DJ's TJ: Low and Slow

[Dev]

Update on some smaller items I recently installed.

Since I'll be cutting my hood pretty high I won't be able to use the factory rubber hood latches so I got these, the $40 Amazon specials .

These are push button style latches. The top piece sits above the hood and a bottom "nut" sandwiches the hood below, and gets secured with some grub screws.

Yea I got some over spray on the hood when I painted the cage

These are designed to mount with a nut on each side of a tab. To simplify the engine bay instead of welding a new tab somewhere I just drilled through my shock tower gussets. But because these gussets sit so high, the hood latch bolts would be too tall if I were to use a nut on top of the tab so I just welded a nut to the bottom of each gusset. This allows the latch bolt to sit lower. And then I had to get creative with a spring mechanism so that the hood pops up when the button is pressed.

Of course I still retained the safety latch in front of the hood by the grille.



I finally got my rear ARB locker hooked up too. My locker came with the compressor when I bought it. This is the smallest compressor ARB makes and it's only supposed to run the locker, nothing else. I have a co2 tank to air up tires and use air tools.

I knew I didn't want the compressor inside the engine bay for heat reasons. Heat is what kills these compressors so as long as it stays cool it should last a while. I dabbled with the idea of mounting it under the drivers seat but I ended up mounting it in the back, on the driver's side wheel well. This keeps it out of the heat, keeps the air line nice and short, and allows me to hear it when it runs so I'll know if I get a leak somewhere.

For some reason the electrical harness the compressor came with wasn't even the correct one so I changed some wires around and made it work for me. I ran all wires along the driver's side of the tub and through the firewall. On the other side of the firewall I made my own wire harness using the ol' crimp-one-end-in-a-vise-and-chuck-the-other-end-in-a-drill-method, and ran it all to my electrical tray.

The air line passes through the factory grommet that's in the driver's side corner of the tub and runs down the cage, along the inside of the frame, onto the upper link and into the housing, just like my diff breather.

The compressor is turned on by the switch panel, and the locker is enabled by the switch next to it. Tested, locker engages and zero leaks. I'm excited to feel what it's like when it instantly engages compared to the Rubicon lockers I had that seemed to take forever sometimes.

I was pretty excited for this one..

I bought a 15" PRP suede steering wheel when I got back from KOH as a commitment to myself to install it at some point.

I eventually bought the rest of the parts I needed for the install. I got an NRG hub adapter pn: NRG-SRK-171H and an NRG quick release pn: NRG-SRK-200BK which will make it easier to get in and out with the high bolsters on my seats.

Removal of the steering wheel was a piece of cake. Everyone says you need a special steering wheel puller but I just used a cheap harbor freight double jaw puller and it came right out.

Installing the hub adapter and the quick release was straight forward too. I didn't hook up my horn switch when I installed it as I don't need it for my upcoming shakedown run but I'll install it before the Rubicon.

And installed.. this might sound weird but this is one of the things that I think just completes a build. I'll be in contact with it 100% of the time when I'm in this rig so it's more than just another part. It now FEELS like a different jeep than what I had, in a good way. It's like a physical object that represents a milestone to this project I've been working on for 2 years straight. Idk, maybe I'm just weird. The suede feels fantastic too.

So I have a few things left to do before taking it out next month including redoing some steering stuff which I'll talk about soon. Since it'll be down for a few days I wanted to take it out for a spin to see how it drove. The last time I drove it I only took it down the street so I couldn't get a feel for it.
I ended up taking a quick rip just outside of the neighborhood yesterday and got it up to speed and damn it felt great!

Although I went with 5.38 gears it actually picks up pretty well. Its more responsive than I thought it would be.

The steering feels great, even without steering assist. (That's on the next post). It tracks straight, doesn't pull, kinda sorta returns to center after a turn even though I have 6° of castor.

The fans come on after they reach operating temp. The radiator fan actually cools it down so much that it'll turn off cause it falls just below 190°.

