DJ's TJ: Low and Slow

[Dev]

Wuddup! My name's DJ and this is my TJ.

My jeep is currently under the knife. I originally wanted to film this whole build process and post it all over Youtube but I realized the project would never get done with the cinematic shooting style that I'm into. I do some shooting and picture editing on my own time so I figured a jeep forum would be a good place to share. I'd like to keep this thread very pic heavy so sit back and grab a beer, but not that light stuff.

A little background about me I pretty much grew up in the garage working on whatever my dad had my brother and I into. I started riding dirt bikes at 5 and dabbled in some racing in my teens. At one point we were going to the desert every weekend to ride and Johnson Valley turned into our second home. We'd always see the crawlers around the KOH trails but rock crawling was something we haven't been exposed to yet. After high school I sold my bike because we weren't riding much and got into other hobbies. After a few years we talked about getting back out there but my mom wasn't too keen on it. After some thinking, and most importantly my moms approval for my dad, we decided to get our own Jeeps and get into the whole rock crawling thing we've always seen from the sidelines. After a ton of research we knew we wanted to get TJ's. We didn't know anything about building our own suspension or axle swaps but we wanted something with enough beef to handle 35s and a weekend in Big Bear so the Rubicon model it was. We both searched all over for the perfect Rubicon in local SoCal. My dad decided on an '03 that has definitely seen some dunes but it was a good platform. And I ended up finding an '03 online at a dealership for a bitchin price but there was a problem. It was in South Carolina. It had 85k miles, was on 35s with a body lift, rough country lift, had armor, fenders and the interior was bedlined. I called the dealership and in one call and just the word from a stranger with a thick accent I decided to do it. BAM! Bought it for $12k and had a third party ship it to me. This same jeep in California would have been at least another $5k. When it arrived (Oct 1st, 2016) I was pretty stoked. It was in great shape and rust free. It didn't take long before I replaced the giant bumper, body lift and tires. We took our new jeeps on a few wheeling trips and from there we were HOOKED!

 

[Dev]

I quickly realized that 35s and factory length control arms were limiting me big time so in mid 2017 I bought the Clayton 3 link/4link long arm kit. This came with front and rear upper and lower long arms (square tube) with Johnny joints, rear truss, control arm mounts at the axle and frame, springs and Bilstein 5100s. While I was doing all of this I also decided to regear both axles to 5.13s, truss, sleeve and gusset the front axle, build a trans crossmember, cut and straighten the rear upper spring perches, and replace the steering with the Currie currectlynk kit. I also bought a set of very lightly used 37" Maxxis Creepy Crawlers. My dad helped me with the regear after he just did his and I did everything else. For some reason I only have two pics from the build, it looks like all of my photos are gone from having different phones over the years.

After this giant facelift I was super impressed with how the jeep performed. The gearing felt much better, everything felt much more stable, it flexed a lot more. We were finally able to (comfortably) wheel the harder trails in Big Bear.

 

[Dev]

In 2019 I built my own cage and installed suspension seats and harnesses. When it comes to installing 4 or 5 point harnesses there's a right and wrong way to do it. A harness bar directly behind the shoulders is a must. Too many people mount their harnesses either to the floor of the tub or on a harness bar that's too low. In a large frontal impact that harness will compress your spine and easily break your back. If the harness bar is mounted too high then you'll move upward in a flop or rollover. With that said It's extremely important to mount your seats to your cage which your harness bar is connected to. If your seat is just mounted to your cab then your harness and seat can move independently from each other. You can see how that can turn very ugly in some type of impact. Mounting your seats to your cage comes with other benefits too like if you roll so hard that your cage breaks through your tub then your cage won't sandwich you to your death. There's a reason why race cars are built a certain way and just like everything else, we have to learn that rules are written in blood.

