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Project Unicorn - a light duty trail rig

Fox hydraulic bumps 450. Plus your time.

Im debating doing prothane inserts on the front to save money but will I really be saving money putting the 80 bucks plus my time into them over just spending the 400 on real bump stops that actually work and are tunable?
You can damn near buy 4 bump stops for that 700 dollar number you spit out there

However you could see that a double triangulated rear would make bump stop tuning and bracket fab much quicker and simpler then attempting to cycle leave springs so yes youl blow the 700 dollar number.

You could cut oneside off a set of leafs 1/4 elliptical like to be able cycle rear and get things close.

I love seeing built not bought rigs. Not all of us have access to the tools and minds that you do. Now use the resources you have and quit second guessing yourself think fab burn and repeat.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
 
Not a lot of progress this weekend. I did a day trip to SFR Friday to work on it, but I needed to spend some hours with a client so I can pay for all of these fancy grade 9 bolts. And you know, the jeep parts.

First thing is first, I had a broken bolt in the diff that I didn't know about. Not great pictures here but I drilled a 1/8" hole in it about 3/16 deep, and then took a left hand drill bit to it. As soon as the LH bit got some bite, the bolt unthreaded itself and came out.

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Installed the same Tera diff cover and lube locker setup I used on the rear.

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The Tera covers come with fancy serrated grade 8 bolts which I dig.

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Installed, Torque to 35 and fill.

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If you remember I opted not to use the normal offset TRE's with the belief that a little rubbing the diff cover is a lesser annoyance than not being able to buy steering joints at a local parts store in a pinch.

It does just rub at full lock, but just barely.

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I'll take that.
 
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Next we have this fancy shmancy G2 Core DRS swaybar. Selectable dual rate with an air solenoid built for the JK community.

This particular unit is used - it's a take-off early production unit a friend at G2 gave me, because they want to see how it works on an XJ and figured I would manage to make it work.

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We started by taking it apart and putting the frame up to see how it fits. We had to cut the return off of the front core support but then it just slides right in place.

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This is the inner bar, removed. This will be my swaybar while disconnected.

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You may remember when I did the front frame stiffeners I left the bottom plate off because I intended to use that space. This is why.

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The drop from our cut. I think we're adding more strength than removing.

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Will have to do a little grinding here and cut some holes, and make a nutstrip that drops into the frame.

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And I bought some generate Prothane swaybar bushings with a 1" hole.

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Grind the lip off and mark our new holes

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Draw up some nutstrips.

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Do some drilling and welding.

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Drop them into the frame

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Slap a little paint in place.

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And then boom, bolt it all right up.

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Arms slide right on and show that everything should fit just right.

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The end caps are pretty interesting. You can see the inserts that engage with the inner arm.

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That went way too easy.

Now I just need to mount a good air compressor up under the hood with an ARB solenoid, and attach an airline to the quick disconnect on the housing.

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Needed to test fit for axle side mounts and some links, so we stole some links from the VW Bug project.

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Test fit with a set of SFR's off the shelf axle side swaybar mounts for WJ conversion, and they go in just the right place.

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And here's where I apparently stopped taking pictures. ;)

The mounts aren't going to work. Without offset TRE's the tie rod crashes into the swaybar mounts before full lock. I ground the hell out of them for clearance, and Dallas felt like there wasn't enough material left to be reliable.

We spent an hour or so looking at alternatives but didn't land on something we liked, and we had shop chores to do (the air compressor needed repair) so we stopped working for the day. He's going to ponder design possibilities this week and we'll revisit it later.
 
Well, I left my house Friday heading for Stinkyfab, but somehow Dallas and I ended up camped on the beach with our better halves and some beer.

Progress:

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Maybe we'll find time for the jeep next weekend.
 
Well, I left my house Friday heading for Stinkyfab, but somehow Dallas and I ended up camped on the beach with our better halves and some beer.

Progress:

fire-me.jpg



Maybe we'll find time for the jeep next weekend.



Sometimes that is the best type of progress! Some R&R!
 
I think I have a BNIB ARB std compressor I could let go

I have 3 of them and about a dozen solenoids in the garage. I was thinking I'd find something I can reasonably air up with as well though and just do the job once.
 
