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Joel's multipurpose XJ build (rocks/boulevard)

Then, just when I thought I was done with organizing freebies.

MillenWorks (my old job) gave away all their rem stock metals.

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Holy crap! That's a lot of steel. I brought home enough to well cover my driveway and I barely dented the net.

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Dom (anyone making rock sliders need some?) plus some aluminum.

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Full sheets, some of them virgin.

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Drops from the water jet table. This stack is about a foot deep.

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Stainless (oh baby do I have some fuel hardlines in my future!)

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Material cart (I bought this one) should be a huge help.

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Welded shelving, I'll figure out something for this.

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Stupid heavy racking.

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Stupid heavy casters on a 4x4x0.25 backbone.

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And this is what you look like after a day in the sun hauling free metal. Yes, I'm dumb for wearing white. Yes, I did it on purpose because I'm also a f---ing gringo and asphalt is hot enough without a dark shirt. Took three trailer loads to get it home. With many thanks to my friend Anthony who at least got himself a great deal on a bitching shear for his trouble.

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Thar be mischief afoot mi hearties! ;)
 
So what happens when you bite off more than you can chew?

Suck it up? Gag? Spit it back? I say you just gnaw on that that bastard until it’s a more manageable size. Here’s my step by step approach that will help YOU TOO on that most strange but glorious day when you find a mountain of scrap metal on your driveway.

Step 1: call in the big guns.

This is my buddy Mike. Owner of said big guns. You can take that just about any way you like and it’s still probably true. In this case the big guns I needed were some bad ass tools and a bad ass individual to spend some time gnawing on my sh-t. Wait, no… That came out wrong. Sorry brotha, I love you, man. :D

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Seriously though. The porta-band ripped through this like it was nothing. Not necessarily that straight of cuts but whatever. It’s got ‘er done. This heavy racking combined with that heavy frame/casters was my idea for a way to hold all the sheet metal while all the tube would go on the cart I’d bought.

However, if you need to chop up a ton of metal, what you really want is a high torque 14” chop saw with a carbide blade. This one is “The Slugger” which Mike apparently ran across on Finnegan’s garage (see YouTube if you don’t know it). I’ve borrowed a few abrasive style chop saws and I was always been kinda “m’eh” about them. Wide cuts, too loud, too slow, burning hot results like you just welded on the end… I can do better with an angle grinder most of the time.

This thing though: Sweet tea on Sunday morning with a slice of pie before church! WOW!!

How about a more practical example? I brought home this stupid chunk of unknown something (guessing 4130 based on what else it was with).

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Measuring in as an honest 2” x 3” solid; I brought this home intending to let my band saw nibble away for an hour or so and thereby have killer press blocks.

Instead…

Light pressure, maybe a couple heavy fingers worth (I know enough to not overdue it) and 43 seconds later--yes I timed it, hey I was curious!

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To quote the always quotable movie Friday… “DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN!!”

I used this thing to rip up all my 20’ tubing into more manageable 10’ sticks (all except the SS hardlines, those went on my garage wall rack to keep ‘em long).

I even managed to jerry rig a way to square off the corners of my cart pieces.

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For the record: You know it’s a bad ass tool when you’re like… “I can tiddy up these ends. I’ll just lop of the last hair of a 6” steel channel with 1/4" webbing and 3/8” flanges! Won’t take but a moment…” And IT DOESN’T!


Step 2: Realize you’re screwed and your HOA hates you. Maybe your neighbors too (less sure on that front, but definitely the HOA). Call in the wife to prep metal too.

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She’s willing, she’s able. She’s not necessarily having THE MOST fun but she IS generally willing, at least to a point, because she loves you. It’s basically the same logic as when you’re feeling frisky/adventurous and she’s feeling some good ol’ quality missionary lovin’… ;) but I digress (seriously don’t show this to my wife. I do love the woman.)


