I read all the time about folks who have moved their front axle forward on the YJ Jeeps and have created steering issues for themselves. That was me all over! I had moved the fixed spring hangers forward one inch. One inch should not be too bad, should it? HAH! Remember, this is a Project Vehicle. Nothing is easy once you start changing things, or so it seems.

Anyway, once I put in the Waggy D44 front axle, I decided to stay with the factory steering set-up with the pierced tie-rod to drag-link connection sitting on top of the knuckles. I got the TREs from Parts Mike for the set-up. The High angle DLE at the pitman arm was a ES2027L and the TRE that inserted through the tie-rod was a ES2234R. These are 3/4 ton sized TREs and make the stock YJ stuff look like Lego parts. I also had Parts Mike re-taper my Waggy pitman arm to accept the large taper of the ES2027L. However, once I had the TREs in place, even without a draglink between the two parts it was obvious I was in trouble. The Waggy pitman arm is longer than the YJ one and between the one inch stretch of the axle and the longer pitman arm, there was not enough room to adjust the jam nut on the ES2234R without it hitting the tie rod. It was crossing into the tie rod on it's way to the pitman arm. I needed to move the pitman arm end of the draglink assembly forward in relation to the axle and tie rod.

I hoped that going back to the shorter YJ arm would get me out of trouble, so I had the YJ arm re-tapered to accept the larger DLE and eyeballed the results. Now, the jam nut was free of issues, but I just moved the interference down the line a bit. When you looked down from straight above the tie rod, it was obvious that the draglink would 'scissor' into the tie rod as the axle moved up during flex.

Well, either I was faced with very expensive steering changes like going to crossover steering, etc, or I was going to have to re-do the steering box mount location. This was pretty involved since the frame is sleeved where the box mounts and has captured nuts in some places. I was prepared for some cutting and welding time. Running an even shorter pitman arm was out of the question. As it was, I was not sure if I would get full turning ability with the YJ arm and the Waggy knuckles, but at least I would enjoy increased steering leverage with the shorter pitman/longer knuckle.

Then, while I was at SEMA, I ran into Parts Mike and he mentioned he had a new product that was just getting ready to hit the market. It was a bracket that moved the factory YJ steering box forward 1" of stock without any other frame mods. I saw light at the end of my project tunnel. As soon as it was ready to try, I had one shipped to me to try. The bracket is made of heavy plate steel and matches the cast factory bracket with a few important changes.

It comes with instructions and hardware. I dove in with both hands and began by removing the steering shaft. Well, at least I tried to. I could not get the 'slip shaft' to slip. Morris at Parts Mike had warned me that I might face a stubborn, rusty shaft here. Yeah, buddy, was that an understatement. To remove it, I attached a heavy bungee cord to the steering box to support the weight of it and unbolted it from the frame. My impact wrench made that easy work. Now I could remove the shaft and get it to move. Obviously, since you are pushing the box forward 1", the shaft needs to expand to allow for the extra distance.

Two hours, one welder, one propane torch, two hammers, a vise, some scrap steel, a cup or so of penetrating oil, and a lot of whacking later, I got it to move 1mm. Oh my goodness. I almost gave up. I welded a piece of 3/16 flat scrap steel to the outside part of the shaft to give me a whacking spot (pointed out in the pic...you don't want to hit the yokes at either end of the shaft), welded a button of steel to the inner double D shaft to keep it from walking out of the vise, and heated it with the propane torch, whacked it with the hammer, sprayed it with oil and repeated until it slid apart. Wow. there are two little anti rattle springs in the shaft. Keep them for later. I took a sanding disc, removed all the weld beads, and lightly went over the inner DD shaft where it was rusty. A bunch of grease, and back together it went, keeping the two little clips inside their notches.

OK. Now the steering box. You can see in this pic below that there is a sheetmetal scew and clamp that holds the hoses to the frame. It is covered in grease here. Remove this per the instructions. Then making sure the box is tied up or supported, remove the 4 bolts holding the box to the bracket. They were pretty rusty but the impact wrench did the trick.

