• Garage Projects

    The Lone Ranger – New Transmission Cross member

    When you do a doubler, you have to modify or make a new transmission cross member. If you’re running a decent sized lift (5” or better over stock) you can get away with hacking up a stock member. Since I’m only running about 4” of lift over stock, I couldn’t make that option work so I made up a new one using 2x3x1/4” wall stock. Instead of using the stock tranny mount (left) I nabbed the mount that I was…

  • Garage Projects

    The Lone Ranger – Clocking the transfer case

    Or I guess I could call this post “Pay attention to clearances”! I got the doubler put together and stuck it in the truck. Everything was looking pretty good until I tried to stick a drive shaft in it. That’s when I noticed something was a wee bit off: Yup, the dang drive shaft rubs the front case with everything lined up in a “stock” position. Had I taken a second to check this on the bench, I could have…

  • Garage Projects

    The Lone Ranger – Crawl Box Upgrade

    After killing the 1350 crawl box on our trip (rear T-case loosened up because I forgot to lock-tite the bolt, guess I shouldn’t drink while wrenching), I needed to get something fixed quickly. When the rear t-case came out of alignment, it put enough side load on the crawl box shift forks to kill the nylon that was there, and gave it some metal on metal contact. Eventually killing the fork and letting the box come out of gear: So…

  • Garage Projects

    The Lone Ranger – 1350/1354 Doubler with D&D Machine Kit

    This is my first foray into any transfer case. Thankfully it turns out that they’re quite a bit simpler than I thought they would be. I don’t know if the gear driven cases are any more complicated, but my guess is that they’re even simpler. I’m using the D&D Machine kit from Duffy (he also makes the “Box For Rocks” kits for the Jeep stuff as well). The kit really is quite simple to put together (heck, even a goofball…