No it’s not finished, 87 XJ 4.6 stroker, PSD D60 and 10.5

[AIbandit]

Maybe I should note that while I want to get better I don't care how I compare to others. This is my first time doing this I'm not a fabricator and never claimed I was. I tried using one once and all I got was a roll cage and a vehicle fire.
Also I was let down by DBO never said DBO is the antichrist. I still have yet to receive a response from them. I emailed asking if it was supposed to be notched.

While I would of much preferred to have a template I decided to wing it with an angle grinder. Would of been quite a bit faster knowing how deep to cut but I got it close enough.

I forgot the tow points last time so I burned them on today too.

 

[xcm]

No it’s not finished, 87 XJ 4.6 stroker, PSD D60 and 10.5

:cheers:: sometimes short cuts take you much longer! Your next notches will be easier because of the practice.

My comments may have been in slight jest, but I was right, you had this! I am not criticizing your skills at all, just trying to push fellow jeepers into developing more.

 

[blondejoncherokee]

I do all of my notching with a angle grinder, actually 2. One has a cutoff wheel, and the other has a flap wheel. chock it up in the vice after drawing on the cuts with sharpie, cut away. I can do these notches extremely fast and close now.

 

[AIbandit]

Lol well thanks for the support xcm and I'm sure you're right. If it was a 90* it probably would of been a lot quicker but having it angled forward and maybe 75* I had to test fit it a lot.
I installed a car alarm today so nothing too fantastic.

 

[AIbandit]

I do all of my notching with a angle grinder, actually 2. One has a cutoff wheel, and the other has a flap wheel. chock it up in the vice after drawing on the cuts with sharpie, cut away. I can do these notches extremely fast and close now.

How do you mark it? use the end of the tube? Compass?

 

[xcm]

TubeMasters are bitchin when you can use them, ive also seen people cut little sleeves of 1 size larger tube, notching those in a variety of angles, then keeping them in the top of your tool box. I can notch with a grinder, but its a pain in the ass on big projects. A jd2 tn01 tube notcher is worth its weight in gold. Perfect notch in 20 seconds, just gotta take down the edges where the material is thin.

On complex peices, i 'creep up' on my lengths to minimize scrap and short peices, notching one side long, then getting the angles right on the second notch, then doing any clocking on the notch(if needed) and taking an extra 1/4" or so off the easier notch to get the fitment tight and perfect. This would take forever with a grinder!

 

[TRCM]

If you're using 1 3/4" tube...toilet paper rolls work excellent for copying patterns over.

Cut them to various angles, just slide them over the tube, copy, remove, cut

 

[AIbandit]

Thanks for the tips. I finally got it into the gear shop. It will be there for a couple days since they have to wait for bearings.

I'm thinking I'll stick the ARB compressor in the hole the back seat goes over and making a hinged door over it to try to deaden any noise.

Since the fab shop melted my dash and it's too damn close to the rollcage to replace with a stock one. I'm thinking about making my own out of sheet. But I'm really concerned about it coming out looking retarded. Any ideas for that would be greatly appreciated. I have a spare xj with all the heater junk that got burned up so I'd like to keep that in there.

 

[blondejoncherokee]

How do you mark it? use the end of the tube? Compass?

eye ball it and sharpie. clean it with a flap wheel to dial it in. Works really well and I can notch a bunch of tube pretty quick that way. it takes a while to get the feel for it, once you do, you kinda know how to eyeball and cut the angles you want out.

 

[AIbandit]

Still waiting on the gear install so I decided to go through my PUTCO headlight harness.
after reading the reviews there seems to be issues with both the relays and the connections themselves to I took apart every connector and soldered them.
I decided to replace the relays with bosch style since they're cheaper, reliable and uniform with everything else on the jeep.

You can get bosch relay sockets cheap off amazon. The connectors are the same so all you have to do is bend the tab on the connector (shown below) flush by sticking a screwdriver down the face of the socket. Bend it back out and pop it into the bosch socket.

Large red= 30
small red or white=86
Yellow or blue = 87
Black= 85

As I said I went through every connector just in case and that's what I'd recommend. There was a sketchy ground on one and both battery terminal connectors were sketchy.

 

[WiscoXJ]

awesome rig so far!