Sab-a-dab-a-doo! The back-country LJ build has officially started

[sab]

Fellers, this build is about to accelerate for a bit because today is my last day of active employment (by choice). Starting Monday, I'm using up 2 months of PTO, and then I go work for someone else. I plan to head home to Wisconsin sometime in that period for a week to visit family/old friends, and I have some non-LJ related tasks to do around the house, but I consider building the LJ my job through the first week in November. I'd love to get everything done and have the LJ of my dreams by then, but I'm realistic - I never get fab work done in the time I expect. Stay tuned, it's about to get hot in here!

 

[NashvilleTJ]

Fellers, this build is about to accelerate for a bit because today is my last day of active employment (by choice). Starting Monday, I'm using up 2 months of PTO, and then I go work for someone else. I plan to head home to Wisconsin sometime in that period for a week to visit family/old friends, and I have some non-LJ related tasks to do around the house, but I consider building the LJ my job through the first week in November. I'd love to get everything done and have the LJ of my dreams by then, but I'm realistic - I never get fab work done in the time I expect. Stay tuned, it's about to get hot in here!

Enjoy the time, Scott.

 

[sab]

Enjoy the time, Scott.

Thank you, my friend - I will do my best to do so!

 

[psrivats]

Fellers, this build is about to accelerate for a bit because today is my last day of active employment (by choice). Starting Monday, I'm using up 2 months of PTO, and then I go work for someone else. I plan to head home to Wisconsin sometime in that period for a week to visit family/old friends, and I have some non-LJ related tasks to do around the house, but I consider building the LJ my job through the first week in November. I'd love to get everything done and have the LJ of my dreams by then, but I'm realistic - I never get fab work done in the time I expect. Stay tuned, it's about to get hot in here!

God luck in your new adventure.

These decisions are sometimes hard to make but there is a certain calm that you get after you have decided and have clarity on the future path.

 

[sab]

God luck in your new adventure.

These decisions are sometimes hard to make but there is a certain calm that you get after you have decided and have clarity on the future path.

Thanks, and you nailed it, Sri.

 

[RocknLJ]

Good luck on the new adventure!

If your anywhere near the Brat Stop in Kenosha let me know and I’ll buy you a beer.
May even drive my LJR behind the cheddar curtain to meet ya.

 

[sab]

...and I’ll buy you a beer.

I do believe I owe you a beer, and a bottle of a fine single malt, my friend!

 

[sab]

After a crazy last day at work Friday, I started Saturday morning by going back in to the office to haul the rest of my stuff home (17 years = a collection of personal stuff in the office). When I got home, I decided to tackle a fairly large plumbing job in my water tank house (I'm converting from well water to rain water collection because the well's about played out.)

And that brings me to today, finally back on the LJ build. I'm getting close to finishing the step slider reinforcement project. It's crazy how much time was spent figuring out hole locations with this project. After five weekends of working on these, I'm still not done laying out holes. I did all my layout directly on the aluminum backers, but the top holes, other than the two covered up by the fender flares, need to be drilled in the step sliders first, and then drilled through the backers and body. So, I first had to put the step slider up against the backer to translate positions from the backer to the slider:

As you can see, I had to get creative to clamp the slider flat against the body. I was walking around the shop to all my scrap piles trying to find something I could bolt to the face of the sliders and extend beyond the ends in order to clamp to the backside of the body. I found two pieces of Unistrut in one of the piles, and they bolted right on. Sweet!

With it clamped on, I was able to measure to the first hole from the front edge of the aluminum backer, accounting for a slight offset to center it between the fender flares. With that location determined, I had measurements to all the other holes, so I removed it and put it on the fab table to mark and punch the hole centers before drilling.

Now would be a good time to revisit how I decided to drill these holes because the width of the sliders and short top flange make drilling a bit difficult. If you want to read how I thought that through, please refer back to Post #185 from a few weeks back. For drilling the holes, I ended up buying four 6" long drill bits (1/8", 3/14", 1/4", and 5/16"). When using drill bits, I always prefer to start small and work up in diameter. It's tedious, but I've found the bits stay sharper longer and the holes stay "rounder." I'm using 1/4" screws instead of 5/16" for these top ones because the step slider frames are made from 1/8" thick steel, and I was afraid the heads of a 5/16" flat head screw might pull out in a bad drop onto the slider. To compensate for the smaller screw size, I'm using eleven of them.

