The adventures of a Jeep and its driver.
My engine skid has taken quite a beating over the years. It had a well defined frown in the steel. I used the oxy-acetylene torch to heat it up and hammer it as flat as I could get it.
To try and prevent future warpage, I took some angle iron and welded it to the top side of the skid. It won’t interfere with anything, and should keep it a bit flatter for a while.
Once the control arms were back from the powder coater, and before I started reassembly, I wanted to make sure the internal threads were clear. I would imagine there was some surface rust at least in there.
I didn’t have a tap that big, and no way I was going to spend that kind of money, so I diced to make my own thread clearing tool from the old control arm ends. I ground some slots into a decent example of each size, used the torch to heat it up for a heat treat to harden it, and then was able to use it to clear all the internal threads. Worked like a charm.
When I removed one of the the rear shocks, I have to cut the bolt off with a torch. The bolt had rusted the lower bushing and would not come out. This destroyed the rubber bushing.
Unfortunately, it’s not available from the manufacturer. I found a set of bushings from Daystar, but the internal sleeve size was different than the stock bolt. It was too big.
I had recently been given the opportunity to be trained on the lathe at the CWRU thikbox, so I decided to make a bushing as my first real project!
Problem solved.
Dropped all the parts to be powder coated off at 440 Powder Coating and a couple weeks later, I got them back. Everything came out great.
Had the control arms done in black. And he did the wheel rims in Cleveland Indians blue. They were so beat up and bent, it was time for some fresh color.
I spent some time over the last couple weeks getting the rest of the suspension removed from the Jeep. Some of those bolts were too tight to get off. But, as they say, it’s ain’t tight if it’s liquid! I had to use the torch to CUT the bolts off in a couple places. There’s just no way it was coming apart. The bolt itself had seized into the heim joint of the suspension. Burning it out was the only choice.
Removing the joints from the suspension arms proved to be another challenge. Some heat and penetrating oil did the trick. I mounted a vice to the storage rack I built this year and it gave me a nice strong platform to get some big wrenches on the jam nuts and such.
Took advantage of a Black Friday sale and bought Teraflex Big Rotor kits for the front a rear. I never felt like I had as much holding power as I would like when on steep rocks. Plus, this will help when I go to 37″ tires at some point.
I’ve been making some progress getting things apart. Got the wheels off and the Jeep on jack stands. I bought a couple pair of 12 ton jack stands from Harbor Freight to get the Jeep up in the air as high as possible without hitting the garage door or opener.
I also removed the engine skid. It is bent pretty bad. I must have hit that on some rocks a few too many times. But I have a solution for that. Stay tuned!
My wheeling trips are done for the year. I need to get started on the rebuild of the suspension. I’m already replacing all the control arm ends and springs. There are a few other things I want to do as well. But I need to remove the suspension completely from the Jeep. The control arms, track bars and drag link are all going to get media blasted and powder coated.
Time to get this started. The oxy-acetylene torch is already coming in handy. Some of these bolts are super rusted and need a little persuasion with some heat.
I won a gift certificate at Freak Fest this year from JKS. I used it to buy a set of sway bar disconnects. I do like these a lot better than the Rock Krawler. Much easter to remove than having to zip tie them out of the way.
The only thing I ever plugged into the 12v lighter plug in the Jeep was a USB adapter. Occasionally a inverter, but almost never. I ordered this from Amazon and wired it in with a fuse. This one has a voltage meter on it as well.
