neohic

Hell yeah! Let the mods begin!!

One week YJ swap is done! Heavy tacks went over everything so I could put the CJ on its own weight. Lower shock mounts were wrapped up too. Currently, ride height is slightly lower but pretty much the same. With the wheel spacers on, the rear hub to hub width is now 54.5” and the front is 56.25”. Wheelbase is a WHOPPING 84.5”!! The last parts that needed to get made were the inner frame plating for above the spring mounts, and then a bunch of welding. Nice to get things wrapped up with paint and assembly! Next step is to get it back on the flex ramp to see where we landed!

I took the weekend off from CJ things. Back on to the rear today though. All of the brackets came off just as easy as the fronts, however I will forever be (rightfully) skittish using a torch around a fuel tank. For the rear shackles, I reused the old ones but cut out the center stiffener and drilled them out for 9/16” hardware. Bump stop measurements went the same as the fronts too. The axle got jacked up until the majority of the spring was flat and everything else was set from there. I did notice that the rear has some flex steer that pushes the axle towards the rear. The body/inner fender got trimmed for a little more clearance. We’ll call it rust removal. There’s plenty of room for shocks in the rear compared to the front, but I didn’t like how the factory upper mount would’ve made the shock hang down if I had kept it like originally planned. The pocket the upper mount lives in between the frame and the body leaves enough room to push it up some. The pinch seam got a little notch in it similar to how early Broncos do to get the shocks higher. Otherwise, the lower mount is just a stud welded to the spring plate. Moving right along. Maybe done tomorrow?

That Viper is actually pretty cool! He drives the thing everywhere and it has 214k on it.

I did the same cars and coffee event this morning and it was a way better turn out! Had to style out the truck a bit too.

I’m calling this one exotic based on the weird and rareness of it. 1986 Mustang SVO with a turbo 2.3. I love it!

I won’t spoil any surprises.

Rise and repeat. The CJ got turned around to start looking at the rear suspension today. Didn't get too far into it. More so just measuring and making a plan. I hadn’t put a tape measure to anything in the rear before and finding that it currently has longer springs than a YJ really surprised me. Stock YJ spring mounts are 43” eye to eye where this is 45”. Noted. Other measurements I took is the ride height from the top of the axle to the bottom of the frame, same as the front, just for reference. Then the more I looked at things the more I noticed things in the way. The rock sliders, rear recovery point, and exhaust had to go. Everything came apart nicely. When I was originally making it all I tried to keep in mind fastener location. Thanks, past me! Before taking anything else apart, I found the center of the axle and measured out where the future mounts will end up. The rear axle is centered on the springs same as the YJ layout. Super easy math being I’m not moving the axle. It was getting close to the end of my day and I was dangerously close to starting a new, giant mess so I called it quits after removing the suspension.

Fun little project today. Mazen dropped his axle housing off with me when we were rearranging parts at my shop. We turned around the front axle fairly quickly being he did an awesome job getting the inner C’s where they belong. The 9” was going to be a bit more of a project. The housing was VERY clean which was nice to start with. This kit Mazen purchased is nicely cut and fits great! I did need to get the outer bearing races out which put up a little fight. After yanking on them with a puller, they were being stubborn. I welded a bead inside each one to shrink them down and they popped right out. Then there was a drain plug supplied with the kit and I added a pipe fitting at the top of the housing for a low profile vent. In the past, I’ve used alignment bars to keep these axles straight when doing this much welding on them. My buddy has one however he didn’t have the right size pucks to go in place of the bearings. After clamping it to my table with some preload in it, the back brace got some good tacks and I welded the center. Then I chickened out and it sat for a few days. The problem I wanted to avoid was the hub bearing cups. Anytime I’ve welded a truss on a 9” it turns into a 50/50 shot if the outer cups need to get cut off to realign with the center section. Back over to my buddy’s shop for some problem solving! Yup… he 3D printed the pucks I needed! He’s done this before with good results even with getting them a little warm with welding. Overall, I’m very happy with how Mazen’s axle turned out! It’s so nice to use a truss kit that just fits correctly with minimal fuss. Glad to be part of this rad build!

