Round 2 of my XJ

whitneyj

whitneyj

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Mayville, WI
Well after "building" my XJ in this thread: http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=969675&highlight=another+build+thread. I really rushed it, wasn't prepared for half of it, had never built anything before of this magnitude, and generally was embarrassed of it when guys would check it out. It performed pretty well, minus the stock 3.55 gears, but I wasn't please with it 100%. So basically I'm rebuilding everything with the intention of having a very capable, well built XJ. On to what I've got going on now.
It took me the better part of a day, but I got my garage "cleaned up" enough to get her in

And 4 hours later had everything stripped from underneath


triangulated radius arms and stuff in a pile


And then I got started on getting the axles underneith, squared, and mocked up
 
Man these photos take a while to load. On to more pics:

Here you can see how I started to cut and clearance the stock spring pad on the front diff housing


WAAAAAAY bigger than the 9" that was there. . .

I didn't post this already, but I'm running a D50, I'll explain later, and a 10.5. They're both geared to 5.38, rear had a detroit which the center clutch assembly has been welded so it's basically spooled, and the front has a "fixed" lunchbox in it. The reason I'm running this combo is because I got a "great" deal on em. The gears were both brand new, rear was questionably new when I re-set it up, locked, new shafts, lockout hubs, brakes, yada yada complete. I popped the cover off before I bought em and everything looked good. However when I got home and tore them apart a month later the front d/s shaft wasn't just broken, but destroyed and was ground to a point, the front locker was cracked-which I had ground out and TIG'ed together-more on why later, and the rear detroit came apart in pieces. Long story short, I got screwed and should have known better. Lesson learned. Several hundred $$$ later I had both axles good as new.
This guy's last day under my XJ
 
I picked up a D300 because I lost my shift fork in my np231 in last years Veteran's day parade. So I thought better now to swap this puppy in

I bought it off a good friend of mine so I have no doubt it's in good working order-he just pulled it off his running CJ for a new one with a 4:1.
In order to swap in a D300 I needed a 7/8" spacer and I wanted to clock it flat. I had my np231 clocked flat thanks to JeffWI98 (sorry if I got your name wrong, it's been a good while) and Jeepfreak, which I have also pirated many ideas from :D. I don't believe in buying anything I think I can hack together so I started building my own spacer/clocking ring. . .
This is me staring mindlessly at the tranny/tcase adapter



Which is where I got this thing

I'm using 3/8" and 1/2" plate steel to make the 7/8". I'm no machinist by any stretch of the imagination, so I had to redrill a couple holes. I'll be filling them in once I got the tcase up there and figure out where the new holes will be.





 
I'm also no photographer :D

And the first of several HF grinders to dedicate their very short life to me.

And thanks to an amazing friend I now have this:

He loaded all 1060 lbs of it himself on his trailer and drove 8 hours to drop it off to me.
now time to wait for more pictures to load. . .
 
With my new crossmember I needed to plate the inside of my rails. I plated the outside from bumper to bumper with 3x3x3/16" angle, so tying in some 3/16" plate wasn't going to be that difficult. I did have to make a couple cuts and bends as my XJ was a salvage, so the rails were a little tweaked I think.







I hadn't accounted for the forward part of the rails where it gets wider, so I still need to cut 2 small triangle pieces to tie the plate to the angle. Other than that, it's done. It turned out pretty well I think.
 
Well I said I stole a bunch of ideas from Jeepfreak, so here they are! I really liked his crossmember idea-running bolts through the rails to the crossmember vs. bolts on the bottom. My previous setup had the bolts running up from the bottom and after a couple runs I had to grind and hammer the socket on to drop it. I wasn't digging that, so I started cutting up some extra dom I had lying around.

The pieces are 4" wide, but the ID was to small, so I broke out the 3/4" reamer I had and opened em up. Oh yes, I said 3/4". . . with some good advice from Jeepfreak, I decided to use 3/4" shank bolts as I had them around and I don't think I'll be sheering them anytime soon. . . hopefully.




I got all of that done in the last couple weeks. I'm full time college, working full time, and trying save a boogered up marriage, so someone needs to figure out how to make the days into 45 hours a day. . .
I bought a used steering gear box, which turned out they decided that swamp water was a better fluid that PS fluid, so it was junk. Had a buddy swap it out with this

gotta love friends!
 
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Now I got into the fun stuff-the crossmember. I have 20 or 40 ft of 2x4 3/16" box so I cut 30.5" of it


and put the tranny adapter on and looked at it for a while, for now reason.

