Cal said I needed a build thread

[Redxj5150]

After 9 years of owning my XJ it appears to be time for a build thread.

I'm going to predate this build thread back a couple of months. Let's start with the rock sliders:

I set out with plans to recreate sliders from a couple saved images I pulled off of years ago. I recall it was a jeep from Maine. Thanks for the idea guy from Maine!

Here's a pile of metal. Those are my old which didn't help much. Along with the material for the new sliders.

Somewhere in the middle of this project I got sick and went into the hospital for a few days. I had completed one on the ground:

When I got out I took a couple days rest and then one day I went out in my pajamas and finished the other. I broke my finger using the tubing notcher.

Now cutting the rockers out is pretty straightforward. There's exactly one hold up to getting these things to fit squarely: the bolt/welded nut for the seatbelts. With a gentle hand on the grinder you can overcome this problem.

After all the cutting, grinding and welding here's my finished product:

Currently working on a cage. I'll bring the thread up to present day tomorrow. I have a wedding to go to tonight.

Thanks,

Travis

 

[jrowell]

Looks great!
Too bad you were lazy and didn't get these sliders on until after we ran turkey Claw! 8>)

 

[Redxj5150]

Looks great!
Too bad you were lazy and didn't get these sliders on until after we ran turkey Claw! 8>)

No regrets! Running turkey claw the last time was a great show of how impatient I have gotten on trails.

I only built these as Cracker deflectors in case any of my passengers decide to dump water all over him while he's in his buggy.

 

[Redxj5150]

So for my next trick i'll build a cage, and do the cab shop. I wanted to do an internal cage, but I've changed plans. So far I've chopped the top and today I welded the C pillar hoop into place.

So I started stripping the rear interior.

A couple days later I was able to find a place for all this stud in my garage.

After all this I found a few cracks in the floor. I haven't welded these up yet because id like to find a way to keep these from reforming.

There are also some broken pinch welds along the edge of the shock brace.

After all these discoveries I chopped the top off.

I only got a few pieces of tube from the metal yard. I have a funky conduit bender that actually works quite well. The radius of bend is pretty big but it looks ok. I started bending up the hoop. I thought I had enough to also do the back stays but I didn't. I'll get more tube in the morning. Its 1 5/8" .125 wall. Kind of odd ball also, but its working out perfectly.

Once I bent the top of the hoop I also decided I needed to clean up the floor for some spreader plates.

Then spreader plates. I went with 20sq inches.

I cut a little bit of the body here to put this plate in.

Then I welded them in.

I bent the rest of the hoop up.

Today I finished welding this all in. More tube tomorrow. I'm also out of shield gas. You may say this is complete crap and you wouldn't be far from the truth I'm trying to keep this cage out of the way as much as possible. I succeeded at retaining all the headroom for the back seat. now I'm going to try my hand at not giving up a whole lot of legroom.

The direction from here is to follow and replace the stock roof rack sliders switching to 1 1/2" tube to keep the height at a minimum. It'll be a pretty simple halo with some triangles between b-c pillars and a-b pillars. My roof rack will mount directly to the cage after I'm done.

 

[Redxj5150]

Not a lot to add from this weekend. I at least got the rest of the tube and the gas. I welded in the back stays Saturday. Today was taken up by father stuff.

It's going to be a hot week, but I'll still try to do some stuff after work. I relocated my speakers before I got too far into this so I'm going to finish that job if its too hot to work the roof halo.

Here's a few shots of where I'm at now.

Before I welded it in.

After

I guess I can cool off from updates and just stick to once weekly now.

Thanks,
Travis

 

[mtbxj87]

I like the curve you made in the hoop

 

[trippled]

X2 that looks good!

 

[blondejoncherokee]

I am liking the cage

 

[Redxj5150]

Thanks for the kind words.