Step 3: More big guns. Borrow a 220 V mig running 0.035” wire.

I’d never welded with 0.035 before. The sizzle of the MIG bacon sizzling sounds wrong on the big wire. Instead of a nice high pitch crackle, the frequency is lower. It’s like comparing the sound of a v12 to a v8. Both are right, just takes some getting used to and took me a good while to get dialed in. A good thing too, because I had about a forever of welding to do.


Step 4: Weld forever.

Then you end up with this:

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That’s good until you realize the cart needs to live outside since you still only have a 2 car garage. Which means you need to….


Step 5: Clean forever.

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Yep that was almost a full roll of paper towels. This rack was covered in OLD grease. You know the stuff that’s kinda gotten hard and picked up up who knows what from where during in its existence since when it was built sometime back in medieval times? Yeah, that stuff. Might have been fine without paint now that I think about it… Nah, gotta keep it tidy. That’s my MOJO. I just live with mess when I can’t help it. Good thing I inherited about 6 (might have been 7?) partial gallon jugs of denatured alcohol.


Step 6: Paint forever.

Seriously, I finished this in the dark under lights so I didn’t grab any pictures. I just went in stages from the inside out so I wouldn’t be reaching through wet paint. It got touched up in the morning on the couple spots I missed.


Step 7: Load metal.

Hahahahaha, no just kidding… Step 7 is PREP metal. All my tubing got hosed down in fogging oil (I’d make another sex joke but I’m tired and that one’s just too easy). All my plate got excess bits trimmed using the plasma so it’d be a bit more manageable. I burned up my compressor I ran it so hard and so long with the plasma. *Sigh* well sounds like I better wire up the big bastard instead of the portable guy.


Step 8: Load metal…

Silly boy. Nope, Step 8 is clear space in the 8-12’ width that is the slab at the side of your house since you’d already filled that with randomness and the carts don’t quite fit yet. Convince yourself it’s OK to sell the junk tires and mustang wheels you thought you might go drifting on--but probably won’t--since you made your car too nice. (psssst…. Hey mista… wanna buy some mustang RIMS yo yo!! I got RIMS baby! I’ll hook you up!)


Step 9: Load metal?

Yeah ok, now it’s time. Recruit one more buddy who’s pic you don’t take because you’re so in awe that he managed to take his new driver’s license picture wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. Not that I love Trump but it was trolling on a whole 'nother level (true story I won’t name the perpetrator). Apparently they had to call the state capital to verify if "Make America Great Again" could be claimed as a religion.

Assuming you haven’t shot yourself in the head with all the big guns floating around this place, you tell yourself. “Self, that’s $12k in metal, be thankful you don’t have a job and could spend a week on this! The good Lord knows what he’s doing and smiles on his idiot children”

At some point you actually do load all the metal and you end up here:

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Then it makes you giggle and smile every time you walk by. And once again all is well with the world.

By the way, my OCD loved (!!!!) sorting the goods. The tubing is pretty self explanatory. It’s sorted by material first, then shape, then size. The metal rack goes stainless, then steel, then aluminum (lighter when you need to reach deeper), then wood since I don’t much care about the plywood. There’s a bunch of plastic skid plate material tucked in wherever it fits since I’m not OCD enough to give it a dedicated space…. I still need to build a cover for both racks and I’m toying with ideas on how to build that into the rack since hey, they should be plenty strong enough. I think that racking material was 3/8” wall tube. Even with Mike, Anthony AND me (not technically a slouch, I mostly joke around), these things were barely moveable when they were full length with 13 of those legs sticking out.

So that’s the party and step by step plan for what to do when you inherit something north of 5,000 lbs of free metal (and bite off more than you can chew).

Love and humptiness to all.
-Joel

PS It’s late and I’m mostly entertaining myself (feel free to NOT take that any way you see fit.) I’ll upload pics and get this posted tomorrow. Which is now, now. Funny how that works.
 
