Decided to cut up the XJ .. lots of pics

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

to start: I posted this on some other boards and folks told me to come post it here.. so here we go..
-------------------------------------------------------

Well after my last trip to Tellico I smashed the front fender, rear tailgate, rear fender, and rear passenger glass..I decided it was time to finally Chop the XJ .

But I have not liked the flat look of what I have seen on other XJ's that have been chopped so I took a differnet route.

I decided to use the XJ rear tailgate as my back glass to keep the factory curved angles, then once we got to looking at it we decided why not make the tailgate still open

so yup I cut the back used the rear tailgate and the tailgate will stil open ( just because )

Here are some pics of before, during and hope to have it done by the end of this week.

We started Thursday night by stripping the interior, then Friday we started by cutting and getting to work.

Here we go.. I have lots of pics

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

Here are few pics of what it looked like when I started

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

So next we had to take out the glass, took off the rear hatch and then started cutting

joshv98xj · Jan 16, 2008

Will the hatch still open with the wheel wells in the way?

RCman · Jan 16, 2008

joshv98xj said:
Will the hatch still open with the wheel wells in the way?

Psst. Give him a minute... he's not done posting all the pictures yet. :spin1:

Nice build, I've been following it on the PBB. Neat idea with the hatch moved forward like that. If mine wasn't damaged I might end up coping some of your ideas.

However, my floor and quarters are getting tossed so this wouldn't work out well for me. I do still love the idea! :thumbup:

SOUTHTEXASXJ · Jan 16, 2008

keep us posted with the progress.will you be selling the center console?

BruceB83 · Jan 16, 2008

Let me make sure I understand what you did. So instead of leaving behind the rear seats open to the outside, you moved the hatch to mount there instead of the original location so it is almost like a 4 door truck with a hatch? Hmmm....I like it. Did you have to shorten the hatch? Was that difficult, closing in the hatch?

***Oh, sorry....you're still posting!

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

Here is where it got interesting..

I grafted on the rear edge off the roof to my cut so that way we could keep the hinges and the angle of the tailgate so it would open correct.. I also kept the rear support beam inside the roof and moved that up so now the "c" pillar is stronger then it ever was..

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

So after we got the top of the tailgate fitted we then focused on the bottom half.. I decided to make the bottom half solid so to help with water and keeping the inside of the Jeep sealed.

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

after much debate I finally decided how I wanted to make the sides of the bed and we went at it.

You can see from the pics we used a brake to bend the steel so it fit the curves I wanted correct and we also bent a lip at the top for strenght that attached to the inside of the outside fender.

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

The last 2 pics so the tailgate off getting ready to get plated so it will seal against the bottom panel we made

also last pic shows the bottom half with the lip we welded on so the weather stripping can be connected to seal the hatch

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

we also finished the rear Cargo area, sealed it with autobody sealer then bedliner spray

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

we got rear hatch mocked up with weather stripping, got all bondo on(will sand that tomorrow night), and a bunch of grinding, smoothing, etc on the metal for hatch

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

Well here are some updates

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

Well here are some updates

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

Great news is we got it DONE in 7 days

yup it is all back together..
Back hatch opens, closes, locks, has struts to hold it open..

it came out very well and I am very happy with a 7 day deadline..

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

here is a shot video showing how it works..

we reused the original latch and lock from the tailgate so it locks and unlocks..

I still need to get unlock mechanism to work.. but atleast for now I can reach inside and just unlock it by hand

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7338570673824170046

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

Here are finished " for now" pics

you can see I did not fix all the dents on passenger side..i figured they would probably get smashed again

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

SOUTHTEXASXJ said:
keep us posted with the progress.will you be selling the center console?

i kept everything from the rear seat forward.

the headliner, roof console, etc..

I will try to get inside pics soon

BRUISER · Jan 16, 2008

BruceB83 said:
Let me make sure I understand what you did. So instead of leaving behind the rear seats open to the outside, you moved the hatch to mount there instead of the original location so it is almost like a 4 door truck with a hatch? Hmmm....I like it. Did you have to shorten the hatch? Was that difficult, closing in the hatch?

***Oh, sorry....you're still posting!

That is correct

Decided to cut up the XJ .. lots of pics

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

NAXJA Forum User

Similar threads