I picked up some heated PRP suspension seats from a KOH winner that came out of his Ultra 4 buggy. They might be considered small size but I'm a smaller guy so these fit me insanely well. I definitely can't move side to side in them while taking a turn. I also picked up a JD2 model 3 bender and some 1.75x.120 DOM and got to work. I wanted to stay away from stantions for the A pillar that all of these companies sell. They'd probably hold up fine in a roller over but since these legs would hold up the entire A pillar and intersecting tubes plus tie into my seat mounts I decided to route the tubes through the dash, just behind the upper vents. To do this I had to heat up the plastic vent ducts to be pliable enough to pull them over using a ratchet strap to the B pillar until they cooled down enough to stay in place. Overall it was pretty easy to do. The vents definitely still work but they don't quite flow like factory. Good enough or me.

I did some research on retaining the factory B pillar and just building off of it. Rigs that have used and tested it say as long as the cage is designed correctly then the B pillar is more than fine to build off of so I decided to leave it. I built a tube between the bottom of each side of the A pillar as a starting point. Once the seats were where I wanted them I connected the A and B pillar just above the tub and placed some tube and tabs for the seats. Got the harness bar where I wanted it and tied that into the lower A pillar tube. I cut off the factory windshield mounts and welded them to the upper DOM tubes. A couple of tubes over and under the dash, tabs to sandwich the tub, and some windshield bracing and this front cage is done for now. I decided not to run additional tubes from the A to B pillars besides the single tube in the middle for now. I can always add those later. At some point I'll also place a V off the center of the harness bar to the top of the A pillar to create an X. I held off from doing that and building my C pillar because I wasn't sure if I'm going to cut my rear inner tub fenders at some point.

 

[Dev]

Alright I think it's time to get everyone caught up on this..
Eventually my dad converted his TJ into a TJ6 by stretching the body and frame 15" and swapped his axles to a kingpin 60 and 14 bolt. I couldn't let that slide so a ton swap was in my near future. The plan was to start acquiring most of the expensive parts so there wouldn't be much down time on the swap. At this point I had a lot of experience with fab work so I decided on junkyard axles.

I picked up a Corporate 14B from a guy on craigslist that was already shaved and had a full Ballistic Fab truss kit. The truss kit was all 3/8" plate and had a piece that tied the truss into the removable pinion carrier and diff cover bolted to the top of the truss. A little overkill for my 4.0 but definitely piece of mind it'll hold up for whatever I'll put it through.
For the front axle I somehow found the unicorn of axles from another craigslist ad. an '85-91.5 Ford high pinion kingpin dana 60 for $1200! At that time that price was unheard of. Right now these can't be found for less than $2k, at least here locally. This is the same axle combo that my dad has. These days this axle combo is considered the "oldschool" way of doing things. Everyone now is using '05 and up superduty 60s. I'm just glad I don't have to eff with balljoints on this jeep again.

We went to an offroad expo and I grabbed a few deals I couldn't pass up. I wanted a selectable locker in the rear because the jeep will see some street use. IMO the only selectable lockers good enough for big boy tires are the ARB air locker and the Eaton E locker and I wasn't a fan of the E locker. I picked up an ARB which included a free ARB locker compressor.
For the front I decided to take my dads advice so we stopped by the Detroit booth and got myself a Detroit locker for the dana 60 for a pretty good deal. This replaces the carrier completely unlike the lunchbox locker that my dad went with. They say the lunchbox isn't rated for 40s but he's been running 40s on his locker for a little while now with no issues.. yet .
While we were there I also picked up some 5.38 gears and master install kits for both axles. Down the line I also got some Ballistic Fab high steer arms, bronze bushings to replace the KP springs, a front Barnes4wd truss and Ballistic's front shave kit.

At that point I was ready to start building these axles! I won't bore you with all of that, we all know how much time it takes to cut and grind down existing brackets.

