Chopped, Hot rodded, and Slammed Postal Jeep

[KEGGER1454]

Originally Posted by dedmetal

Kegger that is awesome really love that drop closed knuckle front diff

think he has custom shafts in the front

[Blind Studios]

Got some more building for you all,


One of the earlier projects that I tackled was rebuilding the dash support and updating some of the wiring under/behind the dash.

I started by moving the dash up an 1.5" to gain some leg clearance, and tried to put it back together from there. Unfortunatley, the only factory support for the dash is a single pinched tube that attached at the firewall and close to the steering column mount on the dash.

I decided that wouldn't work, way too flimsy. I wanted to add some structural support to the cowl as well.

This is what I came up with.....




Not the best pic, sorry.

But what is there is, a peice of 1" DOM from side to side at what became the bottom of the new dash. From there, I extended 3 tubes forward to the fire wall, to connect it all.

Break times over, more later.....


-Jeff

[Blind Studios]

moving on.....


Once the tube was in place I used it to hang some vital bits and peices....

On the left side (passenger) were the heater assembly used to be, I rebuild a more sturdy electrical center....



In the fore ground, I fabbed up a small shelf to hang 4 relays off of. These run the E-fan, hi/lo beams so far. I left my self an extra relay, as a spare or to allow for future expansion.....

On the firewall, I used an old amp housing to mount and protect the new 10 circuit fuse holder....




Also above that I mounted 2 AGU style fuse holders (car stereo stuff) to server as main fuses for the entire system. They can be seen above the amp case.

The reason you don't see any smaller fuses is that, the 10 place fuse holder is water proof from the top, so it is actually mounted into the engine bay for easier service.


On the right side (driver) I made another shelf. This one remounted the cool under dash ash tray, gave me a spot on top to mount the flashers, and also my push start button.....




There are quite a few things mounted up under there in addition to these.

The clutch is hung from brackets off of this structure, and the turn signal switch has been relocated to hang below the dash to the left of the driver.


That's it for now.....


-Jeff

[Wheels4]

great job so far... i look forward to seeing more.

[Blind Studios]

Thanks Wheels.....


Ok, last mini post

When I cut out the 2 rear cross members to put the notch in, I also lost the back 2 body mounts.

Without any better idea of how to place them, we slapped the body back on, and I climbed under there and mocked together 2 new mounts....




You can see my welded in ground post on the frame under the left side of the tacked in body mount.

I'll wait until the body gets pulled (hopefully for the last time) to finish weld and box them in.

I also added a bit of decoration, a reaper waterjet cutout to the inside of the frame rail.

Kinda dumb since I'll prob be the only one to ever see it, but.....

It's cool, it looks bada$$.


So, that catches up all the pics I have currently. Right now the PJs been sitting while I catch up on all the other things I've been ignoring to work on the PJ.

But, as soon as I finish that stuff, it should be time to pull the body again and finish some stuff up...

Thanks for checking it out.


-Jeff

[KEGGER1454]

i'm diggin it...btw sorry with all the hijacks in this thread

[Blind Studios]

Even though I've been busy with other projects around the house I'm always keeping an eye out for bits and pieces for the PJ

I've had these custom light housings from a small job I did at a small jobber machine shop I worked at a few years back.




Pardon the rust they've been sitting for a while.

I had been looking for a light that would fit in them. I finally decided to just grab a generic truck back up light and see what I could come up with.

Pic of what I started with.....



I already have tail lights, but I needed to add a back up light. So taking inspiration partly from a Scion Xb and partly form old Cadillac tail lights, this is what I came up with...



When it's done, the housing will be welded into the bumper and smoothed with a bit of filler.

There will only be one back up light, cause hot rods don't need no stinking reverse....


Here's another pic of the light in the bumper.



And finally a more of an overall pic the back end.



It's kinda tough to imagine this thing all one color, so sometimes it seems to me like a lot of random stuff stuck onto a random vehicle.

I want to make something that's fun to drive and works well, not some random oddity that bairly functions.

More to come.....


-Jeff

[Blind Studios]

So, I'm trying to clean up little things so that when the body comes off and goes back on I'm ready to finish some wiring and find out if the motor even runs.

As part of that I needed to remount the amp gauge so that it wasn't hanging out of the dash.

Here's a before pic....



Steering wheel is off to make some room. The main problem is that the new lower dash bar, was intruding into where the gauge need to fit.

I grabbed a spare piece of alum. plate and made a raised panel to mount the gauge and the light switches into.



A little closer look....




From left to right, the flashers, headlight switch (now just parking lights), and then the actual headlight switch, which operates the headlights through relays now.

Below that is the amp gauge on the right and an extra hole which will be for oil pressure.

I like the top mounted panels as it will make it easy to acsess an of the electrical components, if the need should arise.

