It's been a long time...a real long time...

So this winter has been a crazy one. I seem to be as busy as ever, and really busy with the jeep.
It's finally starting to take the shape I had envisioned when i originally purchased it.
That was before the whole motor thing, for those of you who don't know.

First things first...I built a new garage...




And well why did this project start you may ask....well it's a bit of a soar spot but
it started back at enhanced transmission and well lets just say they were less
than enhancing my jeep. I went to fix what was a collector leak to find a crack,
a stripped out bell housing, bent cross member, and well bolts that were too short.
Ya like glue would hold your bell housing to the transmission. Come on man...Anyone
should be able to figure that out. There is a reason there are grade 8 bolts there, right?

Can you say "Screwed Me"...I can...

Here is what it looked like before all this work.


Soooooo Up Up And UP...
Installing new springs, 2.5" of lift with a little more coming from the Heavy duty shackles.
New spring hangers, swaybar disconnects, and I just couldn't leave out the frame repairing.
oh ya, the frame repairing....
I am becoming a fairly good welder if anything!

You must break it before you build!


Then you need a couple of mad men!



No project would be complete, at least on this jeep, without some major fabrication.
This adventure is no different!

Grind Grind Grind Away!

Grinding 101

Advanced Grinding (Make Art Not War)


Welding was necessary as well, I had to repair the frame for the rear spring hangers.
The nuts welded inside the boxed frame had rusted and broken the bolts off so the
solution, weld new nuts to flat bar, drill big holes in the frame for the nuts, then weld
the whole dame thing to the frame. Damn this worked out really well.

Here is the flat bar with the nuts attached. Fab 101


Welding the flat to the frame.
Thanks dude for the pics, they are sweet!

Welding 101


Bam!
New Nuts :-)

Pow!
Hanger, Shackle, and Spring in place.


The front was different, it was fairly straight forward, everything bolted up, no cutting or fabrication necessary.



Here is a shot of these springs I put in with this kit. I wish I had a shot of the beat ass, sagging old ones for
comparison but anyway trust me, They were wasted!!!


I also installed these fancy little skids to cover the u bolt ends. Keeps them from snagging on whatever you might snag them on. This is cool shit man!


Here is a shot of the front after the lift. It's a big change, I think I have to stand on the bumper to check the oil level now!


Then there is this whole mess...The nerve of some people out there. I mean my doors don't even have locks on them so
why burn a hole in the window to get in...although I guess they could have been trying to get it to go up in flames.


To Be Continued...There is still more work to go on...like fixing the transmission that was
UN-Enhanced by my buddies at Enhanced Transmission.
New cross member in the works...

Great Series from Ken and his Canonette

Ken happened on these in his little range finder camera, They look sweet and old school.
I hope you enjoy these, it's the day we dropped the motor, tranny, and transfer case back in the jeep.

Roasting Weenies on an Open....Fire?

Almost forgot the newest edition to the garage, and the most wonderful winter tool you can own.

Isn't that grand, holy shit i can't believe i worked in the winter before this. all i can say is WOW.

Anyone see Ass Crack?

Well dude and i whipped them out for this plumbing job. Check out those beautiful SS lines and hose clamps.

See um'
but don't let that fool you do you think this was easy? You guessed it, never buy these clamp covers and rely on the cheap hose clamps inside them, we broke every one of them in seconds and then had to buy new ones to finish it off, not to mention we needed to lube them lines to get them to slip on. HAHHAHAHA anywho... here she is and my next post? well it will be all about wiring...I will give you a taste (dude and I cut every wire out of the jeep, including the fuse box....)

perty ain't it.

Thank God for the Sawzall, Now on to Radiators!

So here we go, I bolted up a flex fan had a racing aluminum radiator from Howe and I was excited to weld up some brackets and make this thing fit....WELL it was not that easy. It turns out that I could not get this configuration to work on paper or in my head (big surprise) so I returned all of the mechanical fan and Howe radiator shit for a direct bolt in BeCool Radiator and electric fan setup. Should be easy (Direct Bolt In) right? HAHAHA ya right.

So lets see...here in this picture you can see I had to remove about 3" of sheet metal from the grill to get the radiator pushed into the gill to clear the new motor. Seems when you switch out a v-belt system for a serpentine system you add inches to your block(who knew). This also means that i had to loose the hood safety latch, I hope the outside hooks are sufficient at keeping my hood from warping around my windshield frame on the highway.

Now that it's in and pushed as far forward as possible what could be the next problem? Well let's see, maybe the headlights won't fit because the radiator has been pushed into their space, well if that was your assumption then you should smoke a cigar. So dude and I had to trim the headlight housings to fit around the radiator and now everything fits fine under the hood with room to spare.


Ok now that's out of the way and the lights are in and I'm still hoping there is enough room to plug them in, what could possibly be wrong now? well let's see(look at the photos closely) oh...wait, yes the hood won't close cause the radiator is pushed so far forward that the cap hits he hood support. Well I doubt you guessed that but if you did, I will buy you the cigar. So out came the dremel and I went to work cutting some of the hood away to get it to close.

Me cutting away, thanks dude.

After i was finished doing al the sheet metal cutting I finished all my new cuts off with door trim from the auto shop. Looks nice cuts easy and is self adhesive. Sooooo after all that the radiator is in, the fan fits, the lights fit, the hood closes, and I have to say that aluminum looks damn cool behind the grill.

tahdah!

1, 2, 3, Liiifffftttt.......

Well now it's my turn to update the Jeep blog, I rode Ken's ass long enough about ACchoppers.blogspot.com so here it is dude. Well back in November I think....we humped this big boy up into it's home, my jeep. Here are some beauty shots just before we lifted it in.

If you look hard enough you might just see the creator of this motor in a reflection....now I'm not going to tell you where but somewhere in this string of images.


Maybe here?
Alright now here we go, cramming, shoving, rolling, lifting, lowering, positioning, damn we wrestled this in and eventually won. Thanks to dude, I couldn't have done it alone.

smile

damn just a little more, we really had to shove on this to get the bolt holes to lineup on the motor mounts, we ran out of room on the engine stand and didn't want to have to pull the motor out set it down and rework the stand so we just gave it a shot.

thanks to bud for making this possible....

Ok now that the motor is bolted in and the transmission supported, and drive shafts installed we put the top end back together after lifting the motor in.



Next post will be all about the radiator and how much fun that was.
Enjoy for now, see y'all in the garage soon.