my jeep has the shit a$$ed inserts that my t case skid bolts up to.............. they are junk, and i have ruined and replace several...... they look like there made out of cast of some sort and continually strip....... any good ideas to get rid of these and use another method to mount? just thought of one as i type..... why not make my own insert out of better material at my uncles machine shop? any better ideas?

i just round the corners off of a nut, stick it through the hole so it is flush and weld it. your idea sounds like it would work though.

Jim Lou on the ORC board had a good idea ...

http://tellico.off-road.com/wwwthreads_uploads/797665-DSCN0729.JPG

Jim's description:

"I came up with the method in the attached picture. I drilled a 3/4" hole through the old nut, and cleaned up the burrs inside the hole with a die grinder. That's important; the nut won't seat in properly otherwise. Then I pass the aluminum installation tool, on the end of a long piece of tie wire, through the frame tube and out the hole at the back. The new nut goes on the tool and gets pulled back through the tube to the 3/4" hole. A quick run around with the TIG and it's much better than new."

you can get structural grade "nutserrts" at mcmaster.com the tool to install them is expensive, tho.

Why not throughbolt? Seriously? Why bother with hanging that crap from your nuts (lol!) if they're going to always be troublesome? Zip zip zip and you've got upper holes, get a 6.5" bolt and some Nylocs and you're done.

Bryan

Originally posted by Oxjockey
Why not throughbolt? Seriously?

Bryan

The bolt through method has two drawbacks ...

1. To do it correctly you need to install anti-crush tubes.
2. It is best to drill as few holes in the tops and bottoms of frame rails as possable ... especially on the same verticle line ... and doubly so if you are adding a stress point connection.

Those are good points! I wouldn't torque them balls to the wall, hence the reason for the Nylocs, but I don't think I'm physically capable of collapsing my frame from a verticle bolt. Horizontal, yeah. (and the CJ frames are doubled on the top/bottom) As for the strength issues, I'd hope that the extra beef of the skidplate being there would help the frame resist bending as a result of some 25/64" holes.

EDIT: Don't Rover's through bolt all over the place?

Bryan

1. To do it correctly you need to install anti-crush tubes.
2. It is best to drill as few holes in the tops and bottoms of frame rails as possable ... especially on the same verticle line ... and doubly so if you are adding a stress point connection.


this is not such a big issue with CJ frames.
the frame is so narrow, that a decent top plate used as a washer will distribute the load to the vertical portions of the rail.

CJ frames are 2 formed c-channels (poorly) welded face-to face. drilling thu the center of the weld won't hurt the rigidity of the channels much, since the stiffness of a channel is focused at the bend point top and bottom. keeping the bolts inthe same vertical line is good thing, since it minimizes the net section loss on the rail

Something you could do if you wanted to incorporate some tcase drop is use what we use at work for moutning various things to various other things. We call them mounting blanks or weld blanks. For say a 3/8-16 threaded hole, it is simply a 1-1/2" od solid round bar drilled and tapped to 3/8-16, about 3/4" to 1" thick. Center it on the existing hole on the bottom of the frame, and weld all around. New threads, and a tcase drop all at the same time.

HTH
Chad

The local circle track shops stock a pretty useful insert- the trick is can i describe it-

It's basically a cylindrical nut with an integral flange on one end about the size of a stout flat washer. For a 3/8- 16 you would drill a 1/2-9/16 hole where the old threads were, pop one of these in the hole so the flange (about .080" thick) is bottomed on the frame rail and weld the flange 360 degrees. It's a quick and easy fix, downside is you lose the flange thickness in ground clearance but it's not much. They are easy to change though.

Good luck. I bought mine at White lightning racing 479 443 4494.

if you are making a new crossmember. Why not just weld some angle on the outside of the frame, and use a regular bolt? I guess you could even weld it on the inside of the frame, but it would be hard to reach the bolt in the center.

FWIW-I am in the midst of flat skidding and instead of dealing with the regular bottom holes and not wanting any bolt heads hanging down to grab rocks I am through bolting through the side of the frame and making the skid wrap around the sides of the frame.
I can probably post finished pics this weekend sometime.