Another Cut & Turn (1 Viewer)

['74 UA FJ]

Alabama Cut & Turn

About 3 weeks ago, my brother and I did a cut & turn on our dad's '73 FJ40. It had a spring over and had some scary handling at high speed because the pinion was pointed up a little bit and had incorrect caster.
The first pic is the caster that it had. It was about 1/2 to 1 degree.
The 2nd pic is the axle with all the hardware cut off of it.
The 3rd pic is fitting the axle up under the springs, deciding what pinion angle we wanted, and welding the spring perches.

 

['74 UA FJ]

The first pic shows the tube cut 360º and turned.
The 2nd pic is what it took to turn the driver's side of the axle. The passenger side popped loose easily with about 5 feet of cheater bar, but the driver's side took about 15 feet of cheater and a tractor(a tractor is the best option when both vises are broken from changing u-joints and such ) to hold the other side of the axle down after we bent some 1.5 inch solid steel rod trying to turn it.
The 3rd pic is the groove ground out of the tube so we could get plenty of weld in there.

 

['74 UA FJ]

The 1st pic is the axle sitting under the springs with the weight of the vehicle on it. The pinion is tilted up at around 10º. The castor is now about 4.5º on both sides.
The 2nd pic shows all the hardware welded back on the axle housing.
The 3rd pic is the finished assembly. We had to send the high steer arms back to Luke because the tierod was hitting the spring. He swapped out arms with us free of charge. Thanks Luke!
- mminter1973 did all the welding on this project.
The vehicle handles superbly up to 70mph now with the 4.5º of caster.
The driveshaft angle is now much better than it was with the lower pinion angle.

 

[Full_Throttle]

Looks great!! Good job. I bet that tractor turn was a pain

 

['74 UA FJ]

Looks great!! Good job. I bet that tractor turn was a pain

Yeah, after we cut into the sleeve at least an 1/8 inch all the way around, it still wouldn't move. We bent about a 30º angle in a piece of 1.5 inch steel rod trying to turn that thing!

 

[bandy rooster]

cool dude, nice work...

 

['74 UA FJ]

A little background on this truck just for kicks:

1973 FJ40: 283 sbc--BUILT, 4 speeds transmission, 3 speed case, SOA, 4x4 Labs Hi-steer, Disks front and rear, mini-truck booster, lock-rite in the front, Saginaw PS, 35x15 Super Swamper TSLs, and other junk I can't think of at the moment.
It's dad's "putt around the country" truck.

 

[yotawheeler]

just curious....why not heat up the housing and it would have been alot easier to turn the ball no?

 

[mminter1973]

just curious....why not heat up the housing and it would have been alot easier to turn the ball no?

We heated it up numerous times, to the point where we didn't feel comfortable heating it anymore. Eventually we got enough of a lever on it to pop it loose.

We cut right down the middle of the factory weld, after we ground it down plumb with the housing. I would suggest cutting just to the inside of the factory weld.

 

[randle]

how did you come to 4.5 degrees as your caster? i'm trying to decide for mine. and thanks for all the pics and explanation!

 

['74 UA FJ]

how did you come to 4.5 degrees as your caster? i'm trying to decide for mine. and thanks for all the pics and explanation!

Well we had 35" tires and you need more caster than stock with large tires, so we were aiming for about 5 degrees. After turning both sides when the axle was out of the vehicle, we put it under and let the weight down on it. It just turned out that both sides were at 4.5 so we went with that. I would suggest 4-5 degrees if you are going to run big tires.

 

[Trollhole]

Nice writeup and pics.