Hauled it home this week to get the drivetrain installed and the seats.
So..... exactly how does one get an XJ into the garage up the long steep driveway when it doesn't run and no one around to help push?
You borrow a friend's multi-mount winch, a marine battery - Thanks Terry! - and chain it to a 4x6 across the back door of the garage! (Nope, no buck teeth, no mullet.... last I looked anyway...

)
I failed miserably at fabbing my own engine mounts. That was a huge waste of a day so I'll be saving up for some of Advance Adapter's nifty ones. They get $175 for them, and new motor mounts will cost another $25..... Dayum, that's nearly what I've got into this rig!

. I have the engine hanging by chain from the shock posts..... :shocked: but at least it's under the hood and not on my trailer. Yeah, that's a spray paint cap plugging the throttle body - perfect fit to keep the crap outta the engine.
Then it was on to the seats. It was going to be interesting enough having to fab up mounts with the cage tubing all along the floor and that cross piece over the tunnel, but I soon realized that the seat tracks were WAY wide to fit on the driver's side because of the trans / t-case tunnel. I thought about getting some XJ seat brackets and trying to mount the seats to those, but XJ seat brackets and tracks aren't known for being sturdy or holding up well. In order to get the driver's seat to fit, I had to remove the cross piece of tube and notch the trans hump. Yeah, I can hear so many of you gasping about the clearance issue this creates for the T-case, but believe it or not, with the S-10 drivetrain, the T-case is just out of the way - the AA engine mount brackets will move the drivetrain forward just enough to clear.
Here's the notch filler I made.
Here's the seat bracketry all fabbed up and welded in and the notch finished.
And here's the seats installed.
Once I can get the engine brackets for it, I'll modify the factory trans crossmember to hold that end in place...... and then I imagine it'll sit for a long while.... I still need to fix my other rig! :doh: