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Putting back of mj on xj

so right behind the rear doors? you need some sort of support (cage and/or subframe) for whatever "frame" you leave hanging out the back. Look for pictures of Goatman's yellow XJ, I'm pretty sure he used an MJ cab to seal off his chop.
 
i'm not sure where you're talking about chopping, but if you chop and replace at the C pillar you need to support the back. if you're talking about chopping at the D pillar, all the way back, and just replacing the hatch with a solid back then you won't need extra reinforcement.
 
here's Goatman's rig with his MJ cab on the back before he caged the back:
xj0271.jpg

If you reinforced the inner sides and top well enough it would hold up decent, but you still lack the full uni-body support that was there with the roof.

Goatman added a cage to his:
xj0589.jpg
 
Well, I've never actually searched for anything on the xjdb site, but I have looked at the links that have been posted. You've got a lot of great pics on there. Jeff
 
My opinion is that you need extra reinforcement to compensate for the loss of structure in the roof and D pillar. You also need to make it stiffer than it was originally to keep the body work from cracking and coming apart. When I did mine the cage was planned from the start, even though I took it out wheeling once before the cage went in.

Here's pics of the project

I tried to go somewhat light weight on the cage, tying into the body to add triangulation. I never did finish the cage, just put it off doing other things. I'm getting some cracks in the bondo where body panels were joined, and that might not have happened as soon if I'd taken the time to finish the cage. I'll be adding a cross bar and diagonal bar to the inside C hoop, two bars in the external C hoop from the top corner to the legs, and cross bars from the external C hoop to the rear down bars. I also still need to tie the inside B pillar hoop to the roof hoop........I considered not doing that at all, but it needs to be done both for added rigidity and for more strength in the roof hoop.

I also added frame stiffeners down the side of the frame rails from the LCA mounts in the front to the spring hangers in the rear, using 1x3 boxed tubing spaced out 1" from the frame both to make it easier to fit and to increase the rigidity (the gap adding triangulation).

I'd say you should add stiffness everywhere that you can, and build a stout cage. Have fun, :)
 
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