yet another V8 stretched one ton TJ build (copied from my build thread on pirate4x4)

#1
Well I've been working on this project for a a few months and have been meaning to make a build thread but haven't gotten to it until now. So I will apologize for the historical narrative up front.

I picked up a 98 TJ se last November for a deal I couldn't resist. WHen I bought the jeep is conisisted of a 2.5, ax5, 231 combo with stock d30/d35 and no top, doors, back seat and carpet. Upgrades already on the jeep were a 4 inch skycrapper lift, 4.0L throtle body and spacer, CAI, electric cooling fan, and sitting on a set of almost new 35" buckshot mudders on a set of AR 15x12 wheels (yes thats right, 15x12s).

First changes to the TJ consisted of selling the wheels and tires and sticking on the stock tires from my jk unlimited rubi with a set of spydertrax wheel adapters. Soon I scored a set of half doors with uppers, factory soft top frame, factory rear seat with brackets (had to for the kiddo), and straighten out the boogered up stereo set up. I dd'ed this for awhile as I managed to score other parts for deals. First deal consisted of a used genright TJ ext tank, which was nice going from 15 gal to 19.5 gal. Still dd'ed it for while as I picked up the following:

Set of CUCV tons, which I managed to find a guy that I swapped the front 60 for a 79 hp60 (yes thats right swapped).
5.13s, master install kits, chromo inners and outers along with 35 spline warn hubs for the front, kingpin rebuild kits, ballistic fab diff covers, 14 bolt truss and diff cover tie in, rear coil brackets, pinion guard, rear disc brakes thanks to gubni, hi steer arms, tnt hp60 truss with coil buckets, and all the stuff to complete the hi steer.

While I was putting all of the axle stuff together I stumbled upon a rolled 98 ZJ with a good 5.2 and trans. Bought the whole truck, kept the harness, motor, and trans and then parted out the rest.

So then I pulled the stock drive line, sold it and swapped in the 5.2, 44re, and then decided to go with a flipped d300. Ended up that the d300 had a small crack in the case (explains why I got it for almost nothing) so I decided to swap in a stak d300 RAC with twin sticks along with a jb conversions 4 to 1 kit.



I got the drivetrain swapped in with some help and parts from evan at backwoods offroad and a 98 ram 1500 pcm from a local junk yard. Got the harnesses blended and the driveline running like a champ. Took it easy as the d35 was still under the jeep and i knew that was a time bomb.



So this leads me to where I am today:

Current specs:

98 TJ
5.2/44re/stak d300 w/ twin sticks
stock axles
jk rubi take offs
genright ext tank
4" skycrapper lift with daystar rear adjustable uppers
daystar 1" body lift
teraflex belly-up skid
btf front bumper and winch plate
warn xd9000

parts to hang:

79 hp60, 5.13s, spartan locker, set up for hi steer
CUCV 14 bolt, 5.13s, detroit, rear discs
genright front and rear suspension builders kits
genright rear coil relocators and rear shock mounts
H2 take offs (with stock rollers)

Plan is to go with mt/r foodees, but might opt for 42's once complete. I will be reusing the 4" skycrapper springs for the time being, and will be adding genright stretch corners with high line tube fenders, strecth rockers, and high line front tube fenders.

The build will be streetable but will mainly be for wheeling.

pics to follow
 
#2
So I started Friday night with pulling the stock rearend



Then proceeded with cutting off all of the stock brackets off of the frame. Called it a night after that then rolled the 14 bolt under and started mocking the links in the next day.



 
#4
Finally got around to cycling the suspension today to check for clearances and binding.











So far it doesn't seem like there are going to be any issues with the rear, now I just have to decide on shock lengths and bump stops.
 
#5
so got a little work done over the past 2 days. Got the new stretch corners and one of the rockers hung. Still have to cut the corners for the foodees and hang the hiline tube flares.





 
#6
Got a little more work done but progress has been slowed by crappy weather.

