To make a long story short, it is Sunday (Mother's Day) I don't know how to weld, have limited hand tools and my trusty dremel at my disposal, and broke the bolts off of the somewhat poorly designed AC leaf skids. I have to be somewhere tomorrow so I came up with this. Let me know what you think. Will this work for now? Is this safe to leave on for a while? Think this may even be safe enough to wheel with?
I took the old OEM shock mounts and cut metal off so the leaf pack would fit with a little space on the sides.





Put them between the leaf pack and the axle.


Believe it or not, the centering bolt stuck up through the OEM shock mount enough to do it's job.


Aside from the bolts sticking out (i have to go in search of a saw-zall tomorrow) see any problems with this?


I would love a better setup, but without welding there isn't one on the market... Not that I have seen anyway.

If there's an issue, it will be with the shock at full extension... when it "pulls" on the mount. With no webbing (flange) to support the lateral load it may flex and ultimatley break the mount plate where the 90 degree area is that you cut out. That's the purpose of the flange all the way around the mount plate. I think you would have been better off switching left and right plates and turning them up-side-down (I think?), allowing the axle pad to "cup" in the mount. You would have gained the same reach on the u-bolt and not compromised the flange strength.

Jeff!

Believe me, I wanted to do that... Cutting that steel with a dremel sucked. But the "cup" wouldn't fit around the foot on the bottom of the axle. So far so good. Granted, I haven't been off road. This was just a temp fix. Though I don't know when I will be able to fix it properly. That's why I was wondering how safe it would be to leave it that way for a while.

If the U-Bolts are new, you can probably coast for a bit, but I would fix it permanently as soon as feasible/before wheeling.

IE: Wheeling broke the prior set-up, I don't think this one is better than that, and might be more vulnerable as discussed above, as well.

The old ones died hitting rocks in the mojave, before I moved to Michigan. Hate that they were so low in the first place. At least now they are up and away a few inches. I like your setup TJ... Or (i think anyway) on your older X. Aren't you building a new one? Anyway, if that were a bolt on option, or if there were a welding shop around here open that Sunday, I would have something different. I will keep an eye on it of course, until I can do something different.