Build Thread Goin Postal

[gliryan]

its sitting on a cj frame. I'm going to be boxing the frame I think anyways. I may not box it and just build a good cage instead (I'll be building a cage anyways). I'm not sure if just the cage would be ok or if the frame still would need to be boxed.

 

[73CJ]

Good on the CJ frame.

Boxed mine. Time to do it when it's all apart. 1/8/" x 6" wide flat works fine. Cut a cardboard templet to fit, then mark out the steel. 1" on 3" stitch is fine for the welding.

 

[gliryan]

Awesome thanks for the tip! I really hadn't even thought about the stitch welding. So 1" weld then 3" of gap to next 1" of weld?

Also jumped in feet first in the YJ swap. Ordered all my bracketry, mounts, and lift through Morris4x4. They were giving out free stuff so I got 2 shirts and a 75 piece tool kit. Plus had the stock leaf/shackle hangers I wanted. I bought the Rough Country 4" YJ lift with Nitro shocks. Besides the leaf hangers the only thing I'll have to modify is the front shocks, the YJ has stud mounts on the top where as the CJ's are eye mounts. I'll likely put some box tube up there and drill a hole for the stud to go through.

 

[gliryan]

copy/paste from my local forum, sorry for repeated info if there is any!

You know, I may not even take out the body lift. It'll let me mount the fuel cell way better. It might be stupid tall though, so we'll see.

I was able to turn a few wrenches and bash a few bones today on it though. Pulled off the snow plow mount, rear trailer hitch/bumper sort of thing, messed around with the steering column too. I can't get the steering column in the steering box though, how do you go about doing that? Looks like I may have to take the box apart or something… I pulled off the old shocks too and really wanted to yank the leafs but decided it would be nice to be able to move this thing around for the time being.

This morning I ordered a 4" yj Rough Country lift with nitro shocks, all the bracketry to mount the wider leafs on it, Sunday night I ordered greasable shackles, wheels spacers (save me from getting wider axles for now), and 10 wheel studs and lugs. That should keep me busy for a while. I still want new 1 piece axles for the Dana 44 , if those are 2 piece, and I want a locker of some sort too. Depending on how money goes, I might possibly just weld it. I don't want to go that route though.

I need to get someone with a portable torch to come and cut this off for me. I decided it would look better without it, and there isn't going to be much purpose for it.


Also I think I'm going to take off this bumper too and build a tubular one. What do you guys think?


This made for a nice jacking spot though!




To my surprise the front shocks felt like new?


It seems like every one of my project vehicles has a mouse problem. I yanked out the entire blower assembly because it was in the way of where the pedals need to be anyways.

 

[Petescj]

You know, I may not even take out the body lift.

I stopped reading here. Please get rid of it and re fab your fuel cell location. Ok so I read slightly further.

 

[gliryan]

haha, we'll see what happens. I want to mount a 3rd bucket in the back, and without the body lift thats going to be nearly impossible. No question though if its stupid tall the body lift is coming out. For now, it stays.

 

[gliryan]

I got the rest of my lift parts yesterday. So I've got all that stuff and can get the frame ready to go. I'm on the fence about what to do with the axles though. I would like something a little better than my 19 spline two piece axled offset Dana 44 . And would like something for the front too. For the time being though I'm going to suck it up and hope they will handle 33's. If I have to I'm going to weld the rear end, I can't really seem to find a locker but haven't looked super hard yet.

Today I pulled off the front leafs, decided to spend $10 on grinding disks and cut off the front bumper and shackle mounts. The spring hangers are going to be a pain to get rid of since the frame is boxed in at those points so I can't cut off the heads of the rivets.

The power in my garage is haywire, , isn't working. It has two legs of 120v going out there, so 240 is available. But when you turn anything on, like a light, the power draws down so much you can't even run just the grinder. As one leg goes down in volts the other leg goes up in power. So no furnace until that is fixed, or any welding. I think I need to run new wire







Morris 4x4 gave me two shirts and a cheapo tool set, score


cheap and easy wide track upgrade haha

 

[ken98k]

Got it home today!
The Dana 20 twin stick brings me to my next question. My Dana 44 axle is offset, can I run a Dana 20 (no offset output) tcase to my offset Dana 44 on my short wheel base CJ5 ? I'm missing the whole rear axle anyways, so I need to get a new one from somewhere….
.

