Showing off my Willys

[Mieser]

DAMN YOU!

I would have driven mine to work today if it was driving.....
SOON!
All the more motivation to work on it a LOT this weekend!

[euroford]

Originally Posted by Mieser

DAMN YOU!

I would have driven mine to work today if it was driving.....
SOON!
All the more motivation to work on it a LOT this weekend!

hahaha! glad i can help provide some motivation, i can't wait to see that thing running!

so wow, i just took her for a nice spin around town, its amazing how much of a difference something so little can make! she goes down the road at 50 mph, including over bumps, totally straight and solid, and the steering now feels completely smooth and controled.

having a flatty is definitely for somebody who likes to tinker, you just have to keep trying one thing after another until you finally get it all sorted and it comes together.



so, with the steering and everything else suspension related pretty well sorted, its time for me to start seriously shopping for some new shocks. she handles great, but its painfully obvious that she'll ride way better with some non-crap dampers.

seriously considering ordering up some 12" travel foa resi units. it just seams like a lot of shock for the money, and the tuneability/rebuildability has a lot of appeal to me.

but.... those be some pretty bling shocks for a flatty. if anybody has some good ideas on lower cost dampers that they've had good luck with, i'm definitely open to suggestion.

front end mounting is pretty straightforward, but in the back i'm thinking about laying them at an angle pointing up at the center of the underside of the bed. any thoughts on this configuration?

[euroford]

totally awesome.

busy day around the house today, but i managed to sneak away for a little bit of ultra hawt tire on dirt action.

zipped down 36 and ran left hand canyon up to 5points. yeah, not much in the way of technical challenge, but it felt great to get it out and give everything a quick shakedown. she passed with flying colors both in the sustained highway driving category and in the mild wheelin department.

performance over last year is VASTLY improved. much more stable, easier, and far more capable.



i took the go-pro along, i have no idea what it captured. downloading now.

[Mieser]

Darn it. I just worked on mine all day....AAAAALLLLL day.

Did you get your bumpstops sorted out?

On your shock question.

I ended up having to lean my shocks over a pretty decent amount. Shock 101. The closer you can get the shock to the tire the more effective it will be. The more you lean it over the less effective it becomes. I went behind the axle and outboard as far as practical.

There is only so much room on a low flat fender. I was about to squeeze in a 10" stroke shock with 4" showing on the shaft.

I have had my eye on the new BDS/Fox shocks.

[euroford]

i totally botched operation of the gopro... i accidentally left it on and it was full by the time i actually got to some wheelin... arg!

oh well, wanna go for a ride around the neighborhood?

http://youtu.be/yGrf2PjodBQ

[Mieser]

I'm going to have to get me one of those cameras! How do you have yours mounted?

[euroford]

this is the one that we have:

http://gopro.com/cameras/hd-hero2-motorsports-edition/

its perfect because it comes with a bunch of the sticky plates, and the awesome glass cup mount, and both the waterproof and regular backs.

the audio sucked because i had the waterproof back on.

they are super cool, we've used it mostly for skiing, and bought it mostly for use downhill mountain biking*, but it will get a ton of use on the jeep as well!


*mountain bike vids will be cool, the link below is a trail we ride constantly. you can see my wife and i hanging out shooting photos as our son was in the race.

http://youtu.be/hIJ7Nl_2iGE

[CAVE]

Not to derail your thread, but knowing you like to MTB... if you are ever in Oregon, this trail is a must. I'll even be your guide. This was one of my first videos with my contour and used helmet mount. What mounts have you found to be most stable on your bike?

Some good shots in the 5:50 and 9:26 range. We had a day of flats but the scenery is amazing, even for a guy from Colorado.
Dread and Terror NUT - YouTube

Jeep is looking sweet by the way. Good job working out the handling.

[euroford]

Originally Posted by Mieser

Did you get your bumpstops sorted out?

eh, sort of. i still havn't gotten to flex it out under sort of 'laboratory conditions' the way i would like it to, but it performed great on the trail the other day, so at least i know they are functioning as intended.