The heated seats work great, everything sounds good, exhaust sounds perfect. I was stoked..

and then I got back home. I left it running when I went inside to open the garage, I came out and heard the radiator gurgling and noticed the engine temp gauge was pinned I noticed both fans were off so it overheated.

I did some troubleshooting and found it was caused by the shitty design of the bus bar I used. There's one stud on the bus bar that disconnected from the bar it was sitting on so my relay panel lost its 12v supply. I already know how I'm going to fix it so it's not a big deal. I just hope I didn't blow the head gasket by getting it so hot. But I'm glad this happened now, not while on a gnarly trail in JV.

 

[Dev]

As I mentioned in my last post, the jeep overheated due to one of the bus bar posts losing connection with the bus bar.

Let's go way back to when I purchased these bus bars. When I got them I noticed the bus bar would sink down when the center posts were tightened. There isn't enough infill below the bar so it's just a shitty design.

I shaved down each plastic side so that when the bar sunk down at least the terminal would still contact the bar.. at least that's what I thought.

Fastforward to last weekend when the jeep overheated I noticed this was still happening. Can't really tell from this picture cause it's the post to the left, but it looks like it's sitting down on the bar but my meter says otherwise.

Here you can see the lack of infill below the bar. The single plastic nub in the center is definitely not enough to support the bar when the terminal posts are tightened.

So I designed some infill spacers and had them 3d printed.

Much better.

Some of you may have spotted this in my previous post but I made a ram mount on my front axle. I got a PSC 1.5x8" steering assist ram. I initially wanted to mount it directly behind my tie rod which would keep it high and out of the way but the minimum bend radius of power steering hose prevented that from happening. I ended up mounting the ram just below the tie rod. Because of this, I wanted to add some protection as it would be the first thing to get hit. I added some .120" DOM right below the ram, which sits pretty much inline of the factory tie rod mount of these Dana 60 knuckles, so overall the packaging of all of this is still higher than where a stock tie rod would be.

Let's go through the process of building it...
But first here's the beautiful ram. These damn things are $300 at the time of this post.

Of course before cycling the steering I had to do an alignment. These are the TMR alignment tools. I've always used some angle iron laying around but these make it simple.

First, I welded a cap on the end of a tube and then welded some tabs onto that. These tabs will be my winch suckdown point. Since I'm welding some tube to the axle I figured why not? This will allow me to suck the front end down during steep climbs to lower the COG. this tube will also be my mounting point for one side of the ram so I trimmed down the tabs that the ram came with.

It's looking a little uh... Excited

This is the rest of the tube that sits below the ram for protection. This was a fun one to build due to the compound bend and weird notches. I think it ended up resembling an elk antler.

The other end of the ram attaches to the tabs I welded directly to the tie rod. I trust my welds more than I do a clamp.

And a little more Steelit to blend her in..

I'll be showing a lot of power steering work in the next post.

 

[Dev]

Since I raised the body and trans quite a bit my transfer case linkage wasn't real happy.

Savvy cable kit going in.

Halfway through the install I realized my kit didn't have the correct hardware so I contacted Savvy and they sent me out the correct part right away. Pretty awesome company to deal with.

Here it is installed and properly adjusted. Shifts smooth as butterrrrr.

Moving on to the dreaded power steering work I had to do. My power steering pump whined even at idle . If I left it, it would constantly be in the back of my mind wondering when it would fail. I knew it had to be the restriction of vacuum going into the pump, causing cavitation.

From the research I've done before building my steering I read that using -8 as the vacuum line would be fine but apparently it's not, for my application at least. It's a relatively long run after all. I thought about changing it to -10 but if I was going to take everything out and do all this work I figured I'm gonna do it right. So -12 it is. I hopped on Summit and ordered what I needed. Since this isn't a high pressure line I ditched the high pressure style fittings and went with push-lock fittings.

Here's a pic showing the different between -12 (top) and the -8 line I was using. For reference, -12 correlates to 3/4" and -8 is 3/8".

