Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
It’s looks low budget lol There was a lot of hidden cost and time into those housings. I definitely could not have done it without all of the help from my friends and the tools they have. There is still a lot of money to spend on those axles that I’ll be posting soon. It should be pretty durable, later as funds allow I’ll probably buy a spare stub shaft and maybe a spare u joint. I will be running Toyota drive shafts. That will probably be the fuse.
the best part of doing the shave kit is if you dont like how the first one turned out, or your cut was not strait enough, or you had to grind too much you get the opportunity to do it a second time.
So The “front” 14 Bolt already had a shave, 5.38’s and was welded so I just left it alone. It doesn’t have the shaved ring gear but I’m not worried about that much clearance to redo it. The “rear” is the one I shaved and also needed to machine the ring gear. Btw carbide sawzall blades are awesome! So I marked the cut by putting the diff cover on and then according to the instructions, you have to cut a few degrees off the face to taper it off. I used a digital angle cube to set the degrees and just went for it with the carbide blade hoping I wouldn’t have to grind much. I actually cut off too much, we had to make a filler plate out of ar400 plate on the plasma table. Then my buddy went to machine the ring gear on the lathe and that didn’t go well either. As I turns out, gears are pretty hard, he burned up a bunch of cutting heads trying to take it down and gave up. In the instructions, they specify a certain cutting head that you need to use, so I looked them up, and it turns out they’re quite pricey. That kind of put me in a dilemma. I couldn’t return the gears that I already started to machine to then just buy machined gears from Ballistic, the cutting heads were kind of expensive and I didn’t have the time to send my gears to Ballistic to have them machined because I wanted to make it to KOH 2023 with the rig. So, my buddy hit me up one night and goes what do you think about grinding your gear down with an angle grinder? And I was like no, I can do some janky shit but I don’t think I can do that. He sends me a YouTube video of someone doing it and it looks pretty easy! One problem, I already shaved my housing…The video shows them spinning it in the housing. So my buddy was like well you have another 14 Bolt you know what you need to do. So I pulled the front apart then I spent 12-14 hours grinding that ring gear… I started out really optimistic and I was like hey this seems like it’s going really well to, F*** this thing. I would never do this again, please do not follow in my path, just have your gear machined or purchase it machined…
Shaving 14 Bolts…Well here’s a good story
That was an option, but like you said, I didn’t want to get that much dust around the lathe and make that much dust in the shop that it is in.
That sounds familiar, that might be the video I watched
I haven’t heard of any issues with the shaved 14 Bolts but I haven’t been on an off-road forum since Pirate4x4 died. What type of issues are people having? I’m planning on putting that hurt to this thing so if there’s a weakness, I’m going to find it. I’m trying to keep up with all my buggy friends and rear-steer buggy friends without a buggy budget
Oh man you scared me, I thought we were talking about ring gear failures. I don’t think this thing has a fighting chance of holding oil in it
if the bottom falls off, I’m packing it full of grease and covering it with a trash bag and tape to finish the trip. The diff cover is going to leak as soon as I bang a rock pretty good. But it’ll probably leak before it even sees a trail from the axle seals and not the axle seals themselves, It’ll be the O-rings that hold the seal housings in. A lot of race car guys JB Weld the seal housings into their axles, but then it makes it hard to change the seals themselves, so I was going to give it a shot with O-rings first before I made that choice
Oh man you scared me, I thought we were talking about ring gear failures. I don’t think this thing has a fighting chance of holding oil in it
I’ve seen some dirty 14 bolts put up with some abuse. That’s why I chose to run 14 bolts. I’m sure that it loses a little bit of strength and it probably doesn’t sling oil the same which it doesn’t with an aftermarket cover anyways. But in this application I’m not worried about it. Nothing is invincible though
very cool
I put the bed on and I have done a little bit of tube work. mocked up the transfer cases but I need to make a custom mount. I’m trying to run a flat belly and I think we might be able to accomplish it. I have been slowly collecting parts but I have a project taking priority over this for now. But I’m hoping to get cranking on it again soon!