Originally Posted by Mieser

I ended up having to lean my shocks over a pretty decent amount. Shock 101. The closer you can get the shock to the tire the more effective it will be. The more you lean it over the less effective it becomes. I went behind the axle and outboard as far as practical.

There is only so much room on a low flat fender. I was about to squeeze in a 10" stroke shock with 4" showing on the shaft.

I have had my eye on the new BDS/Fox shocks.

yeah i got a quote for fox stuff, it was more than the foa stuff. i'm a BIG fan of fox racing shox, running forks on five bikes, and custom tuned shocks on three. but, i just have trouble justifying premium prices on the flatty.

i -should- just buy some cheepie shocks and call it good, but i feel i can make this suspension perform pretty well, and i like to look long term when spending money on this kind of stuff.

wow, your is low! i have 10" stroke shocks on it now, using the stock mounting points. though i can't actually see the shock shafts on these POS shocks, i think i would have about 4" showing, maybe a touch more.

on leaning the shocks over, and where to mount them, its all about leverage ratios. theoretically, laying shocks over at an angle isn't really any different than the fancy guys using trailing arms, or really crazy guys using linkage actuated shocks. your just introducing a variable between how much a wheel travels, and how much the shock shaft travels.

nothing wrong with that, it just needs to be compensated for. if your leverage ratio was 2:1 (like if you had the shock at 45deg, or about halfway up a trailing arm), you could get 20" of wheel travel from a 10" shock, but you would also half your compression and rebound dampening.

so, nothing wrong with that, as long as you tune accordingly, which is why i'm considering going with a damper that will let me mess with the pressure and shim stack, and maybe why you should as well.

currently, it seams that my 10" travel shocks are acting as my limit straps, and from what i can tell things can go a good bit further before my driveshaft binds.


me thinks, i'll go with some mounting kind of like this:



i should have absolutely no trouble fitting a 12" shock this way (handy tables from foa's website make for fun tapemeasure dreaming sessions laying on the garage floor), i'll get them mounted as outboard as possible, and then as vert as possible while allowing for my bumpstop limited uptravel, then the next step will be to add a limit strap at the pumpkin to prevent driveshaft bind on downtravel.

hopefully with this strategy, downtravel will then be limited by the springs in articulation, and well, it will still be just a little flatfender, but at least as limited by my budget and imagination, as good as this suspension could theoretically be.

[euroford]

Its nice having my lawn tractor back in action!

our homes PO had thankfully removed the cottonwoods, but unfortunately left us the stumps to deal with. i'm glad to say that my welds and fabwork are game for a serious beating! hopefully i'll get this fawker out of there today, we've been throwing some serious full throttle bounces on that tow strap.

[euroford]

i drive the jeep through an easement behind the house to get it into the backyard, and in a stroke of brilliance i decided to see if the ditch would suffice to get some bump stop contact.

barely! i'm not really on the bumps, but they are just barely in contact.



fronts look like they are going to work just fine, i need to make a larger landing pad for the rear though.

[euroford]

i finished up building a new tcase crossmember yesterday. fortunately i had a spare trans and tcase sitting around so i was able to mock-up the fab on the bench without taking the willys off the street.

i still have to make up the crossmember to frame brackets, but i'll only do this after i figure out some way to support everything and pull out the existing crossmember.

i won't get a flat belly out of this, but it will be a whole lot closer than it is now. i'm thinking i should net at least 2" of clearance over the stock setup.

[Mieser]

Looking good!

One thing that was brought up when I built my transmission crossmember for my new frame........

On the factory flat fender frame the belly cross-member is hard mounted to the frame without bushings. It is basically the only thing, besides the body, that keeps the frame from bowing out and/or moving around. There really isn't a lot of support in the front front the motor mounts to the 1st crossmember behind the transfer case. Just a thought. I think if the frame was totally boxed in the belly section it wouldn't be as big of a thing.

It felt SOOOOOO good to drive mine around yesterday for about an hour!