And a huge thanks goes to vetteboy and RCP ph for the measurements for the stock tranny bolts. I didn't' trust my measurements from my last one.

I'm running a Daystar poly tranny mount and it's exactly 4" square, so the box had to be cut accordingly


I'm going to be running a perfect flat belly and the daystar tranny mount is around 1" shorter than a stock one, so I only had to cut 1" down.

Then I started to box it in



Because I cut the sides off I lost a lot of strength in the tube, I wasn't cool with that, so I cut up some 1/4" plate to cap it off around the tranny mount.



 
I'll be drilling the ends of the plate out and rossete welding it as well.
And these are the first holes that I've drilled and gotten spot on the first time. pretty excited with myself

Forgot to mention, that's 2 plates and 2 holes you're looking through
waiting on pictures . . . again. . . ;)
 
I cut 1/4" plate for the ends of the crossmember and drilled 3 holes for the mounting bolts.

I didn't get any shots of everything I did as I just get into what I'm doing and noone else takes pics for me. Need to hire someone for that ;)
Here's the crossmember all tacked up and ready for mock up under the Jeep

I then proceeded to pick it back up and make the 2 bends for the front of the crossmember where the rails get wider


I got it mounted up and it fit like a champ! I was also pretty excited at this. Amazing what happens when you double and triple check everything before you start building! Here's a shot of it being held up with a jack in its new home

I'd say that's pretty flat


Tranny mount fits in the perfectly
 
I then moved onto drilling the holes for it. I completely jack Jeepfreaks idea and when I drilled the 3 holes per side for the mounting plates, I only started with a 3/16" bit. When I mocked up the crossmember I then used those holes to drill into the rails. I had to go out and buy 2 long bits to drill from the inside to the outside of the rails, which wasn't one of my favorite things to do. When I plated the rails with the angled steel I had 1/2" spots weld every 6", drill bits don't like to drill through weld. . . so I got all the holes pilot drilled except 1, I'll have to torch that one later. I then dropped the crossmember and started opening up the holes with a uni bit for the 4" anti crush sleeves I cuts and opened up. Holy hell what a workout that was. . . never want to do that again.



Then this happened

something doesn't look right with this one either. . .

So I grabbed the ol 3/4" reamer and started the holes to 3/4". I'll buy another set of unibits, HF specials, and finish the holes. I was off on 1 hole going through to the outside of the frame rail, kind of a lot, so I'll be die grinding it so it lines up perfectly and making a half sleeve out of a bigger diameter tube to fill in the rest of the hole. It should be ok. That's where I ended for the night. Everything I've posted has been taking place for the last 3 weeks or so. So obviously progress is slow, but hopefully will be picking up speed here this week. My goal is to get the front crossmember fully welded, drill the holes, weld the sleeves in, weld the nuts onto the mounting plates for the crossmember and start gusseting them. This weekend I'll be figuring out link lengths and running them in the 3 link calc. Night all.
 
Sorry, too many useless pics make it too long to load and follow.

Have fun. Good luck with the build. :wave1:
 
Lookin' good man!
cool.gif

Billy
 
Not to much of an update, I got all the holes drilled for the anti-crush sleeves going through the frame except one. I found a spot weld and spot welds and drill bits don't get along. Anyone have any ideas how to accurately drill or somehow open a hole before I whip out the torch?

No pictures today, I'm going to wait until I have something useful to throw up here :D
 
Only had a couple hours after class tonight, so I welded up the crossmember.
Not to bad for flux core

Before side plates are on


Opened up the holes from the bottom. I ended up having to use a die grinder as my unibits all crapped out on me from drilling through the rails.

Tomorrow I'm going to torch the last hole and hopefully get the sleeves welded in.
 
After looking and thinking about the crossmember, I don't like the 2 valleys you see in the above, very clear-not blurry picture. They're only 1/16th wide and deep, but I'm thinking about back grinding it a little and running another bead in there so I can grind it to a smooth, seamless look. Are there any draw back this structurally?
 
i'm sure others will chime in, but i can't think of one. i'd probably want to do the same too.

i'm watching this thread rather closely as i'll be making a new crossmember and such soon too. been planning on it for a while but only now is the jeep (and me) ready for it.

where did you get that poly mount? i poked around online and didn't see much...
edit: that poly mount might not do me any good. what kind of tranny are you running?
 
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