Awesome work! Like the shockmount solution... yours look much nicer than mine but they ended up in pretty much the same place.


For the swaybar... I ended up with mounts coming off the top of the inner C. My swaybar is a bit wider from the looks of things though and where the arms kick out, they hug the coils on my rig. Under flex they also occasionally hit the coils based on the missing paint/rust spots. But I couldn't find any place else to fit things. With the tools/fab you have access to I'd think some better arms would resolve the spring interference issue I have.



For reference my swaybar is an Izusu trooper torsion bar with home made 3/8" thick steel arms so its not exactly polished... but seems to work well enough.



Looking forward to whatever you come up with, and as always, thanks for sharing the build!
 
So I've had a Warn RC9 winch laying around that I kind of intended to build a bumper for, but Dallas built a bumper for normal people winches before I got around to it, which meant my winch didn't work.

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Talk to customer service at Warn who was very helpful and ordered up some parts.

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Did a little tear down.

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I'd never actually seen the brake inside of a winch before.

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Greased up things that rub each other a lot and started putting it together.

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it's interesting that these come unthreaded and they provide self tapping cap screws.

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Finally assemblating things.

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That was a lot easier than I expected it to be.

I present, the full width RC9 winch.

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It bugs me that the tie rods are black and the handle is chrome. I may order another handle and have it plated in black.
 
What about just plastidipping the clutch handle in black? Gets the color matched and would make it easier to grip too...
 
LOL! I would invite you to reread the last 750 posts and then reconsider suggesting plastidip on this build. ;)

It will be back zinc coating.
 
Lots done this weekend. Not a ton of photos so we're just going to speed through this.

First rev swaybar mounts looked great, but the tires hit the link at full lock.

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You can kinda see here where this is going to be a problem.

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Still, it was enough for a test drive and the rate on the Core DRS was awesome on the road.
 
Finally painted the SFR bumper, bolted the winch up and re-mounted it with a lot of fancy F911 hardware.

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Took it on a test drive to the gas station for a 6 pack of beer and a burrito.

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Drove freaking great other than the rubbing swaybar.
 
On top of being an excellent fabricator, and a full time airline pilot, Dallas is also quite the experienced sailor and made quick work of reconfiguring my winch line.

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Out with the old!

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Trying out one of these fancy Factor 55 thimbles. Not sure I like it, but I'm going to give it a chance.

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The winch doesn't look as bare with only 65 feet of rope as I expected it to.

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In trying to figure out what to do on the swaybar, Dallas mocked up a setup he used on a trophy truck he used to chase for @ baja.

Its not all fancy yet, we want to run it and make sure everything works before building a final version.

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We have some mild concern about the rod ends being juuuust maxed out flexed, but we're going to give it a try and see how it works. Maybe Rev2 will be a wider mount with misalignment spacers, or some fancy twisted assembly.

The extensions did give us a lot better angles on the vertical links though.
 
I hate the default Atlas shifter setup with the stupid E clips that fall off all of the time, so I mocked up my own setup using 3/8 rod ends, all thread, and more fancy bolts.

I did all up Advanced Adapters and order new bushings though.

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I mocked everything up with Nylocks (i didn't have non locking 3/8 fine thread nuts handy) and did final assembly with top locks, but failed to take a final picture apparently.

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I appear to have lost my shift knobs somewhere, not sure when or how. I can't find anything I like so we're going to machine some blingy aluminum ones up later, but for right now I'm running bare levers.
 
I have another pair of 10" 7100 shortbodies to go on the rear. Ordered JKS upper mounts and dug through the pile of fabricated shock mounts at the shop.

The JKS mounts are fancy AF but turn out to be kind of a hot mess.

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There's no installation where the reservoir fitting doesn't hit the floor.

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Did a mock up using the swaybar mounts for the rear as shock mounts which worked surprisingly well with the 7100's, but the lower mount wasn't great. Dallas drew something up but was out of 3/16 plate so we tabled the project for later.

Going to order some 45* AN -6 fittings and rebuild kits for these shocks, and he's going to build the mounts when we revisit the car again.
 
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