Once I got them marked, I started the tedious job of drilling them out. I swapped out all four bits eleven times on two sliders, so if you do the math, I changed drill bits 88 times for this! I also could only drill two holes at a time, so I had to reposition the sliders twelve times, too! Very tedious. This picture shows how the drill chuck would hit the slider if I didn't have a long drill bit:

And that's as far as I got today. Tomorrow's Monday, but remember - my temporary new job is to build my LJ. So, for the next couple months (minus a couple weeks for other stuff), it's finally "me" time during the week! I'll be remounting these tomorrow and drilling the top holes through the backers and body. I'm going to attempt to drill the holes in the backers and body using the long 5/16" drill bit because the holes in the steel slider will guide it straight (I did that with the holes in the torque box that went through the spacer blocks welded to the aluminum backers.) Then, I'll remove them and countersink for the flatheads.

The last step will be drilling the bottom holes and installing longer-grip nutserts in the backers. Stay tuned for, I hope, daily updates.

 

[sab]

I started this morning by re-mounting the step sliders, one side at a time, and then drilling holes through the aluminum slider backers and the body:

And here's the driver side with all the holes drilled (that's a lot of holes!):

After that, I decided to make the backer plates for inside below the doors next. I started with two pieces of 3/8" thick 6061-T6 aluminum 3" x 19". There are two rows of holes about 2" apart, so I marked two lines on them the long way, 0.5" off the edges. Here I am marking the first:

After marking both lines, I drilled the first hole 1" in from the edge:

Then I mounted it on the LJ using a screw in that one hole, rotated it until the two lines were as evenly running down the center of all the holes (you can zoom in and see the lines in the holes), and clamped it in place:

The top holes are 5/16" diameter for the smaller 1/4"-20 screws I'm using. I used a 5/16" bit to start each of the top holes, and I finished them on the drill press (no pics). For the bottom holes, I used a Sharpie to transfer the hole location and then center-punched the centers and drilled on the drill press (again, no pics). Here's one of them complete:

Then, I moved on to countersinking the top holes in the step sliders. Again, refer to Post #185 for a review of how I handled countersinking those short flanges up against the top surface of the sliders. Here's a picture:

That just cleared! I finished the day by drilling out the four body holes on each side that need nutserts and putting primer on all the new holes to help keep the iron oxide gods away. Tomorrow, my goal is to install the nutserts in those eight holes, remount everything, drill the bottom mounting holes using the slider armor holes as a guide through the step sliders and aluminum slider backers, install nutserts into the bottom of the slider backers, put it all together for a picture, and then take it all apart to be carted off to the powder coater! And then, I can check this project off the build list!

 

[sab]

Here's the Swiss cheese created when you take a Rubicon LJ, with the Rubicon rocker guards, install Rockslide Engineering step sliders, and then realize that they are inadequate for rock crawling and add aluminum backers behind them:

Wow - that's a lot of holes, isn't it?

I continued on with the step slider reinforcement project today, starting with installing nutserts in the top holes that need them (you can see them in the above photo). I then remounted the aluminum backers, the step sliders, and the step slider armor (in that order). The driver side has been very easy all along, and the passenger side has been problematic. It seems the body is not as square on that side, and everything needs to be persuaded into place before drilling holes. Here's the passenger side clamped prior to drilling the final holes at the bottom, through the slider armor, the slider, and the aluminum backer:

After drilling the holes with a 3/8" Rotabroach, I removed all three components again to drill out the aluminum backers for the extended grip length nutserts with a 17/32" drill bit, ,chamfer the holes and install the nutserts:

Here it is finished:

That wraps up all the fabrication to make these step sliders rock-ready - woo hoo! Here's a couple pictures with them installed:

And the less-exciting , but equally-important, inside backing plate:

Tomorrow I'll drop the step sliders off at the powder coater. I hope their lead time is better than it was the last time I dropped something off there (3 months!) They do exceptional work, especially on aluminum, so the wait is worth it. I'm going to try spraying the aluminum inside and outside backers with rattle can color-match paint and clear. Since only the top 1/2" is visible on the outside ones, I'm hoping my garage painting skills will suffice.