Let's talk about this front shave for a second. Here's a link to the kit: https://www.ballisticfabrication.com/products/dana-60-shave-kit . This kit gains you 1" of ground clearance. At the time it was black friday and I needed a diff cover so I decided to get it. Not many people shave a front dana 60 but it's the same process as doing any other axle shave. Unfortunately I can't find all my pics of the process but it's simple. The most important part of doing any shave IMO is welding the two dissimilar metals together properly. I've used regular steel .035 mig wire in the past on my dads 14 bolt shave but with this being the hard to find unicorn of axles I didn't want to take a chance cracking the housing. I used this stick rod called Supermissileweld. It's very expensive for what it is but it's high nickel based which is supposed to wet the mild steel into the cast steel much better. For this job I called my brother because he's the licensed stick welder in the family. After burning in my shave kit I also had him weld the tubes to the housings on both axles. The 14b is notorious for spinning tubes even on factory style trucks. And why not just do both axles right? Looking back at it I maaybe would have just used steel wire in the mig process because after the cost of all the fancy stick rod and the fancy bottle of tequila as my brothers thank you gift it was pretty rough.

So here are some pics of the axles, not completely built, but good enough to start tearing the jeep apart. I'll get into that in the next post. BTW we're still not up to date on this build so keep checking back to see where I am

 

[Dev]

While getting my axles and other parts ready for the swap we took the jeeps out to JV. This trip was badass! We drove there in the jeeps loaded to the bone in camping gear, wheeled some gnarly trails with no significant trail damage and drove home.

 

[Dev]

After the JV trip I realized one of my rear shock shafts was really bent. After cycling the suspension it was obvious why. With the upper shock mounts in the factory location the shock isn't able to cycle correctly. So I cut off the axle shock mounts and cut out the frame to outboard the shocks. I replaced the bilstein 5100s with some rubicon express shocks I had laying in the garage. I fabbed up some shock mounts at the axle side and boxed in some 1/4" plate on the frame. This allowed way more articulation and the shocks were much happier as the axle cycled. Then it was off to Cleghorn for a shakedown run!

That trail run went well, BUT... I wasn't happy.
My springs were loud during articulation, I had gnarly deathwobble at certain speeds, I couldn't hear out of my left ear because of my small magnaflow muffler. All of these little things had always been there but now that I had a full set of 40s, beadlocks and some one ton axles at home that were about ready to be installed I couldn't wait any longer. I outboarded my rear shocks in hopes to wheel a little longer but it was this trip that made me realize it's time...

 

[Dev]

And so the swap begins.
Here are some shots of my 40s and Allied beadlocks being used as mockup before I pull the jeep into the garage one last time. This was about where I wanted the axles to sit when it was all done. I knew a front stretch that far was a hard goal to set for myself without going full hydro but I wanted to see if it could be done. The goal was to stretch the front to around 8" and the rear to15"

Btw I bought these 4 used tires off a guy from craigslist for $300. They'll be fine for now but I'll have to upgrade sometime down the line. These Allied beadlocks I bought off my dad when he switched to aluminum beadlocks.

 

[Dev]

Ok so here are the plans for the build!

I want to keep this jeep California "somewhat legal" so it needs to pass smog, including inspection at a STAR station. And I'd like to keep it comfortable and safe enough to drive on the street to and from trails if need be. This won't be a trailer queened buggy by any means. Let's go over what this means.
-Cannot do full hydro.
-Need to keep the fenders. I don't want full width fenders but I'll see what I can get away with.
-Need to keep the 4.0 (I have plans to stroke it in the future)
-Keeping the body independent from the frame (using bushings). To keep things comfortable I won't hard mount my cage to the frame.
-Keeping Johnny Joints on my links for vibration dampening.
-Keeping my CATs. Can't get smogged with a CAT delete.
-FUEL? Here's the tough one. know I need a different tank to get the stretch I want out of the rear. I originally planned on getting a Genright Alien tank but here's the kicker. No Genright fuel tank is CARB legal. If you have an aftermarket Genright tank please chime in on how your smog inspection goes. I understand they bolt into the factory (area) but technically your smog inspector can nail you on that. Because of this I just said eff it and I got a Motobilt 15g fuel cell that sits behind the rear seat. Yes, it's very obvious this isn't allowed but if the Genright tanks aren't either then I'd rather go this route and get the actual stretch I want out of it. I'll probably keep it hidden, we'll see what happens when we get there.

