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another build thread. . .

I meant next year winter. I had planned on doing as much as possible this winter, and once the trails open back up wait until the next off season to modify some more stuff. We'll see though, I'll probably end up bashing the rockers my first couple runs out and have to cut em out. I'm trying to work up the motivation to go out and start stripping the cab. . . not feeling it today. 30* and tired from not sleeping all week . .. ugh
 
goatse.jpg


a goatse image might scare you into getting to work.
 
so I went out and started to work on it, then came and checked my computer, then went directly back outside. . . thank you. . . :)

I ended up getting all the molding out, the rear carpet, seats, and consol, but didn't get the head liner out yet. I also think I screwed up one of the rear seat belts by letting it racket in too far. Not sure what to do about that. The ones off the trucks I work on have a way of loosening it, but I couldn't get that to work on the XJ's. So tomorrow morning will be the visors and headliner, then I'll get going on the cage.

 
mscans said:
the cage is inside? i thought it was an exterior cage.

nice rust free interior btw-yeah it's pretty clean, I found just one spot last year when I herculined the front. It's by the passenger left foot. when I cut the floor boards up for the nut strips I wire wheeled the herculiner off and the rust spot got worse. It's right on top of the rail on that side so I don't want to cut it off and weld something else there. I'll have to figure something out before it gets to be a problem.
Click to expand...

yup, definitely an interior roll cage. I plan on chopping the top off someday, so an exo would look kinda funny, that and with all the tubing inside I need less of it for strength, and it keeps the weight nice and tight to the XJ for a lower center of gravity. I'm looking at inboarding the springs, like you did, and I don't want to have to run a sway bar, so I need to keep as much weight as low as possible to keep body sway at bay.

It's 15* out right now, so I don't plan on going out and working on it yet, gonna wait until the sun does its job.
 
ok, I have a couple issues. . .
My brother and I got the cage mocked up in the jeep.




Now before anyone gets on me about there being no triangulation, I understand that and will be adding to this cage. I want it to tie into the jeep more: I'll be using something along the lines of 16 gauge sheet dimple died to tie the cage into the A, B, and C pillars, gussets on some of the more important joints, a bar across the top of the dash, and a big ol X behind the driver.
Now on the issues. . .
You can see that the cage angles toward the rear of the Jeep.


The A pillar tube doesn't run vertical, it slants backward.

I had thought about trimming the bottom of the A pillar tube so I could raise the forward overhead tubes up, so the cage doesn't slant toward the rear, but then the problem becomes the rear overhead tubes don't line up with the front's. The C pillar portion also would need to be raised up approximately 2", which opens up another can of worms. . . any thoughts? I really wanted to keep the rear seats available, but with the cage as is, anyone of medium height would have their head above the cage.
 
thought this thing was from an xj before.

looks like a great start to a cage, you could get a HF bender and bend that A pillar pipe angle in a bit more and out a bit more so it will kinda contor to the a pillar. it's like 89 bucks for the 12 ton bender, i have it and it works pretty great up to 2".

plus, then you could bend whatever other kinda stuff you'll need to tie this into your rockers later down the road, or make tube fenders, or whatever you know.
 
I was looking at doing that, but I'm going a different route. I'll be shaving the bottom of the A pillar to drop it down more and move it closer to the dash. That'll move the front overhead tubes parallel with the floor, (vs. angling them backward). I have to raise the B pillar section up, (the guy cut it short out of his XJ) anyhow, so I'll be able to bring that up to meet the front overhead tubes. That brings me to the C section: I'll have to cut the plates off the bottom of it and extend that as well so everything is parallel and aligned properly. It's going to be a little more work than I wanted, but I still got everything for $200, so I can't complain to much.

When I extend the B and C sections of the cage I plan on plug welding a piece of tubing inside the cage and slide the extention tube over that and plug welding that also, then butt welding everything together. I don't see how that'll affect the cage's strength.

I do need a tube bender . . .
 
just plated the unibody rails from front bumper to rear front spring hangers. When I kick off phase II I'll be plating it to the rear bumpers as well.
 
Man. . . it's been a while since I've done anything, but I did get a couple cool things done today.
I started installing the minispool yesterday and got it done today. I already had the rear axle out of the Jeep, so removing the 3rd member was quite a bit easier.


