i sold my current 231with sye and a few other things and I'm about to pick up a buddies 231/300 doubler with the D&D kit within the week

 

Really lookin foward to seeing how this build turnes out, goodluck man!

 

really good to see you back up and going again. so your axles survived the fire? and you're basically building the same setup all over again?

 

Axles seemed to have survived. The rear will need some new seals though im sure


Almost. This one will be stretched a bit more, ill be running a doubler, cage will be a little different, and the interior will remain comfortable with a/c , factory leather, ect so the family will enjoy riding in it

 

What caused the fire? I had a pinhole leak in the fuel rail that caught fire right after I rebuilt my 4.0L, but luckily we were ready with extinguishers so a melted vacuum line was the only other thing I had to replace. Made for an exciting night though

Any words of wisdom you can give us on how you'll prevent it from happening again?

 

Well, i had the fuel tank relocated up, and built a steel box around it to seperate it from the cab. What im figuring happened is fuel started leaking from the vent since we were constanly on our side most of the week. And it may have started puddling in the tank box. So when we were coming down a trail we dropped off a ledge and the rear of the cage/bumper hit tge rock pretty hard and something must of ignited blowing up the tank box and filling the cab with fire.

Besides a full suppression system which im looking in to. Im going to run a fuel cell this time and ensure that the venting is routed and sealed so that there is no chance of puddling. Also eill be carrying a few larger extinguishers, since the small 5lbs didnt make a dent.

 

That really sucks man. Looking forward to seeing the progress on the new one.

 

Good luck with the new build, my XJ looked like that when I bought it 10 years ago

 

Should be a masterpiece once you brought her back to life. Good luck man.

 

Super happy to see you got a new jeep brother!

I posted up that go fund me page on here and JF but the mother fuckers on JF fliped out and one of the mods was a total dick and long story short my build thread that has been up sinice 2006 was deleted .. fuckers .. anyways .. JF can be retarted ..

I honestly learn so much more from reading post on here so ill just stick to that ..

But super happy to see you got a new xj and is a awesome start .. super nice jeep

 

Seriously? Damn. Buncha jackasses there

 

Picked up the doubler and tore it down for an inspection

 

a buddy decided to go a different direction in his build. so after working out a good deal these will be my new axles.

Ford HP60. spooled with 5.38's ALL brand new parts.


and a 14b getting 5.38's and a grizzly for it.

 

Is the front axle shortened. How are you getting the driverside coil buckets to fit so nicely? or do you have the coil mount on the jeep widened?

 

anyways, back to the build progress.
got some frame stiffeners from ruffstuff, still need to get the front and rear.

tore into the motor from the other jeep. replaced the head with a freshly gone through head along with all the lifters and pushrods, and cleaned all the debris from the block.



stripped the interior out to check out the floors and start making room of the cases.


cut out a big section of the passenger side, and still need to cut out some of the driver side.

 

oh, and hopefully in about 4 weeks my rebuilt 14" ORI's and new pair of rear 16" ORIs will show up.


a HUGE thanks to ORI for hooking me up on the rebuild of the fronts, since i know they didn't have to.

 

Danm it looks good! And that's a hell of a hookup!

 

awesome sudden change of direction.

 

i agree. definetly an unexpected change. but it puts me more at ease now since id like to be able to drive this thing to most trails within a 5hr distance and have the reliability to make it home

 

the problem I'm having is the axles are reliable as hell but my frame keeps wiggling loose because they're so damn heavy. I'm looking forward to seeing what sort of bracing plating caging you come up with.

 

it will all be tied together with cage/bumpers/ sliders and stiffeners, so hopefully it will work out well.

 

So, when's it going to be done and when do I need to come up to watch a professional work a suspension? And drink all your beer.

 

been tinkering with it here and there. only have tiny bits of time during the week at the moment to make progress.

slowly piecing the engine together. still need to make some little brackets to hold the coil rail to the valve cover. but its coming along.

my wheels showed up. nothing special just 17x9 pro comp steelies with 4" BS. down the road ill do some weld on deadlocks. but they'll do for now

and the spool showed up for the 60.

and since I'm converting this thing to an AX15, it means i needed to swap out the pedal assembly. for some crazy reason i figured that the older pedal assemblies would work in the 97+ jeep. so i bought the first one i came across.

i was wrong. while the fire wall mounting holes are the same, the upper dash mounting is completely different.

so instead of just tracking down a late model one (which is turning out to be pretty rare) i decided to make it work. plan is to splice the two together. i cut the early model one up to get the clutch assembly piece and welded it to the late model one. and i swapped over the brake and clutch pedals to the new assembly


still need to add a couple small plates so i can weld the two together in a couple other spots that don't quite line up right. like the top since i cut a little bit to far. and i need to modify the brake switch mount since the 5 speed brake pedal doesn't line up like the auto brake pedal to the switch. but the way it is now will be good enough to mock up and make sure everything works.

 

finished mounting up all the clutch stuff, ended up being more of a pain in the ass than i thought. there were no mounting holes in the fire wall so i needed to drill those. and it was a pain to get the new modified pedal assembly back in the jeep.

 

and i pulled out the tcase, completely sealed it up and finished cutting the floorboard for it to all fit with my crossmember. everything fits up nice and tight above the frame rails. i "may" have to pull it back out and clock the case down slightly. i won't know until i have the axle and front suspension in the jeep.

also, my original plan was to just run some stick shifters for all 3 shifters. but now I've been considering cable shifters so i can have all 3 shifters in the factory location and make it look a little cleaner. so well see

 

sold off the rear 8.25 so i temporarily tossed in the 14bolt and some junk 35s to keep it a roller

 

cut off the upper control arm mounts the PO had welded to the truss.


along with mocking up a tie rod to see the clearence issues ill have with that riddler cover


and tossed some roller 35's on it so i could pull the 2wd beam axle out and slide the 60 under the jeep


pulled off the front bumper and flares so it would fit

 

i set the front of the jeep up at the ride height it will be at.

theres just over 6" between the top of that pankiller truss and my oilpan. so ill have to make sure I'm pretty precise on setting up full bump. lol


started mocking up the control arms in my crossmember to see what I'm working with.

since the crossmember and arms were designed around a almost center LP EB44 front axle it puts the lower control arm pretty close to the driveshaft. i still need to run the axle through its range of travel to see if this will be an issue or not. worse case scenario i will need to cut off and relocate my crossmember side control arm mounts.

 

and a heavily anticipated arrival has shown.

my shocks are here! so now the build will be moving a little faster
16" rear, 14" front

 

started mocking up my steering.

this is with running a small drop pitman arm to help out the angle some. I'm going to angle the axle side track bar mount a little more to help match the drag link angle and buy me a little more truss clearance.

the eventual goal will be to have a local guy machine the knuckle and cut me a keyed highsteer arm so i can flatten out my angles . but i think I'm just going to run it as is at first.


and it looks like ill be doing a little diff cover grinding.