Got the rear shock mounts burned in and am currently debating on whether to keep the coils and add a pair of 15" BBCS or go with a deal I found for a set of used 14" 2.0 fox air shocks. I'm not in the know on the air shocks, so I would be blazing new territory if I go that route.



Also changed plans on the front hilines fenders. I was going to go with the genright fenders but ended up going with the rokmen hilines with the 3 inch flare and complete inners after I got a sweet deal from Jeff. Deciding factor was mainly the ability to not have to hack up my inners, like I did on a previous TJ with poison syder fenders. Will post up pics once I start putting those together once they get here next week.
 
#7
ok, haven't updated this in awhile so here is what is going on.

As previously stated I switched plans and went with the rokmen hilines with flares. I started messing around with the fenders as I was getting angry with the thought of having to modify my exhaust . . . again. After I got the cat back figured out after the exhaust shop redid my y pipe for the 3rd time, now it looks like I am going to have to move the cat about and inch or so further awat from the frame rail due to contact with the gussets for the passenger control arm mount.

So here is how the fenders came out:









All I have to say is that from the point of tacking the fenders to fully completing the final welding goes extremely fast. There was no issues with any of the assembly or fitment.

Also I managed to pick this hs9500i for a deal because it needed a new end housing. So needless to say after a good cleaning, moly coating, and end housing I have another winch for the TJ.



Now I'm considering moving the xd9000 to the rear and putting the hs9500i on the front. Or I guess another option would be switching one the hs9500i for the 9.5xp on the front of my JK.

So things left to do:

Get this pig under the front



mock all of the links, trac bar, and steering

finish the passenger side front fender

drill, tap, and rebuild a zj v8 steering box so I can have hydro assist

mount the genright rear hi fenders

get the cage in

figure out the lower harness mounts

oh . . . and buy some tires . . .
 
#8
Well haven't gotten a lot done due to it snow, yes it does snow on occasion in SC, and rain that has left my backyard looking like a mud hole. Oh how I miss living in CO and my 2.5 car garage.

So I've been collecting more parts as the deals arise. So I managed to score a PSC box and hydro assist cylinder from another board member:



Also managed to score 5 each 40/13.5/17 brand new treps and got them mounted on my H2s thanks to Brandon at Rides of Conover, NC:



Hopefully the weather will get better so I can get the $hitty dryrotted CUCV rollers off of the heep, get the foodees on, and finish hanging the hp60.
 
#9
Got a little work done today before, the crappy weather hits again, thanks to the help of two friends. Got the hp60 mocked, brackets tacked on, links measured and cut, inserts tacked on links, and finally got the jeep back on the springs with the help of a ratchet strap track bar. Wheel base is sitting at 97.5 right now with no front stretch and on 4" springs with ACOSs set at no lift. I should be able to get the additional 2.5 out of the front with the new frame side trac bar mount and the genright twisted pitman arm. I'm kind of maxed out on rear stretch with the 14 bolt and the genright ext tank but might end up switching to the comp tank if I find a buyer for the ext.

Here is how she is sitting as of late this afternoon.





Also amoungst the deals I've found lately was a miller spectrum xtreme 375 plasma cutter that I traded a 300 win mag for; the plasma was brand new, so I was pretty happy with myself.

Next will be mocking the track bar, sterring, and hydro assist along with cutting the rear corners and mounting the hilined rear tube flares. Also sound be having the man in the brown truck deliver my cage and frond leds from poison spyder and a swayloc dual rate front swaybar that I scored from another board member.

Only only other big end piece to get/fab is the rear bumper and tire carrier. I'm leaning towards the genright rear bumper but am also on the look out for something along the genright lights but also has the option to mount a rear winch.

Also I'm considering upgrading my lincoln welder to the miller 211. Does anyone have any expierance with this unit yet? I've used sound_man's miller 251 and loved it, but I need the flexability of the dvi.
 
#10
ok, so i finally finished welding the front fenders, painted them, and started making them purty. Also finally got around to cutting the rear and mounting the rear flares. Also started working on the steering/trac bar and soon realized that my initial plans aren't going to work out. So after a good Monday of research and some phone calls I have a new trac bar set up and brakets coming from TNT customs and another box o goodies on its way from ballisitic fab. I have to give mad props to Chase and East Coast Gear for taking my order on Tuesday afternoon and having the parts on my doorstep today at 1500.

