Accidentally building an LJ

Shreddinlettuce said:
motobilt.com

Motobilt Jeep TJ / LJ / YJ Front Half Frame Kit | Rock Crawler Parts

Motobilt’s Front Half Frame Kit for Jeep TJ, LJ, and YJ is a weld-on steel upgrade that replaces your front frame for off-road strength and durability.
motobilt.com motobilt.com
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That’s what’s twisted and broken on the front of it right now. It may end up getting replaced with a fresh one before it’s all back together. Most of the damage is on the driver side frame rail right in front of the transmission skid. Link mount shoved the rail up, in, and back.

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Rnuovrcj5 said:
That’s what’s twisted and broken on the front of it right now. It may end up getting replaced with a fresh one before it’s all back together. Most of the damage is on the driver side frame rail right in front of the transmission skid. Link mount shoved the rail up, in, and back.

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I know throttle down kustoms will sell you just the rails in thicker tubing or a whole frame for that matter
 
Shreddinlettuce said:
I know throttle down kustoms will sell you just the rails in thicker tubing or a whole frame for that matter
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I looked into them but they’re pretty proud of their stuff and I’d have to ship it from Montana. A buddy of mine found me a good tj frame that’s cut off a little in front of where you cut for the Motobilt stuff. I’m planning on cutting the driver rail out where it’s already spliced into the LJ back half and either cutting the rail out of the Motobilt one or just replacing the Motobilt stuff altogether. I’m pretty happy with how the front stuff all worked out so it’ll likely get copied over to the new front kit if I end up going that route.

Without going into too much detail, there’s some damage on the Motobilt stuff that really shouldn’t have happened with the way the jeep hit. I’ve talked to them about it and they’re going to take care of me so I’m not going to put it out there for the interwebs to run with. It probably saved the passenger rail from getting messed up with what happened and isn’t a major fix to deal with.
 
I used sschassisworx to bend me up some rear frame rails for my Tacoma to my specs out of a single piece of square tube. Probably wouldn't hurt to reach out and see what they can bend up for you. Sschassisworx

They are local, kind of down by URE in Norwood.
 
gslander said:
I used sschassisworx to bend me up some rear frame rails for my Tacoma to my specs out of a single piece of square tube. Probably wouldn't hurt to reach out and see what they can bend up for you. Sschassisworx

They are local, kind of down by URE in Norwood.
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They do good work for sure. A buddy of mine had them do custom rails for his aluminum bodied scrambler project and they turned out great.
 
I’ve got it just about torn all the way down to fix the frame now. Driver side frame rail was bent about every way it could be. Passenger side seems to be good though. I’m going to strip it to a bare frame and use my trailer deck as a frame machine to get the rear squared up the rest of the way and then start rebuilding. It sprung back pretty close once I cut the driver side in half so it shouldn’t take too much to get right.

There’s a brand new Motobilt front half kit sitting here to go on it. Motobilt went WAY above and beyond on fixing the issue I had. The plan is to pretty much copy the steering/suspension over to the new rails.

The LQ4 is stripped down to a short block and waiting on me to buy heads and a cam. I’m leaning towards 799 heads and a BTR Truck Norris cam.

Maxxecu Mini to control the 8HP70 is here too. I need to rent the flash tool and program the internal tcu for it. 5-series BMW shifter is here for it too. And then figuring out the wiring for it all.

I’m hoping to get it back together by late June for an event in Kentucky.
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Got it stripped all the way down and on my “frame machine”. I managed to get it pretty well straightened out without too much trouble. There’s still a little bit of a roll in the driver rail that I’m not 100% sure where it’s twisted at. I think it’s right at the upwards bend in the rear. It was bent to the side there too but my old hi-lift took care of that pretty easily.

Grabbing a set of heads for the LQ4 tomorrow. I’ll order the cam and all the gaskets/bolts I need soon.
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Stuntman Autoworks said:
I like the commitment but I feel like it would have been easier to just buy some rectangular tube and build a whole new frame.
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It probably would have been easier for sure. It was killed a good bit worse than I realized when I decided to repair it rather than replace it. It worked really well as it was too so I really don’t want to change it up too much. It’d end up snowballed into trailing arms and big coilovers/bypasses if I redo the rear and It’ll take me 3 years to pay for all the parts. I’m already deeper into the engine/trans swap than I really wanted to be.
 
