What Did You Do To Your Jeep Today?

The grille is scary, well, so is the driveshaft through the interior!

 

Saturday night I got the Dauntless' removed piston ring grooves clean and scotch-brighted the rings to get the crud off. Honed the rusty cylinder hole. Put a ring in the bore at the worst spot and squared it up with the piston. Then I tried to shine light between the ring and cylinder wall from underneath. Can't see any light. I say it will fly, and at worst one cylinder may burn a tad of oil. Not like my Willys PU will ever be travelling thousands of miles, I average about 1200 miles a year.

Also got the T14 from the 69 half cab I scrapped opened up. No rust, unlike the gears on the T14 that was with the Dauntless. That should save a ton o' cash on rebuilding the T14.

In other news, Peppy rolled past 61,800 on the way to work this morning. Been very cool to be traveling in Peppy this summer since it is Peppys' 50th anniversary.

 

No pictures, but brazed the holes on the bottom end of the gas pedal, and got rid of a good deal of the slop with a 1/4" bolt. I might try upgrading to a 5/16" bolt.
I am also giving a go at brake lines and the master cylinder (those are new). I will see if I can borrow a brake line flare kit to shorten the pre-cut/flared line I bought.

 

Picked the engine up from the rebuild shop and back home

 

Finished fabbing my rear bumper and got it welded on, just need to paint it now. Finished fabbing my spare tire carrier and got it painted. I have attached a spare tire mount from an XJ to my fabbed up carrier. That meant pressing out the old studs and filling the holes and re-drilling new holes for the 5 on 5.5 bolt pattern. I'll have to get a picture with the tire off, I bought the rim and tire on Craig's for $25 , need to paint that rim though. I robbed a lug nut from my right rear to hold the tire on until I can go get more lug nuts.















I still need to drill holes for the D-rings in the recovery hook tabs I welded onto the bumper. Would have drilled the holes before welding but I haven't bought the D-rings yet and didn't know what size hole. I reinforced the entire rear cross member with a 3"x1/2" steel beam and welded the new bumper to that, my hope is that the bumper and cross member reinforcing will cut down on a lot of the flex in the frame. If anything ever happens to the the bumper (probably) I will have to cut the bumper mounts, it's welded not bolted on.

I only have two more plates to cut out and weld in to finish boxing in my frame (looking forward to finishing that, it's tedious cutting out the plates). I got tired of reading all the internet opinions on how a frame should be boxed or reinforced. My version is an experiment of sorts. Since I'm doing it with the tub on (think drive-able build) it's difficult to make a continuous box and I have gaps in the boxing where the cross members attach. I am making 12" long plates and stitch welding them to the frame. There are no vertical welds where the plates meet. People think the frame will crack due to the plates concentrating stress to the gaps in reinforcing. That's the experiment part, hopefully the stitch welding instead of continuous welding helps, well see if it cracks or not. I'll fix it if it does and then we will have actual experience instead of internet conjecture. I plan on gusseting a few of the cross member attachment points but haven't thought that thru yet.

Getting closer to removing that awful body lift. It's easier to do the frame work with it on so for now it's working out.

 

Wow! I really like that bumper and tire holder! Excellent work! Just go ahead and knockout a second set and send it to me!
Seriously though, what size tubing is the bumper?

 

Thanks. Bumper is 4x3 tubing. I can't remember the thickness but it's written on the bumper still since I haven't painted it yet, I'll look tonight. I want to say it's like .180 thick but I'm probably wrong. The tire carrier is 2x3 tubing, can't recall the thickness of that either. I'll take a pic with the tire off (mostly because I'm mildly proud of how it turned out ) and you'll see how simple and easy the thing is to build.

 

Here it is without a tire. Very simple design. It's loosely based on something I saw on this forum.







I can see the writing on the bumper, looks like .188 thick steel. The top of the tire rack has brackets that fit tight against the tailgate body tab things. I just bolt through the tailgate, body tab things and carrier to keep it all in place, again very simple. I can't recall ever needing to lower my tailgate so the small amount of extra work to unbolt it is not a big deal to me.





The tire carrier pivots on some bronze bushings over 1" all thread. I made the hole for the bushings in the carrier 1-1/8" and inside diameter of the bushings is 7/8" (1" all thread fits perfect in 7/8" bushings). If I need to remove the carrier I can just take out the cotter pins and unscrew the threaded rod and it comes off.



And the bumper is also heavily welded to the middle brackets that hold the carrier, it's all super strong.

You can see how thick the rear cross member reinforcement is in this pic, it's welded top and bottom to the stock cross member. The top of the cross member is the original thickness, incredibly flimsy and I wasn't comfortable having recovery hooks pulling on that thing when things go wrong.



My only concern now is that the stock cross member might just come off the frame. I'm thinking about adding two straps to the top of the frame rail welded all the way across the cross memeber, bumper mount and onto the bumper. That would hold it together really well. Probably don't need it tho. Any thoughts?

 

Thanks for the detailed write up, this is one of the best home made bumper/ carriers I've seen.

As far as the rear cross member goes, I would think the new bumper would be doing most of the load carrying now if you have it attached in multiple places spread across, but a direct tie in to the frame rails would give you peace of mind.

Thanks again for the details!

 

Sweet looking jeep and set up!

 

Put in floor mats. Made them out of an artificial grass rug. Holding them down with self-adhesive velcro patches so I can take them up if they get water underneath. The new paint was taking a little abuse from rocks, sand etc...

 

Not today, but sometime last week I drained the puke-sludge out of the gearbox and TC and replaced with fresh gear oil.

Delicious 50-year-old soup, I reckon. Yum yum.

 

Gas tank and skid in.Radiator in. Power steering gear and winch cradle mounted. Tape says I may have a soft interference between PTO shaft and tie rod at full compression. There's room to raise the winch if need be. Cross member modded to support t18 and drive line offset. Fabbed spacers using 1/2 stock and used existing frame holes. Studs are grade 8 plow share bolts in tapered holes/ welded from back side. Debating between dash and wiring or brake lines next.

 

I vote brake lines, I'd rather stop from an unknown speed the know the speed I'm crashing at .

 

Bake lines. It is essential to stop.

Dash/wiring is a bit easy, at least for me. Mine can wait until I get some materials/tools to do it half decent and closer to correct/accurate.

 

I'm sitting in my living room watching the hail and rain fall on my 73 cj5. Very sad. At least its not snowing...

 

Firewall done, with heater delete panel

 

Very well said.
Chief mechanic wifey got a kick out of that

 

Pressure wash