It Looks to me like you have a D-18 offset Transfer Case to go with your offset Dana 44 rear end.

I don't think you can use a Dana 20 tranfer with that offset rearend

 

[gliryan]

I had heard from a few people that it was ok, but I don't know. I found a set of wide trac axles, Dana 30 and AMC20 for $200. Thinking about that, then I'd just go right into having the Dana 20 as my tcase. Is $200 a decent price for the two axles? The Dana 30 is missing the lock outs. Maybe I could put the lock outs on my jeep currently on the widetrac?

 

[ken98k]

If the existing D-18/Dana 44 combo is seviceable, I'd stay with that.

 

[gliryan]

I wonder if it would be worth changing out the front axle. I would like to ditch the bell crank steering setup and those silly knuckles. Also the front brakes on my existing axle are frozen. I'd rather not spend more money on that axle especially if it's not going to hold up at all.

 

[gliryan]

Plans for this weekend

Get furnace hooked up, its snowing up here!

clean garage

get front springs mounted up. I'm not going to weld on the new spring perches for the axle because I'm seriously considering swapping over to a Saginaw steering box and Dana 30 front axle. For now I'll use this closed knuckle for mock up purposes. I'm going to mount the springs as a shackle reversal as well.

Maybe get the rear end started on and remove the springs.

Maybe start pulling the 3" body lift. I remembered I bought greasable shackles, and turns out they are going to be about 1" of lift on their own, plus 4" on the leafs, plus 3" on the body = stupid.

 

[BajaEdition]

you will go through ujoints right and left if you put a Dana 20 with an offset Dana 44
that D18 is one of the strongest tcaes ever made. have it rebuilt and attached to your tranny. (let them marry it please, to many small pieces you can be chasing if yo do not)

 

[BajaEdition]

I wonder if it would be worth changing out the front axle. I would like to ditch the bell crank steering setup and those silly knuckles. Also the front brakes on my existing axle are frozen. I'd rather not spend more money on that axle especially if it's not going to hold up at all.

I swapped in a Dana 30 and made a hybrid steering system, I may go saginaw in a few years but this system is working fine, there is another alternative to saginaw that works real well also, it is the reversed Ford steering box mod, a lot more modern than saginaw and a bit easier to do
Steering Components

 

[gliryan]

Thanks for the tips. Unfortunately I can't get this furnace to work, so thats all the farther I got today and tomorrow I have to work on other .

The only reason I wanted a Dana 20 was for a twin stick. I'll leave the d18 in there though if I'm going to have to fight with ujoints and vibrations.

I know I wanted this to be a simple build, but as always it has snowballed into something more. Not that its not doable and I have all winter, but I would have liked to not have to mess with the steering and potentially axle(s). I can't get the stupid steering column in the box anyways. There is a chance its not the correct column, but I think it is. Just can't get the washer on the bottom of it past the two pins in the box.

 

[gliryan]

Well got my furnace working so I have heat, thank god. So that started my day on a good note and I finished on a good note with getting the leafs on. I do have an issue though, my shackle hangers are cj ones and my shackles are yj. So the bushings don't fit. I'm not sure if that was my fault or the guy I was talking to's fault. Either way I'm going to call them and see what they say. But I've got the front hangers tacked on. That bell crank steering setup is not going to work I don't think, unless I extend the tie rods and get a drop pitman arm. I'm looking for a saginaw steering setup and Dana 30 front axle anyways. Thinking that would be the best and most useful setup.

Leafs in, its way too big. Going to have to pull the 3" body lift at some point, which is fine I guess. Wont get the fuel cell mounting quite like I wanted, but I'll have the suspension I wanted.



stock bell crank is not going to work.



can't really tell but with no motor the shackle angle is just a little past 90 degrees (or less?)

 

[gliryan]

Got some more work done today. Started out by going to the steel house to pick up some tubing and square stock. I was in the want it now and get it done mood so I ended up with a nice piece of black schedule 80 with basically no inner bump, I needed it for the bushings since I realized I was sent cj shackle hangers, then realized I have the small yj bushings at 1.25" diameter. I also bought 1.5x2" box tube.

