Today was a long day but a good one. Rented a ball joint removal tool from Advance and that made the whole process a lot simpler. Getting the ball joints out wasn’t difficult, but my body is definitely feeling the effort now. The lowers were in there nice and snug. Getting the new uppers in is a trick. The part of the knuckle where they go in is curved so it’s tricky to get everything stay put while you crank on it. Once you figure out how to do it, it’s not too bad. Here’s the ball joints and new wheel bearings/hub assembly (never mind the backwards shield – that was fun getting to take it off and put it back on again.
And then with the rotors in:
I also got the front drive shaft in. That wasn’t bad at all:
After getting everything finished up we FINALLY got to see what it looks like sitting on the HD springs and got to take it for a drive to see how the transmission shifts (this was a salvage yard transmission so we didn’t know). It shifts beautifully! We were extremely happy about that. I’m going to cross reference some pics I had of the Jeep with stock springs but I’m pretty sure there is at least an inch or two lift here:
Once we got it back from the test drive we flushed the transmission fluid. When we were about to install it we noticed there was a little moisture in it due to sitting for a year so we wanted to make sure all of that was out of there.
Looking at this pic of the Jeep sitting down makes me very anxious to get new wheels/tires!
And, finally, here’s the aftermath of the project in my garage:
This is after cleaning up a little bit. The next project is getting the leafs installed and getting the rear diff cleaned up and painted. It’s got a lot of surface rust on it and I want to get it painted to help slow that down.
Other than that, it’s at least at the point of being able to drive it. No where near “done” but at least I can enjoy it now. We did put it in 4wd and the front wheels work (pretty excited to see that) and no weird noises.