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I'll be doing a write-up once its done. Here's some threads I'm following. Only thing I'm doing different is I am going to tee off of the heater line to the filter then back into it. I don't like the idea of 100% of the flow going through the small port.
where did you get the top bar to mount your lights. does anyone else know of a gutter mount bar i could pick up to mount 6 led pods to?
A buddy of mine made it in shop class in high school. Its a very simple design to do a home brew setup. When you wire them up I recommend running the wires directly through the roof.
Got everything buttoned up today and filled the system with coolant. I was expecting to have a huge catastrophic leak and have to tear the whole system down again but that wasn't the case. So far, so good!
New shiny parts make me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside.
Some shots of the coolant filter. I'm interested to see how this works in the long run. I'll cut it open in a year or so to see if it really gets enough flow through it. The inlet hose was hot but the outlet was just lukewarm. Good hobby project either way.
I wasn't super impressed with the condition of the coolant ports in the block after using the chemical flush. The coolant will get dirty again. We'll see what the filter actually catches. If anything, the filter adds an easy way to drain the system with the two ball valves at the lowest point.
I also put this Magnafine magnetic transmission filter inline with my cooler. These are apparently really good but there are cheap Chinese knockoffs everywhere with horror stories behind them. I spent the extra cash to make sure I was getting the real thing. It was about $40.
Started the stiffiners today! It was my first time ever welding on a vehicle and also the first time I've used my welder in the year and a half I've owned it. Welding out of position is definitely something I need to get used to. I'm doing this with a cheap Eastwood 110v welder with gas and 0.030 wire. The welder did pretty good for this job.
I used a coarse flap wheel to get down to bare metal and a dremel in the tight spaces. Worked great.
I primed the back side of the stiffiners then ground away where I wanted to weld.
I also found this pretty gnarly crack...
But im off to a good start!
Last edited by XJlimitedx99; Jun 3, 2017 at 08:37 PM.
Drove 20 minutes to get more gas the other day and the guy at airgas told me they didn't get their shipment because the drivers went on strike! Wtf! So I didn't get more gas.
I did knock out all of the rot on the spot I showed a picture of before and it's pretty bad. I'll be dropping the gas tank and patching this.
Also took the time Saturday to drop my crossmember, which is still such a PITA every time, and also started to pull my front end apart. I have most of my WJ swap parts, Ruffstuff one ton steering, and Ruffstuff track bar setup all waiting to go in.
Last edited by XJlimitedx99; Jun 12, 2017 at 07:05 AM.
Dropped my gas tank today. I stripped out one of the clamps on the filler neck hoses so I just cut them off.
So much room for activities!
I also went over the entire underbody with a screw driver and stuck it through every soft spot I could. There's probably like six small holes that I'll patch, along with the rockers on both sides pretty much gone and this hole on the driver's floor that came back to haunt me.
i got my work cut out for me!
Luckily the unibody rails look solid everywhere other than that one spot.
Last edited by XJlimitedx99; Jun 14, 2017 at 08:13 PM.
I know how that goes with the floor i just replaced that exact same rotted out area on my 98 2 months ago.
keep it up man its all gunna be worth it
Thanks for the positive reinforcement, I need it sometimes. While I was removing my gas tank I thought it was ironic that I was doing something to prevent fires while considering burning my jeep down on purpose lol.
Over the weekend I cut the rot out and began patching it. This was my first time ever doing something like this so it was slow going and definitely a learning process.
This is how it started out..
Then I made a template and traced it onto 16 gauge sheet. By the time I was "done" shaping the patch I realized it didn't fit that well and had some large gaps. Instead of scrapping that piece I played the game of stacking tacks to fill the holes. It worked pretty well but then I spent what felt like forever grinding it down smooth. I thought overhead welding was bad but GD overhead grinding is the worst. I was basically shooting sparks directly at my face. I almost went to the store just to buy a face shield. After awhile of muddling through that and finding some areas that needed to be filled in again I decided to call it a day. This is where I left off.
I had planned on finishing it yesterday but it was wicked humid out and I may have reached into the cooler a few too many times the night before. Oh well, I'll get to it soon. I'm going to plate over this patch so the stress is not concentrated on my welds.
I'm in no rush with this project. I'll get done what I get done. If September comes and it's not back on the road by the time I go back to school it might end up sitting for awhile but that's okay.
