project: Ol Blue

[alehandro3]

And for the actual "do work" part of the update:

It has been almost a year since I swapped the chevy front leafs in and have been more than happy with their performance both on and offroad on a jeep thats my weight. THat being said the only thing I didnt like was under heavy throttle and spinning tires trying to find traction on slick trails, which is more than common in the south, it had some axle wrap. Not enouth to break u joints or pull apart my drive shaft but with a already built anti wrap bar sitting there mocking me from when I linked the rear and a sunny day off work it was enough to tear into it.

previously the motor skid looked something like this, with the piece attached



then welded it here





Then I got some old 5/16 shackles and welded them up here (skid upside down here)



while searching and reading through "front anti wrap" threads the only thing I could find that was useful was when mounting a bar facing back and having a shackle reversal was to have the shackle pointing down, opposite when I had it in the back

heres how it came out as far as clearances, also since my skid hung down far enoug anyways I wanted the bottom of the shackle to be flush with it



I had to notch and backbrace one of the front mounting arms to deal with compression issues







overall how it looks looking at it from the side



when flexing I noticed the skid wanted to pull down under front driver droop so I added this little brace to tie it to the frame. I tacked it here but soon i will drill a hole and tap the frame so the skid will remain removeable

[alehandro3]

overall (even though I only finished it yesterday) I havent noticed any hindering of flex but the loss of wrap is AWOESOME. I have put it in front only and dumped the clutch, doing front digs, and have ZERO wrap. I hung the rear up on this stump and sawed the front side to side under pretty heavy throttle with no wrap.



see here it is hanging down a little more than before



And also It was suprisingly easy to do, it only took a half day and the payoff is well worth it, I am not sure why I waited this long to do it

I have been very suprised with how well the 44 has held up in the past but with no more shock loads from wrapping I believe it will survive much longer.

[Pirate Joe]

This build is awesome! You have done several of the ideas that I've been tossing around and this thread has turned out to be an incredible resource for me. Once this semester ends my Jeep will be getting some mild surgery. I recently made a new rear crossmember to fix some damage that happened (previous owner backed into a pole at the mall) and after reading your build I just had an epiphany on how I should have made it. Keep the good work going!

One question I do have, your front fenders. Are those just the stock trimmed up or did you add what appears to be a small square tube on the edge?

-Joe

[cj5 buggy]

not bad for ga person...

[85cj7]

here is your mystery muffler
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/SUM-630810/

[sandboxcowboy]

I have been following this thread for some time now. I like the low stance and low buck ideas youve come up with!
Hoping to start mine this summer with some ideas you have provided here!

Keep up the good fab,
cheers
justin

[alehandro3]

Originally Posted by Pirate Joe

This build is awesome! You have done several of the ideas that I've been tossing around and this thread has turned out to be an incredible resource for me. Once this semester ends my Jeep will be getting some mild surgery. I recently made a new rear crossmember to fix some damage that happened (previous owner backed into a pole at the mall) and after reading your build I just had an epiphany on how I should have made it. Keep the good work going!

One question I do have, your front fenders. Are those just the stock trimmed up or did you add what appears to be a small square tube on the edge?


-Joe

thanks man, for the front fenders I just cut them as far back and close to the hood as I could. Then I found some leftover parts shelfs from work thats kind of like little angle iron and I simply welded it to the stock fender. If that makes since?

Originally Posted by cj5 buggy

not bad for ga person...

thanks

Originally Posted by 85cj7

here is your mystery muffler
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/SUM-630810/

thanks, I was never really a fan of glasspacks but it sounds pretty good behind the 4.0, and for 8 bucks cant beat it

Originally Posted by sandboxcowboy

I have been following this thread for some time now. I like the low stance and low buck ideas youve come up with!
Hoping to start mine this summer with some ideas you have provided here!

Keep up the good fab,
cheers
justin

Again thanks everybody, Yeah I've noticed many builds on here have massive dollars dumped into them and those are cool but I am glad you guys appreciate some homebuilt junkyard stuff putting together a pretty well rounded rig.

