Way cool, dude. Get some.
I’m headed back to Gilbert tomorrow afternoon to get the brake caliper brackets I neglected to take when I picked up the calipers last weekend.
Well I ended yesterday with 2 out of 3 of the ball joints out of the spindle, but the 3rd one wouldn’t take my removal tool so I had to go buy a Pickle fork. It was just a hair too narrow and so I put it in the mill to open it up. Took about 2 minutes since it didn’t need to be indicated in.
Did things in the wrong order, and my impact wouldn’t budge the hub bolts so I put an allen key in with a cheater and got them out.
Current status, need to finish getting the control arms and cv out, but hopeful to still get it all done by the end of the week
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Does it use a steering rack or recirculating ball/nut? If the latter, check pitman but esp idler arm for play…
Pitman arm feels tight, no slop. The box is leaking kinda bad, but I’m inclined to deal with that later.
The clunk I was looking for is definitely 100% the upper control arm bushings on the driver side. Forward bushing is TOTALLY toast.
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On the 1st and 2nd gen monteros, the idler arm acted as a fuse for the front steering, and the bushings took the fall. Many folks replaced with bronze, or just replaced with plastic ones a LOT.
My 2nd gen1 needed new upper A-arm bushings as well, and definitely solved the clunk. We had to burn them out. 
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I’m never rebuilding front suspension again. It’s not even rusty but this whole thing sucks. How isuzu manages the front cv joints is the absolute worst. You actually have to drop the diff from the car in order to get the cv joints out because there are c-clips inside keeper plates.
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Oh man. That sucks.
With Mitsubishis, it’s always, “Just wedge the pry bar against this lip to pop the axle out of the diff.”
Said lip is approximately 1.5mm tall by 20mm wide.
No fun.
You know… If the diff is already dropped, and CV’s are pulled… I’m pretty sure there’s a forum post somewhere that says you’re halfway SAS’ed? You just need a welder, some leaf springs… 
Is there a clear difference between OEM and aftermarket parts, in Isuzu land, or do you have legit upgrade choices?
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Lol, I’d LOVE to SAS this in the future. If you want to keep the isuzu rear then the only choice is 78 and 79 wagoneer front, that’s the only passenger drop axle within a reasonable margin on width. If I engine swap this in the future I’ll be paying attention for something with driver side drop transmission options.
All we really have is moog ball joints which are basically oem replacement, not really an upgrade.
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So I ended up deciding not to drop the diff and just replace the half shafts. So I got my bearing cups all ready to go:
But then when I took apart my full CVs to use the half shafts there was a problem:
These are roller style instead of ball style. And I bought them 2 years ago so I can’t return them to rock auto.
So new ones are on the way and the trooper sits another week 
What an unfortunate turn of events. What can be done with the new CVs you can’t use?
And about $12,000.
Yeah… And if I was gonna SAS it im definitely doing 4 link anyways lol
Rock auto is great but I’ve also been bitten by parts I didn’t use right away. Bought some remanned calipers for our 2003 Montero. Didn’t install for a few months. As soon as I pressured them up, one side leaked fluid right through the piston. Inspection showed pinholes throughout. I ended up using an amalgamation of parts from the old and new to make something that worked. It still works to this day, even though my buddy has now had the truck for a few years.
Remmaned parts in my house get used or at least checked immediately now. Just in Case.
Buddy of mine sassed his pathfinder years ago, with a waggy axle. It’s an absolute beast. Are they still readily available? Or more like finding a unicorn’s horn these days?
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So I’ve been negligent here… Let’s get caught up…
So I got the new half shafts in, got it aligned, and topped off the fluids just in time to go out exploring. My wife had some stuff to do for church so I took all 4 kids, and went out with some friends on a rainy day:
We went up by castle hot springs north west of Lake Pleasant and just explored back roads. It was a bunch of fun and my kids loved it. First time I took all 4 of them. I REALLY wish I could seat one more person so I could fit the whole family in one car. One more reason to keep an eye out for the right bronco set up.
