You and me both. This a complete change for me and I can't wait to get back into trail riding. Not to mention the 50 year Jeepster Anniversary ride in Moab.
So it took some work to let her tan. She is rolling on her own weight, but I still need the actual trackbar that I am going to run. This one is just in there to keep things centered while I try to find my 3/4" fine thread taps. I just can't remember where they are and my tools are currently spread between a storage unit, my house, and two shops. One thing I know for sure is that they aren't at the shop I work out of. I also haven't built the mounts for the coilovers. I am going to wait on them until I can get the shocks.
I got the steering box braced up and installed. I turned down and bored four slugs to run the bolts through. Then I capped the top two with a piece of 1x2x1/8" to beef them up a little. This is a grand wagoneer box that will be drilled and taped for hydro assist. It fits really well, but I wish I would have pushed the front bumper out about an inch so that it could go forward and let me push the axle a little further forward.
The lower link mounts are inboarded a little on the frame. They mount the links at 10° and push to the center of the frame just about an inch. Sorry for the blurry picture. My hands shake anyway and the phone just doesn't stabilize well. You can see in the picture that I had to rotobroach my body mount plug welds and move the body mounts up. I went ahead and lifted the body mounts 1" to give me a little more room for the drivetrain but to also get the frame exits to work out on the body.
I used a matching 10° link mount on the axle side and was able to get the link mounts to the same width as the leaf springs. I wanted them wider but with 10° I went as wide as possible while still being able to turn lock to lock. I bought the combined link mount/coilover mount, but I am going to outboard the coilovers even more. I will build out the top of the link mounts to be the air-bump landing pads.
With all of the work to fit it all, I did go three link with the upper link on the drivers side. I am running three equal length links, all at 30" bolt to bolt. I have run longer links in the past, but I wanted this to be a little shorter to reduce the chance of bending and to make packaging easier. Here is a shot looking back down the links.
At this geometry I have 86% anti-dive, 1° roll axis with oversteer, and 4" of uptravel, 7" down. I would have liked 6" up and down, but my rear leafs didn't turn out exactly where I want them and I am not sure it is worth all the work to try to raise it up. I am not planning on bombing down the desert in this thing. I will air bump with 2" travel bumps and only 4" of total travel at the bump can. I will then mount the coilovers to have another 1.5" of travel to account for the flex travel at each end of the axle.
Up next the permanent motor mounts and trans cross member. Then it is on to body work until I get a budget for more parts.