Lightning Mcjeep

[Willysracer]

Decided to make a post on some upgrades this off season to my family’s racejeep. Been a long time lurker on the old site and this one, never felt I had anything worthy of posting.

Quick background, I have been racing Jeeps with the PNW4WDA since I was in the fifth grade. My wife and I bought our chassis as our wedding gift to each other something like 8 years ago.

Current specs are
Unknown frame that has been cages from the front to the back and heavily modified.

6.0 LQ4 with a cam headers and a tune

Manual turbo 350 and dana 20

I’m assuming a Ford truck dana 60 rear

Full width chev 44 front

Full hydraulic steering

Roughly 32 inch federals with weld ons

Had Chevy tahoe leafs all around and 12 inch FOA smoothies

Independent steering brakes on the front for tight sections on our tracks

Fiberglass flatty body that has been stretched and changed a bunch

We barrel race (similar to horses) and obstacle race them, basically time trials as fast as you can do one lap around an ever changing track. The kids start racing as early as they can hold their head up with a helmet on and we do “lap driving” both of my kids were racing before they were a year old, and my wife races the same Jeep as well.

This off-season my wife decided she was done getting the shit kicked out of her from the leaf springs and it’s time for coil overs.

Anyways some pictures of the Jeep and family enjoying it then onto the cutting.

/attachments/fed027d2-6d59-4ac1-ad0f-f18e0ff5945e-jpeg.636462/?hash=23f63599c71a41a44220b7b79c0e1951

 

[Willysracer]

The frame on the Jeep has a heavy pinch about at the transmission and widens back out around the motor, as far as I can tell only to be able to fit the old standard tri-five Chevy fender well headers that was common on the racers in the 80s and 90s. I hated it so I cut it off at the firewall and am in the process of making something way simpler and cleaner and a fresh start for new suspension.

With all the ugly gone it was time to dig up some steel and build something better.

These have a compound bend to flatten them out and get to the width of the previous pinched frame.

This should be about bump and where the wheelbase will end up. I moved the axle forward due to the yoke liked to occupy the same air space as the aluminum pan on the 6.0 (that cost me a fresh motor the first race out after the ls swap)

This also moves us up into the long wheel base class from medium but 5th place is long is the same as 5th place in medium so I’m not too bummed.

 

[SLOWPOKE693]

Line mountain?

 

[Willysracer]

Also I’m working out of two shipping containers I cut the walls out of and bolted together and off of jackstands but we can’t all have nice shops and lifts.

The wife decided she wasn’t going to have FOAs on her race jeep again so we were able to strike a deal with another racer and we picked up two 2.5X16 fox race series and two 2.5X16 fox performance series shocks and once it’s rolling again I’ll find someone with scales and get a weight to order springs. The kids loved the new parts for the race Jeep.

This last weeks work was get the new frame welded to the old one and all fish plated and then mount the grill as it will set the angle of the grill hoop and the shock hoops, it is angled because race car.

I have brackets from Barnes coming in the next week or so to four link the back and I have an idea to be a bit different on the radius arm front.

 

[Willysracer]

Line mountain?

Nope we are out in Washington we race mostly in Washington but my grandparents tell stories of flat towing all the way to Montana and southern Oregon back in their day in the 70s.

 

[Gregj50!!!!!]

Line mountain?

My guess:
Capital Forest, Olympia WA!!!!!

 

[Willysracer]

My guess:
Capital Forest, Olympia WA!!!!!

We used to race at the park there but we got priced out dog there. We race off of hwy 12 on an 80 acre piece of property in a town called Ethel.

 

[Leadfoot21]

Badass! Thanks for sharing !

 

[Willysracer]

Also this won’t be the fastest build or have ground braking shit happening, I work on it three mornings a week before the kids wake up and I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel too much.

I have always wanted to post a build on the old site, I made a post about 15 years ago when I got my Cherokee to drive to high school basically asking what long arm kit everyone’s running and was told “sell that stock Jeep and get a Miata and stay the fuck off of pirate4x4” and I have never left the forums since and always dreamt of having something worthy of posting.

 

[BustedCrank]

I dig it. Keep us posted

 

[YotaAtieToo]

Always love to see something different

I'm surprised at 16" shocks for something so low. I was told the rule is no more than 9" of down travel for proper shock tuning and spring rate. I can't imagine you are going to have 7-8" of up travel?

 

[Willysracer]

I’m going to try for about 7-8 up, to keep the yoke out of the pan with the leafs I made a track bar set up that slightly pushed the axle to the passenger side when it went up and it basically sat on the air bump on that side, it was extremely rough and hard to drive at times. It also push so much extra load in the drive train I would blow up spider gears and drive lines from the suspension being basically locked down and all the load going through the axle.

