Build Thread Father/Son Project in Orlando

Build Thread Father/Son Project in Orlando
Looking forward to seeing more!! My two boys and I are about to start a complete teardown also. Just getting our plan of attack together. I am looking to go back with a “Military Style” build up.. Olive drab, maybe some military tail lights..ect.. Am an Army vet myself so it seemed fitting when the boys asked for an army Jeep! Looking forward to more pics!! Any lessons learned are always much appreciated!!
 
JBPage76 said:
Looking forward to seeing more!! My two boys and I are about to start a complete teardown also. Just getting our plan of attack together. I am looking to go back with a “Military Style” build up.. Olive drab, maybe some military tail lights..ect.. Am an Army vet myself so it seemed fitting when the boys asked for an army Jeep! Looking forward to more pics!! Any lessons learned are always much appreciated!!
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I think you are in for a really good time. We definitely made the right decision. I have a feeling these are moments we will have for years to come.

Some advice- Depending on how much experience you have (we had none), If you have someone you know that's a mobile mechanic it may be helpful to get you out of tight spots or give you some advice. This site is excellent on getting you jeep specific advice when you are stuck, but there are times when you need local help... Where do I get the the ball joints and axles shafts pressed? What's a good paint shop? I can't get a bolt off, am I doing this correctly. You will quickly find that just by reading you will gain some knowledge that even specialty experts will be unfamiliar with.

Document everything.... take pictures often and from different angles... put them into a folder to easily reference later (Electrical, frame, brakes, axles).

We are slowing down a little now because it's in the middle of my son's football season but I expect to pick up in the next couple of weeks.

Just out of curiosity, being from New Braunfels and being former military, does the name Constable Kelly Cherry sound familiar to you?
 
FiNorman said:
We ran into a little problem that maybe someone can give me advice on. I ordered an Old Man Emu suspension with the new shackle hangers. As attempted to fit the new shackle hangers on I couldn't quite figure out how to make them fit. They didn't seem to fit any of the existing holes. As I inspected the front of the frame where the bumper goes it occurred to me that there are a couple of pieces of metal that I'm starting to think don't belong there, like they were attached by the PO to fit the oversized bumper that was on the jeep. Can someone please look at this and tell me if this is an aftermarket bracket that I can cut off to get the hangers to fit or are is this the way everyones frame is?

The second problem I have is more of a question. While I was prepping the frame for painting I laid it flat on my drive way and noticed the 4 points of contact, being the 4 internal shackle hangers do not touch the ground evenly. Sort of like when you have a table that has one leg too short and it moves, so you stuff a napkin underneath to even it out. It is off by about and inch or inch and a half. Does this mean the frame is bent and should I take it to a body shop to have them attempt to straighten in or is a certain amount of play acceptable.
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The mounts on your frame look like winch plate mounts. If the shackle hangers with the tab on them are for the fr. springs then you can notch the mounts or remove them. The new hangers should line up with the OEM hanger holes. Old Jeep frames almost always have a little twist to them from V8 power or the way we use them.
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I wouldn't worry about 1"

FiNorman said:
So here are the pictures. The body mount I have figured out because it came in a box marked "body lift".
I'm not sure which shackle hangers go to the front and which is right and left. (I didn't picture one of the hangers in the second pic because it's identical to the one pictured.

there are also hangers that are a different size. I think the bag of bolts is the bushings for the hangers and the smaller bag are the bolts to attach the hangers. If someone can confirm this please do.
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I'm not familier with OME lifts so don't know which shackle hanger goes where, I was just guessing the 1 with the tab goes up fr. If the instructions are no help try matching holes where the OEM mounts went. Did you get 4 or 8ea of the different size shackle plates?
 
Sorry for the delay... It's been a very busy couple of months but we are back in business.
We started the conversion to disc brakes, however upon finding out that our rear axle is actually a Dana 44 from a 70's IH Scout, we had to choose another option since our brackets weren't going to work.
We ended up with a bracket that was welded on by a local shop (it was their design) and a set of Chevy S10 brake setup.
It seems to fit fine, however there is no Ebrake, as we will have to figure this out later.
We got the bracket and axle back this week and wet to work recleaning the rear axle and painting it with por15, and painting the calipers orange.
Since the can of por15 is such a pain to handle (if you don't clean the junction with the lid it will effectively seal the can shut), I wanted to take the opportunity to turn the frame over and give it one more coat, along with retouching the front axle that was previously done.
Then we got it all together and there you are.
We do have one hang up.... I had to send the Ubolts back to RockyRoad so that I could get the size that will fit the Dana 44 (2 5/8 vs 3 1/4 inches). So once I get those back I think we can strap everything back up.
Please let me know if you see anything in the pictures which is incorrect or will give me a problem as we move forward.
I still need to get the rear crossmember welded on, and get one of the body mount brackets fixed as it was rusted through.
Next up we will run compressed air through the frame to blow out any bugs/dirt/rust flakes and then pain the internal portion of the frame with paint can that has a nozzle that sprays in a 360 pattern.
 
pics
 
Do you know that POR15 will not hold up to UV light? You will need to spray paint something over it.
 
mtnwhlr said:
Do you know that POR15 will not hold up to UV light? You will need to spray paint something over it.
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I have read that, however I thought since the axles and frame were under the tub and fenders I thought it would shade it enough so that it would protect it. Do you think it will get enough sunlight that it will affect it under the body?
 
The frame may be alright but I would do the axles IMO
 
mtnwhlr said:
The frame may be alright but I would do the axles IMO
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Thanks, it sounds like good advice... not too hard to do and may save me a lot of butt ache later on... any suggestions on what to use?
 
