That is Our 2004 WJ the day we rolled it. Quick history, it was my brothers DD and gift for making Eagle Scout. He rolled it on some local trails due to having the front swaybar dissconnected. The vehicle was totaled by insurance and repurchased by my brother. We started building in October of 08. After getting the jeep running again. He had cage as well as the necessary safety equipment installed.
When he rolled it the lift was a Teraflex 4in long arm kit with with bilstein 5100 shocks. We ran that lift and shock combo for a season and in Oct of 09 installed fox 2.0 Twin tube bypasses in the rear. In Oct 2010 we added more tube work in the rear and 4in Fox bump stops
along with a hid light bar
We ran it like that for a long time untill I destroyed the front end in June 2012, (the story is below). I attached photos of after we gutted the jeep, Some early cage work and when we replaced the front clip and window
Now the Jeep has a TTB from a bronco in the front riding on 2.5x14 bilstein 9100 bumped and strapped with 15 inches of travel. Front End Swap Custom Swing Steering
The rear frame has cut just in front of the stock coil buckets to make room for 14in coilover shocks and the bypasses from before. Along with the new shocks I added an 8.8 from a bronco with 4.56 gears, a truss and custom upper 3 link mounts. It is strapped at 12in of travel for now. Rear Build
The interior has full cage with two race seats and 5 point harness. I added a 5 speaker stereo and CB. Race Radio, Custom Dash with GPS and Intercom are still to build.
Back from tds. It was a good trip after I got a new fuel tank. I'll explain that later.
The rear suspension worked great. There was a little whine from the gears as they broke in.
My only complaint is my rear is a little stiff. I think it is due to having compression valving in both my shocks and bypasses. It's not too stiff to be uncomfortable but I would like it just a tad softer.Saturday night I started hear a rubbing noise from the rear shocks and I believe my coil was rubbing on my dual rate lock ring. I have it way up right now so the spider does not contact it and I think the coil is flexing into it. I also think it might have something to do with the angle my shocks but I need to look into of. Also to those of you that follow you this, is the fact my coils and bypass shocks are not in line in relation to my axle centerline have anything to do with my stiffness in Tue rear. Here's some pictures.
This is looking from one side of car to other just behind axle centerline.
Back from tds. It was a good trip after I got a new fuel tank. I'll explain that later.
The rear suspension worked great. There was a little whine from the gears as they broke in.
My only complaint is my rear is a little stiff. I think it is due to having compression valving in both my shocks and bypasses. It's not too stiff to be uncomfortable but I would like it just a tad softer.Saturday night I started hear a rubbing noise from the rear shocks and I believe my coil was rubbing on my dual rate lock ring. I have it way up right now so the spider does not contact it and I think the coil is flexing into it. I also think it might have something to do with the angle my shocks but I need to look into of. Also to those of you that follow you this, is the fact my coils and bypass shocks are not in line in relation to my axle centerline have anything to do with my stiffness in Tue rear. Here's some pictures.
This is looking from one side of car to other just behind axle centerline.
try a lighter primary spring, and a little more rebound. that should give you a better, softer ride through the small stuff while allowing you to still take the big stuff.
Shock tuning and working out any little bugs I find. Also adding bigger and better lights. It was broke for most of last season so I want to get out and use it. The next big thing will probably be the dash
Wednesday I'm heading to the el cajon car show to show it off. If your local to San Diego it's a pretty cool event to see.
Been slacking off lately/enjoying time not married to my fab tools. Since march I have dropped springs rates in the rear and noticed improved handling. I still need to revalve my rear shocks, which I know will help a ton. Last time I had it out I was cruised through two whoop sections at 60 plus with no issues. Im happy with it but I know it could do much better.
Figured I would post the rest of the rear end pictures. Before I tore it apart to paint and prep for the up coming season.
I cut the rear frame to make room for clearance of the coilovers and to make everything in the rear fit better
This is the rear end all mocked up with shocks and wheels.
