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another build thread. . .

Very nice work for sure, I'm just wondering how much extra weight this is all adding to the Jeep. Your going to be about as bullet proof as possible out there on the trail for sure. But I keep picturing your rig having as much balls as a geo metro with 4 fat people in it, going up a hill.
Don't get me wrong, I'd kill for a set up like yours =) But where is the point of diminished returns when it comes to power to weight ratio? That's my only concern =) other then that it looks killer, especially the bigger stance.
 
It is pretty heavy, but I started hacking off all the 1x1x1/4" bracing that ran parallel with the Jeep and it's cut down on the weight quite a bit. I also don't mind a little extra weight down there, as Rockmonkey pointed out, it'll help give me a lower center of gravity. I also will be regearing to 5.13's within a year hopefully. . . then a stroker. . . maybe NOS until then...:)
 
Your shit is going to bend unless you get some bending stiffness running from framerail to framerail. Your 2x3 box will be far stiffer if you turn it on edge so that it is 2" wide and 3" tall...if you have room.
 
Phil said:
Your shit is going to bend unless you get some bending stiffness running from framerail to framerail. Your 2x3 box will be far stiffer if you turn it on edge so that it is 2" wide and 3" tall...if you have room.
Click to expand...

2.25 X stiffer to be exact. (engineer, couldn't help myself)

but anyway, awesome build. i like the innovation.
 
Phil said:
Your shit is going to bend unless you get some bending stiffness running from framerail to framerail. Your 2x3 box will be far stiffer if you turn it on edge so that it is 2" wide and 3" tall...if you have room.
Click to expand...

I understand about the bending part, I was just confused on what you meant with the 2x3. I checked a little last night and this morning, not sure how I'm going about all this. I was thinking of tying it in to the floor pans and tranny tunnel, vs. just burning it into the pan.
 
asp387 said:
2.25 X stiffer to be exact. (engineer, couldn't help myself)

but anyway, awesome build. i like the innovation.
Click to expand...


Thanks! I'll be going back to college soon to kick off a mech. engineer degree myself. Just need to figure out all the school stuff first. . .
 
Tying it in to the floor pan or tranny tunnel would get an awesome section. Make sure to spread the load out so you don't just shear the floor.

You'll learn about bending stiffness, torsion, shear area. It's cool until things start to move.

Fatigue is a bitch.
 
I had already thought of that, I planned on plating the section 2" or so around where the mounts will bolt to with 1/8"or so. What's your opinion? I'd stitch weld it, same concept as the 3x3x3/16th on the rails. I'd like to keep any metal fatigue problems at bay as long as possible. A cage will be in the works in a couple years when I get the funds, tools, and experience.
 
It's only, what, 20ga? 16ga would be much easier to weld to 20ga than 1/8" would be.

I'd throw on like a 6"x6" or bigger piece of 16ga, stich weld the edges, a handfull of plug welds.

You want to spread out the load so it doesn't just shear the floor all the way around your plate.
 
Well, I thought I'd post up what I did today since I'm taking a break from my beer brewing. :cheers:
I made the side mounting plates, bolted the sides up and welded the plates to the inside of the rails and welded the floors up.

The passenger side I mangled so badly I just covered it with some sheet.
The driver's side came out alot better.

I got the seats in after everything cooled down, been a while since I've seen that. I'll be herculining everything once I get bumpers finished tomorrow.
I did end up getting most of the bumpers done.



I just have two pieces that I have to cut and weld to fill in the bumpers. I had Nates4x4.com XJ bumpers and just cut the bumpers so I could fold over the pieces and weld them up, which because of the angles, left me a little odd shaped piece to make. I forgot to get pictures of everything, sorry. Well, back to my beer process, hopefully I'll get the shocks taken care of tomorrow and get it out on a little test run.
 
Well what a day! I got the bumper finished today, just had a little piece to cut up and weld in.

After that I tackled the shocks. I haven't measured or bought shocks yet, but I did have an old set from a 6" lift for a 98 silverado . . .
I had to cut the eye off of the chevy shock and the stud from the old jeep shock

Then welded the stud onto the other shock.

I went to weld the shock mounts on and they ended up being to shallow for the "new" shocks, so I ended up making my own out of 1/4" plate. . .

I ended up rounding the edges alot more before burning them in.

After I got all that done, I checked all the fluids and started her up and let it run to operating temp. Then I took it up and down my street a couple times, and up and down my ditch a couple times, which resulted in a little tire spinning action :). I have video of it, but it won't load online for some reason. . . All in all I'm pumped to finally have a semi operational Jeep. Wed.-ish I should be getting my new yoke from Tom Woods, so I'll be taking care of that next weekend along with the driveshaft. Then I'll be taking it on very short and very slow runs and checking the welds and tightness of everything until I get a couple hundred miles on everything. I'll be getting started on the 2x3 rect. bracing here in a couple weeks or so.
 
Thank you! I've got mini-spools to hold me over for now, I'll be saving, for the next year, and regearing to 5.13's with full spools, then saving for a doubler or bigger meats. Not sure yet, there's alot of time to figure out what makes sense for me. I'll be getting to the mini-spools after I get the belly pan DONE and maybe the body work I've got planned. Not sure. I don't plan on hitting the trails until they open again next year probably. I just want to make sure everything works well on road before I pound the hell out of it off road. It's a 3-4 hour drive to any trails, so keeping it safe and road worthy is a high priority.
 
