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How
To Build A U-bolt Flip
THE
RIGHT WAY!
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*Disclaimer* This is provided as a free service
and for information purposes only. There is no warranty, promise or responsibility
given by us to you that if you try this all will go perfectly. It all has to be
EXACT!!! Not close, not pretty good. EXACT! Also, I didn't go into cleaning the
metal before welding, grinding down edges for full penetration, stepping up hole
sizes in the drill press or the like. If you need us to tell you that stuff DON'T
TRY THIS AT HOME! Best to take the drawings to a welder and have them
make these for you. Now that you are thoroughly paranoid about screwing it up
lets proceed.
The stock dodge U bolts are really a bad
design. They hang too low, are easily damaged and the lower shock mounts tend to
bend. Shaggy's had a U bolt flip package design to address this short coming and
now we're making the plan available here, for free! It's about as easy to make
as you can get with only some welding required. If you want to make your own U
bolt flip here what you need to do.
Here's what it takes to do this
job.
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What materials you'll
need
- 2 - 6x6" 3/8" or 1/2" steel plates
- Angle Iron for the shock mounts
- 1/2" Bolts, Nuts, Fender Washers
for the shock mounts
The steel we got from IMS in Irvine, CA.
All our bolts and such came from McMaster-Carr Supply in Sante Fe Springs,
CA. |
What tools you'll need
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Drill press and at
least a 1/2" drill bit, 9/16" and a 3/4" drill bit.
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Metal Saw
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Angle grinder
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130 amp mig welder.
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Big disk sander or
bench grinder
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Additional Parts Needed
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U
Bolt Flip Plate Template |
The plates are pretty straight forward.
You can leave them 6" x 6" or cut them down to 6" x 4
1/2" like Shaggy's did. 3/8" plate is a good thickness for these
but you can step it up to 1/2" if you like. If you are using
5/8" U bolts you MUST use 1/2" plate for this.
Layout your holes and drill them out to
their appropriate sizes. This should be fairly exact but a little off is
not super critical here. The center hole has to be 3/4" dia. to fit
over the center pin nut and leave enough room to wiggle things in place. |
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Pic to follow |
Shock mounts can be of several designs.
Shaggy's use 1/4" thick 1 1/2" angle iron cut into 2" piece
with a 9/1/6" hole drill in it. A 1/2" nut was then welded to
the front of the angle iron over the hole. A 2 1/4" grade 8 bolt and
2 1 1/2" fender washers were used to bolt the shock to the new mount.
the mount was then welded to the axle tube just inside of the U bolts. A
variation of this would be to weld the bolt head to the angle iron instead
of the nut. This makes putting the shocks on a bit easier. Just make sure
you weld it up really good. It's amazing how much force these things
take. |
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If you want to get really tricky you can
try this! with your shock mounts. It's the Shaggy's mount detailed about
with an added feature. Take a 6" long, 1 1/2" wide piece of hot
rolled 1/4" steel plate. Drill 1 1/4" hole smack dab in the
center and a 1/2" hole in each end, 3/4" from all sides. Bend
the piece of steel into a U so that the inside dimension is 1 1/2"
and then drill that 1/4" hole out to 3/4". Take some 3/4"
.120 wall tube and cut off a 3/4" long piece. Weld that into the
center hole of the U shaped piece and slide a bolt through the center and
into the nut welded to the shock tab. This is a Shock joint and it's the
next great thing in off-roading. Shocks need to twist and rotate but all
shock mounts keep this from happening. With these mounts the shock can twist
and rotate as much as it likes with no binding. A note, this was a heck of
an engineering exercise and there may still be a bug or two in the plan.
Use the highest strength and quality bolts you can get! Hardware store
Grade 8 AIN'T going to cut it here!!! We broke a few of those before we found
out all Grade 8s are not created equal. If you can find Grade 10 use
it!
Then you just need to run a 2 1/2"
long bolt through the bracket and shock and tighten it up. They are a pain
to make, require a lot of maintenance and can break if you don't have
everything setup just right but they are awesome and allow a lot more
flex. Our testing showed 2"-3" more articulation with these
installed. |
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