Builds Field Crust - Reviving a 1982 Pickup (15 Viewers)

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Looks good, how do the trident shifters feel? I’ve seen mixed reviews either really crisp or really sloppy.
I think they are pretty good, if they are loose it would be easy to take them apart and add a shim to the bushings I think.
 
Finished installing the dual cases yesterday. Was a little disappointed with how much I had to clearance the floor, but it is what it is. One of the previous owners must have had a driveshaft fail so at least the floor was already messed up. The Budbuilt crossmember came out really nice, I'm pretty happy with how low profile it is. The trident shifters feel pretty nice and I only had to shorten the shifters and bend them a little to get them to clear in all shifter configurations.

Going to try to order driveshafts this week and get started on the rear axle ASAP. 65 days left until I leave for Rubithon....

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is that the final fitment of everything?
if so that is definitely going to be banging the floor.
those stock case mounts allow a lot of movement.
i would also recommend lock nuts and/or loctite on the trident bits
 
Those detents sound solid. To minimize movement of the cases on stock mounts, I used a piece of cable to limit my engine from torquing over. There's other methods too.

I still tore the OEM style T-case mounts and ended up making ones similar to the "Bomb proof" ones for sale.
 
Yep. BUT I may have a different definition of fast. I also don't complain about the speed of my 80 series as it seems peppy to me also haha.
 
My coworker that I car pooled with had an 81 with a 22R, stock gears and 33's. It wasn't exactly slow but the only time he could get into 5th gear was down hill with a hurricane force tail wind.

Same for my son's 91 with 22RE and only 31's. Very rare that he could grab 5th gear. Got by with it for quite a while.
 
@The Machinist
How horribly slow was your truck with stock gears and the 33”s?

My coworker that I car pooled with had an 81 with a 22R, stock gears and 33's. It wasn't exactly slow but the only time he could get into 5th gear was down hill with a hurricane force tail wind.

Same for my son's 91 with 22RE and only 31's. Very rare that he could grab 5th gear. Got by with it for quite a while.
Same experience with mine that @aztoyman cited. Power with 33's and 4:11's is totally fine, but 5th gear is hardly useable. Not a huge problem unless you are spending all of your time at 70mph, but it would be nice to have more torque lol

22r's don't mind reving out, so dropping a gear and letting it scream is always an option 😂
 
I was going to wait to update this thread until my buddy uploaded all the pictures from the Rubicon trip, but it been over a month now so I guess I'll get a head start.

Rear axle came out to get cleaned and freshened up. While it was out I re-drilled the spring plates so that I could get rid of the axle relocation plates and keep the axle centered in the wheelwells.

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Swapped in the shorter rear shackles I had made, then later decided to make some slightly shorter versions of the Skys Offroad boomerang shackles to better suit the springs I setup on this truck.
Also got the new driveshafts in from Tom Woods. Both are heavy wall tubing and the front is the extra long travel version. The front suspension has quite a bit of down travel!

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Along with the new shackles, I also drew up a set of bump stop extensions to use an extra set of big bumstops I've had sitting around for a few years. I've been wanting an excuse to try some tab and slot parts and these worked out perfectly. I made them in an I-beam shape for clearance on the J-arm steering.

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Converted from manual to power steering using a stock power steering box and pump that I got from rockauto. The new engine I put in already had the pump bracket so that made swapping in the parts pretty easy. The pitman arm on the manual steering box really fought me though... I ended up needing to disassemble the box and use the hydraulic press to get it to separate it from the sector shaft. To say it was sketchy would be an understatement, but it eventually broke loose.

I tried to find a stock power steering reservoir in the local junkyards and on ebay for a while but everything was either in really bad shape or way overpriced, so I decided to order a generic replacement part for a 100 series landcruiser. (at the time it was around $35) That required making a bracket but I'm really happy with the end result.

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Re-geared the rear diff to match the front I did previously. This one went a lot more smoothly now that I sorta knew what I was doing. Go ahead internet, tell me how I got the pattern wrong. :lol:

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For those playing along at home.... be very careful with your ARB air line routing around the ring gear. Unfortunately/fortunately I noticed a rubbing noise in the front diff that sounded a lot like the copper air line skimming the ring gear. Thankfully I left a lot of extra line when I did the front so I was able to cut it shorter and re-route it, but having to take the front axle apart a second time right at the last minute before I left for Rubicon really sucked.

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Electrical stuff:
ARB compressor got mounted under the bed using a plate I had laser cut and 4 nutserts. I was worried about heat from the exhaust so I put some fiberglass backed heatsheilding that was leftover from my 1HZ turbo install on the muffler. Works great.

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I've had this set of light brackets that mount to the knuckles for a while so I decided to throw them on this truck with some $12 amazon lights.

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Knowing that the group I was going to be wheeling with on the Rubicon always shows up late and that we were planing to go from Loon Lake to Rubicon Springs in one day, I decided to put some rock lights in. I ended up using 3 KC Cyclone lights with the frosted lenses. I bought the magnet mounts so that I can move them around easily. I'm pretty happy with them.

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I also started using open barrel connectors for everything, and I'm kicking myself for not using these years ago!

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