So here is what we have as of this evening:





So after getting all of this together and the suspension/fenders in order I am rethinking the 4" coils with the ACOSs and thinking about going with either some 2.5" OME springs or the AEV/Nth degree 3" tuned springs with the ACOSs.
 
#11
Updated pics from today taken during daylight, unlike the ones above. Got my parts from ballistic fab, tnt, and ended up ordering a set of 11 inch travel BBCSs from poly. So I got the new tnt trac bat set up tacked in place and all I have to say is that this set up is super clean. Rod hooked me up with their low profile frame side mount which solved my previous issues and their bar is properly bent to clear the top of the truss and the diff. I also got the exhaust deliema solved and found where my t case was leaking from. Also, after some research on here, I ended up installing a master cylinder from a 01 durango with the hopes that this will feed the ford 1 ton dual piston front and chevy 3/4 rear calipers. More to report later on how this set up works after I get everything together. One other thing I am considering is cutting 1 inch out of the gas tank skid in order to raise it up an inch to fit with the 1 inch body lift. And yes I have considered a behind the seat fuel cell but I need the rear seat for the kiddo and need the space behind that for storage and my sub set up.

So now the " to do" lists consists of cycling the front suspension, final welding of all the front end bracketry and links, drill the knuckles and weld in the ballisitic inserts for the OTK set up, mount the hydro assist cylinder, install the jk front parking lights, put the cage together, get the rear drive shaft lengthened (again), figure out what to do about a rear bumper and tire carrier, finish plumbing the brakes and probably getting a tcase support ring.





 
#12
ok, so I haven't updated this is a bit mainly due to the fact that I haven't gotten too much big stuff done as catching up on the little things is time consuming. So i deceided to upgrade welders before I did the finish welding on the front end. I picked up a mm211 from my LWS for a pretty sweet deal. I am impressed with the performance on both 110v and 220v. It will burn through 3/8ths like its going out of style, as I learned when I was burning my sway bar brackets on.

So I finished welding the links and brackets for the front end, installed the dual rate sway lok, got he driveshafts installed (and a new 14 bolt yoke w/ u bolts after I broke a tap off in the stock one when I was cleaning the threads up), got the front turn signals and market lights wired in and installed along wiht the head lights, mounted all of the underhood stuff back on the fender inners, installed a new yellow top after routing some of the large cabling, and welded and installed the new A pillar stancions. I also installed the 11" BBCSs in the front, to match my BBCS 15" rears, to only find out that they were a bit too short with the mounting configuration I was running. So I started searching for a inexpensive fix for raising the front shock mounting position. I ended up deceiding to cut the tops out of the factory front shock towers and graft in some ford truck shock brackets (for 30 bucks at your local dealer you really can't go wrong). Haven't finished them yet but will post pics once complete.

As I was sitting there taking in the stance and after cycling the front suspension, I decided that the skycrapper springs had to go as they were to tall and to stiff. I looked around at the OME 2.5" and the AEV 3" coils, but kind of saw that as alot of coin, especially after the fact that I was medically retired from the Army last month. So I looked into the RC 2.5 progressive rate coils, but couldn't find any posts of people running them on anything other than some mall crawlers and bolt on rigs. So after noticing that the springs come with a life time warranty and a 60 day return policy if you don't like them, I deceided to call Jeff and he gave a me deal I coundn't resist. So here is what the heep looks like with RC 2.5s, ACOSs at 0 lift front and rear, and a 1" BL:





After taking a step back and looking at the stance I deceided to add 1" to the front ACOSs and stay at 0" for the rears, mainly due to the fact that I haven't figured the rear bumper/tire carreir situation out yet and know that the spare trep has some weight on it. So here is how she sits now:





So soon after the pics were taken I pu the front on jack stands and pulled the knuckles to drill and install my ballistic inserts for my OTK swap and cut some of the end off of my chromo 35 spline stubs as they are contacting the inside of my hub. Seems that this isn't that uncommon of a problem as there are a few posts on here about the same issue. Seems that most think somehow chevy stubs were substituted or mistakenly shipped, but who knows. I would take it up with the vendor but its been over 6 months since I purchased the 35 spline upgrade.

