Garvin

Completely forgot to put my build plans in it last night, so here they are. These are in no particular order right now. A few of the more obvious ones from the build pics: Mildly built Chevy 350 coupled to AX15 and reclocked 231 Raised cross member (flat stomach) 3-link front suspension with 8.5" Rustys Offroad coils, RE trackbar, JKS swap bar disconnects, and Crown extended brake lines SOA rear with IronMan4x4 shackles to level her out Ideas still in the planning stage: Fuel cell in the bed (between the roll bars) One ton axles (Dana 60HP kingpin front and Sterling 10.25 rear) Humvee rims, changed backspacing (maybe), welded on rear rock rings, PVC insert (I'm sure I'm forgetting something here) 37x12.5R15 MTR's (might get the grooved ones) Plans to trim enough to drop to 4-5" of lift Maybe bob the bed Maybe a double triangulated rear (not sure on coils or coil over), will only do if the bed gets bobbed Custom built front bumper with recessed winch under the radiator Custom built rear bumper with integrated hitch (cutting the dog legs off and wrapping this around) Custom built rock sliders Exo cage Custom skid plates to make the stomach as flat as possible That's all I can think of right now off the top of my head. I'm sure more ideas will pop up as the build progresses.

I got the upper arm slightly bent for clearances and went from being able to flex about 3" on the drivers side to around 9" before anything hit. Yesterday (today whatever you want to call it...) I managed to get a little done but got distracted by my dads birthday and my brother wanting to play a new (to him) PS2 game. Got everything all mocked up for the frame side upper control arm joint then built the bracket and tacked it to the cross member. Going to be working on the truss and axle mount tomorrow and flexing the Jeep to check on clearances, that'll definitely be interesting...

On to the latest project, the 3-link long arm build. Built a set of frame side lower brackets, just going to use the factory axle brackets for the time being for the lowers. I plan on going one tons later so no real plan on using this axle for any extended period of time. Tack welded them on, partially welded the joints on the ends of the lower arms, and drilled out the lower control arm mounts on the axle from 9/16" to 5/8". Everything is just going to get tacking till I make sure nothing hits on flexing. I bought a set of brackets from Poly Performance which will atleast help with having the holes drilled already. I was planning on using the full brackets but things changed along the way. Put the front drive shaft in and worked on finding a spot to put the frame side upper control arm bracket. A look from down the transfer case shifter hole.

Welded reinforcements to the outside of the frame (yes, that's 1/4" cause that's all I had). Cross member bolted up And then I caught my finger in the wire wheel and tore it down to bone so the Jeep took a break for a week. After that healed (atleast a week of healing) then finished up welding the passenger side reinforcements on and finished clearancing the floor pan for the transfer case.

Figured out the transmission of the AX15 is the only one that hangs down lower :wall: So a little out of the box thinking had to be done. Found a transmission mount from an '80 G20 and redrilled the mount bracket on the transmission for this mount, it actually worked out great in the end for once! Crappy pictures but you get the idea on the difference between the mounts. Found the middle point for the trans in the tunnel and marked it on the mount, then cut. Welded the piece that was cut out onto the bottom as a spacer so that the bolt heads don't hang down below the cross member. Then put her back in with the transfer case on. Need to bang the floor up some in order to clear the transfer case. :wall: Drilled holes through the frame and sleeved the frame to strengthen her back up. There will now be three 5/8" grade 8 bolts holding the cross member in per side. Inside of the frame rails looked factory. :banana:

So...On to the fun part! I got sick of the whole short arm system so decided to build my own 3-link long arm system. The links are made out of 2" OD by 0.25" wall DOM tubing and all six joints are Ballistic Fabrication 2.63" joints. I started with an idea of using the stock mounting points and built a cross member based on that. And then changed my mind... For this new idea, the stock inner cross member brackets had to come off. Engine was placed in to see where everything sits. In order for my new idea to work, the transfer case had to be reclocked. So I made a custom tool and moved the holes over 5/8", which netted about a 2 inch rise on the low end. Back to the cross member! Remember to count twice the thickness of metal if you're putting places on BOTH sides. :wall: And the cross member mocked up. My goal is to raise everything above the frame rails, on the right track atleast!

So for the engine, picked up a '73 Z28 motor and started the replacing! The heads were swapped out with late '70's (I think) Chevy truck heads that were the non-smog type, oil pump was swapped out for a high volume pump, heads were rebuilt while they were off, Edelbrock Performer intake was put on and a TransDapt oil filter relocation was slapped on (need to see on clearances now but might go back to just a regular filter). Then the motor was painted black. When I got that all ready to be dropped in, a buddy offered me a set of roller rockers, new lifters and hardened push rods for dirt cheap, I just couldn't say no...So the engine came back apart and put all those goodies in. I had to get a custom bushing since I had the large nose AX15 (and apparently that's all special order parts...) so the trans got bolted to the engine for fitment.

