show off the new bar

[IOPort51]

rr41mag, impressive, would for sure give a warm fuzzy as you made the second revolution.

CJ Sport Cage Dash Tie in Kit DIY CJ CJ5 CJ7 CJ8 | eBay

these are about the best $40 you can spend if you want to go this way. they do not come welded so you can modify as needed. Do be aware that there will be variations in the bolt pattern of the CJ dash. you may well have to spend some time on a mill or with a die grinder. but these mounts are very nicely plasma cut cold rolled steel, by a fellow Jeeper. I also had to make a bit more clearance for the glove box door. These can be welded to or drilled for the bolt on option.

I used 1 1/2" .090 wall tube. .120 is what most talk about but .090 is popular with the stock cap folks so they had it in stock. It cost me about $3 a foot. and I used about 20 feet.

I have to now tell you about my assembly method , strayed just a bit from the excepted path. I put this together as I would any other pipe welding job with the elbows and saddles being butt welded to straight sections of tube. This was before I found a local hot rod shop that bent tube and I did not wish to pay to ship that much tube UPS. I TIG welded everything and ground it pretty much smooth at the Butt joints. I found the best way to clamp butt joints was a section of 1x1x.5 angle and 2" muffler clamps. This started out as a way to make shipping parts easy but it made the assembly a lot easier than making continuous sections. If you are a decent welder your butt joint can be as strong if not stronger than the tube itself, you don't need worry that the saddle on one end is in perfect time with the other end and you get to tack everything in place rather than have to be able to make room to rotate the total section into place.


A digital level is almost a must. the front/top angle is the angle of the windshield plus the angle from horizontal to the point where the existing bar would be if it were a sharp corner rather than a radius bend.
The angle in the back should work with 22.5 deg but this will depend on the radius of the bend, it will be best to intersect the existing bar with a straight section of tube rather than in the bend.

Bolting to the existing bar was a whole other can of worms and if any body wants to go that way I will try to explain what I did and what I should have done.

When I fit mine I removed the canvas but left the hoops and door frames of the top in place to be sure I was going to clear. I am not that sure that I will be able to use this bar with my hard top but I will leave that problem for another day.


This was a pretty interesting project and there was more than a little setting in the drivers seat and looking for things that I may have interfered with like my head, the wiper motor, my knee, the gauges, glove box, tilt column, the list goes on. sourcing materials was an adventure and I met some very interesting people on that trail.

To do over I would, maybe, think about a frame tie in and I may need to add a cross bar to attach shoulder harness to one day, we shall see. I still have a 10' section of tube I need to use for something.

 

[alpha6]

Thanks for the details. Always like hearing about what you were thinking when doing a project like this....it helps to "picture" how it went from idea to finished product and the steps along the way. Really nice job.

 

[IOPort51]

translation: My lord IO will you get to the point! Nobody wants to hear about all that other !!

Thanks for the details. Always like hearing about what you were thinking when doing a project like this....it helps to "picture" how it went from idea to finished product and the steps along the way. Really nice job.

 

[Torxhead]

Thats a nice design IO, That "Head clearance" is great. Just don't grab it if you go over.

A couple of fellow club members were out in the sand dunes and flipped. the passenger had his hand on the bar which slipped of severing the lower arm. From there it was a helicopter trip to the local hospital, where it was sewed back back on, now years later it is just minor scars and almost everything works as it did before. The CJ "Sport bar" bent right where there was a hole drilled for a c.b. antenna wire.

 

[73CJ]

Could you bore us with the bolt up to OEM bar details?

Thanks

 

[rr41mag]

Iport, I made my own brackets. It was suppose to be a full loop but I didn't like that

 

[IOPort51]

would they have been worth $40 to just weld them together?

Iport, I made my own brackets. It was suppose to be a full loop but I didn't like that

 

[IOPort51]

Could you bore us with the bolt up to OEM bar details?

Thanks

OK, I will give it a try.

1st problem something for the bolt to thread into. a threaded insert with the same OD as the ID of the tube with a 3/8 16 threaded hole with beveled entry that can be welded into the end of the tube. these are mine, don't look too closely at the weld, it was one I didn't use.

the second problem is bolting through the OEM without crushing it. I do not have one of these left over but it is a 2 14" long section of 3/4" cold rolled steel with a 13/32 " hole drilled through the center with a 5/8" counter boared hole in one end to allow the 3/8-16 allen head cap screw to be flush with the hole, .

The OEM has to have three 3/4" holes drilled in it. the hole itself was drilled with a 3/4" hole saw something like this , I spotted and drilled 1/4" holes on both sides of the tube and the long pin helped keep everything from wandering as it was drilled.

to set the hole in the right place you must measure the inclusive angle of the bend and place it in the center of that arc. this helped, the radius of the bend and the center of the included angle. just put it in the inside of the bend and mark it. You probably have noticed that this just gives you one plane. for the other clamp a 1x4 across the front face of the OEM bar and see where 22.5 deg off flat intersects with the first angle and do the same on the backside. A line through these two points should be where the top curve of your side rail intersect with the OEM bar, top corner. the center is much easier if for no other reason than it is round rather than oblong and needs to be angled down at an angle complementary to the top of wind shield to top of roll bar.

(If I were welding this I would make the 1 1/2" intersect with the 2" to be flush with the top rather than on center but I saw no way to drill the bolt hole in the OEM bar off center)

these have to line up very closely so I suggest these be the last thing welded in the event that they require a bit of die grinder persuasion.

 

[73CJ]

Gotcha. Nice.

I like the hole saw pilot extension. Duh. Excellent idea.

The brackets won't fit (75) so back to square one on that. Dang!

Thanks for motivating me!

 

[thiswontbetooexpensive]

IO..............Good Job.

I second this amendment. Very nice IO!


This won't be too expensive Dear! That's what I keep saying. Over and over again.

 

[BuckeyeNative]

Very nice.