This is more work than I expected.  The first shot shows the Confer perch I welded to the rear axle.  As you can see I used some strips of steel to get a good bead all around the spring perch.  For the rear I bought another 8" pipe cap and cut it in half to make a differential cover.   I would have used the other half for the front but I didn't realize I could go the pipe cap route and had already bought an All-Pro diff cover.

I dropped off both of my driveshafts to Oscar at Arizona Drivelines to get Toyota flanges installed.  Here's a picture comparing the rear CV shaft to the stock shaft w/ .75" spacer.  I can't carry the stocker around as a spare anymore.

Last Sunday (Nov 11th) I got up early with the goal of getting the rear lower shock mounts done, along with making new hard brake lines and maybe get a jump on reassembling the front end.  The first thing I noticed was the lower shock mount needed to be about an inch and a half behind the rear axle tube.  Not wanting to modify my upper shock mount I decided the easiest thing to do would be to move my axle back about an inch using the CJ hole in my spring hanger.  When I unbolted the spring I noticed a few cracked welds on the spring hangers. Looks like it was time for a little preventative maintenance.  I cut off both spring hangers, rewelded most of the joints, repainted and re-installed the spring hangers just a few hours behind schedule.  For the lower rear shock mounts I drilled a 5/8" hole in a piece of .25 x 2 x 2 steel angle and welded a 5/8 x 1.75" long shoulder bolt to the angle with the shoulder sticking thru the hole.  I then welded this to the rear axle and used some smaller pieces of plate to fill in the gaps to box the mount in nicely.  You can also see my first attempt at bending steel brake lines in the above pictures.  I was using a $7 Napa bender, the radii on my bends are a little large but that was the smallest I could do with this bender. 

Here you can see the bracket I made to  hold the soft brake lines securely where they connect to the hard lines.  I practiced using a double flare tool but couldn't get a good looking double flare (or anything closely resembling a double flare). Still working on that part.

I bought my steering setup from Kong's 4x4 Off-Road Center.   It includes two new steering arms machined from a solid chuck of steel, a tie rod and drag link made from heavy wall DOM tubing and four Chevy tie rod ends.  Also included is the modification of my Celica pitman arm.  Kong's pressed the ball joint out of the pitman arm and welded in a slug which is tapered to accept the Chevy rod ends.  As you can see, this setup will keep my tie rod and drag link above my springs and hopefully out of harms way.

Here's a comparison with the stock tie rod and the new, and check out the size of that tie rod end!  Kong's can also do this same setup using FJ80 tie rod ends but they cost more and are smaller than the Chevy ends.

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