[alehandro3]

well not really, the Jeep has been running great, havent done anything to it but, I did make a pretty cool press

It started with the score of a lifetime on the best kind of steel... FREE steel

I was looking at a house for sale and saw all this 5 inch I beam and scrap lying behind the house, so I contacted the seller and they couldent afford to ship it cross country with them. So he said to haul what I want. fine by me



tons of heavy plate



after hours and hours of the wire wheel, a 40 dollar HF 20 ton bottle jack, and a little measuring it started to look like this



then this



and eventually this

1/4 gussets and plate in the corners, the plate on top is an overload spring off some mystery spring in the yard. Hopefully it will help disperse the load across the top more evenly then directly in the middle of the spread



One thing I didnt really like about using the I beam instead of c channel, like regular presses, is that the pins holding the table are single shear instead of double. So here we welded a strip of 1/4 down it to make it half inch thick, which really brought the suck when drilling 8 1 inch holes

[alehandro3]

so this is how it sits now, with 7/8 pins in single shear, but seem to be working ok. And got some heavier return springs



Also, stole the idea from another guy on here and made a break out of some 2x.25 angle



flat plate here



and a clean bend up to 90 degrees







even 3/8 without a whimper





maby I should ave put this in the tool section, but I want to consolidate all my crap in this thread, lemme know what ya think

[gtxracer]

Now THAT's using what ya got

[Pirate Joe]

My friend bought a 12k HF press a few months ago for roughly $100. Your's was free, thicker metal, stronger jack, and home fabbed. I like yours better. Nice brake.

-Joe

[alehandro3]

Alright, I dont know about you slackers but I have been keeping busy. I finally got a trailer so I dont have to drive out to the trail anymore and man it is nice not having to worry about driving home after beating the rig up wheeling. Ill get some wheeling pics up soon and the rig did AWOESOME, the low cog is definately worth the work, pics coming soon.



With that said I did find out that with it sitting at its height all of the little hang up points underneth it got cought up on everything, namely the rear lower control arm brackets and the bottom point of the belly pan, where the 300 is, also the gap between the pan and rear crossmember grabbed pointy rocks.

So the decision was made for it to go back under the knife and make a flat belly skid similar to "backyard wrenchers" design, thanks for the idea man!

After much debating I decided the first step was to clock the 300 up an inch to keep the lowest point of the drivetrain 2 inches below frame height. So first cut the rear support and notch the tub a little more



The pain in the ass part about the doubler is that the entire thing has to come out to index it up



move everything one hole over



I found next that I needed a hair more clearence between the case and skid so I thought to lower the drivers side motor mount an inch, in turn raising the bottom of the pass drop 300 just the hair I needed. Also giving the driveshaft a little more room around the bellhousing. So here is an instance of me taking you guys advise and making a new driver mm with a leaf spring eye and poly spring bushing, so I dont pull the threads out of the block.

[alehandro3]

Now with everything up high and tight I cut two pieces of 2x2x1/8 square to line the frame rails. These will eliminate the rear CA mounts as a hang up point when going forward and the front shackles when reversing as well as give me area to build everything flat.





THen I drilled and tapped the rear crossmember to mount a piece of 2x2 angle for the back part of the perimeter



Made two L's to tie the rear to the sides



And the front crossmember will serve double duty as the mount for the motor skid so a little trimming was in order for the front skid to make a straight surface to grab the belly skid



Now with the perimeter set I can add a tranny mount crossmember and start webbing everything in



And mass confusion, everything is TIGHT but clears just barely



And now I present the worlds most overly complicated, engineered flat piece of plate imagineable

[alehandro3]

And I am sure you all are asking why the hell I went overkill on webbing instead of just slapping a piece of 1/4 plate on and calling it done. Well because I am sure some of you have realized that I am a cheap bastard and a peice of 1/8 plate was about a third the cost of 1/4 and all of the peices of angle and stuff I already had lying around

So I got a piece of 30''x38'' 1/8 plate to skin the whole thing







I dubbed it the millenium falcon



Modified the 300 mount to now sit on top of the rear crossmember



painted and with the motor skid mounted, just what I wanted, totallt flat from the oil pan all the way to the CV on the rear driveshaft



With the IROCS I have 19 inches to the belly

[whitie_08]

looks sick bro,
hit me up whenever yall head out to morris [or wherever] again.

