In reply to Patrick :
That's still helpful, thanks for the advice! One of the center cab mounts is in rough shape, and I may have to fab up rear cab mounts from scratch as part of the 3 link brackets. I'll make sure to wander through the electrical aisle next HD/Lowes trip I make
Got a ton of help today trying to remove the old axle.
Rust slowed us down significantly, and despite the torch and a ton of PB Blaster, we could not remove all the u-bolts. After burning about an hour on them, we gave in and cut them off with the angle grinder. I need to order some replacements for temporary use, and come up with a new method to mount the shocks to the axle to keep them from going in the challenge budget. Maybe I'll just weld the spring plates to the pads on the axle.
After the cutting, we wrestled the old axle out and set the new axle in roughly the right position.
Can't really do much else until it is bolted in, so I'll take a few days off until parts arrive. I may need to shop for a new cordless impact though, I think we overworked it a bit, and it is about to bite the dust. It's been a beast for 10+ years, though, so I may just grab another Kobalt. I'll take a look at others, too, just in case, but keeping with something I already have batteries for seems to be a good idea.
On a positive note, I was wrong about the ZR2 panhard bar. It's actually over 40" long, so if I can get it and its bracket re-oriented to under the axle, it could work very well.
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