And the main goal of this entire build is to keep it loooooow. All the rage these days are low COG rigs and it makes a lot of sense. It's amazing what they're capable of with the right link geometry. There will be a lot frame work and body cutting involved. I'd also like to aim for a wheelbase of around 110-112".

So with all of that in mind I wanted to start this build right by raising the body. If the body is raised then the frame sits low. If the frame sits low then the lower link geometry is muuuch better. (I'll be posting link geometry numbers here in bit.) And if the body is high then the trans and transfer case can be raised for a flat belly. To the raise the body I used Swag Offroad's Big Bertha body mounts : https://www.swagoffroad.com/products/swag-bertha-tj-wrangler-high-clearance-body-mount-skid . I tig welded them and mounted them using my existing bushings. This allowed me to raise the body around 1".

 

[Dev]

With the body raised I was able to raise the trans and transfer case 1.75" by making new trans crossmember tabs. These may or may not be permanent. Once the axle swap is done I'll worry about exact placement of this crossmember to be as flat as possible and clear the exhaust.

 

[Rec_Rider]

I like your write-ups Dev. You took a lot more pics than I remembered. You have a few from the pre-TJ6 days too which is cool. I'll need to update my profile pic once you have yours back on the trail. I know you have a bit to do for the Rubicon trip we have later this year as I have a bit to do myself. I think you'll be in good shape. Keep up the great work!

 

[Dev]

I like your write-ups Dev. You took a lot more pics than I remembered. You have a few from the pre-TJ6 days too which is cool. I'll need to update my profile pic once you have yours back on the trail. I know you have a bit to do for the Rubicon trip we have later this year as I have a bit to do myself. I think you'll be in good shape. Keep up the great work!

I must not have enough posts under my belt on here to react to your message. You should post more pics on your build thread! Let everyone know what you plan on changing before the Rubicon

 

[Dev]

Now that the body is raised an inch and the drivetrain is about where I want it it was time to rest it on jack stands and start the teardown.

I figured the front end would be the determining factor of how low I'd be able to get the jeep to sit so I backed her into the garage and started removing the front axle.

I placed my dana 60 under it to get a feel for where it would live the rest of its life and damn does she look good!

A little bit of garage cleanup

This was the time I had to step up to the plate and cut the frame of the precious jeep I've grown to love. The frame section in front of the front body mounts are designed with multi compound bends to make room for the coil springs to sit on the narrow dana 44s. After the coil springs the frame moves outward and down to hold the grill and bumper in place. I knew I wanted to move on from coil springs and shocks to something that packages smaller to make room for my front stretch and the giant axle to sit as high as possible for my low COG goal. To do it right this meant I had to get rid of this section entirely. I wanted to cut the frame about 1' in front of the body mounts where they sweep up. From there I could build my frame section flat and straight to the front bumper with some minor cutting to the grill. Motobilt makes a front frame half kit that does exactly this, but it dovetails in the front slightly which allows no room for a steering box. Because I wasn't going full hydro this wasn't an option for me.

Well, after sitting there, taking measurements, sipping on some freedom water I slipped a little with the sawzall and cut more than I originally planned. I cut the front frame section off directly in front of my body mounts. Ever since I installed my front 3 link my lower links have always been one of my limiting factors of up travel. During full bump my links would almost contact my frame because my frame link mounts were so far back. I definitely didn't want to run links that were any shorter than they were, and I didn't want to move my link mounts super far forward to hinder my link geometry so I just took the frame limitation out of the equation. It was obvious my link would still contact the corner of the frame right at my cut but I really didn't want to relocate my body mount. And at that point I couldn't see what my next limiting factor would be. There was no turning back now!

Once the engine and grill were supported and the frame was out I could place my axle under the jeep again to see where it would sit. Before I started this whole thing I knew the radiator would be in the way because of how low it sits so I removed that for now. With the rad out of the way I placed the axle where I thought it would work. My grill was kind of limiting me on how far I could move the axle forward. I was also thinking about placement of the steering box but I had an idea for that. I ended up settling on this general area. The truss sits Just in front of the engine and behind the grill. With my high steer arms I really wanted utilize what they can do so the plan was to mount the tie rod on top of the arm which would hopefully clear the bottom of my grill at full bump. Ultimately I knew I couldn't get the stretch I really wanted out of this axle unless I cut the hell out of the grill but at that time it wasn't something I was willing to do. Also, if I wasn't aiming for such a low ride height then this axle could've sat directly under the grill allowing the stretch I originally intended.