You can see there is getting to be quite a few unused holes in the dash at this point.

Eventually I will get a bigger piece of aluminum and lay out an all new dash with every thing where it belongs, and no extra holes


Hopefully I'll have my other few projects wrapped up in the next week or so and then it will be time to pull the body.

Thanks for checking it out.

-Jeff

[KEGGER1454]

coming along nicely! it just looks fast sitting there...on the other hand maybe its just because the speedo reads 90

[Blind Studios]

Thanks Kegger,


I guess it can't help but be fast.....



-Jeff

[Blind Studios]

Came across this thread on Jeepforum.com,

http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f8/cr...nt-end-939366/



Some weird hot rod Jeep stuff......

-Jeff

[Blind Studios]

Carrying on with the random side projects, while waiting to pull the body.....


I scored a free chunk of 1/4" lexan sheet a while back with the intent of making my windows out of this in the end.

The piece I had was only big enough for the rear window. That's ok, I wasn't even 100% sure that this would work.

I've read stories about Jeep guys having lexan windshields suck out, due to neg pressure.

That may still be a problem, but considering that all of the windows on the PJ are flat, I had to give it a try.


Ok, so I dragged out the original rear glass and set to work laying down some blue painters tape to protect the lexan.....



The lexan was already a little scratched up, but I'm thinking that it can always be buffed and polished later.

So a couple of measurements and I came up with the window being 1/4" per side smaller than the opening.

So, a bit more blue painters tape and a sharpe later......





A little closer look....





With the pattern all marked out, I grabbed the jig saw and cut it out...




I did a little smoothing with the air grinder and sanding discs, and went to try and fit it in the opening....



After about 40 minutes of pushing and cussing, I decided that the lexan was still too big for the opening. I ended up taking another 1/4" off of 2 of sides and re-blending the radius on the corners.

So it actually ended up 3/8" smaller on all 4 sides than the opening.


After another 20 minutes of working the seal, the window popped into place, happy as a clam....



It's still a pretty snug fit in there, and didn't seem like it wanted to go anywhere once it was situated.

The weight difference was nuts. I didn't weigh the original glass verses the new-ish lexan window, but I'd guess easily a 1/3 of the weight.

Of course the lexan window is 5" shorter than the glass also.....

I like the idea of the weight savings of the lexan. It goes along with my ideas about having the PJ have a race car type feel.

Plans are to have the filler neck mounted into the right rear quarter lexan, with a fender fill kit.


Picture of the finished product.....



Sorry I don't have any big exciting stuff to show yet, but these little details really eat up time. Plus I find myself re-doing these details when I come across better ideas for them.


If any one want better pics of any thing just let me know. I've been using to cell phone camera because of connivence, but can snap some better pics if there is any interest.

More to come....


Thanks for looking,

-Jeff

[roco]

awesome build jeff keep up the good work

[KEGGER1454]

fyi
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Jeep-...fCarsQ5fTrucks

keep up the good build...looks great!

[Blind Studios]

$9000 !?!?

....and no bids in the last six days.

Well I guess they can't all be as cool as a postal Jeep....

LOL!!!!


-Jeff

[Blind Studios]

So I started looking at modifying the front frame rails to allow the front to go down farther.

I'm tentatively planning on plating and building up some short notches onto the frame and then chopping out maybe 3" of the frame rail above the axle.

Any one have any ideas or input on this.

I'm thinking 3/16" side plates and top and bottom plating...

Any help would be apprieciated.


Thanks,

Jeff

[KEGGER1454]

could you just do another c notch like the rear?

[Blind Studios]

To answer your question Kegger, I think so......


So after whacking off the upper shock mount and disassembling the front brake lines.

My brother in law and I set about making a template of what we thought we needed.


So this is what we came up with.....





It matches the frame and the neck down at the front of the frame, and gives about 3 1/2" more room for up travel.

It also is laid out for a 3" stretch of the front axle. Which is needed for clearance to the balancer on the motor.

A top pic showing the difference in axle center line.....




The thinking at this point is 1/8" side plates on each side, 1/8" strap for the top and then cut out the notch and plate it with 3/16", and then for good measure add a new crossmember in between the new uprights.


Not sure if this is good enough, any ideas????



Finally an overall pic of the front.....




Gotta love a Jeep, only takes about 20 minutes to strip the front end down.

More to come, I'm back on the job......


-Jeff

[KEGGER1454]

exactly what i was thinking...looks good...def add the crossmember though!

[Blind Studios]

Not having much experience with notches.....


is a multi piece assemble as strong as a tube assemble???


I'm trying to think forward to gusseting it, but I would think that with not fully cutting the original frame rail, and having the new side plates extend along so much of the existing frame rail would make it as strong.

In addition I would be able to weld the seems along the inside of the side plates,prior to boxing them in.......

Any thoughts or input???


-Jeff