-trevor-

[Bansheestu]

Good work man. I love your creativity. You have done alot with almost nothing. Congrats on a nice ride man, and you can definately say built not bought!

[Pirate Joe]

What type of welder and what model are you using? I'm really trying to fab a lot of my own stuff but my little POS welder ain't cuttin it. For cost reasons I'm thinking of buying a used Lincoln 225 AC/DC stick welder.

-Joe

[alehandro3]

Originally Posted by Pirate Joe

What type of welder and what model are you using? I'm really trying to fab a lot of my own stuff but my little POS welder ain't cuttin it. For cost reasons I'm thinking of buying a used Lincoln 225 AC/DC stick welder.

-Joe

This welder is my Dad's (who keeps nagging me to give it back), its an ESAB Migmaster 250A 220v and it kicks serious ass! My old roomate used to have a lincon 110 with flux core I did a lot of work with it but using this thing makes everything else Ive used suck by comparison.

A stick welder is tough to learn but once you get the hang of it you will be able to do everything you need to, it will take more work but is possible. I say keep the 110 so as you build you can tack stuff together on the rig and once you drop it to do final welding use the 220 stick. But if you can save enough pennies a 220 mig is the tits

good luck Joe

[alehandro3]

Originally Posted by whitie_08

looks sick bro,
hit me up whenever yall head out to morris [or wherever] again.

-trevor-

Hell yeah man, did you ever get that tranny problem figured out?

[Black97TJ30022]

Jeep looks good man! I just moved to Kennesaw and saw ur jeep at the parts store. Maybe we'll go wheelin' somtime.

[gtxracer]

Looks sick, one of my favorite builds for watching some home brew fab

Are you worried about the bolts on the bottom? Did you look into countersunk bolts? They're usually not much more for grade 8 countersunk hardware.

[whitie_08]

Originally Posted by alehandro3

Hell yeah man, did you ever get that tranny problem figured out?

i put another ax15 in it. and its all good.

havent done anything as far as the old one though.

im still toying with the idea of how i want to stretch mine.
and wether to buy a welder and start learning or get a winch...welder would probably be more beneficial in the long run.

[alehandro3]

Originally Posted by gtxracer

Looks sick, one of my favorite builds for watching some home brew fab

Are you worried about the bolts on the bottom? Did you look into countersunk bolts? They're usually not much more for grade 8 countersunk hardware.

appreciate it man!

Yeah, this was my first idea and I started thinking that if these bolts get hung up much all I need to do to fix it is pull one bolt out at a time and step the hole on the bottom of the box to 1 1/2 or so and just let the bolt drop into the box and grab the top part of the box. That way the bolt head is totally inside and away from rocks. still an idea

[Pirate Joe]

Originally Posted by alehandro3

This welder is my Dad's (who keeps nagging me to give it back), its an ESAB Migmaster 250A 220v and it kicks serious ass! My old roomate used to have a lincon 110 with flux core I did a lot of work with it but using this thing makes everything else Ive used suck by comparison.

A stick welder is tough to learn but once you get the hang of it you will be able to do everything you need to, it will take more work but is possible. I say keep the 110 so as you build you can tack stuff together on the rig and once you drop it to do final welding use the 220 stick. But if you can save enough pennies a 220 mig is the tits

good luck Joe

I'm definately keeping the 110, it's great for thin sheet metal. I've seriously been looking at the Hobart 210 welder, new is ~$850 and used 220v MIGs are hard to come by around here. Those used Lincoln arc welders for $150 are everywhere and are hard to say no to. Thanks for the tips.

-Joe

[safariman]

sweet jeep any morew wheelin pics.
good info on the cheap 4link set-up too i want to copy it someday