1975 Brutally Simple Daily Driver

[neohic]

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. 

 

[neohic]

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.

 

[neohic]

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?