Project Crawlin68

[PhantomEB]

Thanks for the heads up, thats a crock that they know everyone who would be in the market for aftermarket knuckles wants to raise their steering way up higher not the low Chevy way. Even if everyone would run high steer arms off the top.

[earlybronco72]

Patrick, I may be way out in left field, but could you run the right one on the left side, and the left on the right side so that the arms piont towards the rear, and run your ram assist behind the axle?

[highlander]

I may be way out in left field, but could you run the right one on the left side, and the left on the right side so that the arms piont towards the rear, and run your ram assist behind the axle?

There might be some clearance issues with the radius arms.

[earlybronco72]

There might be some clearance issues with the radius arms.

Hmm, good point. Would be nice to find a way to get the ram on the back side of the axle though. All our 4X4 line trucks at work run the tierod behind the axle. Huge stuff, but looks cool. Especially the double cardan on the front axle shafts.

[highlander]

I think it could be done if the high steer arm extended both forward and back on one side to catch the ram in the back.

[Delta 4 Wheel]

Are you going to cut off the tie rod mounts and grind them smooth?

I also was comparing the stock knuckles to the Dedenbear knuckles and WOW! What difference. You can see the extra "meat" everywhere. Each Dedenbear knuckle weighs 5 lbs. more than the stock knuckle!

One "gottcha" that I was a little disappointed in, was the "Ford" Dedenbear knuckle is actually a Chebby knuckle! Look at the height of the steering arms! The stock Ford knuckle is much higher. The Dedenbear is a lot lower! All they do is drill a different pattern for the spindle bolts and call it a Ford knuckle (and of course, charge more for them!)

Now if you are going to run high steer arms, then this is a mute point. BUT, if you are going to run a TRO steering system, it's not going to be that high at all!

[crawlin68]

Are you going to cut off the tie rod mounts and grind them smooth?

I think that I'll just leave them in place just in case something catastrophic happens and I need to mount my tie rod on them to get me home.

[Delta 4 Wheel]

I think that I'll just leave them in place just in case something catastrophic happens and I need to mount my tie rod on them to get me home.

Probably a good idea...

[highlander]

So did you get those knuckles turned yet?

[crawlin68]

Time for a little "Redneck Tech". When you have a bunch of gunk in your axle tubes, how do you get it out? Pull out your Redneck Degree and get to work of course. I ran down to Home Depot and picked up a 2 1/4 inch wire wheel (that goes in the drill) Then I welded it to a piece of rod that I found in the corner of my garage via a home made coupler and presto.......an axle tube cleaner outer thingy-ma-bob. Worked pretty good too!

[crawlin68]

So did you get those knuckles turned yet?

Yeah, I sure did! I just got home right now from doing it. It took a bit to figure out what the best plan of attack was going to be. A few hours of trial and error fiddle fart'n around before we finally realized that we just needed to put some heat on it! A LOT of heat! You need to get them glowing red and keep them there while you are fine tuning the degrees that you want. Once we got them heated up properly, they turned pretty easy with about a 6 foot cheater bar. If we would have just done this from the beginning, it would have been a 1 hour job to do both sides.

[blwngsket]

Now that is freakin slick
Tony

[highlander]

Pretty much the same thing I did, except I didn't clean all the gunk out of the tube first and it made a nice grease fire

I didn't have a large enough vice either so I ended up welding some scrap steel to the housing to hold it in place.

[Mike]

Nice work!

[welndmn]

Get some of those MAD4wd tube seals. I installed mine and love that fact that it going to keep the junk out.
If you don't install them now, you never will.