My brother and I also planned a bit of a trip so I had to work fast to get the trooper ready for what’s next…
I still had a slight leak in my rear Differential and my rear shocks to replace. Unfortunately the isuzu is a 3rd member design so I can’t just pull the rear cover, I actually have to pull the axles out a bit… So I just cleaned it really good and smeared some RTT around the outside. I got the rear shocks in, and discovered a nice little Easter egg while doing it:
The longest and softest old man emu springs they sold for the trooper, which explains my ride height. For shocks I’ve just gone with kyb gas-a-just, I’m on a budget and while they definitely aren’t bilsteins they are miles better than the blown FLAPS shocks that came out.
My brother and I have wanted to try out the Arizona Backcountry Discovery Route or AZBDR for short. It’s a route that varies between fire roads, maintained dirt roads, and even places highway, but goes through some very scenic and slightly less traveled parts of the state.
Ridebdr.com has a route for many western states. It’s worth a browse. We did the first half of the trail last weekend, starting at the Mexico border Saturday morning and over the course of two days working our way up to Young, above the mogollon rim.
We camped in Bisbee AZ, about 40 minutes from the start of the route, on Friday night
The next morning we went to Coronado national monument, the official starting point, and then climbed up to Montezuma pass overlook. Mexico is on the right hand side of the frame in this picture
Then we wound our way down to the border through federal land and met a rancher named Bud who had the grazing rights there, he gave us a heads up about water levels and signs of drug traffickers to be wary of, and sent us on our way. I hope at 83 I’m still out offroading like Bud!
We turned north and stopped for lunch in Sonoita
Then we went and explored empire ranch, the oldest working cattle ranch in the United States, it was pretty cool!
The BDR is intended for adventure bikes, which actually meant the offroad aspect was a little more tame than I had hoped for. This ended up being good because in empire ranch my front drive shaft developed a problem with one of the ujoint.
We stopped in Benson, and then made our way to oracle and peppersauce canyon, our campsite for the night.
The next morning we broke camp just in time to watch some fighter jets doing maneuvers over the desert, it’s then got on our way to mammoth, and eventually up to globe where we ate lunch. The road to globe is a dirt service road that follows some rail tracks and it was pretty cool.
We found a dirt lot to eat lunch in globe, and then took the highway north to near Roosevelt lake. Eventually we turned off the highway and onto a back road that eventually would wind its way up to Young. It was EXTREMELY scenic, but also very steep and narrow. We took some pictures before things got crazy, but not in the steepest parts. No 4x4 meant extreme concentration.
Having hit the halfway point, but not really wanting to camp in the MUCH cooler temperatures above the rim, we decided to just head home. We got dinner in Payson and enjoyed an easy ride down the beeline highway.
I can’t wait to finish the trail in a month or two!
Until then I have a number of things to do to prepare, including fixing my front drive shaft issue and rear Differential leak.
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The waggy axles are somewhere in between. Good deals are unicorns but if you really want one there is almost always one on eBay for too much money.
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Man, I’ve been thinking about trying this trip since I saw the pictures you posted on Instagram last week. Looks like real good times. And all the rain this winter means things are looking particularly verdant.
Thanks for sharing. Any hints on where/how you discovered this route?
Any thoughts on one day doing the Arizona Traverse? It sounds similar.
My brother has an adventure bike and found it through one of those groups. Our original plan was to bring his bike with his hitch mount carrier so we could put it on the back of the trooper for the parts he didn’t want to ride, but he decided against it, he was worried the trail would be bigger than his skill set. After doing the first half, he is definitely planning on bringing his bike for the second half. Really wouldn’t have been a problem in his bike. We did skip the expert section at pioneer pass since my 4x4 wasn’t working, but really there was only one stretch he was worried would have been especially tough with his bike.
Never heard of the Arizona traverse, but i’ll give it a look!
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Sounds like good times. I think overland cruising is more my speed these days anyway. I’d rather get in some miles and see lots of scenery than spend a lot of time crawling over obstacles.
Here’s an article about some of the AZ Traverse. (You might recognize one of the vehicles.)
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That was such a great trip, would love to run that route again.
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working on a roof rack. The corners will get covered and reinforced by some 0.040" steel sheet. I still need to add the middle brackets. But when it’s all done I think I’m going to be very happy with the install.
Don’t judge my welds. I’m not showing them to you. They ugly. If I do a pretty one I’ll let you guys know.