I pulled the pump and reservoir. Time to cut off these -8 bungs and weld the -12 bungs in.

Cutting the reservoir bung off was straightforward. I nicked the edge of my reservoir when I cut it but no big deal. I threw some more filler in it after I welded the new bung on.

Here it is welded up. The size difference is pretty big.

Cutting the bung off of the pump was a different story. Any small shaving can be catastrophic in a power steering loop so used the same trick I used when I drilled into my steering box.

By using a -6 plug with a schrader valve on my output side of the pump, I hooked up a tire inflator to it, which supplied constant air to prevent any shavings from entering the pump.

After cutting off the bung with the band saw table I drilled the hole out to the correct minor diameter of the bung and welded it up using the same slow technique that I did before. This process took about 2 hours to prevent cooking the internals of the pump.

Back in the ol' yeepers

So because I moved up to -12 hose, the minimum bend radius becomes much greater. So as I routed the hose between the res and the pump the hose wanted to kink. There are tricks to prevent kinking. Some people fill the hose with solid wire or even sand, bend it to the correct radius and then heat it up in the oven to keep it's shape. I just grabbed a 5/8" x 10" spring and dropped it in the hose which worked out perfectly. By using a spring it's easy to replace a damaged hose on the trail or even buy a new spring from a hardware store.

From here, all that was left to do was to build my lines to feed the ram.

I also replaced the aluminum NPTxAN fittings out of the steering box to steel fittings.

I ended up having to switch my ram lines around cause it wanted to turn right when I turned the wheel left.
From what I read online about the Ford 4x4x2 box, the way it's tapped, people say the channel on the passenger side of the box is for left turn and the shaft side of the box is for right turn. Apparently that's not the case for mine. For anyone that plans on using this box for their build please note that:

The channel on the passenger side of the box (or the end cap of the box) = RIGHT TURN or driver's side of ram.

The shaft side of the box is for LEFT TURN or passenger side of ram.


With everything hooked up and plumbed the steering pump no longer whines!! Hell yea. Just another item off the list.

As you can see I will need to install a spacer to act as a stop when turned to the driver side.

Here's a random pic at full lock. I have some clearance between my tire and lower link. If I want to get more angle out of it in the future I'll have to extend my pitman arm but we'll see how the shakedown goes.

I also wanted to mention how AMAZING the ram feels. I'm coming from Dana 44 stock knuckles, Y link steering and 37s where my wheels would get locked up on every pebble on the trail. With the jeep sitting on its weight in my garage I can steer it pretty much with one finger. Pretty insane how different it is.

 

[Dev]

I've been busting my ass getting ready for my trip that's in exactly 1 week. I've gotten a few things done since the last post so let's get into it.

New Motobilt blank armor! These have been sitting in the garage for a couple months so it was nice to get some floor space back. I went with blank armor so I can cut out the wheel wells for my specific stretch and fill in the space in front of the tires. And I chose steel for it's strength over aluminum and the ease of being able to weld some tube fenders on in the future.

Once I got a side clamped up there I traced out the body from the inside of the armor. My plasma did the rest.

Other side finished

This hole is for my tail lights. I'm just gonna say.. 4.5" hole saw + 3/16" steel plate = pain in the dick. You can see how much I moved the hole over from where I had it originally. It's much more pleasant to the eye in this location.

And done with the corner armor.

Moving onto my skid plate. I wanted to weld a 2x.250" tube between the lower link mounts on each side and build a removable skid plate off of those tubes for a smooth transition but it's cutting it close to my trip. I'll have to build that another time. I just bolted my old skid plate back in for now.

This is a Barnes4wd skid and I added a bunch of plate to it a few years ago to protect the trans. The front of it bolts onto the engine skid so it's essentially one big smooth surface. As you can see it's seen some fun times.

After bolting it up I took a measurement from the floor to the belly pan. I'm STOKED to say it's 17.5"! That's pretty killer for a rig on 40s. Sure it'll be getting used quite a bit with how low it sits but I'm excited to see how this whole LCG hype actually is.

