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1989 Jeep Cherokee 1 ton swap

Bump stops risers welded in.
limit straps torqued to ArmStrong levels.
rear render modifications patched up.

I think all I need are rear bumps and I can actually see how this thing wheels before spending money to buy new gears.
I would really like to run the parking brake cables and test out my idea of using a stainless clamp set to Make a loop and use the factory Jeep parking brake handle with shortened Ford F-350 parking brake cables. No reason other than they came with the axle, and I’ve kind of cut one down already.
 
Both sets of gears have arrived.
I’m waiting for the clamshell puller to arrive now. Plan is to use the stock bearings for setup on the pinion since the carrier already has new bearings installed.
I’ll need a new pinion gasket for one axle. I have one, I think the front, sitting on a shelf, and probably new pinion nuts.
I think these will require shims or a crush sleeve eliminator by design. I didn’t research any of this before, and I’ll have to compare the pinions when I pull the stock ones.
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Front pinion

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Rear pinion
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Biggest measurement I can get on the Sterling 10.25 carrier bearing is 3.950”.
Bearing race measures 4.125”

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RunningProblem said:
Both sets of gears have arrived.
I’m waiting for the clamshell puller to arrive now. Plan is to use the stock bearings for setup on the pinion since the carrier already has new bearings installed.
I’ll need a new pinion gasket for one axle. I have one, I think the front, sitting on a shelf, and probably new pinion nuts.
I think these will require shims or a crush sleeve eliminator by design. I didn’t research any of this before, and I’ll have to compare the pinions when I pull the stock ones.
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Front pinion

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Rear pinion
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Any delays getting gears? I’ll be pulling the trigger on my 1 ton gears any day now.
 
NickMaul said:
Any delays getting gears? I’ll be pulling the trigger on my 1 ton gears any day now.
Click to expand...
No delays. Amazon sent the box pretty fast and Summit was on the ball. I ordered both on January 27, and they’re both here today. I could have gotten lucky with 5.13s being in stock due to most people wanting 5.38s, or Yukon/USA Standard just has shelves full of parts ready to go.
 
I had to look for reverse HP 60 stuff, but once I found them I got everything in less than a week.
 
Yeah Summit was my go to for finding part numbers and the few manufacturers who make reverse rotation gears. Billavista’s Bible lead me to believe 7.17 gears exist for a Dana 60 but I could r find them. I also could t find them in a Sterling 10.5 so it didn’t matter.
 
RunningProblem said:
Yeah Summit was my go to for finding part numbers and the few manufacturers who make reverse rotation gears. Billavista’s Bible lead me to believe 7.17 gears exist for a Dana 60 but I could r find them. I also could t find them in a Sterling 10.5 so it didn’t matter.
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Believe the lowest you can go in a high pinion 60 is 5.38 anyways.
 
The tallest I could find was 5.38. I went 5.13 because it’s closer to stock gearing on the road with 40s. Yes it’s a crawler, and it’s a grocery getter as well.
 
One Ruffstuff rear stiffener installed. It went kind of easy. Maybe it’s because I had the welder dialed in, and I took time to mock this up a few times. It has cutouts for the stock sway bar and bump stop bolts.

I didn’t spray any primer under this. I kept as much of the stock rust coating stuff as I could. Maybe the rear frame is thicker than other sections because I only blew through in a few spots.

I’d highly recommend this product as it’s worth the $175 + shipping I paid.
The W shaped cut out is there for newer model Jeeps. Looking at the company photos newer Jeeps have a body mount there. What ISNT’T welded into place is a filler plate between the swap bar and the bump stop bolt holes.
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You welded through the coating or are you saying you just ground down only the weld areas
 
I ground done just the weld area. When I did sliders I went to TOWN on the whole thing and got everything off. Now I’m older and more experienced, and really didn’t want to deal with it. I convinced myself leaving most of it on will help with any rust prevention. I also did my best to fill in any tiny holes that might leak water.
 
Did some more welding stuff.

Ruffstuff’s rear frame stiffies DO NOT work with their mid frame stiffies if you actually kept the rear most portion welded on. It requires cutting one or the other. Kind of seems like something they’d mention on their website.


Passenger side of my Jeep has the full uncircumcised mid stiffy.
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Driver side mid stuffy is cut.

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Passenger side is mostly welded in.

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I should have cleaned off the unibody on the inside before taking everything into place. I didn’t, and made up for it with a white wheel. It worked well enough.
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Since the jeep is tweaked in the rear I’ll need to find out what to do about the massive gap on the driver side. It’s a little challenging to bend this with the u I body, or even 3/16 plate on the other side, because only so much of the clamp fits between the gas tank and the unibody. Every time I clamp it down tight I think the unibody on the other side is collapsing. I might just make a few downhill passes and fill the gap slowly. VERY slowly.

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I sprayed the backside of passenger side stuffy with a weld through primer. Mostly because I found the can, and thought about it.
 
RunningProblem said:
Ruffstuff’s rear frame stiffies DO NOT work with their mid frame stiffies if you actually kept the rear most portion welded on. It requires cutting one or the other. Kind of seems like something they’d mention on their website.
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That's good to know, I was looking at those stiffeners. If they're mocked up on the bench beforehand it's easier to see what needs trimmed?
 
frank c said:
That's good to know, I was looking at those stiffeners. If they're mocked up on the bench beforehand it's easier to see what needs trimmed?
Click to expand...
It MIGHT be. If you look really close at the driver side photo you can see where the mids were cut just a little forward of the leaf spring hanger, and the rear stiffys come down the curvature of the unibody. The Mid stiffys have the extra material to go up the curve, and base it off the factory drain hole you can see in the photo of the driver side.
 
After hitting the rear section with my purse a few times the gap was substantially reduced, and I finished welding the passenger side in.

Late last night I realized the original plan was to drill holes in the unibody, and weld nuts to the stiffys so when I install bump stops they’re removable (FordFascist’s idea) so now I’ll be using nutserts on the side, and the factory bump stop mounting holes (also FordFascist’s idea) and some bump stops from a 2000 Silverado. I can compress them down to 2” in a vise and I measured 8” between the unibody and the leaf springs top plate so accounting for science and material thickness in my head it’s’ about 5 5/8” of box tubing I need with a plate welded on the bottom to mount the actual bump stops on. Finally. After like 3 years of owning this thing.
The bump stops I had on it were the stock ones, and one was dry rotted to extinction.
 
Back into the freezer. Too bad I’m dumb and didn’t order a long spline yoke before doing any of this. It’s required for the new gears.

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New ring gear installed. Not torqued or anything. I even went super fancy and smacked the gear with a dead blow instead of sucking it down with the bolts. Apparently you’re NOT supposed to pull the ring gear onto the carrier using the bolts, and then everyone who says this does the exact opposite.


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Setup bearing.

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Slips right on. New long spline pinion on the left. Old short spline on the right. This is why I needed a new yoke. I should have known this after all the reading I did. Only shitty thing is I’d bought a forged short yoke for pretty much the same price as the long yoke when I put 4.10s back in with a locker. I doubt anyone wants a short spline yoke. I think new super duty stuff is even more splines.
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After looking closer at the carrier there was a problem with my last setup. Carrier has marks from the pinion teeth, and the pinion has scratching/scoring on the teeth. Maybe it’s from running it a mile or two without gear oil, or maybe I had bad pinion bearings. Backlash was 0.12 which is out of spec. I’ll have to pay more attention to setting up gears. The pattern looked fine when I put them in, and it was close to factory pattern.
 
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