Michigander,
The shop and description are below. Yeah, mine is 4wd and you do have to replace teh front gears too unless you ABSOLUTELY won't ever use the front end cause that will cause serious damage if you don't replace both.
RangerX
Actually the Shop is called "Autostylz" up in Lake Froest (Orange County) A fellow employee is neighbors with the owner. I talked to the owner and he normally charges $550 per axle but since I know his neighbor he said he'd do it $500 each and if I paid cash he'd do it under the table(no tax). That's with the diffs in the vehicle. I'm sure it would be cheaper if you pulled them out and took them in, I just don't have the time. I think the shop is a two person setup. The mechanic used to be the head mechanic for Team MacPherson Racing. In fact they don't have room in their current shop for all the equipment and they said they would actually drive my Explorer over to the MacPherson race shop and do it there. He said I can drop it off in the afternoon and pick it up the next morning cause they'll do it over night!! I talked to them about doing a coil over custom fabbed front end and they said no problem and we'll talk about it when I bring the vehicle in. He said they're building a race truck right now and they are also doing a coil over Ranger right now that should get around 20" of travel. My coworker said they do really clean work and if you've seen any of MacPhersons race trucks he said this is the guy that designed and did a majority of the work on them. If this is true I expect their work to be top notch. My neighbor said they've built everything from show trucks that are lowered on air bags with a three link rear end set up to full on race trucks so it looks like they have teh experience. If you want I'll tell you more once I go to the shop and see teh stuff first hand? I'm hoping to get the vehicle in for the gears in the next week or two depending on my schedule.
By the way, that Rod Fantelli guy up in Ramona is still who I plan on having all my suspension work done by unless I find something better. I'm still months away from that so I'm still keeping my eyes and ears open for that. Still Fantelli is the best I've seen so far. He wants $4500 for a complete bolt on front end with Swa-A-Way coilovers, Air bump stops, extended Radius Arms w/Heim Joints, custom shock hoops with bracing attached across the engine compartment from one side to the other. He said this setup is basically built for race trucks and I should expect to be able to go out and pound through decent sized whoops and catch 2-3 feet of air and expect it to drive home straight. He said that he stands behind his work and if anything bends or breaks he'll fix it for the cost of parts. Labor is free. He also said that he'd let me use his equipment if I wanted to learn to do the stuff my self and fix or fab anything AI wanted in the future. Fantelli seems really cool and is at the top of my list so far (by the way, he used to work for autofab and all his stuff is almost identical. He's cheaper cause he charges $30/hour instead of Autofab's $60/hour) for suspension fabricators but, like I said. I'm still looking and shopping around and for instance I'm going to see what this "AutoStylz" place can do and what their price is like. So far their price is great for the gearing and if this guy is MacPherson's old head mechanic I'm expectiong their work to be awesome too.