Soooo front fenders... For what I want to do It's gonna be a lot of tube work with many different compound bends. I don't have the tube, welding gas or time to get these done before my trip so I had to resort to a couple of cuts in my hood so my tires don't trash it.

I marked out how high I wanted the cuts to be and traced around a piece of tube that's bent at a 45° angle. I may move this cut further back on the hood in the future when I'm ready to build the fenders but for now.. this'll do.

So everything I've been doing on this jeep for the last 2 years have been pretty major fabrication work; frame, tube, CAD, aluminum, electrical. It was at this point where I felt a huge weight off my shoulders because I can finally do the fun stuff; lights, storage, etc.

You may have spotted this in the pics I just posted but my good buddy got me an early bday gift. My first whip!

I refuse to show other peoples brands on my trucks so I changed out the flag.

So for this upcoming JV shakedown trip I'm towing the jeep so I won't be putting the soft top back on. Eventually I'll build an aluminum roof panel for shade and protection but for shade in the meantime I got a badass flag from the GOAT Nick Sawyers of Loose & Lost and turned it into a headliner. This flag is a map of the hammers trails at Johnson valley. So when I'm hammered at the hammers I'll know what trail I'm on

And to finish this post off I got a new odyssey battery. These are a little pricy at $500 with a warranty but I stand behind these batteries big time.

 

[Dev]

Here's kind of a rush post of a few I things I got done recently. Since I'm on a time crunch I haven't been able to go into as much detail as I used to when I started this thread so I'll let the pictures do the talking.

I wanted some amber chase lights. These make it a little safer when I'm commuting between trails on the desert floor when there's a ton of dust being kicked up. I've owned the big $-big name brand lights on my other trucks and I will say that they are worth every penny. But.. chase lights don't need to have insane lumen output so I got some cheapy Amazon specials. At $35 a pair these are a damn good deal. They kind of resemble Baja Designs S2's but they're yellow instead of amber.

I made quick mounts and welded them to the cage.

I actually liked these so much that I bought another pair the very next day they arrived.

I've had this idea for a while. I wanted to mount some lights on my knuckles so I can have fog lights as low as possible to cut through the dust/fog. Mounting them on the knuckles also allows the lights to lead into corners with my steering. I was going to go with Baja S1's but with the price of these and the fact they'll most likely get hit/be submerged in water I decided these were the best choice for now.

I wanted these on top of the knuckles but apparently my passenger side TRE is larger than the drivers side joint so I wasn't able to. Having them this low will also create greater shadows on the objects in front of me which will allow them to stand out more for depth perception.

If you guys remember, I built my front brake lines in the factory config with the lines going straight up to the frame from the calipers. I decided to change that. Since my down travel is so long the lines had to be real long and that just increases the chance of them being ripped off by something.

I used the same lines I had and attached them to the axle instead. I used regular brake hose to connect them to the upper link, then to a hard-line on the upper link, to another hose and then up to the proportional valve. This is exactly how I routed the rear brake lines which I realized I never showed.

I wanted to hard mount my spare parts/tools some how. I've always just thrown everything in the back of the jeep loosely in it's own bag. It's never been a problem as I've never flopped but with this new build I know I'll be getting roudy

I decided on the Milwaukee packout cases. I grabbed an aluminum base and mounted it on the tub. I can mount other cases on top of this one for various tools/items.

I finally got around to adding some tube to my rear frame. I did this more as a recovery point than anything else. Although, if you guys watched that youtube video of us at KOH you saw that I have a buddy that likes to use our tailgates as a pushbar . Using tube as a recovery point makes more sense than a shackle mount these days anyways.

I didn't fully weld it onto the frame yet. I'll be doing that some time today. My tires are no longer the furthest point behind the jeep but that's ok.

Here's a little mount I designed and had my neighbor print out for me. I'd love to get my hands on a printer but he doesn't mind making what I need.

