redneckengineered
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Help Support Hardline Crawlers :
14 bolt front build thread and tech help
- Thread starter redneckengineered
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B
bjeep
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When you going to weigh it? 
Looking good.
Looking good.
redneckengineered
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bjeep said:When you going to weigh it?
Looking good.
I'm going to have to yank it out from under there at some point because I'm as curious as you guys are as to the weight. I was hoping to weigh before it was done but just don't have the time. Truss is all 1/4" with 3/8" brackets so it ain't gonna be light.
jordan7118
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Daaaayyyyyuuuuuummmm... Those outer knuckles are the bees knees!!!
FlatlandFSJ
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This might a hard measurement to get since it's already put together for the most part, or it reid might have put it out there already. If you can get it though..... I'm interested in knowing the rough distance from the UB mounting surface to the center of the kingpins.
redneckengineered
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01tj said:How'd it hold up this weekend??
Amazing! Beat the piss out of it. Not one single issue. I'll post some pics and a final writeup later today when I have a minute. Had a real issue with the stubs from RCV and unit bearings I'll elaborate on as well because it could affect anyone else wanting to run this combo.
slravenel
Well-Known Member
sumbitch was smashing into all sorts of rocks and just kept on diggin! GOTDANGOLE BULLDOZER BUGGIE 
8) 
This thing is massive and if you manage to break it, you did something pretty stupid. I thought that Solid Knuckles were overkill, but these things are just a whole different story. Killer build and really not that bad cost wise when you look at some other builds out there and tally them all up
8) This thing is massive and if you manage to break it, you did something pretty stupid. I thought that Solid Knuckles were overkill, but these things are just a whole different story. Killer build and really not that bad cost wise when you look at some other builds out there and tally them all up
wizzo
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01tj said:How'd it hold up this weekend??
Axle held up fine. Drives like a girl though so.......I saw him LIFT at least 10 times.........LOL
Back on track. For real, axle is LEGIT!!!! Fab work looks killer, parts are ridiculous BEEF!!!
B
bjeep
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wizzo said:
Jessica don't lift,so I don't think that is a true statement.
redneckengineered
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Bear with me while I rewind to last Wednesday (the day before Thanksgiving). I get a call while I'm at work from Nick at Sosebee Offroad to run by the shop. I was expecting to grab my trailer as soon as I got off at 5pm and pick the rig up ready to ride. He's only a few minutes away so I ran over there and we had problems. While trying to bolt the UBs onto the knuckles, everything got into a bind. Basically you couldn't steer more than a couple degrees and nothing would spin. It was around 4pm so I frantically called up Kraig since I had his cell number and he answered the phone. I told him what was going on and he said send him some pictures and he'd have someone from tech call me back. I got a call back a few minutes later from a couple really nice tech guys at RCV. Can't say I was very pleasant to talk to but they we helpful.
Long story short, the outer stubs that RCV is selling for these knuckles/UB combo DO NOT WORK. The RCV shafts are designed for 450/550 knuckles whereas Reid clearly states their castings are based off the 250/350 knuckles. Really the only difference here is a 1/2" bigger spread between the two knuckles however when you go to bolt everything up, the knuckle binds like hell because the stub can't go deep enough into the UB, it bottoms out and jams the CV back into the inner C which then binds everything. Apparently somewhere along the development cycle this was lost in translation between the two companies and RCV is now working to come out with a new stub for this application. Well at this point I hung up, told Nick to forget it there was no way I'd be able to ride Thanksgiving weekend, he gave me a jar of moonshine and I headed to the bar. After a few beers and I started to relax I had an idea. I had the phone number of the guy that was the first to put an axle like this together. He's an Ultra4 guy at in California. I rang him up and he answered. I started in on the issue I was having and he cut me off almost immediately and said "bore the backside of the unit bearing an additional 1/2 and call it good." Apparently he had gone through the same exact problems and that was his fix. He said it worked so well he never called RCV back to discuss the new shaft in development. At that point I threw out an SOS text to my machinist buddy to see if he felt like doing some machine work on Thanksgiving and luckily he said no problem. Once I got the machine work done, the rest of the axle literally went together like butter.
First two pictures are of the stub bottoming out in the UB. Third is machine work in process and fourth is the backside of the UB after the additional 1/2" of splines were taken out.