Slowly making progress on getting it back right. I ended up having to buy a new set of Genright 3 link brackets since the driver side one was twisted/bent about every way it could be. Kind of nice getting to weld it on the rail on the bench instead of under a jeep. Splice in the frame is getting 3/16” plate plug welded inside it through all the holes I drilled. Drilling/tapping a few spots in each inner plate so I can pull them hard against the inside of the rails with a bolt to weld them.
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Finally did something on this junk today after not touching it for a couple months. Got the frame side track bar bracket cut off the bent up front half and weldered on to the new one. Then painted all the bare metal and got the body rolled back into the barn. I’m gonna try to slide the frame under it and lift it all up together to get the axles back under it. Then get the LS in place and build mounts.
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So a couple friends of mine just ran that 1000mile rally that went front WV to KY, they DNF'd with 33miles to go in a v8 tj (fuel pump). I have a feeling I'm going to get roped into one of these rallys in the near future, matter of fact they invited me but I was re plumbing my house and didn't have the time or $$, any tips? I know I need to shorten up my air bumps and get some better shocks, my 2010 era 7100s may be on their last legs lol.
 
gslander said:
So a couple friends of mine just ran that 1000mile rally that went front WV to KY, they DNF'd with 33miles to go in a v8 tj (fuel pump). I have a feeling I'm going to get roped into one of these rallys in the near future, matter of fact they invited me but I was re plumbing my house and didn't have the time or $$, any tips? I know I need to shorten up my air bumps and get some better shocks, my 2010 era 7100s may be on their last legs lol.
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Who were they?

I ran it with 2 of my buddies in a shitbox XJ. We finished in 4th place 😎. 44 hours with 9 hours worth of stopped time because we had to fix stuff. Best one was a 1/4” drive extension that we used as a leaf spring center pin held in with super glue and duct tape.

Biggest thing in the rallies is to keep moving and minimize stopped time. I’m running a transfer tank in mine and only really need to stop once for fuel in the normal 24 hour ones.

Suspension is huge too. The smoother you can get it to ride, the better off you’ll be. Being able to run through the rougher stuff with some speed is where you can make time since everyone is limited to the same top speed and moving average.

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Rnuovrcj5 said:
Who were they?

I ran it with 2 of my buddies in a shitbox XJ. We finished in 4th place 😎. 44 hours with 9 hours worth of stopped time because we had to fix stuff. Best one was a 1/4” drive extension that we used as a leaf spring center pin held in with super glue and duct tape.

Biggest thing in the rallies is to keep moving and minimize stopped time. I’m running a transfer tank in mine and only really need to stop once for fuel in the normal 24 hour ones.

Suspension is huge too. The smoother you can get it to ride, the better off you’ll be. Being able to run through the rougher stuff with some speed is where you can make time since everyone is limited to the same top speed and moving average.

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Chris and Dave, they were in this:
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Hats off to them for taking that jeep on it, it breaks on regular trail rides LOL! They broke the front trac bar mount off at one point at like 1am. They said it was a blast and apparently 93 octane is hard to find in WV. It has an old Corvette motor in it, so it sucks down 93 and makes about as much HP as my v6 tacoma :laughing:
 
gslander said:
Chris and Dave, they were in this:
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Hats off to them for taking that jeep on it, it breaks on regular trail rides LOL! They broke the front trac bar mount off at one point at like 1am. They said it was a blast and apparently 93 octane is hard to find in WV. It has an old Corvette motor in it, so it sucks down 93 and makes about as much HP as my v6 tacoma :laughing:
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That thing was sick. We thought they were nuts for doing it with an open Jeep. It rained a LOT 😂🤣.
 
Rnuovrcj5 said:
That thing was sick. We thought they were nuts for doing it with an open Jeep. It rained a LOT 😂🤣.
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I said the same thing! They said the worst part was the heat coming off the floor and they "didn't get that wet" :laughing:
 
gslander said:
I said the same thing! They said the worst part was the heat coming off the floor and they "didn't get that wet" :laughing:
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We ended up with a massive exhaust leak pretty much under the passenger seat. It got rough being in there. Couldn’t run the a/c because it made the transmission temp climb. So we just got cooked.

Funniest thing we had to deal with was a can of bear mace getting accidentally discharged inside the jeep about 30 min before the start. We got to feel that for the entire 44 hours 🤣😂.
 
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