It's a double Baja Designs dome light mount that mounts to a 1.75" tube. I designed it so it's modular, I can mount other types of things to it like a GoPro mount etc..

After seeing what the light looks like at night I'm gonna redesign it so it's a single mount cause one light is plenty bright enough for the entire seating area.

 

[Dev]

Officially ready for the first shakedown run!!!

Finally took her out to the local lot to snap some shots with the mirrorless. And here's part of the description that I posted on my IG page:





2 years and 2 months (or ~790 white Monsters) of non-stop work, countless hours in the garage after my full time job, and blood, sweat and tears is what went into building this jeep.. this rendition at least.

To sum it all up the goal was to build a LCG (low center of gravity) build out of my '03 TJ that I've had since 2016. To get it to sit as low and stable as possible I raised the body, powertrain and drivetrain, cut the front and rear frame sections, and built a new frame that sat way higher so the entire jeep can sit low. This allows for a much better link geometry.

I slapped in some 1-ton axles out of an F350 & GM: Dana 60 and 14 bolt that I shaved FRONT and rear to keep the ground clearance high. Geared to 5.38, trussed, ARB air locker in the rear and a Grizzly locker up front. All held in with a 3 link and single triangulated 4 link. All sitting on 40" tires wrapped around Allied beadlocks. And 16" ORI stx struts to let these axles party as hard as they want.

Because the front frame section sits so high I had to custom fab everything in the engine bay. To stretch the front so far without going full hydro I used a steering box out of a '78 Bronco and finished it with hydro assist.

For you nerds my anti-squat is around 92% and belly pan is at 17.5". Wheels base is 108".

I got this build "done" in time for my 30th birthday thats in a couple days and I couldn't ask for a better gift than to take my new rig on its first shakedown run with some new homies I've made along the way. Life is fucking rad!

 

[Rec_Rider]

We're going to see how she works. Bring your nitrogen tank just in case.

Just noticed that your TJ looks so much different than in my profile pic. That was a while ago.

 

[Dev]

We're going to see how she works. Bring your nitrogen tank just in case.

Just noticed that your TJ looks so much different than in my profile pic. That was a while ago.

Looks like you'll need to update that real soon!

 

[Dev]

Well, first shakedown run was a huge success!

Here's an AI logo I made for the trip. I wanted to surprise everyone with shirts but the timing didn't happen so I got some stickers made. The girls secretly slapped them on everyone's rigs.

So the jeep did fantastic and had no major problems. It feels like a completely different vehicle. I was able to crawl lines and climbs that I never would've been able to do before.

My first time running beadlocks, kept the tires at 7-8psi.

First time running 40s, the rolling radius felt a lot better than 37s.

The front stretch made a HUGE difference too. When approaching a big rock the bumper was no longer at risk of being contacted first and there was no steering box in the way to worry about. And with the high steer and ram skid I wasn't worried about hitting anything in the front.

The rear stretch along with no more boat anchor of a gas tank hanging me up on everything also made a big difference. The fuel cell directly above the rear axle made it feel like once my front end was passed an obstacle everything else just followed, even on steep climbs.

The flat links felt really nice too which allowed me to climb completely vertical or undercut rocks without the axle having to move forward during up travel.

Even the cage made the whole jeep feel solid with no body flex. And even with the cage and frame now tied together, and my poly engine mounts I felt no vibrations.

And of course the ORIs... I've never owned any top of the line shocks. I came from bilstein 5100s so the difference here is insane. I left the pressures on the higher side at 100psi at the lower chambers for the whole trip and never touched them. With only having 4" of up travel at the front and 3" at the rear it was nice to have them stiff when we were going fast between trails. I hit the internal hydro bump stops and caught some air a few times and they're smoooooth, no more harsh hits when bumping out on my previous suspension. Being stiff wasn't bad for crawling either, they never put me in a bad spot off camber. I'll eventually spend a good amount of time tuning them some day.