The rear had about that much up travel so it felt really weird coming down off jumps the front would only compress a few inches and then your ass would keep going.

The yellow wagon above went linked and coil overs last year and he ended up at 8” up with a 14” shock and he said he wishes he had 16s now but he’s coil over and bypass and doesn’t want to spend all that money again for two more inches of travel.

 

[Opiebennett]

Fricken cool dude. 😎

Subscibed!

 

[Mattygwheeler]

Rad stuff!!

 

[chaplinfj60]

way cool bud. and i was thinking it was two shipping containers welded together. i love it. again thanks for sharing it. i too toss the idea of doing the pass side exhaust around the front to exit on drivers side. cool beans. again super cool.

 

[gt1guy]

Very cool. Keep the updates coming.

 

[Weasel]

good race circuit in Montana, Wyoming still. YORRacing

 

[Willysracer]

A little light on the updates for this week, little girls second birthday, but we did get a big box of stuff from barnes to play with next week.

 

[Willysracer]

Ok got out in the shop this morning to check out all the stuff from Barnes and it looks like a bear got into the packaging, they must have ran out of room in the fed ex truck and just drug it down the road, I’m missing some stuff but got ahold of them so see what we can do about it.

From there I bolted up the coil overs on the back to see if the big ass 2.5 body is gonna fit and it looks like I may have to notch the frame a touch, easy enough.

Using some old shocks mounts (we are the fifth or sixth owners of the Jeep since it was built in the nineties I believe) I have about 2.5 inches of shaft showing at bump but I added a little bump pad when I started this link adventure I can ditch to use more travel if I want.

Then moved onto the front, I’m thinking about out of the box on this one, a radius arm but with both mounts under the axle similar to a rover or later model Land Cruiser but I can’t decide if I like the longer part of the bracket behind the axle or in front.
Behind I get roughly a 32 inch bolt to bolt and in front I can get almost 36 inches.

 

[Willysracer]

Pictures continued.

 

[chaplinfj60]

very nice....

 

[SLOWPOKE693]

Is ground clearance not an issue with that type of racing? If not, longer arms (within reason) are always going to be a better setup IMO.

 

[Willysracer]

Is ground clearance not an issue with that type of racing? If not, longer arms (within reason) are always going to be a better setup IMO.

No ground clearance isn’t an issue it’s a short course style race, worst case is it will plow a berm.

 

[SLOWPOKE693]

No ground clearance isn’t an issue it’s a short course style race, worst case is it will plow a berm.

In that case I would run them under the axle to keep them long.

 

[Willysracer]

Got out there again this morning, cranked up the misfits and the stooges on the stereo, and glued some of the mounts together and got the drivers chassis side stuck to the frame.

That was gonna need some bracing so I dig out a nice rusty piece of 1/4 and scribed some lines.

Then took it to the top of the line vertical band saw to cut them out and grabbed a scrubby wheel to make them weldable.

Made some filler plates and stuck it on for good, tomorrow I’ll make the passenger side match and tack the axle side brackets on.

 

[Murse]

Keep it going. Love these home builds where you use what you have!

 

[Willysracer]

Small update this morning

Was in Vegas last week so only progress was liver damage, sleep deprivation, and cheap tattoos 🤘🏻

Went out in the shop this morning, 25 degrees out this morning at being Western Washington born and raised that was chilly.

Got the rest of my Barnes stuff and welded up what I could on the bench.

And tacked the past front on.

More progress tomorrow morning.

 

[chaplinfj60]

good deal

 

[Willysracer]

This morning was one of the ones where you scratch your head more than cut metal.

Got the pass side front bracket welded up.

Then I collapsed one of the front shocks to work on shock hoops ( I’m hopefully buying link tubing next week then I’ll turn my focus to that but I have ADHD so shocks hoops made sense in my scrambled brain) so I leaned it up where it’s going and did some tape measure work to start roughing those in.

One shitty thing about using second hand tools and parts you have laying around is they don’t always match up. The tubing I found at my dads shop isn’t the same size as the die in my bender but it’s the same as the rest of the cage.

So I decided to try something a little different for shock hoops and make it a notched three piece deal, we will see what the wife thinks of this as it is her favorite vehicle we own and she is a picky Portuguese woman.

That’s just roughed up and clamped in place I’m undecided on whether I like it so I may run to one of my buddys and borrow his bender and make your more normal hoops. Ok time to go in and be a dad for the rest the day. 🤘🏻

 

[Willysracer]

Wife said no way on the hoops, gonna have to run to a buddy’s one of these days and bend some up.