[euroford]

that is an interesting thought that hadn't occurred to me!

given that, i think this cmember, even with the urethane bushings, will bar far stronger and more rigid than what i have in place currently, which is really quite a cobbled together piece of crap!

knowing that it may be doing far more than just holding up the trans though, i might add a plate to the frame where it ties in, and i might box in the plates that the cmember will bolt to.

maybe get started on that later today... we'll see.... i should be working (on work) right now so i have time to work (on da jeep) later.

so stoked to here yours is getting drivin!

[Oze30]

Love the windscreen tie down idea!

[euroford]

i started getting the new crossmember up in der today. i trimmed away a little bit around the tunnel and got it pushed up a bit more, now i can't go any higher without redoing the radiator as i only have a 1mm of clearance between the rad and the fan.

not that it would matter, if it goes any higher the cross member wouldn't be the lowest point anymore.

all that aside, i'm really happy with the results. the bottom of the crossmember is 15-1/2" off the ground, for a net gain of 3" of ground clearance!

[euroford]

sweet, got it back together!

radiator makes a weird whistle noise now that the fan is so close, other than being, well, weird, i don't think its a problem. kind of an audio tachometer...

i need to trim up the trans tunnel and maybe make a new shifter cover. the shift tower touches and transmits vibration to the body.

but, overall, super happy with this little project. gained a ton of ground clearance and now its time to start working on a belly plate.

[beefspots]

nice!

[euroford]

its kind of nice to have her at the stage where i can worry about the little things!

i fixed some bad grounds in the headlights, and replaced the bulbs with new silverstars. I also added a pair of cheap foglights that i ended up with at a chirstmas party gift exchange.

pretty darn happy with the results! the weather yesterday was really nice so my wife and drive her into Boulder for a beer n snack at the Southern Sun, then errands at lowes and the grocery store.

[Heimaster80]

Very jealous of how much you are always USING your jeep, and I thought all this time people owned these things just to work on them.....oh ya the money thing too.

Keep up the great posts. nice read

[warloch]

euroford - next time you need some strange parts for this, reach out to me. I have 4 of those pitman arms in a box in the shop.

You also seem to be doing things close to my main rig. The others have T18s in them now, but mine has the SM465.

[goob]

Jeep is looking very good. Was wondering if you were ever able to get those measurements for the yj spring mounts?

[euroford]

Originally Posted by warloch

euroford - next time you need some strange parts for this, reach out to me. I have 4 of those pitman arms in a box in the shop.

You also seem to be doing things close to my main rig. The others have T18s in them now, but mine has the SM465.

I forget that your not too far away, we gotta go wheel em sometime this summer! so what are your thoughts on t18 vs. sm465? i lean towards an sm465, but either would be a huge upgrade from the t90.

actually, i've ended up being very glad that i just fabbed my pitman arm, this way i ended up with exacly what i needed, and frankly its kind of a cool part. i dig it.

Originally Posted by goob

Jeep is looking very good. Was wondering if you were ever able to get those measurements for the yj spring mounts?

yup, somebody over on colorado4x4.org hooked me up with those measurements, and it worked out great!

thanks for the compliments guys!

so, onto progress. i've been a little sidetracked with landscapping work, but the upside is that i know have a crapload of that steel edging people use for gardens. i'm recycling it into a new trans tunnel!

[MrWillys]

Originally Posted by Mieser

on my gosh! Who shrunk your dog?

More jeep, less skiing!

Thread winning post other than the OP! This thread has a Jeep, a Woman that shoots, and a Dog! Can't beat it.
Had some time this morning, and read through the entire thread. Nice to see a build that can run stock axles and still run up in the mountains, and give the owners just what they want. Congratulations on a fine machine.

[euroford]

thanks for the compliments, i'm glad people are enjoying my simple little build. its nice building something low-budget and low-stress and just taking on projects that i feel like doing while having a vehicle than can actually be driven around.

though i'll admit, i do have some heartburn about the stock axles. they work just fine, but i am afraid that eventually the lack of lockers will shut me down, and i sometimes have a fairly high stress level about breaking something. we'll cross that bridge when we do, i keep my eye out for some good replacement axles and i'm sure something will come together eventually.

saturday i spent a little bit of time getting the new trans tunnel in place.