Something else that was really nice was just the lack of noises. My previous suspension has always made different noises as it flexed and now it's completely gone! My exhaust also no longer makes me deaf so thats a huge plus.


There's really only one thing that I need to make a change on and that's my steering leak. I slightly cross threaded one of my ram ports on the steering box after I added steering assist and now I have a steady flow of fluid coming out of it. I brought a bunch of fluid with me on the trails so I constantly filled the resi.
Every time I shut the engine off I think air would get into the box from that port so my steering wasn't great on the trails.
I'll have to pull the box and step that 1/8npt up to 1/4".


Some pics from the trip:


Buddy of mine let me borrow his trailer

This is everyone that made it out.

This is on turkey claw

And then sometime that first night I was doing about 60 on the lake bed when I somehow found the only puddle in the desert and it covered everything.

This is that V notch that's on Blueberry. The same one we did at KOH in dirtnations video. This time I had my jeep with me.

This pic shows how deep the notch is as I approach it.

And some screenshots. Crawled right up it.

Here's my dad getting it done in his TJ6

Here's another view of the notch right next to the one I did that my buddy was trying. Pretty wild.

Can't forget the famous Comanche

Backdoor!!! This is one of those bucket list obstacles so I had to put tires on it. Hard to tell from the pictures how steep this really is. The suckdown winch helped. I was able to get my rear up slightly but my wheelbase isn't quite there for this one.

Here's my dad's jeep behind mine. He's been waiting over 2 years to wheel with me again.

Here's a good sized rock I parked on to see what my flex was like. This wasn't full flex yet. I never did get to flex her out like I wanted to but the goal for this trip was to make sure everything works ok for the Rubicon and nothing rubs or contacts.

 

[Rec_Rider]

You're right, it's been too long of a wait but you did a great job! Shakedown run at JV on some of the hammers is not really so much of a shakedown run as it's a breakdown run.

 

[E-Ticket]

Congrats on your successful post build trip! This thread was a great read front to back, mega skills with design and fab. Thanks for the detailed thread, super impressive stuff you have done.

 

[NashvilleTJ]

That’s awesome, Dev. Looks like the rig is working well.

 

[B00mb00m]

Now that looks like fun! How did you settle on those uptravel numbers? Are the ORIs easy to adjust ride height, or when you change ride height does it change the tuning also?

 

[Rec_Rider]

I'd say the build has come a long way from this

This is another shot from this weekend while attempting a night run on Sledgehammer. That would have been a very long night had the first two cleared the first obstacle. As it was we turned around and decided to do the gatekeeper on Jackhammer.

 

[Dev]

Now that looks like fun! How did you settle on those uptravel numbers? Are the ORIs easy to adjust ride height, or when you change ride height does it change the tuning also?

The whole idea for this build was to keep it as low as possible so my uptravel numbers ended up being what they are because of where I wanted my ride height to be.

I have a dual fill kit on a nitrogen bottle that I can bring with me anywhere. It takes about 2 minutes to change ride height/pressures. The only other thing that needs to be adjusted after changing ride height is the drag link just to center the steering wheel (which isn't 100% necessary).

And yes, what makes the ORIs so great is that they have an upper AND lower chamber. Filling the upper chamber just gets you to whatever ride height you want (much like an air shock). The lower chamber allows you change how stiff or soft the strut wants to extend and compress. So with a high enough lower chamber you don't need to use sway bars. For example my lowers are currently at 100psi and I have zero body roll coming around corners or driving on steep side hills. They also have clicker adjustments at the bottom of each strut to fine tune compression. If for some reason you want your compression outside of the clicker range you can just drill more holes into the piston to open the flow or tap and plug the holes to limit the flow.

EDIT: Yea, if you change ride height then you should increase or decrease the lower chamber pressure if you want to keep the same characteristics.

 

[Dev]

I'd say the build has come a long way from this

View attachment 617291


This is another shot from this weekend while attempting a night run on Sledgehammer. That would have been a very long night had the first two cleared the first obstacle. As it was we turned around and decided to do the gatekeeper on Jackhammer.