The Parts Mike bracket actually needs to bolt to the box first and then to the frame as a unit or you will not be able to get to all the bolts. However, you will need to do some sheetmetal trimming first. I bolted the bracket to the frame first and then slid the box up to the bracket to see how it fit. parts Mike says that some trimming will be necessary to prevent interference to the hard line PS hoses. You can see where you need to trim. Depending on body lift/no body lift, you will need to trim-test-trim, etc.

Also, I found the bracket just hit part of the gusset on the frame for the box, right where it wrapped around the side of the frame and tucked underneath. I don't have any pics of the spot, but basically it was easy to see that the bracket did not sit flat on the bottom of the frame. A quick touch with the grinder fixed that. Check this carefully before you crank anything down tight. Thinking I was really making progress, I mounted the bracket to the box. There are new bolts and lockwashers provided for this. One bolt is shorter and it goes where the spacer welded to the bracket is shorter. Pretty obvious.

There are 8 bolts that need to be installed in this set-up, so why is it the eighth bolt is the one that did not fit? Sigh. You can see from the pic that the rear-most, top, long bolt would not quite go through the bracket. There was just enough difference between the frame and the Parts Mike bracket so the bolt was about 1 to 2 mm off center. No go. What I found was two things. I had a small gap between the bottom of the frame rail and the bracket that I could not account for. This rotated the bracket down a bit. I finally found that the factory sleeve that fits between the two bolts and the bracket that tie into the bottom of the frame rail, was longer than the new bracket was wide. It acts as a spacer sleeve since the bolt is smaller in diameter than the hole. You can see it in the pliers in the pic. I just trimmed a bit off with a cut off wheel.

This helped but it was not enough. That 8th bolt was killing me. I did not need much, so I bolted the bracket to the frame and got out the big drill motor. I found a drill bit that was the right size to clearance the hole a bit and the frame sleeve that the factory installed kept it on center. It took a bit, but I got it drilled out. From here it was just a matter of bolting the bracket to the box and then bolting the whole thing to the frame. You do re-use the two longer bolts that the factory used and Parts Mike supplies two locking nuts and washers. The longer of the two bolts goes up front, but the shorter bolt juuuust hit the casting of the box, so I added a thick washer on the outside of the frame to keep that from happening. You can see it in the one pic.

So, the rest were details. I reattached the steering shaft at both ends and found that, with the 1" move and the 1" body lift I have, that I did extend the shaft past the small spring clip #1 but just barey. I still have quite a bit of DD shaft inside the tube. I redrilled a new hole for the little clamp that held the hoses to the frame, painted the steering shaft and draglink, and put the Jeep front end off the ground so I could check the steering range. I found that the lock to lock steering was just a bit shy of where I had set my turning stops at the knuckles. This kept the tires out of the springs and although I am sure I am losing a tiny bit of turning radius with the shorter pitman arm, I am willing to accept the tradeoff. Best of all, when I was done adjusting the draglink to center the steering range, I found the steering wheel to be neary pefectly centered. Oh joy.

So, the next question is, did it fix the draglink to tie rod interference? Absolutely. Look at the pic below, taken from the same point of view as earlier. And, next to it, the final look of the finished bracket in place.

Final impressions:

I could not be happier with the result. Of course, I have not gotten it out and driven it yet, but this should be a pretty harmless mod. I do not expect any issues. As far as the fitment problems, it is hard to say if you will find the same issue with the 8th bolt that I did. Depending on variances in production tolerances on both sides, you may not need to do what I had to do. but, even with that, it still was waaaaayyy easier than the alternative. I would not have minded having new, shorter bolts to replace the factory long bolts as they are kinda ugly all exposed now. I could have cut them shorter and I may later, but I would pay a $1.00 more for the kit to have the bolts included, especially since the old ones may be kinda rusty.

One other thing: This bracket eliminates the factory mounting location for the front anti-sway bar, so keep that in mind if you plan on keeping that intact.

For more info on this or for great prices on Jeep parts and pieces for your project rig, give Parts Mike a call and tell 'em you saw it here.

http://www.partsmike.com/ 530.885.0673