This week was starting good, but I'm at a stand still now. I know I said I was going to go to 1.5" tube for the rest of the cage, but it was just a hassle to bend. I got one good bend and a kink. Today I picked up some more 1.625" tube since the bends turned out great with it. Well that winning streak is over too. The 2 bends I tried today were a total loss. I don't know what changed. I just know I've probably gotta find a real bender now to finish this up. Such a bummer to be so close and not able to finish up the 6 bends left. This is where I was with the 1.5" before I bailed on it. The 1.625" is equally as far now.

It was really looking like I was going to be able to finish up the tube work by the end of the week. Now I'll jump to relocating the 3rd brake light and cargo dome light until I find someone to let me do 6 simple bends on 1 5/8" tube.

 

[jrowell]

I really like the look of this cage. I can tell you on my cage, the only time that I have used it is leaning against trees and rock walls on the A Pillar and along the drip rail. Your top bar is set inward pretty far, do you think you are going to be able to use it as a rub rail, or does that not concern you?.

 

[Redxj5150]

I have rubbed before on my roof rack and I intend to put it back on, so it doesn't concern me very much. There's other options I have thought about doing to protect the drip rail, but every situation that I've been close to damaging the drip rail the roof rack would have taken the load. The A pillar will end up pretty much exactly like yours so the windshield will be protected.

 

[Redxj5150]

Even though I feel like I should be done by now I managed to salvage the rest of the week. I ended up going to Goatman's shop to bend up the last major bends. I got them done relatively quick but I started pretty late in the day on Friday. Tomorrow morning I have to rebuild my welder's gun. Something strange is happening with it. It start/stops on welds. Like it doesn't want to feed while arcing. It was working fine this morning so I'm not sure where to start, but ill check for kinks in the liner and change the gun trigger out.

Here's the halo frame.

After I tacked a few crosses in the halo I started tearing the jeep apart more. Instead of running a dash bar I'm just going to weld directly to the cowl. Here's that work.

Once I got these 2 plates on I fitted the A pillar posts. Happy with the clearances I left- hardly any. I didn't even tack them yet.

I used the antenna to prop it in this picture.

After fitting the A pillars I started the B pillar posts. I was trying to weld in the spreader plates but the welder started that start/stop bullcrap.

Until tomorrow. I hope to finish all the welding tomorrow if rebuilding the welding lead does the trick.

-Travis

 

[Redxj5150]

Definitely closing in on finishing the cage. Probably wrap up all the major welding tomorrow. Speaking of welders the issue with mine was the gun liner. There was a nasty kink not 6" out from the machine. I just wish they had the extension cord cap I needed while I was there getting a replacement. I've been stuck close to my 220v plug this whole time because of it. It proved to be a pain in the ass to tack the farthest A pillar up. Anyways, here's my progress from another half day of work.

I was able to weld in the B pillar spreader plates early in the day. Yesterday I got the passenger side B pillar post cut and fitted. I started the driver side in the late morning. My hole saw for notching has definitely been wearing out. Well I nearly broke some more hand bones notching the driver side. I stopped for the afternoon after that and went to see the nee Independence Day film. I liked it. It was somewhere above 100 degrees in the garage by then anyways.

Apparently no pictures of the tube. After I got home I took the time to mount the notcher in the drill press. I'm retarded for not doing this to begin with. Does have one drawback: I wasn't able to get a full 45* notch. I learned this with the final few X pieces for the halo.

I tacked in the rest of the X pieces while the halo was still on top then I pulled it down to weld it all up for good.

While it was down I needed to make sure I patched the hole that my VHF antenna base would leave behind.

I'm pretty bad about not taking pictures of the finished product, but here's the piece of metal I patched the hole with.

I'm a crap welder on tubes, but this bottom weld turn out pretty good.

I finished the night by tacking all the A and B pillar tubes to the halo. Good solid tacks that won't break easy. Tomorrow I will pull the cage up and place the B pillars on 4x4 blocks so I can weld completely around the As and Bs. I'll set it back down and finish the job by welding the halo into the C pillar hoop, Bs to the floor and As to the rock sliders.