With a general idea of where the axle would sit it was time to build this front frame section..

 

[Dev]

The first thing I did was cut the exhaust in an open area that was easy to fit a V-band onto in the future and this gave me room to work on my frame.

I placed my Poison Spyder bumper in front of the grill to give me an idea of where I want the height of the bumper to be. I wanted the bumper to sit nice and high out of the way of the steering and the rocks.

Once I figured out the final placement of the bumper I cut out the grill to clear the frame rails. I marked it, drilled pilot holes and used a hole saw to get the round edges. For the frame rails I used 2x4" 3/16" wall square tubing.

With the grill clearanced for the frame rails I cut my horizontal rails, leaving a good amount of extra material to fine tune in front of the grill.

I then built the sections that tie into the existing frame rails. I definitely planned to miter cut BOTH of the square tubes to mate to each other smoothly but I was on a roll and got a little carried away. I then TIG welded them together and welded in a piece on each bottom side to fill in my mistake.

 

[Dev]

Now for the secret weapon..

We all know how low the Saginaw steering gear sits on our jeeps. It's placed very far forward and below the bumper. If you want to stretch the front axle then you need to move it even further forward which means your bumper sits waaay in front of the jeep hindering your approach angle. What if you use an Astro van box? Sure it makes the pitman arm face forward but it still needs to sit low unless you cut a giant hole in the grill to run your steering shaft. Whats the solution? A forward facing steering box out of a 1978 For Bronco which mounts to the outside of the frame. It's also known as the 4x4x2 steering box because this a big upgrade for the early bronco 2wd guys. I got this idea from the Peck brothers. This does a few things. It locates your steering box behind the grill making it easy to work with your factory steering shaft. And because it mount to the outside of your frame your drag link becomes much longer, improving your steering geometry and your pitman arm joint angle.
Unfortunately what I found after going this route was I had to mount my track bar on the inside of the frame. This makes your track bar shorter than your drag link which makes things a little tough to get right if you're worried about bump steer. I'll get into that in a later post. But that's my particular rig, if you wanted to use one of these boxes I'm sure you can find a way to make it work for you.
If you want a steering box that mounts to the inside of the frame so your trac bar mounts to the outside then you can run a JK box. I think one of the Peck brothers used one of those on another build.

So I was set on the idea of this late bronco steering box. I contacted BlueTop Steering boxes (The brother of RedTop) to order one of these. They offer hydro assist porting along with a warranty on top of that. The issue is you need to pay a lot of your hard-earned freedom bucks to get one if you don't have send in a core. So off to the junkyard to find a core to send in.
I had to drive pretty far to find an old Ford that still had a box in it. Here's the truck I pulled it from. It was a 1977 F-250.

And of course, the truck I'm pulling from had a giant rats nest. Yes, it's buried under all of that poop.

I contacted BlueTop and was told the truck I pulled it from was a 2wd and I needed one out of a 4wd. Womp! Looking back it now it's pretty obvious it's a different steering box. The one I pulled sat inside the frame. I haven't seen one in person before I pulled that one so my mistake. Since these boxes were so hard to find and BlueTop didn't have any on hand I just ordered a reman box from Lares and returned the one I pulled to the nearest yard.

Here's the reman box that showed up.

Continuing on the frame work...
From what I remember I think I might have raised my engine about a half inch or so. I wanted to keep the engine low to keep the COG low. But keep it high enough to maintain a good rear driveline angle. Once the engine was where I wanted it it was time to build some custom motor mounts. I picked up some poly bushings for this. I reused the factory mounts on the engine side. I cut my own length of DOM tube that the bushings slide into so that it's the ight length for the factory engine mounts. For the internal bushing sleeve no one really sells these in different lengths so I jut used 3/4"x.120" wall tubing which is perfect for a 1/2" bolt. BTW this is the same stuff they sell you cut to length when you buy a bushing set.
Once the bushings were mounted onto the engine I used some 1.75" DOM tube off of the frame rails and used more tube to gusset that tube in.