I’m such an idiot. Yesterday I was wrapping everything up for the day thinking, “sure will be nice to finish up the front end in an hour or so!” Then this morning happened. I got into the shop, started throwing hardware at it, and it was great! … and then, “hu… is that scratch new?” It sure was! At full compression the pitman arm was crashing into the tie rod. Not much… but enough to bend the tie rod slightly while turning at full stuff. Then comes in the total idiot part when I thought I could get away with drilling a few new holes and move the steering box forward. Yup… I ended up needing to cut the crossmember, move the goofy shaped rear leg forward that fits fairly tight around the steering box, weld it all back together, add some new reinforcements, AND THEN I could drill some new holes to move the steering box forward. I put a little extension on the back of the winch plate to tie in all of the steering box mount hardware while I was at it. It was missing one of the bolts towards the center this whole time too. The final result after an entire day in the shop? … plenty of room between the pitman arm and the tie rod. Then I took it out of the shop to turn it around to get the shop ready for starting the rear. Sits pretty good.

4600 class is my jam! Been following this one on irate4x4 also. Welcome to CC!

Almost… I almost got the front suspension done today. On the very last hole I needed to tap for the bump stops, the tap broke off in the frame and I ran out of gumption. Anyhow… I wanted to start with finalizing the bump stops based on the leaf springs. These are extended Cherokee bumps and they were the perfect length for when the spring is mostly flat through the majority of the spring. This does leave some up travel on the table, but I don’t want to damage the springs over time. The tire tucks up about 1.5” further than it did with the old springs. Cycling the suspension after I cut the fenders and tacked in the upper shock mounts, I found that I was running out of room quickly! I must’ve moved the upper mounts a half a dozen times before the shock body wouldn’t contact the frame at full extension with the other side all the way up. It’s close! The lower mounts also got reworked in order to tuck the shocks closer to the frame since the caliper wanted to share the space also. Clearance was needed there too. More cycling and compromises were made. The tire has always contacted the frame at full lock in the front. Now that there’s a much larger shock and mount in there, the tire does contact it at full stuff at full steering lock. I thought about cutting out the upper mount yet again to tilt the top more vertical, but there wasn’t anything to gain unless I moved the lower mount also and ground more off the calipers. At ride height, the steering will let the tire go to full lock with a half inch to spare to the frame. I’m thinking wheel spacers are in the cards now. Probably 1” in the front and 1.5” in the rear. After looking at it and cycling, and then looking at it more with more cycling, I decided that everything is where it’s going to live. After painting everything was when I realized I didn’t drill and tap for the bump stop mounting… then the tap broke… then I spent the next half hour getting it out. I’ll let the paint dry tonight and come back tomorrow.

I like this.

Time to get serious! I had another project in the shop this morning that I had to change gears on, so the YJ spring swap was next on the list. So far I’ve got about three hours into stripping and cleaning the frame, tacking the new mounts, and checking wheelbase. Everything dropped right into place after the amount of measuring I did prior to taking out the torch. I decided to leave the axle under the Jeep roughly where ride height was to keep an eye on the driveshaft. Moving the axle forward also means I need to keep in mind the amount of engagement there is at the slip joint… should be okay there… probably. I also notched the axle housing for the wider springs and u-bolt clearance. Then the fun stuff started happening! I set my center to center spring mounts at 42.625” instead of the stock YJ 43”. So far everything just has some good tacks or stitches that are easy to get to should I decide to move anything. There was hope to lower the Jeep some but it came out to about 1/4” higher than it was with the old springs. I’m sure they’ll settle some though. Bump stops and shock mounts tomorrow to wrap up the front suspension!

Bookends.

Took the truck to a cars and coffee this morning. I was definitely the odd one out. The event grew to a few dozen vehicles by the time I left. Eh… wasn’t quite my vibe. Kinda felt like high school where everyone had their cliches to hang with. JDMs… local beaters… the Corvette guys… Not a whole lot of a lowered all wheel drive Jeep crowd in the area.

Yes!… nailed it.