The hard part is yet to come: reassembly. :bawl: I'm still yet to wire in the speakers in the rear passenger doors. I successfully took out my amp yesterday, but need to pull the wires for that. Anyways its late. Enough for today.

-Travis

 

[Redxj5150]

So its not that I've been taking days off, but I've been working too late on it to make posts. Ive made some pretty good progress. The cage is welded up, I trimmed the fenders and put most of the interior back together. Tomorrow I'm going to put the headliner back in.

Heres the work on the cage:

finished cage:

The interior:
I decided to add some insulation.

Perhaps this for headliner?

More to come. I have some more metal work to do. Including adding a Comanche tailgate adapting my bumper to accept the tailgate without interference, and I have to mount my storage box in the back. I want to put it up where I can have the spare tire under it. Also have to mount the roof rack still.

-Travis

 

[Redxj5150]

I started to mount the roof rack to the cage, but it was just entirely too hot to work outside today. I might go back out after dinner to see if I can finish the job.

I made these to weld to the top of the cage. I have to drill holes in the cage so the rack can be mounted as low as it can get.

 

[Redxj5150]

I was able to finish up the roof rack and cleaned up everything. I put the interior back together with some added flair. Right now I need a few weeks off from this thing. I do want to try to do the AC compressor OBA setup before the Coyote lake trip at the end of the month. Also want to get the Comanche tailgate on, but I'm not finding a lot of builds that highlight the tailgate in too much detail. They just touch a little on it then go on. I'm wondering if I have to change my taillights for this. Some of those rear quarter plates with taillight boxes integrated would be awesome, but I can't seem to find 300$ on the ground.

Here's a taste of the mounting for the rack. It turns out the rack is not perfectly square. It was a job. I had to cut the tubes off the rack and just remount it to fit the cage.

I got that in then started to mount my recovery supply box in the bed. I figured just to break the jeep internet I would use angle iron and nylock nuts whom mounting. Success. Winning. Its high enough off the bed that I can git a spare tire under it.

Here's the last thing I have to show: the headliner. It came out great. I was Really wanting some plaid fabric, but this stuff looks great. I relocated the rear cargo light to be in use in the back seat.

I also reused this plastic molding from the back.

By the way if anyone needs any of the interior parts that I'm not going to use feel free to ask. Perhaps there's a way I can get it to you. That's all for a while. Perhaps ill work on the tail gate after work this week. I must take off the rear bumper and do some fitting. Hopefully the hardest part of the tailgate project will be modifying the bumper.

Thanks,
Travis

 

[mtbxj87]

The tube work looks good! What bender are you using? I just built a rear bumper similar to yours.

 

[Redxj5150]

So the rear tubes were bent with a conduit bender, and the front was done with a JD2 32 with the hydraulic ram. The bumper is over 10 years old. A friend of mine made it when he was 15 He's 27 now. As you can see it matches the rear quarters really well if I still had rear quarters. I'll have to modify it quite a bit to work with the tailgate. It doesn't clear the corners of the tailgate. I might have to lower it too. And I do want to match the sides to the current body lines. So I'll cut out a triangle on each side and reweld to fit a 2x2 square tube to run across the bottom towards the tires.

 

[Redxj5150]

So I installed the Comanche tailgate today. It was a fun little project. Definitely a different piece of work. I didn't seem to take any progress pictures. I got extremely dirty today and I don't like touching my phone whom I'm dirty. I can take some pictures of the specifics later.


Heres a few before I put the bumper back on. I changed the fuel pump while the bumper was off. It was best to do that since Its difficult to take the bumper off without cutting.

Here's the latch plates.

I had to chop these corners off my bumper. They used to follow the line of the lights and the original hatch.

A few people asked me why I should even bother when I mentioned that I was going to put a tailgate on it. Well I think the tailgate really tied the jeep together much like the dudes rug tied the room together.

Here's what it looked like at the end of the day:

 

[trippled]

Are you going to make something to cap off the area above the tail lights or just run it?