The first thing that had to be done (and what better time than when the drive train is out) is to replace the floor pan. I got an OEM Cherokee floor pan offline and a buddy gave me a hand cutting and fitting pieces (by gave me a hand, I mean he did it while I was the lackey). I figured I'd learn from him since he works at an automotive body shop to see what things I can pick up. First thing was to remove the rust. I cut back to all good metal so that we would have a good base point. Since we did it over two days (a week apart), the floor pan was primered so she didn't rust back up. That was after the first day... During the week I ordered a can of POR15 and did the whole top (and around the corners onto the bottom) of the floor pans to have a nice coat inbetween the pans to prevent rust later on. The next weekend we really dove right in to get the floors all done. He cut and fit all the parts and then we fully welded the pans in. I Herculined the floor (top and bottom) to help again with the rust. Since the interior was pretty much ripped out, I went up to the top of the firewall and all around up to the point of the bottom of the rear window. Since the floor was done and I had spare metal laying around now, figured I might as well fix the apron. This fix isn't the prettiest (not sure why I sealed the corners, just felt like doing it) but it works. The battery box hides most of it and I might just touch up the rest to make it look better later on. This was my first attempt at really doing my own work (this was 10 months or so ago) and have since then dove a lot farther into the whole fabrication side.

Not really all that tired and got bored so figured I'd post up where I am with my build. Going to see how far I get with posting till I pass out. The Jeep started as an '86 Comanche X with the 2.8L, AX5, NP207, Dana 30/35, 3.55's. I bought the Jeep for $600 and came with 31's. Surprisingly, she had a solid frame, just needed floors and the apron fixed (where the battery box bolts to). Got the Jeep home and did a tune up just to figure out that one cylinder was real low on compression. Found two bent pushrods and did a tune up and that still didn't fix it, think a lifter collapsed. I wasn't going to spend any more money on the crappy 2.8L so it was time to upgrade. The 3.4L just wasn't for me, so I went searching. I found a great deal on adapter plates from a guy on Craigslist for a Chevy 350 and mated an AX15 and NP231 to it. In the mean time, I added a lift with 4.5" BDS short arms from a 4dr JK, Rusty's 8.5" front springs and a SOA in the rear. Shackles were on the list once I figured how everything sat in the front.

6.5" is about ideal for 33's if you want to flex, might need to trim a tad for full stuff. As mnkyboy said, it all matters what you want to do and how much trimming. I have a buddy that has a 3" lift on their Cherokee with 36's, but that XJ is hacked to all hell to fit them (same concept and can actually trim more on the Comanche rear than an XJ without major fab work). If you really want to do SOA but only want about 4" of lift, Cherokee shackles are about an inch lower. SOA gives anywhere between 5-6" of lift, depending on how much the springs are sagging (I gained close to 6" on my '86 MJ). Until the drive train gets put in, you can bolt the axle under the Jeep with the perches in the middle so you can roll it around. Once the drive train gets dropped in, then you would be able to actually set up the angle. Each Jeep is slightly differently with the SOA in the rear. Your best bet is to dial in your lift height then figure out the angle.

You'll see a little wire harness come up from the drivers side rear of the engine and connect on top of the intake manifold, that comes from the CPS. Try to unplug and plug it (as said before) but it sounds like it's going bad. When they first start going bad, they will work perfect when cold but won't start when hot (first hand experience on that on my '90 XJ with the 4.0L).

All the parts interchange between the 4x2 and 4x4 but the springs are slightly different (maybe shocks too?). The 4x4 springs sit an inch higher than the 4x2 springs when mounted on the Jeep. I'm not sure if the shocks are different cause of that, though.

If you're going 4.6L, you might as well go that extra inch and hit 4.7L. When I was looking at stroking my old Cherokee, the parts were all pretty much the same price and the machining was the same price. You get an extra 20hp or so from what I read up with basically no price difference.

AX5's are fine and dandy for the street behind the V6 or the I4 but sucks for any kind of real abuse. My buddy keeps destroying his in his 4 cyl Wrangler with 3" lift on 33's. He upgraded it to some beefy Dodge 3/4 ton truck trans cause he wasn't going to put a 4th one in. That and he's going to a 318 or 360 later and will just drop the engine in in front of that trans (removing the adapter and all those goodies first). As for AX15's, I've seen them behind ZZ350 Chevy 350's at 350hp without breaking (these guys abuse the hell out of their rigs). I have one behind my mildly built Chevy 350 (around 350-400hp) and don't have any worries about blowing that up. Hell, the only part of the drivetrain I'm afraid of is the Dana 35 in back, but blowing that up will do me a favor with speeding up the one ton axle swap.

A good majority are asking for the newer XJ and ZJ seats so I'm going to be aiming to make the brackets to make those two sets work for the time being. I'm not too sure about the tip part though, might skip that due to safety issue. My brother and I are looking to open up a little combination shop in the next month or two where we will have tons of stock Jeep parts on hand (it's going to take a little while to build up the parts) along with a section to do fab work and general maintenance/installation of parts, the shop will be named SME Tech. We're letting you guys pretty much decide what we make so any ideas or input to stuff already out there (improvements/alterations) are appreciated and will be looked into at great depth. Right now we have the two Comanches to build parts from but will also be picking up a Cherokee later on to be basing parts off of.

