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The Lone Ranger – Front SAS – D44, leafs, and D35 Tear out
Why buck the trend of just doing Radius arms and coils? There are a few reasons, I’m cheap (Links got expensive), and leafs should work just fine for the wheeling we do out here. The additional bonus of leafs is that it will make it retarded easy to put a D60 in if the D44 Gives me too much trouble. Why run Full Width axles? This goes back to the reliability portion of this build. While I can narrow the…
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The Lone Ranger Project – NHL Body Lift
I’d noticed when I purchased this truck that there were a few body mounts that were shot. There are also a few of the frame mounts that will need a helping hand, but we’ll get to those later. Since there is a doubler in the near future for this toy, I thought a little extra clearance under the cab might make it easier to install one. If you’ve never done a body lift, there really isn’t much to one. Loosen/remove…
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Cookie Cutter Flat Towing
While the Cookie Cutter TJ is working out well for what it is, there are still some short comings with it. Mainly space. Trying to pack a wife and kid into it for a weekend trip is nearly a no-go at this point due to the amount of ‘stuff’ that always seems to accompany them. Going by the numbers, the TJ weighs in right at 4,000 lbs, the Mercury is rated to tow 6,250 lbs in its current configuration. So…
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De-Lifting the Cookie Cutter TJ
When I purchased the Cookie Cutter TJ, it was sitting on about 6.5” of lift (4.5” Suspension and 2” body) and huge (!) 33” tires. Needless to say, it looked a tad goofy: It didn’t take long for me to slap some 35” tires on it to make it look less goofy, but it was still too tall: So after a bit of horse trading I wound up with a pile of springs to play with: And started swapping them…
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Bringing the Cookie Cutter TJ home
I’ve had a bit of a desire to own soft to Jeep at some point in my life even after taking one out west in 2010. But more specifically, I really like the old flat fenders, though I really don’t fit well in one, and packing the wife and kid into one was a definite no go. The closest modern day equivalent to that is the SE TJ, which is a 2.5 4 banger, with zero options. A deal was…