"one piece at a time"

Pulled the drivetrain and set that aside for now. 

Got an early start today. I hoped to make some progress today. On the agenda is removing the twisted and mangled draw bar brace and associated crossmember. I also wanted to removed the Bubba fab bump stops. These were interesting. They consist of a 1.5x3 rectangular tube with a drilled hockey puck acting as the "bump" Funny thing is, the "bumps" were not aligned with the axle. They miss during travel. Still trying to figure that one out. The upper shock mounts needed to go. Bubba took a spring plate and welded it to the top of the frame to create a dual shock set up. No bueno. One of two of the stock shock mounts was damaged. So I just removed everything so I can start from scratch. And finally the rear bumper, crossmember, tire mount situation was removed. While not particularly bad, the attachment to the end of the frame left lots to be desired. I just didn't trust the way it was done. In the event of a good pull or yank, I'm pretty sure the bumper would have left the vehicle. 

Sooooo......I went out to make some progress. But this sure as hell doesn't feel like progress! 

I know. I know. I swore I wasn't going this far. I'll just accept it. 

So I order 4 new Skyjacker springs today. Turns out, after some measuring, this Jeep had 76-86 Jeep CJ front springs on all corners. I briefly considered going to Wrangler leaves, as they served me well. But that would have required even more mods. 

This frame is exactly the frame that I have under the crawler - well bits of it anyway. Stripping this frame down seemed all too familiar. Then I remembered why. 

So here's that frame in the early days of the crawler. In the day it was bumped out to 84 inch wheelbase. It rode on Wrangler springs with buggy leaves at the shackle end. It worked real well back then! You could get any tire 40 inches off the ground before another lifted. And believe it or not, it went down the road okay. Go figure. Oh and the driver was way younger......and thinner. 

Down the road? It's trouble now! 

Speaking of trouble.....

The frame is now officially bare. I found some ugliness with the rear frame rails. So we need to fix/rebuild that. As soon as I have time to score some steel, I'll get it done. 

I removed the rear spring hangers and replaced with with the proper ones. The prior owner did some interesting to make later CJ springs fit in an earlier mount. Bottom line, it was poorly done and needed to go. 

Also needing to go was the "bumpstops" I guess I could commend the effort.....but I won't. You can be the judge.

Got the rear frame cleaned up and largely repaired. Basically i had to remove 8 inches of frame rail and replace it. I used 2x3 1/8 wall rectangular tubing. The profile is similar enough to work quite well. I also squared up the spring bushing bungs. The prior setup was off by nearly a half inch. Some bracing and some patient welding kept things from moving around. I'm pleased with where everything landed. 

I'm debating fish plating the side of the frame at the joint. With the frame overlap on top and the strap on the bottom, I think it's good. But a lot will depend on whether I reconstruct the pintle brace. I'm considering mounting the fuel tank under the Jeep instead of in the passenger compartment. 

The rearmost crossmember will become an air tank, along with the front. I intentionally lent it a bit long. I'll decide the final shape when the tub is mocked into place. Next will be building the rear bumper. I liked the original design. So I'll likely just copy that with some structure updates. 

Anyway....enough words. On to the pictures.   

Yes sir. This Jeep will have on board air. With it's planned trip to the Banks, I'll want it. My goal is to use a York compressor driven by the motor. I used to have a similar set up and it was pretty handy. I'll have air chucks on the front and rear bumpers. 

On the big Jeep the roll cage is the air tank for the OBA system. All the cage joints are drilled to allow air to flow. It was an epic pain in the a** to get all those joints air tight. I won't do that again! 

I added the rear crossmember. I'm toying with the idea of bending up my own fuel tank. We'll see how ambitious I get. 

And finally I swung the axles back under the chassis. The rear axle needed some serious clean up. Also the spring perches were wrong. So I knocked those off so I can reset the pinion angle. 

It was a productive weekend! 

I've waited for years to find a reasonably priced 8274. Anyone who's shopped for these know they are fetching unreasonable money. Hence, I've never owned one. Well, in one day - I acquired TWO! One I will refurbish. The one with the mount works perfectly. Other than a general clean up, it's going on as is! 

This is exactly what I hoped to find for this project! Life is good! 

Congrats on the find(s) ... but I'm worried there are too many "good" things happening lately.

I don't like it, lol...not one bit