The driveshaft angles are less of a concern with the Comanche due to the longer wheelbase. I did a spring over on the rear of my MJ (netted about 6" of lift) and the angle hardly changed. I think it was calculated that you needed a 12" or 16" lift to take the drive shaft out of the transfer case (assuming I remember correctly), where a Cherokee is about 4.5" without a transfer case drop. For the front, you mainly need a track bar (usually comes with lift kits). The stock steering linkage works fine but needs to be aligned after a lift, I had an 8" lift on my Cherokee with the stock steering linkage (chose a larger steering dampener though since I was running 36's) and had no issues with bump steer.

I'd mainly be building the lower portion of the track (the part that bolts to the frame) for the time being. I need to see how the whole top section is to see if I can make them universal or not, where you just take the top section and bolt or rivet them to the lower. I will be looking into picking up a set of XJ seat and ZJ seat brackets and start building prototypes in the next few weeks, just need to get some of the current jobs done before I take on another.

Are you joking? The man is doing a v-8 swap, and wants a stronger axle. They also take the same amount of work as a 44. If you are going to do the swap... why go for the far weaker axle? :thwak: You can make a Dana 44 just as strong as a 60 and the 44 will give you around 2" more ground clearance plus a lighter axle. The only weak point in the 44 that isn't offered yet is the ball joint (Ballistic Fab is working on a heavy duty rebuildable Dana 44 and Dana 60 ball joint). The Dana 44 will just cost a lot more money to build up into that (due to that reason, I'm going the whole Dana 60HP King Pin route till I win the lottery). If you're dead set on going 60, look for the king pin style as they eliminate that ball joint issue. I think you can shave some off the bottom of the Dana 60 also (don't quote me on that part yet, that's a later project for me so haven't looked into that in depth yet). If you don't plan on running anything larger than 35's, you might be better off with the Dana 44.

Both of my MJ's have buckets (one came factory, I think the other the guy before me swapped) so I have templates to run from to make installation a breeze. Leaning more towards XJ seats for the time being since that's what I have on hand but don't see it being too hard to make a set for ZJ seats (might need to offset the mounts down a little due to the height of the seats). If the uppers are just a matter of slightly different mounting holes to the lowers then a set of universal lowers shouldn't be too hard. If there is a bunch of interest on here then I'll start working on them in the next few weeks.

Just seeing if there is an interest in aftermarket seat tracks. Once I get my Jeep running, I was thinking of building some seat tracks and maybe selling them. Not sure if it's going to be just the lowers or if I can find some Cherokee seat tracks and steal the upper halfs and make complete, bolt in tracks. Not sure on prices if I do go through with this either, need to still see what all needs to be done and what I can get stuff at price wise. They most likely won't cost any more than the going rate of the factory ones except the lowers will all be new. Basically just gauging interest right now before I go diving into this.

I believe the inputs do swap over from 231's. The question is, why not use the transfer case that is bolted up to the AX15? The spline count differences is in the inputs, I believe the output splines are the same.

That's one hell of a list there. I only went for the automotive fundamentals, small engine, welding and electricity (knew welding and electricity before hand so decided to just finish it off). Diesel is where all the money and jobs are around here but I refuse to touch that stuff due to the smell. Marine and Motorcycle are fairly easy once you understand engines and body work is definitely a good thing to know! I wish you the best. :thumbsup:

ah okay, I'm pretty much the opposite, i hate automatics, they suck lol. i will be using D44 in the rear and d30 in the front when i swap in the 4x4. thats one of the first mods I'm doing to it. thanks! i plan to have the automotive diploma and 5+ certifications :) I give you 5 years in the field. ;) I actually went through with the automotive technology cert (no real point in getting the associates), got out in the field for about 4 years then got laid off and said screw this. I ended up going back to school for mechanical Engineering (got one year left now of a 4 1/2 year bachelors). I wish you the best with school and hope there are a lot more jobs down there than there are up here. Make sure you start a build thread when you start it, kinda interested just to see it put together.

Just a little bit more info I forgot about that might have a major impact on why mine changed. My front Dana 30 from the '88 was out of a Cherokee with an NP242, so it had the solid axle shaft instead of the CAD system. The only thing diff was the slider in the caliper, which I swapped out since I didn't feel like bleeding the brake system and the calipers were good on my Jeep with the extended brake lines on them. Went from 1990 axle (bent) to 1993 axle (blew up) to 1988 axle (totaled the Jeep with that axle in and used the same calipers the whole way, who would have guessed the caliper would outlast three axles... I'm not too sure on the 2wd to 4wd but it sounds like the other guys have that covered.

I've swapped parts from '88's and '93's and they will interchange. The only thing I've seen different were the bolts/sliders and that the later (97+ ish area) use a thinner rotor. I just swapped the sliders to the one the caliper bracket takes and the calipers fit and worked perfectly fine. There might be other changes also and I was just lucky or something but that was my experience.