Hommade long arm GURUs HELP?

I'm not looking for Do this... Don't do that... this way is better, or this is how I did it pics or.. I just have one question for those experienced long arem guys here:

I have 32" adjustable Long Arms.
I'm trying to mount my LCA rear brackets on the frame in the correct location in front of the stock crossmember.

1. - When mocking up the Long Arm mounts, including the UCAs how do you position the axle under the vehicle to get your measurements correct?
2. - Do the coils need to be in place? If so, How can you put weight on the coils without any control arms attached?

The above are my two main questions. Any other infor you may have to offer that directly pertains to this, please add.
I want my mock up to be at accurate distances according to how my jeep will sit with my 6.5" Rock Crawler coils in place, but I want to do this without the tires being on so I have more room to work.

I would leave all the short arms on and pull 1 lca at a time,thus leaving the axle located in its stock position.Leave the springs in but put the axle on jack stands.You will need to "trim" the lca mounts a little for clearance.

There is no clean cut answer for you, I'm sorry to say. Once you start making your own crap, you'll find that there are many more variables than you thought of. Do you want it in the stock location? Do you want a shorter wheelbase? Do you want to stretch the wheelbase? What kind of long arm set up are you doing? Everything is adjustable depending on how much effort you want to put into it. But your best bet is to decide what your goals are and design it around that. I bet you have something in your head, but write it down and it'll help.

I'm assuming that you want to keep the stock wheelbase and you are going to stick with a stock axle (d30 because you didn't say otherwise)....

1. Get a FSM and look up the body dimensions. Tape out on the floor your wheelbase and square off the corners, in effect, making a rectangle. Use the top and bottom lines as your axles. Use the longer sides to mark your track width (or if you'd like, mark your centerline on your axle and make a centerline on your rectangle). That works the best IMO. I'm a visual sorta learner and it seems to work well for others.

2. The coils should be in place and at ride height to get your ams exactally correct. That being said, it's often difficult to get the weight of the body on the axle without control arms keeping it in place. So either go like RCP PHx said and leave the stock arms on there (and remember, if you're using the stock arms w/o drop brackets, they'll be in their radius of movement and probably not sitting at the stock wheelbase with your specified ride height), or just figure out where the ride height will be with your specific coils and just leave the Jeep on jack stands at that height. The last method can be tricky if you're unsure where your Jeep will sit with the coils if you're adding lift at the same time so be careful. The last method will also allow you to attach your LCA's to the axle and get the frame side mounting points exactally where they need to be for your ride height with 32" long arms.

Go see some XJ's with different long-arm kits on them and take measurements/steal their designs. At least that way you're copying something that's been proven in design. If your welding and fab skills are decent, you should end up with a workable long-arm suspension.

For my 2 cents worth, it's worth every penny to just save up and buy the best long-arm kit you can afford. It'll save you countless hours of trial and error and getting tired and filthy cutting, grinding, and welding steel.

I'm just going to measure the height of the 6.5" RockKrawler coils on another XJ with weight on them. This distance will be the same for mine, therefore I know how far to place my Dana 30 away, centered correctly below the coil studs and shock mounts obviously, keeping the stock wheelbase.
Thanks for the help, but I think I got it figured out.

17 in. is the stock distance from center of hub to bottom of fender flare on all xj's 17.5 inches in the rear. as long as the center of your hub is 23.5 inches from the bottom of your fender flare (or where your fender flare would be if you don't have one) you should be in the ball park.