked the outside of the housing, then pulled the piston back out and lined it up on the exterior to check the clearance. As you can see it is very close to being an issue.

If you drill partially into the recessed feed passage and you don't drill all the way into the bore it should not bee an issue. Here you can see the feed port is a recessed area in the bottom of the bore and that's where you would drill into.

PSC drills their ports into the valve housing which is a more critical area to be drilling into. I figured out where they tapped into, just not sure how they went about doing it. I slid cable ties into the two pressure ports for the different directions.

Upon looking inside the valve housing i discovered where those two ports are fed by. The hole closest is the return line to the pump. The next hole in is the pressure feed from the pump. The passages for the power assist are actually drilled to the two different grooves and this is where PSC taps there units by looking at pictures on their website.

Now the hard part is drilling and tapping into those grooves without damaging the bore or altering the width of the grooves so you don't affect the valving or tear up the seals. I have some more research to do and i may try it on a spare gear housing before i commit to it on this good gear.

 

[rabbit91]

Eaton Trutrac.

Invisible on the street. Only locked when you need it. No compressors to buy, air lines to plumb, no engaging before you need it or hoping it'll get you out if you get stuck first.

And it's cheaper than an ARB.

X2 I cant even tell its in there and I just went wheeling with it, all my buddies following me said it locked right up over all obstacles even lifting tires

But an ARB would be nice...$$$

 

[johnny499]

I am going to try the truetrac if i can get enough money together. I just ordered $660 worth of parts for the rear axle rebuild, re-gear and SOA. I also have the oil filter stands and adapter to do the oil filter relocation and extenal filter for the transmission. So the remaining big pieces i need to get are front and rear springs, differential and speedometer correction module.
I decided not to spend the time trying to tap into the valve assembly for the ram assist ports, i drilled them into the housing instead. I still need to get that reassembled.

 

[MercuryMullet]

I have a tru trac. I have only I've not had it spin the tucked tire once. I was twisted and the left rear and right front were of the ground while trying to turn left. It didn't spin as much as the tire in the air, but it had enough effort to move me.

 

[johnny499]

That's great news, everyone seems to have had a positive experience with the truetrac.
Here are the results of drilling and tapping the steering gear. You can see the piston bottomed out in the the bore in this pic, it is very close to the seal groove in the piston.

I decided to tap into the top for the front port. Hopefully this will avoid clearance issues with the radiator hose. I have two 90 degree fittings on order for the box to try and keep everything as tight as possible.

 

[johnny499]

Last night i rebuilt the steering gear now that the fittings showed up.

I still have to clean the atf off the outside and get it painted.
I have both the drop style pitman arm from the Bronco2 and a straighter one from a full size bronco. I don't know which i will need but i have choices.

I am getting so close to being ready to cut this thing up and doing the swaps. I am going to get a set of chevy springs for the rear this weekend and probably ordering the Truetrac soon.

 

[MercuryMullet]

I have a full size bronco arm.

 

[johnny499]

Picked up a set of rear leaf packs on saturday.

I broke them down to clean them up last night.

I am going to try this graphite paint on them.

I need to replace the bushings in them, i am on the fence deciding between poly and rubber bushings. The poly should last longer but the rubber should flex better.

 

[johnny499]

My Truetrac showed up yesterday along with a poly trans mount and crush sleeve eliminator for the pinion gear. I ordered poly bushings for the rear springs today. I will be ordering the front springs shortly and then hopefully in a few weeks i can get rolling on this. My plan is to get this all rocked out and fine tuned before it snows.

 

[johnny499]

Saturday i worked on the radius arms. The tubing is 2" dia. so i found a box that was 1" tall and used it to mark the tubes on both sides, rotated them about 3/8" and marked them again. This gave me centered markings on both sides of the tubing.

Cutting those out allowed the tubing to slip over the factory radius arm sections.

I used my welding bench to get the flange surface level. Once the tubing was leveled it was tacked and then i welded one pass all the way around.

I went ahead and ran a second pass that filled it in and smoothed the flanges to the tubing.

Right now they are roughly 6 inches longer than they need to be. I couldn't help myself i had to put the rod ends in to see what they will look like.

Here i compared how parallel they came out, the tube on the right one was 1/4" longer than the other. They are almost perfect and way better than they were factory.

I threw the new "c" bushings on and bolted the arms up for some setup measurements.

Sunday I pressed the bushings out of the leaf springs and cleaned them up with a flap disc on the grinder.

While I was using the press i put the carrier bearings on the new truetrac. If the weather cooperates i plan to paint the springs tonight with the graphite paint.

 

[johnny499]

The weather hasn't allowed me to paint the rear springs yet. I did order the front coils yesterday and am working on gathering some little things like brake line, fittings and misc. hardware. I also worked it so i can bring my dads iron worker to my place for doing some of the fabricating. I am pretty excited to have it available to speed things up.

 

[johnny499]

I gave up on waiting for the weather to get better and tried to spray the graphite paint on the springs Wednesday night. I should have known that was not going to work when it plugged up the paint filter while pouring it into the gun. The spray gun plugged up immediately so i dug out a brush and went to it. I put a third coat on last night. I will be picking up new center bolts tonight and reassembling them. I think i am going to try them without the overloads to start with. I painted them anyway and will be leaving the center bolt long enough to start with that i can add the overloads after the fact if i decide they are needed. The front springs are supposed to be here Tuesday. The brake proportioning valve showed up today and i have the rest of the brake hardware ordered. I should be attacking this in a couple weeks if all goes well and the planets align.

 

[johnny499]

The springs were dry saturday morning.

I put them together with new center bolts and minus the overload leafs for now.

It looks like i will need to drill out the center hole in the new spring perches.

I really like the precision of these spring perches, i couldn't have made them as nice without spending hours.

Then i moved on to marking the rear rotors to be drilled to the new bolt pattern.

The Thunderbird calipers are not designed for banjo bolts, the hose screwed directly in which will not work for this application. So i cut the recess area out around the line hole so it will accept the banjo fitting.

One of them was deeper than the other, but i did both anyway.

I had caliper paint left over from another project so i used it up on these.

Yesterday i pulled the other pair of rancho rs9000's off of my mud truck for this and found a set of bronco rims that are 15"*8" that had 31-10.5's for mockup.

 

[griz700rocket]

Subscribed. This looks like a solid build. I'm on the lookout for parts to try a SAS on my 99 sport.

 

[johnny499]

Subscribed. This looks like a solid build. I'm on the lookout for parts to try a SAS on my 99 sport.

Thanks man!
I've been collecting parts since this spring. I have used info from a lot of builds on both this forum and a few others along with my own experience to get what i think is going to be a good combination.

I have a big project at work that i need get completed then my plans are to take a week off and try to get this converted. This is why i have been trying to make sure i have all the little things planned out ahead of time as much as possible. I have no delusions of there not being things i didn't think about or that go together differently than originally planned.

My most recent bit of indecision is tires, both size and model. I am trying to decide between 33" and 35" tires. Online the 35's are more money, locally they are actually about $10 a piece cheaper across the board. I think i may wait to make the size decision until after i have the axle swaps done and can check clearances. Then i need to decide on the model, i have heard good things about the STT, then the KM2 and MT/R's have good followings also. This is still going to be my daily driver so it will see more pavement than dirt.

 

[MercuryMullet]

KM2s are pretty heavy. I have them, like them but not my DD.

 

[griz700rocket]

I have 32.5 (damned metric system) duratracs on mine and I love them. It's been my daily driver for a couple years now and they still look almost new. Good all around tire. Handle the snow, mud and still run 75 down the interstate no problem.