I need to thank two forum members for assistance on this project. First, @mrblaine's guidance on what works and what doesn't work was indispensable. Being able to bounce ideas off someone with that level of experience is wonderful! Second, thank you to @Fluxor for taking over where Savvy left off. While I'm confident I could have had the backers cut and bent locally, being able to buy a set without holes from him saved me lots of time and headaches.

Thank you, Mr. Blaine, and Klay. You are both appreciated!

On to the Altas install and tummy tuck!

To see these after they returned from the powder coater, see Post #284.

 

[AirborneTexasRanger]

Here's the Swiss cheese created when you take a Rubicon LJ, with the Rubicon rocker guards, install Rockslide Engineering step sliders, and then realize that they are inadequate for rock crawling and add aluminum backers behind them:
View attachment 559042

Wow - that's a lot of holes, isn't it?

I continued on with the step slider reinforcement project today, starting with installing nutserts in the top holes that need them (you can see them in the above photo). I then remounted the aluminum backers, the step sliders, and the step slider armor (in that order). The driver side has been very easy all along, and the passenger side has been problematic. It seems the body is not as square on that side, and everything needs to be persuaded into place before drilling holes. Here's the passenger side clamped prior to drilling the final holes at the bottom, through the slider armor, the slider, and the aluminum backer:
View attachment 559043

After drilling the holes with a 3/8" Rotabroach, I removed all three components again to drill out the aluminum backers for the extended grip length nutserts with a 17/32" drill bit, ,chamfer the holes and install the nutserts:
View attachment 559044

Here it is finished:
View attachment 559045

That wraps up all the fabrication to make these step sliders rock-ready - woo hoo! Here's a couple pictures with them installed:
View attachment 559046

View attachment 559047

And the less-exciting , but equally-important, inside backing plate:
View attachment 559048

Tomorrow I'll drop the step sliders off at the powder coater. I hope their lead time is better than it was the last time I dropped something off there (3 months!) They do exceptional work, especially on aluminum, so the wait is worth it. I'm going to try spraying the aluminum inside and outside backers with rattle can color-match paint and clear. Since only the top 1/2" is visible on the outside ones, I'm hoping my garage painting skills will suffice.

I need to thank two forum members for assistance on this project. First, @mrblaine's guidance on what works and what doesn't work was indispensable. Being able to bounce ideas off someone with that level of experience is wonderful! Second, thank you to @Fluxor for taking over where Savvy left off. While I'm confident I could have had the backers cut and bent locally, being able to buy a set without holes from him saved me lots of time and headaches.

Thank you, Mr. Blaine, and Klay. You are both appreciated!

On to the Altas install and tummy tuck!

I think your Jeep has more holes than Bonnie & Clyde's Ford

 

[RocknLJ]

Nice work.
I’ve been eyeing the Rockslide steps and now see why you did what you did.
To bad that just couldn’t find a way to extend them a bit for better rocker protection.

 

[sab]

Nice work.
I’ve been eyeing the Rockslide steps and now see why you did what you did.
To bad that just couldn’t find a way to extend them a bit for better rocker protection.

Thanks! Those step sliders were one of my first purchases for the LJ, and I believe that I'll like them even more as I get older and more crippled. I had no idea at the time how under-designed they are, though. It was a lot of work, but I feel better with them now.

 

[mrblaine]

Here's the Swiss cheese created when you take a Rubicon LJ, with the Rubicon rocker guards, install Rockslide Engineering step sliders, and then realize that they are inadequate for rock crawling and add aluminum backers behind them:
View attachment 559042

Wow - that's a lot of holes, isn't it?