Long story short, the outer stubs that RCV is selling for these knuckles/UB combo DO NOT WORK. The RCV shafts are designed for 450/550 knuckles whereas Reid clearly states their castings are based off the 250/350 knuckles. Really the only difference here is a 1/2" bigger spread between the two knuckles however when you go to bolt everything up, the knuckle binds like hell because the stub can't go deep enough into the UB, it bottoms out and jams the CV back into the inner C which then binds everything. Apparently somewhere along the development cycle this was lost in translation between the two companies and RCV is now working to come out with a new stub for this application. Well at this point I hung up, told Nick to forget it there was no way I'd be able to ride Thanksgiving weekend, he gave me a jar of moonshine and I headed to the bar. After a few beers and I started to relax I had an idea. I had the phone number of the guy that was the first to put an axle like this together. He's an Ultra4 guy at in California. I rang him up and he answered. I started in on the issue I was having and he cut me off almost immediately and said "bore the backside of the unit bearing an additional 1/2 and call it good." Apparently he had gone through the same exact problems and that was his fix. He said it worked so well he never called RCV back to discuss the new shaft in development. At that point I threw out an SOS text to my machinist buddy to see if he felt like doing some machine work on Thanksgiving and luckily he said no problem. Once I got the machine work done, the rest of the axle literally went together like butter.
First two pictures are of the stub bottoming out in the UB. Third is machine work in process and fourth is the backside of the UB after the additional 1/2" of splines were taken out.
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redneckengineered
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Since I know someone will ask, there is still 1.75" of spline engagement there with a 2.75" diameter shaft with huge splines so I feel like strength is not an issue after the machine work. Anyway, on to the pics. Things were stressful for a couple days but I'm very happy with how the project turned out and the maiden voyage went perfectly. Oh, brakes absolutely suck ass now but we'll address that in a bit.
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redneckengineered
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redneckengineered
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redneckengineered
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redneckengineered
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redneckengineered
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redneckengineered
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Some random tech. Brakes are huge and they suck ass. I'm running 3/4" MCs front and rear and I'm guessing I need to step up to probably a 1" for the fronts now. If someone makes a smaller 1/2 ton brake kit for these in the future I would swap to them.
17" wheels are the absolute minimum you will get away with here. The calipers don't rub but it's close. Wheels pictured are Trail Ready 17x8.5 with a 4.75" backspacing. As you can see, the way we designed the steering arm to line up over the factory tie rod location for double sheer, it puts the heim extremely close to the sidewall of the tire. I watched this all weekend. There was maybe just a handful of times where I thought there might have been a little dust/dirt rubbed off but definitely nothing major. We ran some of the gnarliest rock trails at Golden Mountain so I'm feeling ok about that for now. I run about 12-15psi in my tires, if you ran less it could be an issue I guess. Oh, and no one had a bolt long enough to go through the whole assembly, which is why it is not done in the pictures. I had to order them.
Late model 14 bolts have metric diff cover bolts. I had no idea. Took a minute to figure that one out.
I could not use my 13 bolt cover from Barnes 4wd. Turns out late model 14 bolts also have a drain plug recessed in the bottom right where you need to cut. I did not feel like cutting into that and trying to weld it all up and keep it from leaking the day I was trying to go ride, so we slapped a regular fabricated cover on that Nick happened to have at the shop. Bitch is definitely a rock magnet. I would like to shave it at some point and I guess I should probably start thinking about 43s like the rest of the cool kids.
17" wheels are the absolute minimum you will get away with here. The calipers don't rub but it's close. Wheels pictured are Trail Ready 17x8.5 with a 4.75" backspacing. As you can see, the way we designed the steering arm to line up over the factory tie rod location for double sheer, it puts the heim extremely close to the sidewall of the tire. I watched this all weekend. There was maybe just a handful of times where I thought there might have been a little dust/dirt rubbed off but definitely nothing major. We ran some of the gnarliest rock trails at Golden Mountain so I'm feeling ok about that for now. I run about 12-15psi in my tires, if you ran less it could be an issue I guess. Oh, and no one had a bolt long enough to go through the whole assembly, which is why it is not done in the pictures. I had to order them.
Late model 14 bolts have metric diff cover bolts. I had no idea. Took a minute to figure that one out.
I could not use my 13 bolt cover from Barnes 4wd. Turns out late model 14 bolts also have a drain plug recessed in the bottom right where you need to cut. I did not feel like cutting into that and trying to weld it all up and keep it from leaking the day I was trying to go ride, so we slapped a regular fabricated cover on that Nick happened to have at the shop. Bitch is definitely a rock magnet. I would like to shave it at some point and I guess I should probably start thinking about 43s like the rest of the cool kids.
Jduck
Well-Known Member
I thought the point of those new arms were to tie back into the original hole on the knuckle?
