My Juggy Build

[Mr Stubs]

Try it and see for yourself!!

Hole saw is ok for short angles where straight tubes intersect. Once you start notching through bends and complicated nodes then cut-off wheel or plasma is the way to go. I don't know any cage builders who use hole saws.

I’m with Eric on this one as well. I bought a notcher and quickly threw it away years ago. Plasma and grinder are my go to as well.

Now the few guys that I know who have notchers, have the nice ones. You know, the ones that cost like $700 or more, and are builders of multiple chassis.

 

[Russellmn]

I had a Baleigh notcher for years, best part about it was doing repeated angles like for x bars in the B pillar. Could set the angle and knock out all four (or 8) tubes quick and easy. But the vast majority of my work was death wheel and flap disks.

 

[Eric]

The next series of posts will focus on tub and fenders. From the beginning of this project the intent has been to maintain the full-bodied Jeep look and that goal has not changed. The original plan was to use a full TJ tub and cut holes where needed. The tub was comp cut to accommodate the rear axle stretch and I sourced GenRight blanks for rear corner armor. Cutting holes for the coilover shocks and roll cage was expected. I then found myself cutting sheet metal along the transmission tunnel to clear the transfer case and lower the seats. When the suspension was test fit it turned out I needed more holes to clear the upper control arms and rear axle upper control arm tabs at full bump. The rear wheel wells were also tight to the seats and I was looking at more cutting there. It was at this point that I had another aha moment: Cut the back of the tub off then build some skins to maintain the full body look!

 

[Eric]

This is all that was left of back half of the tub once the sawzall was done:

These rails were then attached to the corner armor blanks and fitted to the chassis using tabs:

I then built some custom tube fenders:

 

[Eric]

Next step was to fill in the open space formerly occupied by the rear wheel wells and floor. I did some old school “CAD” to mock up new wheel wells which were then constructed from 0.120” thick 5052 aluminum sheet. The 5052 alloy was chosen because of its formability. A rear floor was also constructed from 5052 and then stiffened using 6061 angle bar. I initially made a very cautious attempt to weld the angle bar to the floor but as expected it started warping almost immediately despite lots of clamps. In theory 5052 and 6061 can be welded together but even with the recommended rod the welds immediately cracked upon cooling. Plan b was to borrow a page from the aircraft manufacturing play book and rivet the angle bars to the floor boards. Final result is that it takes about 10 minutes with a power ratchet to strip all the rear skins and fully expose the chassis.

 

[Eric]

Custom front tube fenders to match the rear. The front fenders are attached with two flanges and a tube clamp for easy removal:

 

[Eric]

Every Jeep buggy needs a grille. I started with a stock TJ grille and removed all the backing structure leaving just the front skin. Add some brackets for the headlights and secure it to the grille hoop with tabs. Last photo also shows the Ford Red that will be used to paint the sheet metal.

 

[Eric]

The dash was fabricated from 0.120” thick 5052 aluminum. The gauge set includes tach, oil pressure, voltage, engine temp, transmission temp, and fuel level. And a check engine light.

 

[Eric]

The swing out TJ tailgate that came with the tub was ditched in favor of a drop down CJ tailgate. The original CJ hinges would not work because the body structure they normally bolt to does not exist. I considered hacking up the CJ hinges to make them work but decided it would be cleaner to fab some new hinges from scratch:

 

[SLOWPOKE693]

The removable rear quarters and floor area are

 

[Eric]

The last time I posted to this thread I expected to have been done with the build and wheeling all summer. Nope. Fall is here and I am still fawking around. I’d reached the point in the build where sheet metal work, paint, and wiring were main things left. I don’t find any of the above to be very appealing and it was no problem finding excuses to do something else like go fishing.

I’ll cover wiring and body work later. The next several posts will cover exhaust, reworking one of the motor mounts, skid plates, and driveshafts.

The exhaust was farmed out to my friend Jim Doaks who has been in the custom exhaust business for decades. Jim also runs a monster truck and understands the sport of off-roading well. The system was constructed from 2 ½” mandrel-bent stainless with a Flowmaster muffler. As usual, I was very pleased with Jim's work.

The passenger side header is very close to the starter which makes me nervous. There is barely enough room to fit a heat shield and I’m not a huge fan of wrap after watching a fire that resulted from wrap soaked with steering fluid. I have two friends who are running the exact same headers; one in a TJ and the other in a CJ. Both tell me they have no problems with the starter getting too hot. I'm probably going to hope for the best and deal with it later if necessary.

 

[Eric]

The bolt for the passenger side motor mount ended up a lot closer to the exhaust header than I wanted. For a long time I convinced myself that it was OK. There was maybe 1/8” between the end of the bolt and flange.