I don't like the idea of welding the spiders, I'm just not comfortable with. I'm not an engineer or metallurgist, but I know when you heat the metal like that you are potentially compromising the strength of it. I know people weld diffs all the time, but that's just my personal preference. I got a couple good deals on some used mini-spools, so I snagged them. I'm not sure if I'll need a doubler, but it's an idea and something to consider later on down the road, we'll see what I think I need when the time comes. I'm up in North Carolina off the coast.
I saw your build thread, I like what you did with the "comp cutting"
 
oh cool man, your build is going great, as you see i am not welding my spiders, but if i had some throw-away carriers, i probably would have.

i've struggled with stock gears long enough, so gears were at the front of the line this time around.
 
Man, what a day. . . I finally got the time to do the homebrew h&t and things went wrong the entire way through. Man. First things first:
I started by taking the driveshaft off and measured the 1 1/2" of spline I was going to keep. I then tapped it off so I knew where to start cutting when I put the jeep into drive.

Well, this is where things went downhill incredibly fast. The blade wandered and finally caught and didn't cut smoothly. The cut-off wheel just jumped and cut very very wrong. I can't get a good enough picture of what it looked like: very uneven.



Well, I was able to fix it, kind of. I put a grinding wheel on my trusty dewalt and started the jeep and put it back in gear and just layed the grinding wheel on the shaft until it stopped jumping. It's quite a bit better than it was, but I'm not happy with it yet. I'm going to see how bad it vibrates and make a descision based on that: going on a lathe or saving for a REAL SYE from tom woods. Either way, I ended up with 1 3/8" of spline left, not bad, but not as much as I wanted. I then started on the yoke.

I ended up cutting 2 1/16th" off, also not cut at a perfect 90*. I should have just called it a day after the shaft went wrong. :( Well after I got it cut I started on drilling the end of the shaft. Well, since I didn't have a good pattern from cutting the output shaft, I had to measure for about 10 min before I felt comfortable about center punching it. Ends up I measured wrong by just over 1/16th", which I had to kill the jeep and drill sideways until I centered the bit. It's still about 1/64th" off, but I'll live with that. I then proceeded to burn up both my 3/16th and my 21/64th drill bits. a 45 min. trip into town later I came home with 2 new ti-ni coated bits that cut through the shaft like butter, pretty impressed with Lowe's brand Kobalt bits. Then, man is murphy's law being applied time after time tonight, I started to tap the hole. I didn't break the tap, I stopped well before I was overly worried about it, but the tap won't go in more than 5/8".

I wasn't about to force anything, so I just stopped at 5/8". I'm not happy with it, but I'd be ALOT less happy trying to get a broken tap out of the end of the shaft. I slapped the yoke on and coated the hell out of the bolt in red loctite and torqued it to 50ft/lbs. (That's nothing more than a guestimate, but seemed plenty tight without worrying about overtorqueing it)

THEN! Get ready for this. . . I measure for the driveshaft, and I'm short by 1 1/2" on the very conservative side. Total buzzkill. I have 4 driveshafts of differenct lengths and not one of them worked. Hadn't planned on that. so monday I'll be getting one extended and balanced to get under the Jeep. I've got a list of things to do for tomorrow, but I won't be able to post until Sun. Brock vs. Randy "The Natural" is tomorrow, so I'll be busy. Until then. . .
 
Well, I got a little done today and called it an early day. I didn't mess with the SYE or the driveshaft. I was thinking about extending it myself, but I'd rather have the peace of mind of knowing a pro did it.
I started today putting that plastic molding over the cut fenders. It was a pretty good deal, I just needed to buy one package per side and it already came with a sealant in the "c" channel. Worked like a charm! After that I made some bolts for the tie rods and did a much better alignment: went from 1/2" toe-in to 1/8th". Not sure how I got 1/2" last time, but I'm using a better way to measure it now. Tomorrow I'll be drilling through the nuts and bolts on the tie rods to run a coder pin through.
After I knocked out some of the more boring things I started on my exhaust hanger. I didn't have much of a plan and just kind of waited for things to come together and they did. I started with an exhaust clamp and welded on some plate to extend it to the rail.

I knew that I needed a bushing of some sort to allow the exhaust to flex with the engine, so I cut the eyelet off of an old shock and welded that to the plate. I grabbed a bolt and cut it to the length of the eyelet and welded it onto another 1 1/2" square piece of 3/16th plate and welded that to the rail.

I then mounted the clamp onto that and tightened the clamp up and threw a nut and washer onto the bolt running through the eyelet.

Worked out pretty damned well if you ask me!
I felt a little better about my novice fab skills after that so I tackled relocating the washer bottle. I started by removing the old one from behind the fender and fishing the harness back up behind the grill. I found a washer bottle from a 92 XJ with the pumps and everything, so I moved around a couple things under the hood and stuffed it in there. Most of the plugs swapped right over, but I still need to splice the old plug for the washer level "sensor" onto the 92 style bottle. I filled it up and both pumps worked. Also I noticed that the low washer fluid light didn't come on even though the circuit was open. Thought that was odd.

I only had a little garage time left so I knocked relocating the horns out.

That's about all I got done today. I plan on removing the dust shields when I repack the hubs with better grease tomorrow and dropping the bellypan, again, to wrap the exhaust and start on the vertical reinforcements for the bellypan. I'll probably get started on notching the pan for the front driveshaft too. We'll see how I feel tomorrow. :cheers:
 
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