Yeah, that's pretty gnarly! A chainsaw doesn't exactly cut clean. haha

Glad you're healing well and hope you're back out there soon!

 

Definitely could've been worse. Glad you're okay man.

 

started to make something with this free piece of crusty 1/4"



Cut it up, ,made two of these, messed up on one of the holes but did better on the second one. The bolts are just sitting in there.



cut a piece like this



bent it into this



clamped it to the jeep to look at things.



view from the top (remember, rough mockup.)



The clamp is in the way but with the frame stiffener on the unibody rail, it is pretty close to 1/4" thick so it lines up pretty good to stick 3 layers of 1/4" together so I can make a d-ring shackle mount. and tie in both sides of the front unibody rail. Plan is to start with a simple stubby bumper, might add a receiver hitch to it mostly flush. This is my first bumper build so we'll see pretty quick if I'm any good at it.

 

Looks great! A receiver hitch should tie it all together well.

 

The only issues with adding a receiver hitch are that I would have to buy one, and also that I would then probably want to use a piece of 2x6 box tube instead of a single layer of metal for the bumper. Which I would also have to buy. Or make a full length crosspiece that ties in both left and right frame rail instead of two bent pieces like shown above so that I have essentially made my own box tube. It would probably end up costing me at least $50 more especially because I'm using cut off wheels. I was hoping to keep this supplied only from the scrap metal collection.
Who knows, kind of depends on the next time I'm working on it. I'm pretty scatterbrained when it comes to jeep projects.

 

I need to get this project rolling, literally, as I'm moving in around a month.

So, I'm trying to get the front end back together at least to get it on and off a trailer when I move.

Recent progress in not very many pictures because of dirty fingers:

First time doing ball joints went well. Southern XJ is the best XJ.



Thought this was going to be worse but it popped right out



Starting to clean them up



Fast forward, WJ ball joints installed.



Heating the WJ knuckles to weld the 1/4" spacers on



Started painting the knuckles and realized I forgot to take a pic of the welds. They aren't great, but they will do. Welding the cast steel to the spacer was interesting, to say the least. Weld a bit, throw it back on the grill, grab the other knuckle, weld a bit, repeat. Wind didn't help.



I also removed the pitman arm using the crayon trick an old guy taught me. Took about 3 minutes vs all the horror stories I've read online of cutting them off etc. Need to drill it for the GM 1 ton tre.




And an off topic picture from work.

 

Rad! What do you do if you don't mind me asking?

 

What's the crayon trick? I've never heard that one

 

I drive one of those boats for the Navy.

Basically what is shown in the picture. I put the 3 arm puller on the pitman arm and snugged it up tight. Then I heated up the pitman arm just warm enough to melt a crayon down into the splines on top. The wax in liquid form follows the splines down through and puts a coating on everything. Once it cools and hardens the wax coating makes things slippery. I let it cool for a minute and then gave the arm a whack and it popped right off. It will work in other situations as well. Hope that makes sense.

 

Sweet build, I might have missed it but what brake rotors are you going to use for the Wj swap? Redrilled wj rotors, or sport trac or otherwise?

 

WJ rotors for now because I knew they would fit aside from the bolt holes. Haven't drilled them yet. If I ever drive this thing and wear them out I might go for the sport trac rotors to avoid having to drill holes again.

 

sounds good, make sure to keep us updated on the swap, that's something I've been looking to do.

 

Found a free hour, quick update. I installed driver side axle shaft, wj knuckle, brake bracket and caliper and one wheel to check clearances. I was happy to see it basically only rubbed the paint off the caliper and inner wheel. The tire spun with almost no resistance, however the wheel weights would get ripped off right away if I ran it as is. So, I plan to grind the calipers a bit. If it still rubs the weights, I'll look into alternative methods of tire balancing. Grinding is free though, and I don't envision having to grind much.

wheels are 15x8 ET-19 or 3.75" BS American Racing AR23 alloy.

If you didn't feel like reading that, the pics say it all.

 

Started making steering this morning with the RuffStuff kit. Only took the one picture for no good reason at all.

 

Finished the tie rod. Welded one end of drag link. Need to assemble the front suspension again to get the right length for that.