advice on early (pre97) vs late (post97) frame

[Skullver]

honestly, I'm going to have to remove most of that to seam weld anyways. anything I don't strip for welding will get taken off acid dipping before its galvanized. I will have to make sure the rails have some holes for air and zinc to get in through, but I think thats better than trying to spray paint in it.

Honestly, you can't remove it all. I welded just about every single "seam" on my xj chassis and it was an absolute PITA, I have the scars from the popping glue to prove it! You just cannot get it all out, it is squished between each and every layer of thin sheetmetal, in some places there are 4-5 thin sheets all glued/spot welded together like around the lca mounts etc. I think you would have a much easier time with paint. This is one of those cases where the downfalls considerably outweigh the benefits. But hey, if you are a glutton for punishment and have tons of spare time and dough, go for it!

 

[el_roy1985]

E85 provides a higher octane (105 octane I think it is) at a cheaper price, so that would be another benefit. A lot of forced induction guys like it for that reason. Always wondered how it would perform in a high compression engine.

 

[metalman]

to update, I've found I have just about the perfect 1990 frame, only rust is in the floor pan above the muffler, which I even found on a 98, so i'm keeping the 90 frame.

The galvanizing is going to run roughly 42 cent per pound of steel. so if the stripped frame weighs 1000lbs, 420$. this is the full processed price, cleaning and the works. They said they like a 25% of cross section vent hole at opposite corners and the zinc can get in and out fine for the hot dip, which would be no problem for the frame. for the roll cage I'll proably just weld it up and not worry about it, the inside of it shouldn't be getting rusty anyways and the outside will be sealed, plus its inside so I don't see it having problems.

just a heads up, assure them that your not some concourse resto whackjob, and that your not going to freak out if your frame is off by a 1/16th, and they relax and start talking to you. they were super chill once they realized that I just wanted to stop rust and I didn't care about much else.

the downside is that as I knew, it would need to be stripped of paint (one thing they can't clean off) inside and out. the best price I can find on acid dipping is 1400, which is more than I paid for the whole jeep. so...

I'm going to try electrolysis. kind of whacky, I've used it before on tools, never anything that big, but I figure I don't have much to loose and the principal is the same. basically dunk the part in a solution of water and baking soda or washing soda, hook up a negative DC voltage source to your part, and the positive to something steel that you don't care about. The rust basically transfers to the positive part which is sacrificial like rebar or any ferrous junk item (not stainles steel, casuses a toxic byproduct), and cleans up the negative part. some hydrogen gets produced, which disperses pretty fast if you outside, and you have to make sure the voltage source is up to the task, but thats about it. It also strips paint, it will even take "japaning" off, which is pretty tough stuff (think old school por15). The body caulk may take a bit, but I think that should come off too given some additional scraping.

so far, my grand plan is to build a temporary "tank" lined with a 12x20 sheet of construction plastic, I figure that will get it stripped up to the window sills, then I may try flipping it over but I'll probably just chemical strip the top. once its out, I'm going to spray some rust preventative wax (rumor has it waxy deck sprays work good for a while) weld up the frame stiffners, do the rockers and probably add some bracing and cross members to the frame, weld in the cage, possibly back in the electolysis "tank" one more time, then off to get galvanzied. After that, no rush, it isn't like its going to rust ever again.

I'm actually kind of excited about it. and its actually way cheaper than even getting the floor lineXed (obscene what those guys want for that stuff) PLUS galvanizing works better. this is actually making me wonder about just clear coating it and driving it around galvanized, although its the wife project, and she really likes grabber green which is a bit more reasonable.

 

[Darky]

I understand, and no offense intended. I'm not one to spite the law for sport, and I'm actually pretty "green". Thats actually my major issue with the cali emissions laws. I'm going to be running a cat and full exhaust, and I can run a cleaner engine with MegaSquirt than the factory did, but still fail for "tech" in cali, which is what fails most cars. Unfortunately cali emissions laws have little to with the environment, and a lot to do with bringing money into the smog shops which fail cars for some pretty pointless infractions. Ideally I'll be able to find a steady source of E85, which besides burning clearner, has a much smaller carbon footprint too.

To the PO, E85 may burn cleaner, but the carbon footprint is actually larger. It requires more than a gallon of gasoline to produce a gallon of E85 (there are a lot of stages between corn and ethanol). The only reason farmers love it because of stipends they receive, but thats really about the only benefit.

As already pointed out, E85 is crap. The engine produces less power, you get worse mileage, plus all the extra processing to make it. Not to mention that it takes food and turns it into fuel. The only real benefit is that it gives money to farmers.

You've already decided on the 90, so my recommendation would be to use POR-15 for your rust prevention and then all the extra time that would've been spent on galvanizing can be spent swapping the 99 interior into the 90. That way, best of both worlds. 99 interior (with REAL cupholders!!) with 90 emissions laws. Plus, I'd hate to go through all the trouble galvanizing it only to find that some seam/sandwiched sheetmetal/etc lost it's glue that you didn't or couldn't weld and have tat piece fall off/apart.

