FJ custom build coming soon

[Mark Grant]

Just want to let you guys know that I'm about to start on a sweet project for a customer. He rolled his FJ that had a 15,000 miles on it testing out a new road he built on his property. Smashed the roof at the windshield badly as well as the right front corner. The hood and fender are about 8 inch or more lower than the driver's side. I looked for a replacement roof and parts for about 6 months and can't find anything. He wants the thing to be usable so I ran this by him and he's down. We're gonna cut the roof off, fix the windshield posts to accept a stock window. Then I'm going to biuld the rest of it to look similar to a military duece and a half with a canvas bikini top. When the top is off he's going to have another attachemnt that will bolt onto the roll bar that will be a lumber rack. Just wanted to toss that out there and see if anybody has a pass. fender and hood for grabs, or know where to get them. I'll post pictures as soon as I dig into thing, hopefully today we'll get started.

 

[lgrt]

look forward to seeing how this turns out.

 

[joebob2586]

me too should be an interestin project

 

[Bad Voodoo]

Tag! I'm keeping an eye on this too!

 

[sls019]

Cool project. Should be one awesome 'chop'! Will be watching.

 

[Mark Grant]

I've got the interior gutted and some braces welded into the lower part of the body now. Pictures will come of the rolled & gutted FJ soon. The top will get cut off in the next few days. I just bought the front glass...$675 was the best deal I could find. DAMN! I don't care, not my bill! We are going to also be welding the small rear doors onto the quarter panels and body. I want it to be solid and without a top latch for the rear doors I think it would be cheesy to leave them without an upper latch.

 

[Mark Grant]

Just got the new windshield today. $674.27 WHAT A DEAL! *UCK!

 

[amaintaylor]

I've got the interior gutted and some braces welded into the lower part of the body now. Pictures will come of the rolled & gutted FJ soon. The top will get cut off in the next few days. I just bought the front glass...$675 was the best deal I could find. DAMN! I don't care, not my bill! We are going to also be welding the small rear doors onto the quarter panels and body. I want it to be solid and without a top latch for the rear doors I think it would be cheesy to leave them without an upper latch.

Pics please

 

[Mark Grant]

Pics please

Sorry for the lack of pictures. Things have been too busy to take any time out for stuff like that. You all know how much time it takes to get them off the camera and onto photobucket then onto the forum. I promise it will happen though!

Anyhow...here's where we are as of now. Got the radiator support pulled out and unwrinkled. Today we're going to put the rad and AC condenser back in. Got the windshield posts close to where they were stock, close enough that the window fits anyway I had to cut the header out of the windshield opening and rework it. Got it welded back in yesterday.

My customer has finally realized how big of a project this is. For some reason he thought since it drove and the stereo worked it wasn't that bad, hahaha. The only panel on the FJ
that wasn't DEMOLISHED was the back door. Everything else took major damage. The truck isn't going to be finished w/ body work and all like I stated originally. It's going to be left full of dents for now and maybe at some point in the future it'll get the body finished. So when it leaves my shop this time it's going to have the cage inside and the top of the sheetmetal all caped off. As well as having the major front end damage fixed. We're off for a Yosemite trip for a week and hopefully when we get back I'll get some shots of it up.

Anybody know where we can sell the side curtain airbags for some decent $$$??

 

[Mark Grant]

Ok guys, here's pictures! sorry for the delay, things move a little slow around here. Let me know what you guys think...

 

[AGreekBoy]

this is interesting nice work

 

[Mark Grant]

this is interesting nice work

Thanks buddy! It's been a lot of work just to get to here. I have a few more bars to make then I'll start welding it together. The cage is 1 3/4 DOM .095 and we're using a Mittler Bros. "mandrel" bender. Not really a mandrel, but does make pretty nice bends on this material. I'll be using a Miller 250 wire feed to weld it up with. Nothing to fancy, just needs to be functional.

 

[joebob2586]

looka like a lot of work is ahead of you, but pretty cool lookin

 

[tburrell]

AWESOME! I want one! :-D

 

[Lemony]

Hey put a hammer to that passenger door it looks way too straight and throw that chome bumper on the ground on it and its show time..... Looks like fun, you have a great start on it.

 

[ChaoticSilentium]

Very interesting. It will certainly be one of a kind. Looking forward to seeing the turn out.

 

[Mark Grant]

First off, thanks for all of the positive comments on this FJ. I tallied the hours and I am at about 90 hours to this point. That includes repairing the radiator support and stripping the interior and such. I am waiting on money at this point. Once I get rolling again I'll post some detailed pictures of the cage bracing that I'm about to build. I can't wait until this thing is done!

 

[Mark Grant]

Thought I'd give an update to this one. The FJ was never finished. The customer turned out to be the typical want it for nothing kind of guy and that just ain't what I do. Here's where I got before I made the guy take it out of my shop. He decided that bracing the cage wasn't going to work out because it was going to be "in the way." I told him he should never put anybody he loves in the thing because it was dangerous as it sits. Anyhow, I had lots of time in this, the metal caps took a long time to fabricate and all the stock plastic interior went back in. Could have been cool...

 

[NCFJ]

Looks good to the point you were able to take it. Unfortunate that the customer was the "do it for nothing" type. I get that at my shop once in a while as well. Last was a guy that wanted a complete axle swap front and rear in his Jeep and only wanted to pay $500.00

Would have been nice to see it completed.

 

[Mark Grant]

Looks good to the point you were able to take it. Unfortunate that the customer was the "do it for nothing" type. I get that at my shop once in a while as well. Last was a guy that wanted a complete axle swap front and rear in his Jeep and only wanted to pay $500.00

Would have been nice to see it completed.

Sounds more like 5,000 worth to me! Yeah, these douchey **cks can really take the fun out of something like this. I would have really liked to finish this one. Ohh well, at least it's not taking up space any longer, I have forgotten about the $500 that the guy still owes me. I figure I own him for $500.