So list of stuff to still do is finish the steering, install hydro assist, fix stub/hub contact issue, replace the rear brake hard feeder line after I accidently pancaked it between the frame and the upper control arm bolt when I was tightening it with the impact, finish the rest of the brakes, finish cage, install 4 point harnesses, paint all of the primered panels an unkown color, figure out the rear bumper/tir carrier, and finally take her for a spin.
 
#13
Well I haven't had a ton of time to work on the heep lately due to crappy weather and the wife's greenhouse project. I've mainly been hung up on working out some little kinks, so here is the current list of discoveries and changes.

Current wheel base is 98" with little to no where left to go with out hitting the genright ext tank or having contact issue with the pitman arm and the trac bar. So I see and genright comp tank in my future in order to achieve that additional 2 plus inches of stretch.

I didn't take into consideration the lower coil when I first welded the front UCA mount on the truss, so when I lowered the jeep I had contact issues with the ege of the frame when flexed. So I ended up having to cut the mount off and go through 2 different location until I finally got everything lined up.

I thought that the stock power steering pump was pushing the assist ram ok, but it lost pressure fairly quickly. So I hooked up a new PSC pump kit from Andrew at letzrolloffroad. I have to admit that PSC has some top notch products that work flawlessly.

I ended up having issues with the front brake lines and the ford dual piston calipers. Main issues were from the 3/8ths banjo bolts and the larger diameter hole on the brake line. So I ended up pieceing together front lines from some JEGS and Russells AN-3 adapters and fittings along with some Earl's hyperfirm brake hoses. End result was great once I put a larger washer between the caliper and the hose adapter so the hose fitting wouldn't contact the caliper. Also on this note and the ongoing debate over one tome brakes and MC/booster combos. I upgraded to the MC out of an 01 durango and am using the stock TJ booster to run ford dual piston fronts with chevy 3/4 ton rears. The end result is great stopping power and awesome holding force even when shifted into low ( 4 to 1 with 5.13s on 40s).

The RC 2.5 progressive rate spring didn't last. I maybe put 20 miles on them, with no wheeling, and the front began to sag pretty bad. My assumption is that they aren't designed to hold up to the V8 driveline and added weight of the body armor. So I now have a set of OME HD springs on order and the RC springs are being returned to RC under their 60 day guarantee.

I got the stock front shock towers cut off and grafted the f250 mounts intol the pockets and burned in. Was able to compensate for the angle created with the front stretch and it worked out pretty good. Was driving around breaking the new gears in when I noticed that my front driver BBCS 11C was puking oil on itself. So it is on its merry way back to poly and a new one will be inbound. Might also have to swap out the 15cs for some 13cs, as it appears that I will need a little more uptravel than this set up now allows.

I put about 25 miles on the jeep with about 15 being in 4 high in order to break the new 5.13s in. This was my first time setting up gears by myself, and also the first time ever setting up a GM axle. I was pretty meticulous about the backlash, patterns, and pinion preload but for some reason seem to be getting more pinion slop than I expected. This is mainly in the 14 bolt, which gets a little less than 1/4 of a turn when shifted in to gear. But I read that this axle, coupled with the detroit, will produce slop. My only issue is that I swear it sounds like it has something banging in the t case. I will be relooking my transmission mount and will most likely being beefing it up along with a little retooling.

I'm still dialing my stak RAC TJ shifters in. This is an ongoing battle as my rear shifter would pass through all 3 position, but the front wouldn't. Now, after adding jam nuts and messing with the linkages, the front goes through all 3 position but now the rear won't go into low. So I will continue to screw with these shifters and hit northwestfab up to continue to see of their cable shifter set up will work in the little to no room I have to mess with.