Crazy mad flex! I ran the CJ up my buddy’s ramp today to get some more baseline measurements. Unfortunately, I ran out of traction before lifting a tire so the winch got used to pull it up the rest of the way… very embarrassing. Let’s talk about the rear. With the rear tire bouncing off the ground, the shock was about topped out at 19” of travel. At the other side, the tire was just about into the wheel well and I wasn’t even close to the bump stop. As for the front… … I also have a mile or so before anything touches anything. The shock bottomed out before the tire was anywhere near full stuff. Pretty sure there’s some room for improvement here.

I had a slew of hand-me-downs when I started driving. The first was a four cylinder ‘90 Chevrolet Lumina that overheated a lot, and the second was a four cylinder ‘90 Dodge Spirit. Both came from older brothers. FIRST, first car was a ‘76 VW Beetle but I didn’t drive it much by the time I was actually driving. That was replaced by my ‘72 Beetle (that a sharp eye will see the Lumina and Spirit in the background) but that was also a project for the first two years or so that I had it. Really, I wasn’t driving anything that I considered “mine” for the first couple years I had my license. What I will always consider my first vehicle that I bought and then started driving right away was my Eliminator. Tough to believe that I’ve had that truck since 2005.

Another day in the shop and I’ve got nearly everything I need to get started on the front suspension. I started with making the front shackles and then moved to getting real world measurements on the shocks. Shackles are 4.5” from eye to eye because that’s the length I could get out of the 3/8” material I had. The front shocks are 28.5” extended and 17.75” collapsed. Rears are 23” to 15”. They are both 3-4” lift YJ shocks for the ease of future replacements. Eyeballing it, I think the rears might just drop right in, but the fronts are obviously much different than what’s currently in there. To get real numbers on the springs I started with measuring the current setup. The spring moves a whopping 1” from ride height to droop and is 39” from eye to eye at ride height with a 2.5” shackle. This thing had a much longer shackle years ago but I put the tiny ones on it to try and get some caster in it. Moving to the new springs, I started with static measurements to see how much it’ll move. They’ll obviously move more with the weight of the Jeep and axles moving around, so it was more the measurements with weight on it that was important to me. Looks like they’re going to be nice and flat at ride height! With that I started figuring where the front shocks will live. The bottom mount will pretty much be where it currently is. That should keep the caliper playing nice around it. The upper mount will be more creative. I started with a piece of steel something-er-other that I nearly ran over on the road years ago and then decided to pick it up. Maybe from a tow truck?… it’s shock mounts now. My torch made short work of extracting what I needed. Then I made a quick template to get the angles right and cut out the rest. Paint and rust was removed with one of those “hamburger” stripping pads. Those things are awesome! They consume pretty quick, but still awesome! The current upper mounts need to get cut out and these will go in their place. Again, we’re just eyeballing things based on compressed spring measurements. This might change once I get the new springs in and flex it around to get hard numbers on the shocks. Fenders will need to get cut also. While I had tape measure things happening I took a look at where the spring and shackle mounts will go based on factory YJ numbers. My plan is to move the axle forward some and modifying the bumper is now in the cards. There is some factory boxing on the inside of the frame over where the new spring mount will go but I need to connect the dots a bit. Right now, it looks pretty straight forward to me. My tape measure tells me everything will work so it’ll be fine… probably.

My springs arrived! I went with a Zone Offroad 2” YJ kit without shocks. Reason being is that Zone is under the Fox/BDS umbrella and I’ve heard great things about the ride quality and flex. These are more on the basic side though being they don’t have military wrapped eyes, but let’s say that this kit was also “cost effective”. With the addition of the Bilstein shocks, I’m hoping for good suspension performance. In the spirit of “cost effectiveness”, i decided to make some of the components I’ll be needing too. Shackle bushings and spring plates are on order. I considered making the plates, but the disgustingly rusty plate I had in mind isn’t big enough to get four plates out of it. Next on the list is making the shackles. Maybe I’ll start the suspension swap soon?… still not in a huge hurry.

I finally got around to cleaning up my shop some and I forgot to put the truck’s “puppy pads” back under it. To my surprise this morning, there were no fresh leaks! The rear main started leaking from sitting for years but that looks like it came around! Another leak was coming from the oil pressure sender adapter. That got replaced recently. I can’t say I remember the last time I noticed that one of my Jeeps didn’t leak anything!