I only added a few pictures because I feel rear axle shock mounts and trusses are a dime a dozen online. I have more pictures if anyone wants to see something specific, I just left them off the save bandwidth (waiting someone chime in and tell me I used the wrong term)
Now that gas tank story I was talking about. So when I first installed the bronco tank I had frame rails to squeeze it between. The tank was a little larger than the hole i was putting it into so i used my BFH and bent the flange that seals the two tank halves flat. When I got out to TDS i was filling it up and noticed fuel leaking from one corner...:thumbdown: After a failed 2am attempt at jb weld I called a junkyard near by who by gods graces had three broncos. When I arrived it appear that the 90 and 92 bronco tanks were gone but the 88 was still there so I had the guy start pulling it out. while this is happening my brother and I went walking around looking for treasures. We ended up finding the tank from the 92 bronco around the corner and underneath another truck. So we grabed that tank and after some cleaning, swaped it for the bad tank I had. It even used the same fuel pump:highfive:. After some :cheers2: and a couple hrs time I had the new tank swapped in and we were on our way. Big thanks to the guys at Desert Truck and Auto Parts for the tank
Realized today I never posted up any of the pictures of my steering from the front end swap back in December.
Ill briefly try to explain the steering problems with TTBs, but if you want a more indepth look at it just google swing steering bronco.
Ok here goes nothing...
With TTB front end each wheel travels on its on arc as the suspension cycles. Much like the need to have your Trac Bar and drag link inline with a solid axle to avoid bump steer, how you set up your steering on TTB has a huge effect on the amount of travel you can achieve and how much your steering wheel moves as your driving down the trail. Ideally you want your tierod to travel in the same arc as your I beam/axle which is hard to do because the beams mount about 12 inches apart from each other and travel independently of each other. To compensate for that people add a swing arm to the inside of the passenger frame and use an idler arm from the pitman arm to the swing to move the tie rod for the drivers side tire. The passenger side tie rod just mounts on the pitman arm and travels to the knuckle. With lots of trial and error or help from someone in the know you can achieve long travel with little to no bump steer.
This picture is a simple drawing of the problems with TTB and steering.
Here is a drawing of how a swinger solves this problem
I built a custom pitman arm based off my stock drop arm, that would locate my passenger tierod about an 1" above the passenger beam pivot. I then fabbed and swinger to have the drivers side tierod mount in the same relative location to the driver beam as for the passenger.
The swinger was pretty simple once I picked a location
Here you can see how everything squeezes in and has room to move
My brother took some hd shots with his new camera. It's currently not starting due to issues with removing evap cartridge so we just left it out front. Hope the quality transfers to the thread.
I guess his camera takes a low light shot a normal shot and a bright shot, then he combines them together. It removes a lot if the shadows. I really love how they look.
Got some work done this weekend and today. Finally got around to attaching my body to my cage
When I first cut my frame I did it all in a few hrs, including rebuilding it so it came out looking like garbage. See below
I decided it was best to cut all the old out, which it turns out was quite hard. Guess while it may of looked like crap it was strong.
This is where I sit now
I plan to box all sides of the frame I have left next to my bump stops then tie everything together all neat and clean. I had to build the top plates today to tie things together before I cut out the old. This is the new upper plate
Look for more pictures in the next few days. Things should go back together better the second time.
I'm running valving in my coilovers and bypasses so once my valve stack passes my compression bypass I get double valving. I'm going to run without my bypasses this weekend and see how it handles them pull my coilover valving to make it more of a coil carrier rather than shock.
Finally getting around to posting the rest of the pictures from when I re did my re frame cut. I made new plates for all sides and then welded everything together making a nice box shape to distribute load.
I also rebuilt my firewall to include window and keep more dust out. I built a frame around everything then made panels to fit into the frames. Then I caulked everything and painted it all to match the cage.
Here is a pictures from the outside which shows the new rear light bar
Just for fun I added some stereo stuff to listen to while crusing around
I also addressed my lighting issues with this new roof rack.
On the bumper I have a 24"led bar and two pods
Some other pictures
Top is headlights, Middle is lights plus led bar and bottom is lights, led and roof.
Rear Lights
Front rock lights
Also Some recent videos of us cutting excess wieght and adding hood pins
Also rock crawing the leftovers obstacle at Tierra Del Sol
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