Carwash Crawler - Build Thread... again.

[carwash]

Well, new centers came from Copperhead a couple weeks ago. Dropped them off to Jeff for the finish work. He is machining the center hole, the lug holes, and the outer edge... should be able to drop into the wheel and weld in... I owe him big. Pics of those soon... maybe he will chime in here and give me an update...

Spent the last couple evenings finishing up the chunks for the rockwells. Had to pull the one apart that Kargomaster and I knocked out a couple weekends ago... recall the thrust washer questions... Anyway, those are all buttoned down and ready to go.

the second chunk i got into had some serious pinion slop, maybe as much as 3/32". since i am running pinion brakes, no pinion slop is tolerable. I was dreading tearing into this, as i hadn't even looked in my manual yet, and assumed it was going to be a serious pain in the ass. Turns out it was very simple. The shims for preload are behind the retainer, and there was no need to remove the bearings or anything... so about an hour of off/on/off/on/off/on until i was happy with the preload and i was done.

Put on the rear high clearance skid on the housing tonight. I purchased the DIY kits from Blue Torch. Note to self, don't be a tight ass next time, and buy the welded ones. Here are a few pics of the process...

Starts of course with the bare housing, stock bowl cut off and the area grinded flat to accept the new cover...





I then tacked all the pieces together on the housing.