Oh yea, I forgot your's was a YJ.

Oh well

Thanks, I added that to my file just in case. But it's in milometers, not sure I have a tape for that.

Made a bit of progress on the frame work. First, I got the frame and skid plate back from the sand blasters. They did a fantastic job removing every spec of rust, even on the inside of the frame as far as they could reach. Fortunately, there was very little rust inside the frame to begin with. The nasty finish you see on it was from the Ospho I sprayed as soon as I got it home, to prevent flash rust.



I finished cutting all of the segments to build one frame rail. I made a drawing in Autocad to get my dimensions of all of the frame segments.



I used my new Milwaukee chop saw to cut the segments. I laid the segments over the old frame rail, and it follows the shape and angles perfectly, so I'll use these pieces to trace out the ones for the other side.

I made some decisions on steering and suspension. I decided to mount the springs over the axle (SOA), and use Rubicon Express 1.5" lift SOA springs, with 6 leaf packs up front and 5 leaf packs in the rear. The 6 up front is to compensate for the all iron 390" engine. For steering, I decided to go with a high steer setup. So, I purchased new high steer knuckles from partsmike.com. Its a complete kit, and he upgraded it with 2" forged steering arms at no extra charge. Shown in this pic are the standard flat arms.

Very nice work and great parts choices IMO

Rickster

My high steer kit came in. The steering arms are forged and very beefy. They will easily clear the leaf springs.

I made some progress on the frame work.

Nice Work Dave

Rickster

Thanks, Rick! I'll be a better welder when this project is finished.

....lurking. I love the fact you spit out such cool crap out of that "shop"

Thanks, J-Body. It keeps me out of trouble, and my wife never has to wonder where I'm at.

I made the other rail today. I messed up on the angle on the last segment of the rail in the foreground. I'll need to cut and re-weld it.

Fixed it.

I've reached the first of many milestones in this project. The frame rebuild is complete. Since the rear bumper mounting bracket was in decent shape, I reused it. It was helpful in verifying some dimensions. I measured everything 6 ways to Sunday from many body and suspension mounting points, and its all dead nuts.





The next phase is to send the Dana 44's to the axle shop to get rebuilt, re-geared with 4.56's, Warn hubs, and locker diffs installed.

Sweet

Rickster

Very impressive, you are coming along nicely.

Here is what I built yesterday, gonna get the bars bent for the rear section tomorrow and tack them in. Then I'll take it to a real welder to do the final welding, I don't trust my self on cages.