I would use Duplicolor.
 
Although I had previously run water through the frame Prior to painting the internal portion of the frame I decided to blow out the tubes with some compressed air.
Below you can see the results... The first picture is a garbage bag with about a pound and a half of metal chunks, rust, cob webs, hornet daubers, yellow jacket nests, and maybe even an animal carcass.
If you are going to do this the method I used was to tape a garbage onto the end of the tube frame, leave an open area that is untaped so the trapped air can escape but the debris goes to the bottom of the bag.
The bad news is that I can't find the tube that goes with the internal frame paint, so I will either have to buy another can or see if Eastwood will send me another one.
The next two pictures are of the fibroscopic camera image I took of the inside of the frame with my six year old daughters finger sticking through it to give some reference.
The final picture is of the result of the POR 15 peeled out of the plastic container I placed it in after it dried. It is very malleable and flexible, almost as thick as a garbage bag used to store leaves.
 
I haven’t updated for a while so here it goes….. So having ordered the OME lift kit from Rocky Mountain we got exactly what we ordered… except we later found out we don’t have a AMC20 on the rear, but a Dana 44 . So back went the U bolts as they would not fit properly. Small world they happen to be in Heber City, Utah, which of course is pretty close to our favorite place Park City.

from the picture you can see the internal tube of the frame. As recommended by other members on this site we will be using Eastwood “internal frame” with the special 360 nozzle to prevent rust from forming. I have a couple of recommendations that I would like to add. First, make sure you blow out the internal frame repeatedly with a high pressure hose to get a lot of what’s faking inside the frame out. When we did ours we blew out about a pound of rust flakes, leaves, dirt, mud daubers, yellow jacket nests and what was maybe some Gator Pooh.

It’s tough to tell how much coating you are using because you are not able to see the portion of what you are painting. It was hard for me to tell if I was using too little or too much spray and there is a delay from when you press the nozzle to when it starts/stops coming out. Lesson 1…. Even if you are only painting the internal frame, put down a drape and wear painting clothes. As the nozzle comes back through it will try to poke out of every bolt hole in the frame and shoot paint everywhere. It might be helpful if you can get your hands on this tool from Harbour Freight. It’s basically a camera with a flexible tip an a light source. This will allow you to see where you need to add more paint to the internal portion. From what I can tell I I will need to used two bottles of the internal frame coating but your MMV.
 
Next we finished painting the calipers orange, however a mistake we made is we need to go back and paint the POR15 with some chassis black paint to protect it from the UV rays.

We stripped down the grill from it’s internal parts part… bad news here as the PO had bent the portion of the grill where the cage nut sits so that he could put a 3 inch body lift. And yes this combination did make the jeep seem to want to tip like a toddler with a big head.
 
Next came the most invasive thing we have done to date, which actually turned out to be fairly straightforward, again thanks to the many members of the board who offered instruction and advice. When we bought the YJ tub the guy told me there were 2 body mounts broken…. I thought to myself “that can’t possibly be difficulty to fix”…. If by two mounts he meant 6, then he was being honest with me.

So here my son and I looking at these body mounts with a fear of cutting into the body to fix them…. We could have taken it to a professional or my son could have turned to me and said, “come on Dad, pick up your skirt, grab your junk and lets get this done”. Which would you have chosen?

So we start cutting away, and found that as long as you measure carefully, pull the floor board away, there sits the cage nut…. Cut the spot welds with a spot weld cutter bit and they just sort of come out…. Here are some before and after picks. If I could give a word of advice here, cut a much bigger area of the floor board (maybe 2 inches on each side of where the cage sits) so that you have plenty of room to work with in the interior panel to remove the cage nut. I don’t think it will make a difference when we put it all back together (weld, por15, primer, undercoating, paint, carpet, seat,) and it will allow you to pull the cage out without bending the metal.
 
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Next we took careful measurements and went to a local metal shop and asked him to fabricate the actual nut from what I think is either ¼ or 5/16ths inch steel with a thread. I think we will leave open the two holes we cut into the floor board sheet metal that are under the front seats, because if IRC the yj body has to be adjusted in this spot for the frame (I believe the body mounts are moved out about an inch. Strangely enough it appeared as if some of the body mounts came in 5/16ths and some came in 3/8ths. We had all of our new nuts threaded to be uniform at 5/16ths. We were able to salvage the actual cage, cleaned them up, painted them with POR15 and are ready to weld the cage back into the floor board. You can see the picture the contrast between the old bolts with the body mount bolts rusted/fused together with the new nuts and the cleaned cages.
 
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Next we started on the conversion of the YJ to CJ… we wanted to start simple so we figured a logical place was the gas tank opening. We taped some construction paper from the seam of the corner of the jeep to where it welds with the rear quarter panel around to the junction of the tailgate. We then used a razor to cut out the hole of the gas tank, removed the tape, flipped it over to show it’s inverse and used the template to mark the new location by taping it in the same exact way on the opposite side. Once again we used the seem of the rear quarter panel as our landmark.
We were pretty happy with the result as this was our first attempt at anything cosmetic. We then used the piece of sheet metal we cut out to spot weld it into the yj gas tank opening.
 
At this point I am actually lucky we found areas with bondo on the YJ body, as I later discovered that the jeep had been painted and the top coat was not sticking to the base layer. Our paint job would not have lasted long. We removed the paint/bed liner with Aircraft remover, a wire brush, a vibrating tool and some glass bead blasting and a bunch of elbow grease. During this time I left my son to get some supplies and he used the wheel cutter to remove the bondo. The result is that there were several areas where the sheet metal has large gouges in place. We will have to address this later.
 
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