Round 2 of yet ANOTHER XJ. . .

whitneyj

whitneyj

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 30, 2008
Location
Mayville, WI
After a couple requests and me getting a sudden urge to do this, I'm posting up what progress I've made with this build. Here's some specs:
00 XJ 4.0, aw4
3 link front
triangulated 4 link rear
106-ish wheel base
links made with 2x2x.25 square and 7/8" heims
D50/10.50-geared 5.36, welded Detroit in the rear, fixed auburn in the front (thanks Rockcity). Yager should remember the fun little story revolving around these axles. :rolleyes:
boatsiding 10" up with a hybrid cage
flipped D300
38" super swampers with soon to be homemade AL beadlocks
And little trinkets I'm sure I've forgetting.

No one is going to read this, but I'm waiting for webshots to load so I need something to do. . . Backstory: This is the second build. First go around was spring/summer of 08, coincidentally it was also my very first build that involved any fabrication. So we'll just say it was quite the learning experience. The XJ performed alright, I had 22" of limited front wheel travel with triangulated, extended Ford radius arms (thanks Franklin), and a bastard pack for the rear leaves. I pushed the front axle out 5" and did the same for the rear, which is where a big learning experience came about, my WB was now at 114" with 35's. . . I was waaaay to long. I also rushed the entire build and wasn't proud of my work, which is a big thing with me ask Jeremy1977, I won't give his CJ back until it's all the welds look purdy.:D Which is a big reason why this build is happening.
Ok, on to some pics:
Here was it last summer after the first build

And here it is after a long afternoon of making it fit

Sorry about the blurry pics, I don't have the good camera anymore and am clueless how this one works.
4 hours later it looked like this

Out with the old:



On in with the new

This is my least favorite part about building suspensions: squaring up the axle underneath. . .
 


Then I started on making the adapter/spacer for the D300 to AW4. I took 1/2" and 3/8" plate steel made a rough cut with the plasma and began transferring holes.


Many of these lost the good fight

When I was planning my crossmembers I wanted them to sit above the bottom of the rails for what I have planned with my belly pan. In order for me to do that I had to add onto the rail reinforcement I already had and plate some of the inside.


to mount the crossmember I drilled a bunch of holes through the rails: through 3/16 plate and double rolled 16 gauge sheet on BOTH sides. Not going to lie, it was miserable. I picked up the idea from Jeepfreek on NAXJA for the drilling: make the plates for the crossmember, pilot drill them, use those plates as templates to mark the inside of the rails, drill through the inside and use a loooong drill bit to go through the outer side of the rails. Then I just opened them up with a unibit and torch and welded in some anti-crush sleeves.
Then I got on the front crossmember: 2x4 3/16"








And here it is mocked up under the XJ, yup, I think I have a flat belly. . .
 
This about as tight of a fit as you're going to get


That's a daystar poly bushing as it barely gives if at all. I left approx 1/16" clearance all the way around for whatever deflection it will see.
Here's the crossmember fully bolted in. I'm using 6 3/4" shank bolts as they're mounted in shear and I didn't want to worry about guillotin-ing one of them puppies off.

I figured since I was this far I might as well kick off the 3 link front. I'm one cheap individual and I absolutely refuse to buy something I feel I can build, so all brackets where made, hence why they look crappy. The front brackets are all made out of 3/8" hardened steel. Why hardened? Becuase I have a ridiculous amount of it for free and I didn't know any better. That being said, I will NEVER work with it again. Ever. I spent 6 hours drilling the holes through these things. Mild steel or bust next time.
Front brackets




I figured I'd show the crossmember as it'll be under the Jeep-upside down

Then out came the sawzall

Decided it wasn't enough. . .
 
Hell yeah. I wondered if you ever used those arms.
 
I ran into some bad times and progress slowed and so did the pictures. But here's a couple of the front as it sits now:
3 link calc.