I started by removing the adjuster nut retainers and the adjuster nuts. I counted the number of rotations each adjuster used to come off with the idea that that's what I'd need to thread those back on and I'd be good. . . wrong. Lesson learned.

Then I removed the bearing caps and races being careful not to mix them up.

Then I took the carrier out. Just for peace of mind I marked everything before I took it off.

Then I removed the ring gear bolts and knocked that off and separated the two halves of the carrier.

As I took the spider gears off I made sure to retain the washer thingys from the two big gears, those get reused with the minispool.


Dropped in the minispool after cleaning everything up in there.

The spider gears used one long pin and two short pins to hold everything together. The minispool only used the long center pin, I though that was a little odd. I would think that all 4 holes would be utilized.

Then I put everything back together, tightening the ring gear bolts in a star pattern to pull everything together evenly. Then torqued the ring gear bolts to 70 ft.lbs.

I put the carrier in 3rd member, installed the bearing caps with the bolts hand tight, and then the adjusters. I ended up having to stop there and go buy some grease paint to run a couple patterns, I wasn't thinking I'd have to do that, but I should've been prepared for it anyhow. oops. I got everything finished today, but I'm trading axle housings with a guy a couple hours away. My 9" is 65.25 WMS, and his is 67.5", which will match my front better. While the rear is torn apart I'm going to start phase II, that and I found out Uwharrie doesn't open until April. So I've got some more time to play with. I need to order some more angle to plate the rear half of my Jeep before I either relocate my bastard packs or swap in the 63" Chevy's. I'm just not sold on the Chevy leaves. They're 14" longer eye to eye than my bastard pack, which when kicking the rear axle back 5", that really puts my shackle out there. I'd rather keep the shackle box location, just built with 1/4", to keep from dragging over everything. So we'll see what I get convinced of in another thread. . .
I've also got some UBE's a buddy's been building me at work. I'm not about to spend $20 per ubolt, when I get G8 bolts from work. Kind of a no brainer.
Since I don't have the angle steel for the rails, or my tubing for the cage, I decided to tackles the front tube fenders. I got a late start on them today, so I only got the driver's side tube done and the passenger side is bent up but needs to be burned in.




I just used 1/2 EMT conduit and a conduit bender. Nothing really fancy. I ended up cutting the top of the fender a little higher, otherwise I couldn't make the first two bends. I looked afterwards and decided to put one more bar from the middle of the main tube and tie that into the inner wheel well too. I'll be cutting up some stuff at work this week for the sheet metal to go over all of it and tie it into the fender itself. As it is now, I can grab it and move the whole Jeep with it. It's pretty rigid, so hopefully it'll hold up for a while. That's about all I got done today. Hopefully I'll get the passenger side done this week and get the angle I need to finish the rails this next weekend.
 
I seem to really be slowing done on this build! I got the passenger side tube fender done, I just need to get the sheet to cover both of them, and I still haven't gotten the angled steel I need for the rear. I did decide what I was going to do with the rear leaves though: I'll be keeping the stock XJ bastard pack and relocating the front mount farther back and rebuilding the rear spring box.

I did get the tube I needed for the roll cage. . . I didn't start taking pictures until the A pillar was in, so I don't have any good pictures of the plate I used for mounting them. But here's the couple I did get:

camera's upside down

Here's the plate that I used to mount the B pillar to the floor

I had to extend the tube 2" to both sides, the holes for the plug welds are 7/16"



Here's the B pillar tacked up

I got the A and B pillar sections tacked in today, and realized I need to extend the tube from the B to the C pillar sections by 8" for all 3 tubes. . . so I need to order more tube. . . killing me! But I have to do it to maintain use of the rear seat. I'm hoping to get the angled steel this week and maybe a new windshield, we'll see. That's about it for now.
 
Not to much to add right now, I'm picking up the angled steel and more tube on Mon, so this weekend will be just cleaning the rails, building spring hangers, maybe a new shackle box, maybe thinking of how to mount the shocks, maybe removing the gas tank to relocate it. . I don't know! We'll see what happens!
I did get this done this last week. . .and by me. . I mean my buddy at work in his spare time.


It's 3/8" diamond plate steel covering a stock d44 diff cover. I'll probably end up making a ring to go around the mounting bolt holes so it'll be easier to get the bolts in and out. What do you think? anyone. . . ?
 
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