Dana 44's - Continued

Relocating Front Leaf Springs

Because of the position of the differential housing on the front axle, the distance between the leafsprings ends up being wider then the original Jeep set-up. To accomidate this, I had to move the spring hangers on the Jeep outward 2" on each side. To do this, I made brackets out of 1/4" steel. The front looks like an upside down "T" and the back looks like an "H" that has the bottom "n" and top "u" offset from each other.

The front spring hanger on a CJ are skinnier then a YJ, and since I'm using YJ springs, something had to happen to get them to work together. I could use CJ rear spring hangers, and YJ shackles, or use a special shackle that I got from Rubicon Express offeres. Because I was unsure of bushing sizes, I opted for the special shackle, because it came with bushings.




I decided to bolt the back spring hanger in place in lieu of welding. This allows me to change or move the spring bracket without grinding forever, should something be wrong when I'm finished. Bolting stuff together also lends itself to performing a shackle reversal in the future. Lastly, welding weakens frames. I used some galvanized rigid plumbing pipe as spacers to keep the bolts from crushing the frame rails. These peices did get spot welded into the frame, just to ease installation and servicing of this assemble. The sleeves and grinded welds are visible in the picture above.

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