Before I welded the tubes in I welded some 3/16" plate to the inside of the frame rails. This acts as a big fish plate to tie the two pieces of square tubing together and acts as a big distribution plate for the weight of the engine to sit onto. Also it's important to note when building fish plates you must round the edges to prevent stress cracks. The bigger and rounder the better

Added some Barnes4wd 1/4" gussets to the outside of the frame and built my own gussets to tie into the original frame.

Here are the frame rails after paint. I used Steel-it grey. For anyone that doesn't know, Steel-it contains stainless steel flakes which makes this paint extremely durable to scratching and the elements. It also makes it super easy to weld onto directly. It's about $36 a can but well worth it IMO.

 

[Rec_Rider]

I love that you aren't afraid of customizing to fit your needs. Is it the easiest or quickest way, obviously not but can produce a great rig. I'm looking forward to the finished product.

 

[NashvilleTJ]

That’s quite the build so far. Nice work.

 

[Dev]

That’s quite the build so far. Nice work.

Thank you sir, I appreciate your interest!

 

[Dev]

Since 2x4 square tube is a little narrower than the TJ frame tube I butted them flush to the outside and used a couple of plates on the inside. I made the 1/4" inside plate as long as possible before it contacted the slight bend in the factory frame just behind the front body mount. Then I drilled a big hole in the frame to tie the two together. The outside of the frame was also welded at the butt joint before I welded my fish plate on. Overall this front frame section is very structural.

Not the best picture below. Maybe I'll post more later on.

Of course the only pictures I have are of the passenger side with the uglier welds..

Ok at this point I was ready to tackle the front bumper and front crossmember. With the frame rails in the perfect spot to make the bumper able to be bolted on and removable, the more I looked at it the more I didn't like it. My bull bar stuck out a lot more than I liked but I could've lived with it. The issue was when I mocked up my winch in place. Because the winch sits on TOP of the bumper it blocked most of my grill. I saw this as a potential problem before I built my frame rails but now that everything's in place I wasn't really stoked on it. I thought about cutting out the top plate of the bumper and fabbing up a bottom plate for the winch to mount to. But this would've meant the bumper would have to stick way out in front because my crossmember would have to sit behind it so that was a no go.
Once I realized the big issue I was dealing with was trying to fit a crossmember on this frame to accommodate a removable bumper, I decided to take the "removable" part out of it. If I built a bumper INTO the frame then the whole thing will be a crossmember. Problem solved! And the project started to snowball..
This was about the time I discovered CAD work on Fusion 360. I made a couple rough designs of bumpers to see what different shapes would look good. Once I settled on a basic idea I started building it. Using all 3/16", I started with a bottom plate that the winch would sit on. Then I boxed it in with a plate behind it for strength and cut a hole in the passenger side for a winch cable pass-through.

By the way, this is a HOSS fairlead from Brenan's Garage link here: https://brennans-garage.com/products/winch-hoss-hawse-fairlead . This fairlead is beveled on the backside which prevents the cable from fraying as it enters. I think it's a genius idea that other companies will start to catch onto. You can read more about it on his site but I think this what ultimately allows me to mount my fairlead so close to the winch and keep such a tight approach angle.

I ordered these shackle mounts and cut them to fit inside the bumper channels. These were welded inside before I welded them to the top plate so they will be plenty strong enough to pull the jeep from.

Since I was in here I built a grill hoop to protect the radiator in case of a rollover. I kept it nice and tight to the grill but just far out enough to open the hood easily.

Here it is after the top plate installed and everything complete.

Really happy about this approach angle!

 

[NashvilleTJ]

Beautiful work, Dude.

 

[Rec_Rider]

I'm fortunate enough to have sons that can weld. If it's something simple I'll do it myself but it's important or visible I have Dev or his brother to do it. You can see why.