scottd16

Picked up a ford 8.8 for around 150$. It was pretty complete everything their and in good condition except e brake lines that where cut.

The 8.8 will be getting a new limited slip unless I can find a electric locker for a fair price or I get a big pay check. Also I'll be ordering nitro 4.56 gears and a master install kit, going to try to find a friend to do this for cheap instead of paying 300+ but so far no luck finding anyone who can. Should be getting my master brake kit from east coast gear supply by Thursday. My install kit from ruffstuff came in the other day.
its a pretty beefy kit.

scottd16

took all the brakes and lines off the axle yesterday to begin cleaning it off. Also got my brake kit from east coast gear supply.


started to sandblast the axle which sucked by the way mainly because it got clogged at one point and i had to dump all the sand out of the tank but it cleaned up pretty nice il take a picture tomorrow.

next step is to buy gears (4.56) and a locker or a ls.

If anyone in Maryland or Pennsylvania knows of a steel distributor with good prices let me know.

scottd16

Today was pretty productive.
Got all the brackets cut off and cleaned it up.



Then put together my new tool



Started putting together a stand for it, going to finish it tomorrow.


Not to bad for second time welding.

Also got some concrete anchors Im going to set up in the garage for the bender.

scottd16

All mounted up buying a dye tomorrow and hopefully finishing degree wheel tomorrow as well.

scottd16

here are the stiffeners by ruffstuff.



crappy cell pic but il have others up eventually. install went well just had to cut the ends off since im not going long arm at least not yet. my jcr skid isnt going to work with these sliders so I think il be fabing a new cross member and have tube bend around it to cover the tcase. Hopefully work on that towards end of month. ordered steel yesterday, friday il be picking up 60ft of 1.5"x.120 wall DOM, 12ft of 2x6x.188 rectangular tube for sliders, and 4' of 2" square tube.

scottd16

made my degree wheel and pointer for the bender oh and the handle. First i tried without the extended handle and that pipe was going nowhere!
here is the degree wheel and pointer. Made the degree wheel out of a degree wheel from summit, my dad had it around for something but we made a scan of it and taped it to some plexi glass and then screwed a clear cut out on top if the degree paper.

Here is the handle i made out of 3 pieces of 4.5" plate and 40" of 1.5DOM tube.


Then i calibrated my die!
I did a 90* bend to calibrate the clr, the die list has the clr as 6.00 and mine came out to 6.25 so not to far off.
then my uncle came over and decided to try it out and made a 45* bend.



Bend-tech is still pretty confusing to me starting to figure it out more and more but if anyone is reading this and uses bendtech how exactly do you use it? I dont get the locations, is that the center of the bend? Also when you fill out lengths is A1 the length you will be sticking out of the bender like your mark location when you calibrate the die?

scottd16

haven't been on in a while but since my last post I made some rock sliders out of 2x6 .118 wall tube and 2x2 .188 wall tube. the 2x2 was used to fasten the rectangular tube to the ruff stuff stiffeners.

Not the prettiest weld right their. It was a pretty rough morning..

scottd16

Havnt done much lately due to work and the parents being out of town and now i leave for new mexico for 2 weeks but when i come back im gettin to work! I bought a fuel cell today and yesterday I decided the wb is getting stretched and the body is getting a comp cut

cagedxj707

If I were you id get the gears set professionalyy. That's not somethin u want people foolin with unless your sure they know exactly what there doin.. or ur willing to take that risk. Also if u can't find a locker u could just weld the rear end a lot of people cry about it but I've welded a few rear ends and no problems so far lol.

scottd16

Yea I'm getting it done professionally by a local 4x4 shop, didn't want to risk doing it my self it would suck to waste all that money. I'm debating if I want to get an arb locker or eaton e locker when I do the gears. Next pay check I should have enough to get it all done.

scottd16

finished a bumper today well just about but here it is

The brackets



brackets are made of 6x4 1/4" plate, 2x4x.188 tube, and 2" plate that was sitting around the garage.

The actual bumper is made of 63" long 5x2x.188 tube

Cut a square in to add a receiver I bought from good old harbor freight





placed the bumper up to jeep and tacked it all up to pull off and weld





just need to paint it now


ugly welds on the brackets, took me a bit to get used to new wire.
got a little better

scottd16

painted the bumper today and cut out a spot for the fuel filler and positioned the cell. I'm going to North Carolina for a week and when I get back I'll put the cell in and finally send the 8.8 to get re-geared.

scottd16

So got the cell in couple days ago! Its freaking sweet but i have some problems.
first the fuel gauge isnt working, we took the old sending unit from the pump from the 96 and put it on the 97+ pump it was wiring mess.
I filled it up for first time and next thing you know gas was coming out of the vent line so I need to make sure I have that right. So tomorrow im going to take the pump out and see what thats all about and seal the pump a little better because i smell gas a lot.

modded96xj

lookin good, love the 2 doors i regret selling mine

Malik3404

sweet build man.