The actual setup changed a little, but I haven't re-run the numbers yet. I increased length of the upper link to keep my pinion pointed straight at the tcase front output. I don't have a picture showing it, but since I clocked the D300 perfectly flat and so far up, it's pointing into the tranny tunnel where the driver's side foot is. When money permits an atlas will be swapped in as the front output of a D300, when flipped, it 3-4" higher than if it were just a passenger drop application. So I know the front output of my tcase will be my limiting factor for D/S droop. Other than that, everything should have stayed the same-ish. I'll re-run the numbers at some point just to see how radically it changed, or didn't.
All lower link mounts will be plated with 1/8" to keep the hiems off the rocks




Just a mock up link. I ended up making the upper out of 1.5x1.5 1/4" wall

I measured 6" of uptravel before the trackbar was built

One thing I hadn't mentioned yet was why the lowers are so traingulated. Pretty simple actually: I had to. I'm running a set of superdoody axles and the differential is offset so far to the D/S that I was forced to run the lowers so far out, so to clear the rails I had to inboard the frame side mounts to clear the rails. Pro's: my roll axis was greatly diminished. Con's: I can't think of any besides it being a pain the butt to package.
This lead to another problem involving coil bucket location. The stock XJ's upper coil mount was to narrow to fit anything on the SD's housing without building the lower mount way up on the housing. No big deal, whiz wheel and 130 amps later:

I moved the upper mounts out 3/4" and back 1/2". I had to pull the axle back a little for the front tires to clear the bottom of the grill. I have no problem hacking away any sheet metal, but I want to leave the grill unmolested.
I finally got the D300 mounted. I ended up taking it to a local machine shop so they could tap it for me. I couldn't get a tap started, why?? because some retard decided to use hardened steel for this too. . . never again.
 
Then I started on the lower coil buckets




I ran into a snag with the front end and had to stop until a small metal order arrived, so I started on the rear 4 link


In hindsight I should have rounded the corners of the coil buckets. My original thought was to leave everything square of "blocky" looking as everything about an XJ is just that. But I'm not digging these square edges. We'll see, I may redo them.
lower coil buckets


I built the lowers front and rear, and rear uppers to retain the coil

Then here is really where I lost a bunch of pictures. As of now I have the rear 4 link pretty much set. The crossmember is tacked on the inside rail reinforcements, the lower link brackets and links are made, tacked, and mocked up. I just need to cut out the rear truss to finish the uppers.
These are the only pics I have


Not sure if anyone noticed, but I tried to make all the brackets hit 3 sides of the crossmember for an unnecessary amount of weld area. They also sit 1" below the crossmember which makes them dead even with the bottom of the rails. (It all has to do with the belly pan) Also, all plate steel I've used has been recycled, that's why it looks like crap right now. I also have to give a HUGE thanks to Jeremy1977 as he hand loaded 1060 lbs of steel onto his trailer and brought it from Ashville to the coast for me. Before it gets painted, I'll be trying to up the stocks on flap disks to really clean everything up. I'm also unsure of what to do with the tranny tunnel. I'm almost the point where I might as well just cut the darn thing out and build everything new, but if you see how far out the holes are cut for the rear upper links, that pretty much eats up the whole floor pan too. If I keep the tranny tunnel, I'm going to build removable covers for the links, and try and mate everything up where it looks decent enough. But I hate sheetmetal work, so either option isn't appealing to me. Anyone have any pointers they could shoot my direction?
 
Looks good so far. Might I suggest buying some of the sanding disc wheels for your grinder to clean up the metal instead of gouging it up with a standard grinding disc. Little trick I learned several years back and it makes cleaner parts and smoothes things out without digging in like a normal grinder wheel does.
 
sqrl$$ said:
Looks good so far. Might I suggest buying some of the sanding disc wheels for your grinder to clean up the metal instead of gouging it up with a standard grinding disc. Little trick I learned several years back and it makes cleaner parts and smoothes things out without digging in like a normal grinder wheel does.
Click to expand...

Appreciate the comment, I'm assuming you're talking about the inner frame rail welds, other than that I haven't cleaned up any of my welds yet. The inner frame rail I'll be going back over and filling in all the little spots and grinding and flap disking it smooth. I'm a big fan of the flap disks, I just haven't gotten that far yet. Once I get everything fully welded I'll worry about cleaning em up. Thanks though, I appreciate any and all comments and help.
 
