Center coil install

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5-3-2004

My friend, Scott, down in Tucson, has been having a major pain in the ass issue with his rear spring packs. Seems the packs have settled....and the rear was starting to look like it was dragging. So up to Chandler Scott heads for an install of the not so well known ZUK-COIL. There's nothing really tough about fabbing up a set-up like this. A chop saw, hand-grinder, mig welder, and a drill will suffice. We used quite a bit of scrap metal laying around (have you priced steel lately!?).

We cut this piece of 2x4x.120 steel to 37" and moved a few things out of the way to fa-naggle it in position.

I made this junky tripod up many moons ago and today it came in very handy.....much easier working under there with head-room plus some safety.

Lotsa different way to truss it. I cut up a chunk of card-board to make a template.

Scott removes the extra bracketry that was not needed or was to be re-transplanted.

I used the chopsaw and the handgrinder and came up with the truss....I had to do lotsa trimming still to get it to fit decent.

Here it is tacked in place.

More weld and some paint. The lower coil dish was pointed at the dish above near the bed and then welded/bolted in place. This dish unbolts and spacers can be inserted to create additional lift.

The top dish is welded to the cross-brace. The muffler tabs were relocated(easy) about an inch downward to allow the tail-pipe to clear the cross-brace.

The other side of the brace cleared the brake valve a-ok.

We chose to simplify things and cut it free.

emergency brake cable/brackets were easy to re-locate. New metal brake lines will be re-formed and pass over the top of the truss out of boulder reach in the near future.

We cut 3 inches off of the Rubicon Express Jeep TJ coil......and it still netted us 3.5" of much needed lift.The truss/coil install took about 8 hours and was deemed a complete success. Besides having a somewhat stronger axle housing per the truss, we now have a "support" lift system that has selectable lift (via coil spacers), a softer ride, a nice payload enhancer and leaf-packs that might last damn near forever. ZUK