Well ya know I have been slacking of course, but finally I have a few net results that can be seen
Of course it's all on the surface.......but to get to the point. I have gone through 4-4" wire wheels and a half dozen smaller dremel wire wheels. It took a considerable amount of time to get 10 years worth of midwest grime and rust off of the axle and components, but for the most part it is completely prettied up
I have finished with the complete housing clean-up as well as painting the entire thing. The knuckles and dust shields have met with the same treatment. The axle shaft at first looked a bit had, but an hour with the wire wheel made me realize that they are really in pretty good shape, and likely will not need to be replaced at the present time. I also gave the rotors a nice bit of cleaning and had them turned. In essence that leaves me with a set of calipers needing a bit of cleaning up as well as the steering set-up.
Now I just need to get all the parts in. I have on order currently the ball joints and brake pads. Hopefully this paycheck will leave me with enough spare change to order the new steering u-joints as well as both hub and rotor assemblies that I keep delaying on. Then of course the joints between the tierod and draglink need to be replaced as well as the tierod ends.
The last part and most expensive is the internals (gears,seals,bearings, and etc...) I was considering the Tru-trac for a traction device, but as I have dug into info on it, most feel it will be rather useless with 33 or 35 inch tires. I doubted them, but have been told by many a folk on the jeep boards to just leave it open if I can't afford the ARB at the present time. They claim to speak from experience, and basically say that due to the fact that the Tru-trac tends not to lock up properly with the amount of stress created from the larger tires on a d30, it is not much better than an open differential.
Anyway on to the pictures of my freshly painted parts. Sure looks a hell of a lot better than the first post in this thread