 

[metalman]

thanks for the advice about the por15, not taking it though, I've seen too many frames that were so rusted I could put my finger through their black shiny por15 surface. I think its good on a sealed space like an axle, but not a frame. I'll let you know how the electrolysis works out though. I think its actually going to work pretty good on the unibody, I've seen it used to get frozen pistons out of a 100 year old steam engine when a 20 ton press failed, in about 4 hours, I guess I'll see how it handles unibody caulk. I figure it will take about two weeks, but we'll see when the weather warms up. Now I don't know why I didn't think of using that for the paint, I guess because the frame on the xj is shockingly unrusted.

darky, thanks for "pointing out" the fact that you and some other people think e85 sucks. I guess thats why the alcohol dragster guys use it, because its crap and it helps them slow down so its not as scary when they race. Also, ethanol doesn't give money to farmers, they get a subsidy growing yellow corn, whether it winds up in my gas tank as ethanol or a fat guys hand as high fructose corn syrup, the farmers get the same subsidy regardless of who buys it or where it winds up. The ethanol producers may get a subsidy for producing ethanol, but they usually aren't farmers, and the oil companies get subsidized very heavily too, even after that totally rad "ocean of oil" petroleum give away they did in the gulf this summer. Try getting facts from places besides TV newsertainment.

 

[Darky]

thanks for the advice about the por15, not taking it though, I've seen too many frames that were so rusted I could put my finger through their black shiny por15 surface. I think its good on a sealed space like an axle, but not a frame. I'll let you know how the electrolysis works out though. I think its actually going to work pretty good on the unibody, I've seen it used to get frozen pistons out of a 100 year old steam engine when a 20 ton press failed, in about 4 hours, I guess I'll see how it handles unibody caulk. I figure it will take about two weeks, but we'll see when the weather warms up. Now I don't know why I didn't think of using that for the paint, I guess because the frame on the xj is shockingly unrusted.

darky, thanks for "pointing out" the fact that you and some other people think e85 sucks. I guess thats why the alcohol dragster guys use it, because its crap and it helps them slow down so its not as scary when they race. Also, ethanol doesn't give money to farmers, they get a subsidy growing yellow corn, whether it winds up in my gas tank as ethanol or a fat guys hand as high fructose corn syrup, the farmers get the same subsidy regardless of who buys it or where it winds up. The ethanol producers may get a subsidy for producing ethanol, but they usually aren't farmers, and the oil companies get subsidized very heavily too, even after that totally rad "ocean of oil" petroleum give away they did in the gulf this summer. Try getting facts from places besides TV newsertainment.

So, you gonna build your XJ to Top Fuel dragster specs? Comparing an XJ to a top built dragster is like comparing a WWI biplane to Gulf V.

But whatevs...

 

[metalman]

actually, topfuel is nitromethane, ethanol is "alcohol", not the same, and I'm not trying to be a dick here, but you really seem like you want to be wrong about all this.

I wasn't comparing an xj to a dragster, you were the one calling e85 crap, when its higher up the fuel food chain than gasoline, but if you want to compare them, look up some info about garth hill on JS, you might learn something about your engine. A lot of strokers have issues with ping, a precursor of detonation, so running e85 lets you run way higher compression, which makes more power, assuming you can tune it right. I just hate seeing bad information that keeps getting circulated because someone reads something bogus like "e85 is crap" and regardless of political opinions, it warrants attention from a preformance standpoint, but they go on to pass off that same bad information as fact.

Instead of coping attitude with "whatevs", take a chance to further your understanding and learn something, this forum would be a lot better off for it.

 

[el_roy1985]

I used to think E85 was a joke. Until I started researching forced induction engines and increasing boost along with tuning. Now I think E85 is great. The higher octane has solved a lot of my future problems with fueling a forced induction engine I will be tuning. Then if I ever build a stroker, I may go high compression if E85 is equally as beneficial in a high compression naturally aspirated engine. Which I don't see why it wouldn't be, just been spending my time talking with forced induction guys about the benefits of E85. Sure there are a lot of NA guys out there that could fill me in, just haven't gotten there yet.

Now E85 in a flex fuel car is kind of a waste. Less mileage on a fuel that no longer is cheap enough to make up the difference. Oh well, leaves more for us that use it for things that are more fun.

I'm sure that eventually E85 will become produced in a more economical way. There isn't much in life that works at it's best right out of the gate. It takes time to perfect and even then there is room for improvement. We need to free ourselves from fossil fuels, plain and simple, so at least supporting something that has potential will go a long ways.

 

[el_roy1985]

Delete this...

 

[metalman]

I agree, flex fuel is kind of questionable unless your going with a turbo and you can crank the boost up, and I'm not going to run my compression high enough to need e85 on this, although I have known some guys that added quite a bit to their fuel to be able to run more timing. I thought about it, but there just isn't a steady enough supply in my area right now, although I will use a methanol injection system hooked up to a knock sensor and a manual switch, thats only a couple gallons at a time not driving around on it. I know the cherokees like to run hot, and the strokers seem touchy about heat, which is exactly what your going to get from driving slow on a trail and keeping the revs low getting over something so the methanol spray should shut that down. It says a lot about how strong these motors are that over on stokers they talk about ping like its annoying, most chevy guys even think they hear it and they instantly shut their motor down (for good reason), those guys just shrug and keep rockin'. With MS and a fuel system built right I could run it on e85 or a blend if I felt like it down the road though.

As for ethanol, if they ever get the cellulose process down, it would be a miracle fuel, but right now thats still a pipe dream, one that I think doesn't get nearly enough funding though.