Eventually, I could not live with it anymore and pulled the trigger on a do-over.

Much better!

 

[Eric]

My theory on skid plates is that its best if a) they have a little flex and b) you need to think about them as being consumable. Its better to replace a skid plate then build it so bullet proof that the chassis gets tweaked instead. I originally toyed with the idea of a spring-mounted belly skid plate but could not come up with a concept that was reasonably simple to build and thus ended up going with the tried and true stiffened plate design.

The skid plate is mounted with flat head bolts to tabs that were welded to the frame and crossmembers. Flange-head nuts were welded to the tabs. The belly skid plate weighs in at a healthy 85 pounds.

 

[Eric]

I originally did not plan to run an oil pan skid plate. Then I watched a friend crack open his oil pan the first time out with his new buggy and decided it was better to be safe than sorry. Of course I had not given any consideration to fitting an oil pan skid during the build.

After some head scratching, I was able to mount the front of the skid plate to the motor mount tabs using some rectangle section tubing. Its tight to the upper control arm and driveshaft and I had to re-clock the passenger side O2 sensor but it fits.

The biggest challenge was mitering where the tube meets the front of the plate since it’s a compound angle. I ended up modeling the assembly in CAD, measuring the corner lengths of the tube in the model, and then connecting the dots. It mated up perfectly!

 

[D.Dixon]

Some clean work going on here. The cad trick for compound angles is great have used it myself a couple times. What thickness skid material did you go with?

 

[Eric]

Some clean work going on here. The cad trick for compound angles is great have used it myself a couple times. What thickness skid material did you go with?

All 1/4" so that the flat head bolts sit flush. Would have preferred to go thinner, especially for the oil pan skid.

 

[chaplinfj60]

wow nice build wicked nice, i coppied a few part numbers down too, starting my own 5.3 swap this winter and love what your doing.

 

[Eric]

The next couple posts cover driveshafts. The plan was to run a two-piece single-cardan front and a double-cardan rear; both with 1350 u-joints. The axles were setup with pinion flanges and the suspension geometry was configured to accommodate single-cardan front and double-cardan rear. I did not give any further thought to driveshafts and bought front/rear DIY kits that had been sitting on the shelf for a couple years.

Before building the front shaft the first step was to come up with a solution for the carrier bearing and mid shaft. I’ve seen transmissions cracked open due to running rigid mid shafts so I definitely wanted to isolate the t-case/transmission from any abuse taken by the front shaft. I also needed to allow for some misalignment between the carrier bearing and t-case output to clear the transmission shift linkage. The motor/transmission/t-case assembly is mounted on bushings so I also needed to account for motion of the motor assembly. I looked at the “single ended” carrier bearing setups offered by Wide Open Design and Busted Knuckle and the “double ended” setups offered by Branik and JE Reel. The “double ended” setup looked like the way to go since I could incorporate a mid shaft with two u-joints and slip. Out comes the tape measure and this is when I realize the front shaft is going to be a lot shorter than I had imagined. With the carrier bearing & shortest mid shaft available I needed the front shaft to allow a 30 degree angle at full extension. The most I could get from a 1350 flange yoke was 20 degrees and there was no meat available to grind additional clearance. Roh roh.

Time for plan B. In theory, 1410 gear can support a bit over 30 degrees off-the-shelf. But it turns out that not all 1410 components will allow that much flex. I could not find a 1410 flange yoke that would allow more than 20 degrees thus I had to replace the pinion flange with a yoke. The pinion yoke provides enough clearance but I still needed to grind some clearance on the driveshaft slip yoke.

I used 2 ½” diameter x 0.120” wall tube which requires machining a bit of material off the inside of the tube in order to fit the standard weld yokes. I shoot for a “tight” interference fit which enables pressing the yokes into the tube then mounting the shaft on the vehicle and tweaking the runout with some hammer taps. With a little patience I can usually get the runout to less than ten thousands.

 

[Eric]

OK. I suck at build threads. But this is now a wheeling thread. Hopefully I can come back and finish documenting key parts of the build that have not been covered.

Yesterday was the first time out on the trail. Was literally still bolting shit together 5 minutes before loading onto the trailer. Ended up having to tweak the t-case linkage in the staging area and also found that the flange on rear driveshaft double cardan touches the floor pan under load. Makes a gawd awful noise but just barely touches so we ran it.

Ran some black sections of trail and hit a couple easier red obstacles and could not be happier. Aside from the driveshaft interference a couple other issues that I want to address asap are transmission temperature and dialing in the springs.

