how far can you rotate a front axle?

[super10brss]

OK... here is the deal... I did a spring over for a friend of mine who has a CJ5... (I know.. I know... not big into jeeps either) but to get the drive shaft half way close to bolting up without a crazy double CV drive shaft I rotated the axle before I welded in the spring perched...... I think I went too far... how far can you go... should you draw a imaginary line from fender to the ground how many degrees can you go?

 

[wayne]

Well you can rotate it as far as you want but.... You have to make sure the pinion bearings and everything gets lube. Also if it is driven on the street you will need to rotate the knuckles for alignment.

 

[super10brss]

Well you can rotate it as far as you want but.... You have to make sure the pinion bearings and everything gets lube. Also if it is driven on the street you will need to rotate the knuckles for alignment.

how do you go about rotating the knuckles? Is it a cut and reweld the tube? or a unbolt type thing? I think that is my problem... they are too far over.....

 

[colbystephens]

are you getting death wobble? is that why you're asking?

 

[super10brss]

don't have shocks on yet so I can't really drive it down the road....

 

[goalvanny]

you should be able to feel it in steering effort. if you rotate the whole axle too far you start to lay the ball joint angle down and you exactly end up lift the eight of the vehicle when turning. find out what the axle came with angle wise from the factory and try to match that as best as possible. depending on your skills if its a dd you might wanna let a pro do it so the match

 

[wayne]

If you need to rotate the knuckles then it is best left to an expert.

 

[Hogback Fabrication]

If you simply move the spring perches, you will throw the caster right out the window (as aforementioned).

The correct way to do this is to grind out the welds at each inner c, turn them so that caster is an acceptable range (say, 6-8 deg) and weld them back up.


As for the most angle you can put on a front axle, it depends on which axle we're dealing with (some are better at oiling the pinion bearings than others). A general guideline is that 10-15 deg is the max.

 

[super10brss]

OK I took some pictures..... I zip tied a 3/8 extension to the "C" of the axle top and bottom... with a square at the bottom... It looks like I am about 6 degrees forward on the "C".... what do you guys think?.?.?. I still have to weld the shock brackets in and I hate to weld them and have to cut them back off if I have to rotate the axle back down.....

 

[bp71k5]

You should probably look up what the correct castor is and figure out how to measure it to see how far off it is.