My "Hero" Blog

[Jeep450r]

Originally Posted by 87matchief

Well shit I just read through a 101 pages to catch up here and dam man sweet build, very clean work,keep it up, I would have kicked my jeep to the curb after the 3rd bell housing crack haha but im also lazy and hardly work on my junk. but after reading this makes me want to get back at it. looking forward to see what else you come up with

haha thanks for the kind words man!

I haven't been working on the jeep as much as I anticipated... which is to be expected I guess. Been too busy with school and trying to find a job. But I plugged away a little bit last night. I got the upper link mount all ready to weld in, as well as a sweet brace for the back side. Pics of that to come later.

I dropped my tcase because the trans wasn't sealing against the tcase input shaft. It looks like ill have to fill that weep hole with RTV and seal both mating surfaces of the clocking ring. I also chopped my exhaust out again. Ill be moving my flex pipe further forward, and will finally weld a muffler back in it for a little bit of back pressure.

With the exhaust out of the way, I decided to tackle the floor board next. I spent last night with a buddy of mine designing a new floor board in Solidworks. Ill print the drawing to scale on some paper, cut it out, and make sure it fits fine, and then ill cut the design out of some 18ga on a plasma table and bend along the bend lines for a (hopefully) perfect fit with minimal welding.




Flattened out to show the cut and the bend lines.

[Jeep450r]

How much vertical wheel travel are you guys getting out of your rear leaf setups?

[Luke95]

Originally Posted by Jeep450r

How much vertical wheel travel are you guys getting out of your rear leaf setups?

Bastardized pack (xj main and 2 mids) 1 inch shackle 10 total wheel travel.

[Mike1331]

You'll want to go with a leaf pack that's much longer than something that bolts in to the xj boxes if you want travel out of a canti set up. When I had a national pack built for a jeepspeed xj and shocks through the floor I was maxing the pack out at 12-13" og travel. Which means relocating your pivot boxes. Or just put some coilovers in the canti arms and spend a lil more time building links.

[blondejoncherokee]

I run a MJ main in my rear packs, who knows what the travel is, but its longer and I have a killer shackle angle with some long boomerangs. you could try that. I would say go at least 56". the issue with going longer than 56"- the damn shackles and leaves will get hung up on everything...mine stick out pretty far- I wouldnt want it to be any further. For all that time and money, you could just link the rear.

[Jeep450r]

Yeah that's what I was afraid of. I have a badass design figured out for a cantilever setup on the jeep and a line on some rebuilt 2.5" kings valved to my specs for a good deal, but don't think I'll have the wheel travel to make it worth it. And the jeep is immobile right now so I can't measure my own wheel travel. But it likely won't break 10-12".

Looks like I'll either put the cantilever idea on the back burner, or build it with a 1:1 motion ratio bell crank and use a 10" shock for 10" of travel and build another pivot box down the road for more travel if I ever link it. Idk...

[blondejoncherokee]

Sounds like a solution looking for a problem dude. Id say your time is better spent elsewhere .

[Phil]

You are an hero to us all.

Just link it.

[Jeep450r]

Yeah looks like its going on the back burner for now. Links will eventually come and maybe I'll do the cantilever at the same time.


Been making some progress. I built a new adjustable upper link mount, made a slick brace for the link mount, and notched the crossmember to clear the tcase.







I also started building the floor. Had extra time Friday night and decided to cut the floor pieces out by hand rather than having them CNC cut and bent.




There's some goop left over from my half-assed floor insulation (home depot waterproof repair tape). Please note that this stuff does not do well with heat, and melts and smells like crap when it gets hot. Anyhow, I am trying to remove the leftover residue from the floorboards so I can weld to it and place real dynamat over it. Any tricks for removing nasty black adhesive goop? Brake cleaner seems to be doing the best so far. Purple power did nothing, as did wd-40.




I also removed the tcase, sealed the clocking ring to the tcase, filled the weep hole on the transmission with a vacuum plug and a crap load of RTV, and sealed the tcase to the back of the trans to keep the trans fluid from leaking out, as advised by Lou (IIRC) as well as Atlas. But that's boring and doesn't deserve pictures. Thanks for the pointer on that one Lou.

Thanks for the input fellas!

[GordoSmasho]

Hot knife gun with a rope cutting attatchment works best. Comes off like hot butter.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B004XA...1 3H8V0PR89HR

[goodwilljeeper]

Googone or painthinner

[Mike1331]

I've always wanted to try these. I hear they work really well for glue and pin strip removal without effecting paint.
http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&key...l_1aavsnel4z_b

[blondejoncherokee]

Looking good kevin.

[831_xj]

Slick work for sure

[GordoSmasho]

Looks really good kev.