More to follow as this project hopefully gets done so I can go wheel the $hit out of it.
 
#14
Well I finally got around to wheeling the TJ for the first time this past weekend at gulches. Put it through it's motions on palmetto crossing, radical ravine, a few other various trails that I can't recall the names and heart breaker and trail 7 two times each. The only carnage the entire day was my front drivers BBCS shock that seems to have blown it's lower seal on the trailer during the ride up. Didn't notice it until we were taking the ratchet straps off prior to downloading the jeep. All in all I was impressed with the way the jeep performed. The radial treps worked awesome and I found that you can air them down to a little under 10 psi with the H2s and not have to worry about rolling off of the bead or the tires not looking up. The rear detroit and front Spartan combo worked great together along with the stak that finally works correctly. I did figure out that I'm going to have to make some sort of guide to show what gears the shifters are in. A few times there was some confusion as to if the front output was in a high/low or neutral. The added torque of the 5.2 and the auto trans made crawling right over things stupid easy. The only changes that I'm going to make, besides sending the BBCS shock back to poly for exchange, is lengthen the front lower bumpstops by 2 inches and add the center limiting strap that I already have, extend the rear spring guides by 2 inches so I can get rid of the annoying sound the springs are making when the guide almost unseats and then reseats after the guide pops over the edge of the pig tail that produces an awesome spring ringing noise (Miller can attest the awful noise), and add some rear air bumps. So enough with the writing and here are a front and rear shot of flexing the TJ out on the beginning of heartbreaker.

IMG-20110813-00074.jpg

IMG-20110813-00073.jpg
 
#17
looks good. you might have mentioned it somewhere but i missed it but whats the wheel base?
Wheelbase was at about 98.5 inches or so last time I measured if I remember correctly. I'm pretty sure I can squeeze almost another inch out of the front since I moved some things around. I plan on trying to adjust the front lowers out this weekend to see what I can get. I think if I can get 99.5 inches while still running a 19.5 gal tank and not comp cutting the rear I will be happy.
 
#18
So I decided that instead of addressing the annoying spring noise coming from the TJ rear that I would just redo the bling on the 14 bolt

IMG-20110913-00080.jpg

So after a few discussions with Tommy at Poly I ordered a set of fox 14" emulsion coil overs with triple rate kits and the new artec low profile 14 bolt truss with the pinion guard, bridge, and bracket combo. All I have to say about the artec stuff is that it is straight pimp. Their finished product kicks ballistics in the nuts, not only by finishing but also fit and size/thickness of stock used.

Still waiting on the barnes4wd shaved 14 bolt cover to finish off the rebuild and for poly to send me the correct triple rate sliders. Then it will just be a matter of installing the triple rate kits, recharging the coil overs, and then a little plasma, sawzall and welder love to the 14 bolt and she will be back out on the trail. Well I guess I forgot about adding the fox 4" air bumps, that will be shortened to 2" travel.

More to follow once I start burning some metal.
 
#20
Well since xmas time is upon us, and vendor deals are getting a little sweeter, it appears that the TJ is going under the knife yet once again. I got the rear coilovers installed and tweaked, along with the 14 bolt shaved and retrussed, about a month ago. Many thanks go out to Matt at GR8TOPS for letting me borrow some bay space to get rid of weather distractions and my neighbor's wife getting pissed when I'm running air tools and banging on things at 0200 in the morning every other night.

So this all leads to the front suspension being redone with coilovers, new hoops and engine crossbar, retooling the trans mount, ditching the TNT front trac bar with the crappy summit machine jimmy joints for the genright builders trac bar with a johnny joint and massive 7/8ths heim that I've had since I started the build, and a high probability that the TNT front truss will be going bye bye too as its too tall and limited your upper link mounting options. Also in the mix is the addition of a new pro-bender model 32 thanks to the wife (and mainly due to my talking about it weekly for almost 2 years).

Oh, and the plan is to have all of this complete prior to grad school starting back on 4 Jan 12 . . . more to follow . . .
 
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