just thought i'd lend a bit of inspiration to some of you. i bought a well abused 80 series and have been slowly cleaning it up and modifying it.
it came with a 50mm ome lift and the po had created some rear sway bar links by bolting/welding the original links to bar stock. the welds broke and they were virtually worthless, so i made one piece links. not pretty, but functional. you can also see a rust spot that i'll have to take care of in the near future.
another thing that drove me crazy was the filthy carpet. i'd tried shampooing it and it wouldn't come clean, so i decided to pull it out completely and pressure wash it (yep, at the carwash). i presoaked it with tide first. make sure you already have it in a pickup truck before you presoak cause it's heavy when it's wet.
i used one of the garden fertilizer things that you attach to your hose about 1/4 full of tide to presoak the carpet. here's the nasty stain on the left passenger area...eeeeewwww.
with the carpet out, i could see some sketchy wiring.
some more pics of the sketchy wiring and my repaired wire with nice weatherpack connector. this wire was added by the po for an aux power outlet mounted to the side of the center console.
the original header pipe was 2 1/2" and the po had cut that off and added a 2" exhaust in a rather restrictive pattern to get the exhaust over the frame...that just had to go with all the mountain driving i do, i need my rig to breathe.
for now, i jerry rigged it until i can talk to a local shop about having a better setup created...i wasn't planning on wheeling at all this year for financial reasons, but i did get talked into holy cross and there was minimal damage to the exhaust as it ran under the frame.
so my current project is getting a bumper/tire carrier mounted. it was a sweet deal from a fellow club member, but it was jsut the bumper/tire carrier, not all the little parts.
po had cut the frame for better departure angle and had a heavy rear bumper in place with a tow hitch, but the pin hole was too far back for most hitches (all of mine included) and the clevis mounts were too wide for screw in clevises.
here's the equivalent of what was missing off of the back side of my frame. along with the brackets that had to be ground off in order for the rear bumper that i've got to fit on.
i started by making templates of both sides of the frames (top only since so much was cut off the original frame that puzzling the frame together on the sides would be extremely difficult). the reason for puzzling the frame is so you don't have a spot where the frame want's to distort. if you weld it square, it's like putting a crease in a piece of paper...it's more likely to tear apart.
then, i started making the sleeves that would fit inside the frame rails. added strengh and something else to weld to. the sleeves couldn't be full rectangular because they had to clear the lower nuts that the bumper bolts to.
next was to use the templates to determine how i was going to puzzle the frame, then to mark and cut the frame pieces. I also had to try to square off the old frame while keeping enough material to still weld to. this was one of those measure, measure again, measure again, then pray.
next was to test fit the puzzled pieces and make the final fit decent. you don't want to have it fit tight...you want some gapping, that way you can fill in with weld as opposed to having the weld sit on top. if it's too tight, grind the edges into a v shape. the welds aren't pretty, but i'm a newbie to welding. i have faith that my welds will hold since i welded the spring hangers on my 55 before beating it up at moab with no ill effects.
the hi lift on the ground was to push the frame back out...as soon as the old rear bumper was pulled off, the frame may want to push in since the rear bumper is also the crossmember.
a lot of work to go through...yes, but it will be so nice to move my spare and hi lift outside...plus it just looks cool.