I pulled off the rear wheels/leafs and got to work cutting off the old mounts. Then I realized I REALLY needed to rework the rear frame because of how crappy it was, plus some of the bolts/rivets holding it on were in the way of where I wanted to mount the shackle hanger.

Hole sawed the box tube


Then hammered it down just a bit to hold onto the tube.






Is it a good design? No idea, unless someone says otherwise….? Live and learn. I'm going to cut an angle in the front of it then cap it, and cap the rear so nothing can get inside it as well as build onto the overhang. Axle was moved back about 6". I really wish my 220 was working in the garage as I would have loved to tig these pieces up. I only got one side done, hole saw got chewed up and am waiting for a replacement to be brought over, gotta love Irwin holesaws! Lifetime warranty, spendy at first, but its worth it.

 

[gliryan]

Got my rear axle hung again and the hangers all welded up. Thought I had setup a good starting point for the rear shackle angle. Well the thing squatted so much when put back down!! So this is what I ended up with. I stood on the back and bounced once, shackles flipped! Now I get to cut off the front mounts and move them forward, and I already welded them up as if they were going to stay in place, efffffffff! Not super happy about this anymore, the only positive that will come out of this is the axle will be a little farther forward, it was too far back for what I was shooting for.

 

[gliryan]

Sorta fixed the shackle angle. The shackles are pointed a little bit forward now, I know not ideal by any means, but I think I'm going to leave it for now and see where the springs sag to.

I was talking with a guy from my area just now about finding a Dana 30 and steering setup. Figured out some things. Pretty positive now there was a 4 cylinder in here before (thought so but now even more certain), figured out I can use the d27 front axle and mate a drag link to it with some mods and fabbing so I can keep that axle and go to a saginaw steering box, and I looked at my axles to see the gearing to try and match up a new axle. Well the tags both read 5.36! I was pretty excited.

New plan, even more solid than before, is to not use the amc 360 (suppose I jumped the gun on it anyways ) and I'm going to find either a 4 cylinder for direct and easy install or the 225 v6. Anyone have a 4 cyl?

I'm also going to keep both of these axles because of the gears and because I already have them, no wasting. Apparently the d27 can be swapped to disk brakes, put the bigger drums on the Dana 44 , then I'll find a wagoneer brake cylinder and not run power brakes for now. See how it works, sounds like they work plenty strong. On the steering front, I guess its not all that difficult to mod the knuckles to make use of a high drag link mount. So as of now thats the plan. Should be easier, work well, and be cheaper to build than swapping axles and installing the 360.

 

[gliryan]

Worked on the motor install today. Pulled the grill to made it easier to slide it in, much easier and I'm really glad I did. My Transmission that is in the jeep already had a bellhousing on it, I pulled that off because there was one on my new motor. Got the motor in after messing around getting the bellhousing off and lining up the output shaft, required some wiggling. Well then I realized there wasn't a clutch fork in the bellhousing, so I tried to slide it in (I had one from my old bellhousing). Then I realized there wasn't a throwout bearing so I put the one out of the old bellhousing on the Transmission again. Well after messing around I submitted to pulling the bellhousing off the motor, it wouldn't all fit without that off first.

Bolted that stuff up and put the motor back in, after another hour of messing around back tracking. Stupid. But now the motor is in and bolted up. My Transmission is pretty stiff, I don't think it has been touched in a really long time. And I hope my tcase is the same because I pulled on the levers and nothing really happened. I'll check it out more later.

So motor is in. Then I drained the power steering fluid out of the pump and tried to get the lines off, they wouldn't come unfortunately… Not sure what I'm going to do about that, but I think that needs to be my next step. Otherwise I'm not sure of the best way to go from here. There is wiring, fuel cell mounting (might go propane though), fixing pinion angle on the front axle, flipping my rear springs around since I installed them backwards, mounting the power steering pump (need to build a custom mounting setup since that motor never came with one), mount the power steering box, get a new tie rod or shorten this one, build an arm for a drag link or drill out a new knuckle to accept a drag link, etc etc. Lots of work left unfortunately. I like the front shackle angle now that there is a motor in it though, so I'm pretty happy about that.














Last week went to a Jeep/Willys junkyard. It was pretty sweet but didn't find anything that I needed.