How I outboarded without SRS

SRS = Shackle Reversal System or Setup


There's more discussion out there to be read about SRS than you could possibly ever take in. Some people like it, some don't, both sides definitely have pros and cons. I won't go into all the reasoning here again, as I said, you can already read about it until your eyes fall out....

After reading a lot and calling a couple of "local" shops, I decided I didn't want it and set out to do my own. I have drawings for the pieces I had made and the cardboard templates in the garage somewhere if someone really wants them.

Let me put this disclaimer on this post: I haven't trail-driven my scrambler yet with my new setup. I've put on a few hundred road miles, but it's not trail tested. I felt comfortable doing this with my background in structural/mechanical engineering and with the knowledge and help of a master welder Scrambler buddy to make the brackets I designed. Follow my lead at your own risk! (duh) Oh, and mine is right-hand drive, so that explains the steering box location in my pics EDIT 1/27/09: I've now trail ridden this a bunch with no problems.

What I did was design brackets in the rear that moved the rear spring mount and front shackle hangers outboard of the frame. I also decided to move the front axle back .5" because I knew I was going to have pitman-to-tie rod clearance issues to overcome when moving to a D44. Everything I did was in 1/4" plate.

The rear mounts are welded to the bottom of the frame all the way across the frame (he welded the frame seam first) and gusseted to the side of the frame in three places. The rear gusset ties into the body mount that's in this area as well. I kept the same vertical mounting position as stock, so there's no lift added from the brackets (something that a lot of the SRS versions didn't do, they had lift built in)





The front ouboarding is a little more complex because there's a lot going on, especially with the steering box mount.

What I realized is that the stock setup uses the shackle hanger as an integral piece, but this could be replaced with 1/4" plate easily and then you could mount the hanger on the plate and everything else would bolt right back in (obviously with all the needed holes located and drilled). I also like that there's a lot of stock threaded holes you can pick up with these new plates.

So I made plates that bolt in place of the stock shackle hanger, picked up a couple other holes on the passenger side and drilled new holes for the shackle hanger in the correct outboarded position.

I spaced my gussets so that the winch plate fits bewteen them and shaped the new plate around the gussets to flow somewhat with the lines on the frame. We bolted these into place (after tacking in the rear spring mounts), checked all of our measurements and squareness of the front end and tacked these to the frame.

After checking everything again three times, Joe burned in all of the pieces. The front is welded all around the perimeter of the plate except at the back edge across the frame.











With this setup, the suspension bolts right on and everything fits fine. I think, especially compared to the stock setup, that this is much stronger that it needs to be (Joe kept commenting on this from his view as a welder) and will hold up to anything I could put on it.

It kept the stock shackle-forward setup and was not really complicated other than TONS of measuring, drawing, remeasuring, making cardboard templates, checking, etc.

I gave measurements on cardboard templates to a metalworker to burn the pieces out and cleaned them up with a grinder. Joe was THE MAN on the welding and loved helping this come together and was great with what to check on the suspentsion measurements (he's a body and frame guy).

It's not a simple DIY and took me forever (but I was on borrowed welder time and life was going on at the same time). If you could get the pieces cut and are a competent welder, one day of welding will get this together. All the pieces are flat plate and won't take much to get cut. I figure I had ~$200 in the hard costs including new grade 8 hardware for the front mounts/hangers.

Here's the thread that shows some more of the fabrication/planning/fitup (along with a bunch of other stuff I did to mine to rebuild it after an accident ): linky

Hope this helps someone sometime...

That's essentially what I did with mine, but mine's not as pretty. Although my steering box is still on the correct side...

Resurrected thread time!

I remember reading this the first time around, and I'm glad I found it! I just came across a Scout with D44s, and plan to put them under the Scrambler. This is exactly what I needed!
Do you still have the measurements you gave to your metal man to have the pieces cut? In spite of the fact that your setup is obvious overkill, I think that's a GOOD thing.
What did you do in the back to address the spring spacing, or did you even have to? I suppose cutting and moving the spring perches would be easy enough, but we obviously don't have that option on the front.
Thanks,

I cut off the perches and put on new ones in the rear.

Overkill was my design method since I wasn't going to be actually calculating the "optimal" arrangement, I needed to work with simple flat plate and I wasn't going to do any testing.

The front Scout 44 doesn't have any caster built into the knuckles, are you going to cut the knuckles off and rotate them? I've read that they handle horribly if you don't. Just a head's up.

I may still have the templates, I cut cardboard templates for the metal guy rather than taking measurements, it was easier to know that everything would fit.

Thanks for the heads-up, I was aware of that. Actually, through my reading and surfing I've learned that the Scouts didn't exactly handle like sports cars with 0* caster, either, but they only changed it in the last model year (MINE!) to 2*. I also found a company that makes caster correctors (http://www.cafes.net/epp/CasterCorrectors.htm) that can add up to 1.5* caster to the D44.
The only issue there is, the D30 as used in the CJ has about 5* IIRC, so 3.5* is going to make it just a little bit squirrelly. I can start with the correctors just to get a feel for it, and if it's still unbearable on the street, I can spend the money to have the knuckles cut and rotated.
I guess I'll have to reinvent your wheel using your wonderful pics- thanks for taking all those!- and see how it goes. Off to the yard for some plate steel!

You can cut & turn the knuckles yourself, just need someone to do the welding if you're not up to that task. I know guys with far less Jeep & mechanical experience than you have who have done their knuckles.

On that Scout front Dana 44,by the time you cut the cast in spring pad to bring the pinion up,(it needs about 1/2" to 9/16" off of the front) it will have serious negative caster

Ted,
Not sure what you mean by that- caster in the rear? I don't plan to rotate the rear pinion up at all, as I'm only at 4" (2.5" in the springs and 1.5" in the shackles... and yes, a true 1.5" in the shackles, as they're 7" c2c).
Now, in the future, if I go SOA, I might consider a little angle, but even then I won't need much more than a couple degrees. Any more than a little, and I'll have to go with a double cardan on the t-case end, and point the pinion straight at it.

n9viw said:

Ted,
Not sure what you mean by that- caster in the rear? I don't plan to rotate the rear pinion up at all, as I'm only at 4" (2.5" in the springs and 1.5" in the shackles... and yes, a true 1.5" in the shackles, as they're 7" c2c).
Now, in the future, if I go SOA, I might consider a little angle, but even then I won't need much more than a couple degrees. Any more than a little, and I'll have to go with a double cardan on the t-case end, and point the pinion straight at it.

Click to expand...

I was talking about the Scout front 44.