Lifted Eagle field test and R&D

[mach1mustang351]

Hi everyone.  This has been a long process and I have finally done enough driving in the car to be comfortable with the results.  Some of you may have been following my thread form a few years back on the "Baja 1000 Eagle."  In the thread I attempted to make a 3" body lift for the car.  My friend Mike and I made it happen but the car never worked quite right with the steering.  We started over.  During this time, I picked up another '87 Wagon and proceeded to do a 4.0L, AX15 and a NP242 swap.  I decided I wanted one Eagle.  I took the proper lift things and put them in the 4.0 car.  After readdressing the steering issue I have a combination that works. 

I put the car together drove it a limited amount and put it on a trailer and moved form Central CA to Anchorage, AK.  I have been driving the car every day and have had no issues with the lift.  A few other components have needed repair but the "impossible" unitbody body lift is a success.  We are quickly coming up on winter in AK so I wanted to get a thread started to show you how I did it.  Kind of like a winter project. 

Unfortunately the fabrication skills required and the machining needed this is not a reasonable undertaking for the average do it yourselfer.  After everything I do believe a solid axle swap would be the easiest way to go but for a daily driver and to prove it was possible I wanted to keep the IFS and make it go.  I will try and get some pictures this weekend and get this going. 

[GRONK]

Eye wide and ears open.

[mick]

Eye wide and ears open.

AGREED!

[shaggimo]

I remember that from a while back, (where's the popcorn smiley?).

[rollguy]

Eye wide and ears open.

Same here.  We all like to see different renditions of Eagle lifting.

[GRONK]

I will be lifting an 83 Wagon this winter so I'm very interested.  I want as much lift with as little troubles as possible.  Not looking to trail the Eagle, but looking to get some decent rubber under it and never want it to high center in the snow.

[mick]

  I want as much lift with as little troubles as possible. 

When you figure that out, let the rest of us know.

[mach1mustang351]

Here are a couple pictures of the finished product.





This is an over all 3 inch lift in the front and 4.5 in the rear

I have some radius rod bushings to replace this week so I will snap some detailed lift pictures.

[mach1mustang351]

The tire is a 235/75/15.  This makes for a pretty reasonable height and a good look.  I had another eagle that had 31x10.5 but it didn't have the road manners this one has. 

[GRONK]

looks awesome.  I'm very interested in how you did this. 

[mach1mustang351]

As I stated in the first post here, this is a body lift.  The next statement is always "you can't body lift a unit body car."  Well the reality is, yes you can, but it requires a lot of work.  The theory is the same as a body lift as on a conventional body on frame vehicle.  There are a few more complications.  So what happened was the body went up.     

We'll Start at the back:

The body had to go up... or the springs went down... depending on how you look at it.  This method was preferred because of some of the unwanted characteristics associated with lift blocks.  On a street driven vehicle the blocks are probably okay but the original intent of this vehicle was to desert race so durability was important.

These lift pieces were made from 2x3 3/16 wall steel.  In an effort to save $$$ the steel used was all remnant form the local steel yard at $0.55 a lb.  This 3" material accounted for 3" of the lift in the rear and the other 1.5" came from the springs.  No those aren't stock   They came from Alcan spring and I had them put in another 1.5 over stock just for a different stance.

This is the setup at the rear of the spring.  I uses stock shackles because the vehicle ended up being a street car and I don't feel it necessary to go heavy duty at this point.



This is the setup at the front of the leaf spring.  It fits inside where the front eyelet used to go.  I also cut an additional hole in the frame rail to add a second bolt to the lift piece for support. 



If you have a super keen eye you may realize the new spring bolt and the first lift piece bolt dont line up.  This is by design and I opted to move the spring back slightly giving me a little longer wheel base. 

Here is a look at the springs and shocks.  Those are Rancho 9000 series.  I couldn't get a decent picture but on the passenger side the upper mount had to be moved inward so the base of the shock would clear the bigger thicker spring pack. 

[mach1mustang351]

The front took some more time as I had steering to deal with.  The same 2x3 steel stock was used there are reinforcements where the long bolts go through to keep the bolts from crushing the tube.  The cradle was then bolted to the new lift piece.



The radius rod brackets were now a little off too... go figure.  I cut the straight piece and extended it the 3" and a 2" piece was used to compensate for the piece that bolts to the dropped portion of the unit body frame.



The struts that run to the front of the car were now 3"short of bolting in so some boxed pieces were made with reinforcements.  I then tied them to the 3x2 for the engine cradle with 1" square.  I then tied them together with the same 1" tube.  Probably not necessary for strength but it came in handy later for correcting the steering issues. 

[mach1mustang351]

This is for perspective.  Three inches of body lift really set the engine deep into the engine compartment.   



The 4.0 swap had it's issues that were further compounded by the lift.   

[mach1mustang351]

With the Ax15 swap I had mount issues for the transmission.  This is the setup that works for me.  I started by modifying the AMC crossmember but it didn't work as expected and after about 5000 miles it started to bend.  I built a custom unit from scratch.  I had to drop the crossmember 3" or lift the body 3" at this point, depending how you look at it.





I also had to put the mount in a different spot as the AX 15 doesn't mount in the same spot as the 904.  I uses poly sway bar end link bushings as inspired by someone else on this board that did this swap.  I cant find their info to give them proper credit but if you are looking chime in.  I was going to use a mount but I liked this setup as it is solid and gives me a little more ground clearance.   

[mach1mustang351]

Now up to this point many of you might be thinking "hey this looks pretty doable."  You're absolutely right and making these pieces isn't all that bad as long as you can cut and weld steel.  This was the third attempt at making this steer right.  If yall are following the concept everything bolted to the body becomes 3" further from things bolted to the engine cradle.  This includes the steering knuckles.  I have posted on a few threads in the past about people wanting make balljoint spacers to lift their eagles.  I have reccomended no on all of them, Why??  Because we tried that first to make this work.  This setup created obscene camber issues on suspension compression and rebound causing the vehicle to be terrible going over any sort of bump.  I revised the ball joint spacer a couple times to try and make the problem go away.  No luck.  So what did we do... my buddy Mike and I made some knuckled that are 3" longer. 

This is what puts the project out of reach.  We worked as machinests in the past and had access to the equipment to make this happen.  The costs of having someone do this for you, if they would even accept the job, are going to be way too high to make it worth it.  The amount of hours spent on our knuckles was crazy.  Knuckles were cut.  Hours were spent making a jig to hold the knuckled while it was milled to perfection.  The other end was machined then the spacer piece was machined using aircraft grade billet aluminum.  The spacers were then machined to tight tollerences on bolt holes to ensure a tight fit when all pieces were bolted together.  We used aircraft grade fasteners and put them together.  This solved our camber issues. And not to sound like I am tooting my own horn, when installed and taken to the alignment shop there were no camber adjustments required as the control arms weren't removed.  Very tight and accurate machining.  My buddy Mike hit a homer here.







The stepped portion of the aluminum fit into machined steps in the cut knuckle sections to keep them aligned and to keep them from moving during driving situations.