I continued on with the step slider reinforcement project today, starting with installing nutserts in the top holes that need them (you can see them in the above photo). I then remounted the aluminum backers, the step sliders, and the step slider armor (in that order). The driver side has been very easy all along, and the passenger side has been problematic. It seems the body is not as square on that side, and everything needs to be persuaded into place before drilling holes. Here's the passenger side clamped prior to drilling the final holes at the bottom, through the slider armor, the slider, and the aluminum backer:
View attachment 559043

After drilling the holes with a 3/8" Rotabroach, I removed all three components again to drill out the aluminum backers for the extended grip length nutserts with a 17/32" drill bit, ,chamfer the holes and install the nutserts:
View attachment 559044

Here it is finished:
View attachment 559045

That wraps up all the fabrication to make these step sliders rock-ready - woo hoo! Here's a couple pictures with them installed:
View attachment 559046

View attachment 559047

And the less-exciting , but equally-important, inside backing plate:
View attachment 559048

Tomorrow I'll drop the step sliders off at the powder coater. I hope their lead time is better than it was the last time I dropped something off there (3 months!) They do exceptional work, especially on aluminum, so the wait is worth it. I'm going to try spraying the aluminum inside and outside backers with rattle can color-match paint and clear. Since only the top 1/2" is visible on the outside ones, I'm hoping my garage painting skills will suffice.

I need to thank two forum members for assistance on this project. First, @mrblaine's guidance on what works and what doesn't work was indispensable. Being able to bounce ideas off someone with that level of experience is wonderful! Second, thank you to @Fluxor for taking over where Savvy left off. While I'm confident I could have had the backers cut and bent locally, being able to buy a set without holes from him saved me lots of time and headaches.

Thank you, Mr. Blaine, and Klay. You are both appreciated!

On to the Altas install and tummy tuck!

You are very welcome, as always.

 

[Fluxor]

Thank you, Mr. Blaine, and Klay. You are both appreciated!

No problem! Turned out well, the work has paid off sir!

 

[sab]

I've been working, on and off, over the last two days on getting everything below the frame removed to start the heavy work down there. I'll be starting with a tummy tuck and Atlas 4-speed installation, and then continuing on to the Savvy mid-arm, followed by the Genright raised body mount brackets. I don't have a lot to report, other than that the axles and long-arm kit are out:

And I have a clean slate:

As you can see, only the rear track bar is left. The inner bushing is frozen to the screw, and I gave up on it after struggling for about an hour - I wanted to get everything else out. I'll get back to that some other time. Tomorrow, I'm going to get the t-case out and fit up the Atlas.

 

[sab]

@mrblaine, or anyone else, do you have any advice on flat head screws to use for mounting the skid to the frame? They're metric 12mm nutserts, right? But what pitch? (Note - I'm being lazy, sitting in the air-conditioned house instead of walking the 200' over to the shop to figure it out.)

I took a look at McMaster-Carr, and the only choice in that size seems to be hex heads.

 

[mrblaine]

@mrblaine, or anyone else, do you have any advice on flat head screws to use for mounting the skid to the frame? They're metric 12mm nutserts, right? But what pitch? (Note - I'm being lazy, sitting in the air-conditioned house instead of walking the 200' over to the shop to figure it out.)

I took a look at McMaster-Carr, and the only choice in that size seems to be hex heads.

M12 x 1.75 x 40ish mm in M class 12.9

Allen drive is all we get. Fortunately they are 8mm/5/16" so Milwaukee has a nice impact socket for them in their lineman tools. The hardness of these screws saves us a small bit of grief. We have never stripped one out or broken a good driver in them.

 

[sab]

M12 x 1.75 x 40ish mm in M class 12.9

Allen drive is all we get. Fortunately they are 8mm/5/16" so Milwaukee has a nice impact socket for them in their lineman tools. The hardness of these screws saves us a small bit of grief. We have never stripped one out or broken a good driver in them.

Thanks, Mr. Blaine!

 

[RocknLJ]

Nice garage and lift!
Was wondering how the heck you were getting all the stuff off underneath the Jeep so quickly.