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Haha grinding/prepping metal in flip flops. Your wife already meets 90% criteria to be accepted by the faboholics!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I should probably remind folks that the circumstances of this hook-up are far from ideal. Most notably I am still unemployed so it ain't all roses.

It also took an metric ton of work in blazing heat to make happen. If I came home with 5k lbs of metal I probably moved 15k lbs in sorting in that parking lot.

To my way of thinking this is more of a silver lining in a stormy sky kinda story. ;)
 
Great work!! I'm amazed at the ability of others (and myself sometimes) !! Suks about the job front! Hang in there... a man of your talent and ingenuity will surely find another job/opportunity if you apply yourself on that front like you do on your fabrication and Jeep work.
 
Started a new job so finally started spending some money again.

Daddy got a new pair of shoes. 33x12.5r15s

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And immediately took the family camping...

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Was kinda stoked that in the first 12 hours of driving on these more than half of that was on dirt. Woke up to a beautiful morning in Jawbone Canyone a bit above Mojave. The jeep was clean for about 5 seconds.

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Then it wasn't.

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I can't tell you how stoked I am that my girls love jeeps and dirt. Really makes my heart warm.

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Some beautiful canyons and what not...

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Worked our way across the hills with a few buddies on motorcycles. Killer views...

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And the object of our search. "Burro" Schmidt's tunnel. One man cut 2600 feet through solid granite bedrock. Took 38 years but pretty wild. That tiny light was the end of the tunnel. Pic about halfway in.

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Wicked sunset on the way out too. XJ in it's natural habitat.

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We were out there all weekend and even managed to borrow a few toys. Riding a quad with my daughters.

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Good times had by all. Where else in SoCal do I need to go exploring? Vacation is lacking so I'm limited by about as far as I can get from Orange County on a Friday evening.
 
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Thanks, as an added bonus of the tire swap I think my 15s would work with the WJ brakes I have on the shelf... Keep debating that one.

Bonus shot of the on trail sunset from last weekend. So pretty.

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Been wheeling a bit while SoCal's weather is so perfect. I figured if the rest of the world is freezing their bits off I should enjoy it a bit.

Quick jaunt with the "SoCal Trail Buds" had one dude with a decent camera and ended up with some of the best pictures I've ever had of my rig. The one in the trees made the cover page of the Trail Buds facebook page!

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There's a heavy Toyota contingency in the Trail Buds, but I represented for Jeep pretty well. Working a hard line option that no one else took... The rock vs. rocker potential was high.

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Hope you're having a brilliant New Year and if it's cold where you're at, I hope the snow wheeling is rad.

-Joel
 
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Lots of great tech in this thread, thanks for posting. I just read your post on brake proportioning and have a much better understanding now.
 
Hey, Joel. Met you at SoCal Fest. Noticed your cargo area storage cabinetry and commented to someone on how good it looks. He pointed out the aluminum gas tank skid. So I got curious and started reading this thread from the start. You've done some great work on the XJ, and I really dig the look of that FJ40! So now, dagnabbit, I'm going to have to go and read that thread.

Did you ever get your mid skid reinstalled?
 
Hey Nimrod. It's Al, right? Nice meeting you too. Yes the mid skid's back on. I had it at SoCal Fest but it's pretty far under so harder to see the bling. I think JohnX got a couple good looks after I hung it up on the Doran waterfall climb. 33's do me right most of the time, but every now and then... The skid does give up another inch and some for break-over angles.

I have a couple write ups of the prep work I did for SCF almost done. Came away with ball joints knocking pretty good, but no real damage so pleased about that. All my other projects seems to be conspiring to keep me from the FJ, but it's still the one I'm most stoked on. I took the gas tank skid concepts here into a full custom fuel tank on that one and should be posting about that soon.

Should I occasionally post FJ40 stuff here? This forum influenced a great deal of the strategies I've now been taking into other builds.
 
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