Well it's about time for an update, I've gotten quite a bit done since my last post, but for a number of reasons (excuses :D I wasn't able to take alot of pictures and post em up. Here we go:

Now this is only my second ever build and my first time doing a lot of detail oriented fabrication, so a lot of what I'm doing is fairly simple and not ground breaking. Good for me as I like to keep things simple looking. :D
Here's the rear truss, like I said, simple

It's 2x4x3/16" rect tube set back to follow the flat spot on top of the 10.50. To notch the bottom of the truss to follow the tubes I used a cardboard template from the brackets, a bunch of simple geometry, and a level to get everything square. It came out fairly well, everything fits tight. What I do need to modify is how the bolt goes in the upper link mounts. I'll need to notch out a section of the truss to allow the bolt to go in and out of the link tabs and use some small diameter tube to plate it. Should turn out well.

Well at that point I had everything tacked in with my little 135 amp 110V Clarke. So the only thing holding me back from getting everything fully welded and on the ground was the lack of doing just that. Trip to National Welders produced this


Miller 252, 60% duty cycle at it's max 250 amps. Pretty excited about it. Figured if I'm going to buy a tool that I use regularly why not go big right away?
Anyhow. I got all 4 tired mounted and the beads set.

and started rolling the front axle around to get fully welded, or so I thought. I forgot to get a new bottle of Act. so the D/S which has me welding to a bunch of cast steel is going to have to wait. Here's the P/S side:

As you can see I used a flap disk :D



I still have 1 piece to add, it'll tie the back of the trackbar mount into the middle of the coil bucket. It's not really for anything but to keep the look as clean as possible.
I then kicked off welding all the control arms, front crossmember, tie rod, trackbar and trackbar bracket.


Then painted it all flat black, as that's the only paint I seem to have a surplus of. . .
 
:beer: This has come a loong way since I have seen it. You can work on my junk anytime. :beer:
 
Here's a couple shots of the rear double triangulated setup



And this is my favorite part about the whole build right here. Look where the front output is pointing

I knew that I'd be having a fair amount of sheet metal to do, but it looks like I'll be using at least a 4'x8' sheet of 16 gauge on this. I'll be building a whole new tranny tunnel and covers for the links. I'll be making sure they're all removable for ease of maintenance of whatever reason I feel I need to go from the top down.
 
72Rockcruiser said:
:beer: This has come a loong way since I have seen it. You can work on my junk anytime. :beer:
Click to expand...

thanks man, appreciate it. I'd love to work on your rig. Someone just needs to figure out how to add another 10 hours into the day so I have time! :handed:
 
I've seen your build thread on NAXJA. Your XJ is one of my favorites. I can't wait til I can go full-width.
 
Thanks man :beer:
Going full width isn't that hard, just a lot of work, but man does it make a difference. . .
 
Good lookin' build. You might get it done a lot faster if you didn't have someone else's junk in your way all the time. ie big orange cj, trailer.... LOL J/K Build looks killer and some sweet fab work for sure.
 
Dude I need to come and see it now. When we going wheeling? I will be retired soon and got a new job already. Taking May off. Planning 2 weeks of wheeling and camping.
 
Lol! I can't say anything about Jeremy, he knows where I live. . .
Thanks for the props man, I appredciate it and look forward to wheeling out by you soon. Hoping to be able to keep up with you guys running taller meats!

Familyxj-I'll be lucky if I get it done for the Harlan Easter ride, I have a loooooong list of stuff to do, finals next week and I'll be back in WI for 2 weekends. So that really cuts down on my build time. Congrates on the job situation, jobs are hard to come by now. Was looking at changing careers, but the $$ isn't there.
 
Thanks. I am taking the month of May off before I start. I am planning to spend Monday through Friday next week at Uwharrie and maybe the 3rd week, if I get the A/C Compressor to stop making noise. I am gonna try to build a T-case Skid and Oil pan skid. I may be getting a TJ really sheap too. Mud Bogs are Saturday night if your not doing anything. I may try to run just to see what the Xj will do
 
Ahh... forgot about this. . . Once I find a way to post pics I will
 
This is a sick build. Props! :bling:
 
Thanks man. If I can ever get my computer to play nice I'll finish the build thread.

I've been out a couple times with it and besides a couple issues, related to me not doubled checking everything, it worked flawlessly.
 
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