Well up until yesterday, I thought I was finished with this Jeep project.
My wife was manning the brake pedal while I manned the brake bleeders. Couldn’t get the brake pedal to tighten up. Went thru 3 pints of brake fluid trying to get the air out of the system.
Then it hit me. I got under the front of the Jeep and looked at the front calipers. Everything is in order. Walked around the back, bent down and glanced at the driver’s side caliper:
There I discovered my first self-induced glitch of this project. I installed the rear calipers on the wrong side. Bleeder valves were lower than the brake line fitting going into the caliper.
Pulled both wheels and fifteen minutes later, had the calipers on the correct sides.
Talked my wife to come back down and man the brake pedal again while I tried bleeding the brakes one more time. Not many air bubbles came out of three corners but the last one I cracked open I got a bunch of bubbles.
Having a friend at a good shop I’ve had mutual business relations with over the last several years send down his roll back to pick it up and take to his place to do the 4 wheel alignment and an NC inspection.
I trust my work on getting the driveline in order so it can be driven out on the road. I took it for a test drive yesterday evening and it rolled true and straight with my hands off the steering wheel. Would rather it be professionally aligned however before I start rolling down the road.
I got lucky when I set the toe on the front end, after chalking the tires and the floor once I had both wheels centered, I made one adjustment to the drag link and one to the tie rod end on the driver’s side.
Had my son help hold the measuring tape and took a measurement on the front side then back side. 1/8” positive was my goal. I pulled up the phone calculator and subtracted the smaller fractional measurement I got at the front from the bigger fractional measurement I got from the rear side.
.0125 was what I ended up with. I couldn’t believe it. After eyeballing the front tires and making one adjustment, I got my 1/8”+ tow reading.