too much jeep stuff in college appartment

[asp]

over the weekend ross was kind enough to do the welding on the WJ knuckles and burn my track bar together for me. both are pretty not so bad if i do say so myself. gotta paint everything and take pics of that but here's what i did monday:

probably my best weld to date, but still not perfect:

some of the welds were better than others. started to slack big time as dinner time approached but i only have pics of the driver's side LCA skid. the passenger side one was a lot less complicated. everything is 1/4" and the inner C gussets got one bead welded along the top of the gusset and then i pounded them to the contour of the C and burned it the rest of the way.

more to follow after tomorrow and saturday are done... and i'm supposed to be wheeling on sunday :wow:

 

[5spd_xj]

very nice. keep on crackalackin!!

 

[foxwar71]

Anthony, I'm totally digging the new toe nail colors and pink sandals!!!

 

[asp]

thanks dude!







but actually my girlfriend took most of these pics... if you look at the URL they are linked from it's her facebook. i came real close to putting that in the first post that you could see her foot... oh well.

 

[asp]

new toy

profile of the passenger side unibody stiffener for the front bent to shape. it fit really well.

painted with krylon rust tough (weld through primer) i found it to be quite a pain to weld to/through. you really need to concentrate the heat on the painted part and have the heat a bit higher than you normally would for welding something of that thickness...

more weld through primer

so... i figured out why my steering box was so difficult to mount last time... the holes in my JCR tabs were way off. solution? weld the holes solid, grind the welds flat and redrill.

so i decided to make some real fish plates for the bumper that would tie into the tow hook mounting points it comes with. unfortunately i have a limitted amount of 1/4" plate... so i had to splice a small triangle on.

here's my tumorous fish plates

final shape

the left 2 holes are the tow hook mounting holes on the bumper and the fish plate gets the front 3 bolts on the bumper mount. i used bolts for the front 2 because there's no room to clean the powdercoat off of the bumper or get a welding gun in there... so grade 8 bolts it is...

and it got burned in place... here's a shot from the back after weld. mmm penetration

as it stands now everything is painted and ready to bolt in.

oh yeah, the AC compressor got swapped and my dad rebuilt a durango box and we modified it to have the travel of a stock xj box. so that is going in with a brand new pitman arm too.

another edit: all these pictures were taken with my phone. sometimes technology is cool.

 

[foxwar71]

painted with krylon rust tough (weld through primer) i found it to be quite a pain to weld to/through. you really need to concentrate the heat on the painted part and have the heat a bit higher than you normally would for welding something of that thickness...

I too am disappointed at this stuff. i had high hopes for it and had heard good things. i found it to cause way too much splatter too. Id make a couple of passes and would have to clean my nozzle. 3M has some stuff but its over $30 a can, one of these days ill find something thats good and cheap.

Everything else looks sweet Anthony. The welds are looking pretty nice now. Got any pics with the plates installed?

 

[asp]

no, i forgot to take pictures of that, but i will tomorrow. thanks for the complements on my welds. watching you and talking to mark helped a lot. my nozzle gunked up overly fast too. spattered like rust, almost.

 

[5spd_xj]

very super! welds are definitely looking prettier Glad I was able to get you a temp fix for that A/C issue, I would have been pissed if something that little kept you from going this week haha

 

[redneckboarder]

i found weld through primer is ok for using a 220 stick but i tried it with my 110 mig and it was hopeless...so i just painted everything ground the weld joints off made some nice welds and primed/painted the crap out of stuff i did my stiffeners that way a while ago and i have no rust peeking from the pores in the welds yet

 

[asp]

i would see no need to put a 220 stick welder straight to the unibody of a xj, and that's really all i can see myself using weld through primer on, but i'll take your word for it haha

 

[asp]

what is that yellow stuff in the middle of my weld?

 

[redneckboarder]

it wasnt on the unibody, it was an experiment on some 1/4 inch stuff i had lying around i just wanted to see if it was my welder or something i was overlooking

 

[asp]

aah good to know.

 

[redneckboarder]

if i weld to the unibody again ill just blow the dust off the ol 480 3 phase TIG my grandpa has lying around. i roasted some 1" heave wall pipe with it a while ago and it was really fun playing with that much power

 

[asp]

crappy pic, but i relocated my shock reservoirs with adam's help.

the WJ swap is done but stuff keeps going wrong. working on ironing it all out.

 

[asp]

well after many months of DW and cursing and much less wheeling than i'd like... i'm back to work on this bad larry.

i stripped most of the interior... not quite done with it yet. no pics of that cuz uh... well we all know what those look like w/o carpets. i uninstalled my sweet soundsystem and will be putting it in my 07 GTI. i'm also going to be hard-installing OBA with a tank mounted in the hatch. it will run off of the AC compressor. without any carpets, this gives me a good chance to fix any and all (and lots of it) rust.

right now, the plan is to ditch the short arms and custom fab a 3-link and crossmember with all new joints and a new track bar. details on that will come later. i don't even know exactly how that's gonna work yet.

the other main issue is my transmission. due to the fact that i uh... ran it dry for 120 miles :doh: i need to replace/rebuild/replace it. rather than dropping the coin on a cherry ax-15 i bought 2 ax-15s with problems, but different ones. one has a blown synchro for 4th gear, the other wouldn't go into reverse (justin's and kyle's respectively). i chose to take apart the donor tranny first, the one with the bad 4th gear. i've decided to put reverse from that one into the other. should yield the least work too. here are some pics thus far. the only thing keeping me from finishing this dissasembly is having a gear puller. my neighbor is bringing one home from work tomorrow...

aaand the reason this transmission hated 4th gear:

edit: i used this as a rough guide for dissasembly and will be using it as a careful guide for reassembly
http://www.scribd.com/doc/7057536/Jeep-AX15-Service-Manual-Transmission

 

[cmelo]

rather than dropping the coin on a cherry ax-15 i bought 2 ax-15s with problems, but different ones. one has a blown synchro for 4th gear, the other wouldn't go into reverse (justin's and kyle's respectively). i chose to take apart the donor tranny first, the one with the bad 4th gear. i've decided to put reverse from that one into the other. should yield the least work too. here are some pics thus far. the only thing keeping me from finishing this dissasembly is having a gear puller. my neighbor is bringing one home from work tomorrow...http://www.scribd.com/doc/7057536/Jeep-AX15-Service-Manual-Transmission

I like your style :thumbup:

 

[asp]

the 1st one is now fully apart. the 5th gear of the 2nd is still pressed on and that's all that's holding it together but i couldn't get it pressed off tonight. will try again next week when i have time to get back to it.

a better pic of the synchro:

the reverse idler gear out of kyle's:

edit: i should mention that plenty more metal chips came out when i cracked the case apart too.

 

[Hackmeister]

aaaaah my idler gear! THAT's why it quit!

 

[Hackmeister]

I have to have that gear as a souvenier anthony!