Builds ‘68 M715, AKA "Smokey" (Can I post this Jeep on MUD?)

[Rock40]

Few more cab shots:

Motor mounts are burned in after loosing count of how many times I adjusted everything

 

[Rock40]

Tires are here, Maxxis 40x13.5x17

 

[Rock40]

CAD drawings for the front suspension. Radius arm w/panhard bar. All the joints are designed to be mounted above the frame rail for maximum clearance. The bottom link should be just about horizontal at ride height. 3.5” of up travel designed around 14” coilovers. Total lift: 1.75”-2” over stock

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Hawt.

 

[Rock40]

Did a little bit of body work today on the cab corners that were completely cracked and broken from Alaska dirt roads. Suspension is still in the works

Ugly TIG pushing in a TON of filler rod. It should sand out well and is probably stronger than original

 

[Rock40]

I'm still slowly working on repairing what nearly 50 years of abuse has done to the tub. I pulled the fresh air intake off today and found the remains of a very old nest and a bunch of media blast material

Continued to TIG the body corners back together. The biggest challenge is that ANY of the old welds are full of impurities

You can see here that the body was not even welded together in most places. Just quickly ground and "maybe" tacked in place.

Still removing a bunch of rusty junk from the cab too....

 

[Rock40]

Here's the finished driver side cab corner, I can probably get away without even sanding it.

Not welded form the factory which contributed to it breaking...

Welded...

Today was also the day to remove the front factory spring hangers, never a fun job

 

[Rock40]

Driver side front bracket

Passenger side rear mount

Front passenger cleaned up

Rear passenger, body mounts are next to go after making some measurements and whatnot

 

[Rock40]

All done with cutting the front spring hangers off for now. Gas axe, giant grinder, sanding disc and finally an 80 grit disc to finish things off. Although the body seems to be more or less held together with Elmers Glue, the chassis mounts are no joke. Most mounts were front/back welded very, very stoutly.

I only use this little fella for "exteme" grinding jobs

 

[Rock40]

I’m slowly picking away on the cab and all the firewall cuts (necessary to fit the 8.1 liter) are now boxed in

 

[Rock40]

The driver side was tricky and I retained a portion of the factory steering column plate. The replacement panels are 22 gauge and welding them to the stock firewall is a pain, especially given that I'm cramming my dumb head up under the dash in order to do it while still working the foot pedal for the TIG. I used ER70S2 filler but I'm going to switch to silicone bronze and see how that goes. The last pic also shows a hole in the floor which got repaired.

 

[Rock40]

Dang, it’s about time for a quick update on this. The front suspension design is nearly complete, I should have brackets in the next month.

Nearly all the factory brackets have been cut off the frame, these are from the rear.

Sourced an Artec truss for the 70HD and it only took a mild amount of trimming to get it to fit. It’s design is for a D60.

 

[Rock40]

Re-fabricated the rear drivetrain mount into a much stronger design. It bolts in front of the ORD Magnum and is 3/8” plate set into 1/4” wall 2” square tubing. Poly bushings isolate the mount from the frame rails.

 

[Rock40]

Tore the 70HD fully down in preparation of all the coming fab work and the ARB. Backlash on the existing 4.56 gears was way out of spec at 0.015 anyway.

I’m currently working on the rear double triangulated 4 link and I believe this will be very close to the final
Product. It’ll be tunable to about 75%-125% rear anti-squat.

 

[Ronny Grady]

Very clean.

 

[Rock40]

Decided to put the SM465 back together today, it’s been long enough sitting on the shelf. Used gears from 4 different 465’s to build one really solid one. Reverse idler was replaced with new as those always get chewed up. The mainshaft was replaced with the upgraded, shorter version from ORD

Pressing on the input shaft bearing

I fully tore down and replaced all the wear parts in the top shifter cover also. Media blasted it and tapped NPT threads into the stock breather location in order to run a better breather system

 

[Rock40]

Here’s the final 4 link design:

The links will sit VERY flat and the anti-squat can be adjusted from about 70%-130%

 

[Rock40]

Got to work reinforcing the factory crossmember. It’s essentially two pieces of “C” channel clamped together and not welded so both the top and bottom needed to be welded together. Created a total
Of 6 plates to either reinforce the crossmember or prepare it for the suspension link mounts

 

[Rock40]

Used PVC to mock up links. The rusty 1”x2” square tube is simulating the driveshaft.

Prior to this, I’d drawn the driveshaft arc at full compression and full droop out on the floor to verify that everything would clear

 

[Rock40]

Yep, this should work well. I articulated the axle much further than it’ll go in real life and there’s no bind or clearance issues. After looking at this, the current plan is to run 14” coilovers in the rear with 4” of up travel.