My 1970 CJ5 Build Thread

And here's a bit more progress....

Got the Exhaust manifolds pulled off, and taped up the ports, as there's going to be some grinding and welding and stuff happening





Pulled the floorboards, and why no, there's no cancer in my floorboards, none at all, move along.





Got the steering column and the old ross box pulled



New Rear/Center dump manifold mocked up just to check to make sure I'll have room to route exhaust, looks like I've got plenty of room once I jerk all the old exhaust out of there, clears the MC just fine, once I reroute that brakeline and move the shiny blue residual valve.





Drilling out the rivets on the Bellcrank mount. Oh what fun, Of course, they riveted *and* welded the bellcrank mount, so I'll be doing some grinding this afternoon.



And just for funsies, since I need to sort that part out, removing the firewall mount collar from my cherokee steering column, not sure if I can reuse it or not, as I haven't sorted the angles, but it was in the wrong spot for what I need.




More to come later.....

 

And here's some pics of todays progress....

Hacked off the extra tabs I don't need, as that section of the frame is getting boxed before welding the steering box mount on.



And somehow, I forgot to take any pics between this step, and the next one, with the steering box mount all welded in place and the box mounted up so I can start figuring out steering shaft stuff.




And Finally, after Focker helped me remove my head from my rear end, here's the Power Steering pump all installed and a belt on there, so I can make sure my steering shaft clears when I start working on that tomorrow.

 

Gates 7480

 

Alrighty, so heres just a few more pics of where I've gotten to. I keep forgetting to take them as I go, so it's spotty.



Flange Bearing on the backside of the crossmember


My simple little cheater bracket to reuse the stock column mounting holes in the dash, and the mounting cradle out of the Cherokee I got the column out of.
When I redid my seat brackets, I outboarded my seats about 1-1/2" so this corrects the column placement for my seats pretty well. When I redo the dash, I'll probably do it up more like an intermediate, or perhaps even a later CJ, and bring it further up, but this works for now.






And in the previous pic, and this one, you can see the ball flange I used at the base of the column



That's it for now, more to come.

 

Thought you were going with Herm's steering .

 

I was going to, but I got to looking at some stuff, and it *really* looks like you could whack the end of the output shaft with the axle, if you got twisted up. I'm not trying to build a real nasty crawler or anything, but that just didn't seem like a fantastic idea. I thought about going with a 70's Bronco/F-Series box mounted outside the framerail as well, but my tooling and whatnot that I have here is somewhat limited, so saginaw it is, what with just being able to order up a mounting plate from Advance Adapters....

 

Looking good! McRuff is or was making a mounting bracket that is very nice. I have a couple of them hiding out for future projects.

 

Here is how I ran my P/S lines on mine.

 

I've got my box further forward than you do, so I don't need to, I'll get some pics of it after I get it back from the exhaust shop tomorrow....

 

So here's a few pics of the final mounting and whatnot on the saginaw swap....



I've got do a little more clearancing here on the fenderwell for the return line tube, but it fits in there nice and snug.



And a pic of the finalized steering column location
I've still got to clean up the wiring, and after being able to cruise it around a little after getting it back from the exhaust shop, I'll definitely be modifying my replacement dash to mount the column higher, ala an intermediate or late model CJ, I don't *hit* anything right now with where it's at, and it's not any worse than the stock column was, I just know I'd be a bit more comfortable with it a couple two or three inches higher than it is right now. Still have to sort out why the turn signals aren't working as well.



And here's some pics of the exhaust I had put on it. I thought about doing duals, but hell, this is basically a stock dauntless, dual exhaust doesn't *really* do me any good, and the exhaust guy was able to tuck everything up nice and tight and out of the way with a single exit, I'm super happy with it. And if I manage to bounce the exhaust off of anything, I'm *really* doing something wrong.

 

Yeah, that's one of the things I need to finish cleaning up, I'll probably get a rubber dip clamp of some sort on it to get it away from the edge of the grille.

 

looks great!

 

Hrmmm, so, while cleaning up some wiring and getting the turn signals and brake lights working again, I just so happened to run across this today....



Anybody got any recommendations/preferences for replacement motor mounts?

 

So I ended up going with motor mounts for a '75 Skylark, from FLAPS, and had to do a little egging out of a couple holes on the passenger side, (replaced both of them, just as preventative, and sure as hell, the passenger side was starting to delaminate on the engine side.) And holy crap. About half my vibrations are gone, and the chattering in reverse is almost eliminated. Makes me wonder if the torque mount on the transfer case is just hard as a rock, or deteriorated. Suppose I'll add that to the list of stuff to go ahead and replace when I do the T98 swap.....