The transmission gauge was reading in the 240's while crawling. Its a Turbo 350 with a deep pan, 1,600 rpm stall, and Derale stacked plate cooler. The fan kicks on right at the temperature the switch is set at so the gauge must be reading correcty. Looking for ideas to get the temp under control.

The springs I'm running right now are a little stiff. Ride height is about 1.5" higher than design with zero preload. The dual rate stops are fully backed off at the moment. I was a bit surprised it was fairly stable without preload or the dual rate active. I'll be ordering up a couple pairs of springs asap.

 

[SLOWPOKE693]

That turned out unbelievable, you did one hell of a job building that rig. So freakin cool to see it out on the trails, I'm happy for you!!

 

[Wisconsinite]

Awesome build. How loud is your exhaust? I have a similar rig with a similar exhaust, but haven't started it yet.

 

[Eric]

Awesome build. How loud is your exhaust? I have a similar rig with a similar exhaust, but haven't started it yet.

Just right! Tailpipe after the muffler is key.

 

[WaterH]

Wow, I wish I had been subbed during the build. It was fun catching up though. It looks great.

 

[rattle_snake]

bad ass man!
just fill in build from October to now thanks.

 

[rattlewagon]

This is wicked man!

 

[Slander]

Badass!!

 

[rugburn]

Thanks for sharing...detail is amazing

 

[KungFooMASTA]

I saw more of this build in GCC than anywhere else.

 

[Eric]

Went wheeling last weekend at Field & Forest in NH. This was the second "shake down" run. Found some more issues to address but overall it was a huge success. First some photos. My daughter was behind the wheel. She's been driving since she was 10. I was hiking and watching how everything was working.

Turns out that during the first shake down run the transmission was severely overfilled; like about 3 quarts, basically due to impatience on my part. Its looking like running (just for a couple hours) overfilled might have blown out the input shaft seal. Probably going to have to pull the motor to fix that one but its not bad enough to keep from driving right now.

During the first shakedown run the rear springs were 14" 150 over 14" 150 which put me at ride height with zero preload. The dual-rate adjusters were fully backed off so the spring rate was a fairly soft 75 lbs/in. It was more stable than I had expected but still a bit tippy and quite a bit of torque roll upon hard acceleration. Since then I switched to 12" 125 over a 16" 150. The new setup requires about 1.75" preload to achieve ride height. I have the dual-rate stops adjusted all the way down so that the secondary rate (150) kicks in at ride height. Super stable, very little torque roll, and I'm not seeing any need to retrofit a sway bar. In case anybody is wondering why 12" over 16" instead of two 14" springs its because with 5" uptravel a 14" lower spring would block out before full bump.

Some of the other issues that I want to address:

1.) I'm running a simple "check valve" style vent on the fuel cell. I think its from Longacre Racing. Its leaking gas when off camber or during steep climbs/descents. I really don't want to run one of those convoluted and ugly hose systems; especially since this is just a trail rig that will not be running comp courses or anything like that. If anybody has suggestions on a more robust vent valve then lets hear them. I was thinking maybe something that is spring-loaded and will only open up when a certain level of vacuum is present inside the cell.

2.) When the fuel level is about half or less then the motor can get starved after a steep descent. Right now the fuel cell is filled with foam and the pickup tube pointed to the rear corner (external fuel pump). I'm looking to go with a HydraMat and get rid of the foam. That foam creeps me out anyway. Some guys tell me that HydraMats are the shit and others tell me they also break down like the foam. I'm looking for something I can install and forget about for 10 years. Any comments?

3.) Twice the catch can filled and dumped oil into the manifold. Once was during an extended off-camber maneuver and the second time was a steep climb that took a few attempts. I am very surprised by this. I have a hose running from the "dirty" (driver) side valve cover to a firewall-mounted catch can then a hose running from the catch can to manifold vacuum with an inline pcv valve. On the "clean" (passenger) side I have hose that routes metered air from after the throttle body into the valve cover. The motor is a 2001 LM7 (5.3) with LS1 intake. I think this is a very common pcv configuration and wonder if part of the issue is higher than normal blow-by because its a fresh build? Most of the setup is visible in the photo below. Again, comments are welcomed.

 

[Opiebennett]

1. 3 sides and down is proven and cheap

2. Your instincts are correct- dump the foam and get the hydramat

3. Disconnect all PCV hoses from the intake, just vent to atmosphere. Yes, you lose the clean air / dirty air cycle through the valve covers, but venting to atmosphere (via the catch can) takes care of the pressure buildup and won't ever put oil into your intake. And your not trying to get 6000 miles between oil changes with a wheeler.

My thoughts anyhow. Great looking car - and good on ya for getting the daughter out to play too.