View attachment 617294

Hard top and full doors! Haha good times.

Yea we'll need to get out there again and conquer sledge. That jackhammer v notch climb was super fun too.

 

[Dev]

Alright the big Rubicon trip is next week! We've been planning this trip for the last 2 years so it feels like I built this jeep specifically for this.

I'll get you guys caught up on what's been going down.

As mentioned I was having a nice little steering leak on my shakedown run. It was leaking at the steering assist port due to a slight crossthread fuck up on my part when I changed the fittings.
I pulled the box and snapped a pic of the threads.

The plan was to open this hole bigger to step it up to 1/4 npt which meant more potential of getting shavings into the gear. So I figured eh, why not just weld the fitting on? This is cast steel to mild steel which means annealing should be done but since penetration isn't the goal it wasn't necessary. After all, the weld just needs to seal.
So I welded the fitting on, threw the box back in and primed the circuit.

No more leak, but there was still a big problem. This steering gear felt like absolutely garbage, even after getting all the air out. It had a ton of resistance throughout its rotation, like A LOT. I felt it big time on the shakedown run but I figured it was just from the leak which allowed air into the system..
I narrowed the problem down. It must've been back when I drilled this port out for steering assist on initial install. When I missed the channel slightly, the drill bit must have opened up the inside wall of the box and caused tolerance issues. There was no way I can drive it on the street like this. If I had to make quick turns the box physically wouldn't let me. So I had to order another reman box. There goes $500.

I decided not to tap this box for steering assist. I just need this box to get me through the Rubicon. I'll send my other box to redhead or bluetop to get machined and rebuilt.
The new box went in and it feels WAAAAY better.

My dad and I took our jeeps on a quick rip to the beach to see how it handled on the street. This was my first time taking it on the highway. Steering did great, ORIs felt nice and stable, even my beadlocks didn't feel unbalanced at any speeds.

I accidentally snapped a schrader valve off of one of the struts. Got a few ordered and got it replaced.

While all the nitrogen was out of the struts and the suspension bottomed out I had to snap some shots of the ol girl sitting pretty.

Hard to see unless you saw it in person but the clearance on everything at full bump still blows my mind. Everything looks like it's one worn out strut eye away from crashing into each other, but it all works so well together.

So now that I know this jeep can drive fine on the road it was time to get some fenders built so I can be as street legal as possible. I started with the rears.
For this I'm using the same tube I used on everything else - 1.75x.120 DOM. These were definitely the most complex single-tube, multi-compound bends I've done. These took a little while to do but they're still be much less complicated than the fronts will be.

Here they are welded onto the armor. I made them stick out about half the width the tire. I have some sheet metal to throw on top but frankly I'm out of time so this is how they'll be for this trip.

With this trip coming up way too soon I also don't have time to build the front fenders. As mentioned, for how I want to build them they'll take a good amount of time to do.


As a lot of you may know a trail like the Rubicon is a trail that a ton of gear is needed. And now that I limited most of the space behind the seats it was time to use vertical space, so I built a simple cargo tray.
These real simple projects are by far my favorite type of fabrication projects to do. Something that doesn't have to be structural, and I can get real creative with without much planning. And the best part is I had all of this material in the garage already so it technically didn't cost me anything.

I left a cutout just above the filler cap so I wouldn't have to worry about moving things to fill the tank.

The whole thing flips up to access everything below including my cooler. It pivots on 1/2" bolts in the back with the aid of a couple 85 lbs gas struts and uses a quick-release push pin that I found somewhere at some point. Super crude and simple design.

After I built it I bought a Milwaukee packout triple drawer system. It didn't fit horizontally with the drawers facing the rear but it fit absolutely perfect sideways. I mounted it so when the bottom drawer is open it clears the upper flat stock of the rack by like 1/16".

And of course like everything else I don't have time to slap some paint on this yet. We leave in a couple days so I'm already on vacation mode

 

[NashvilleTJ]

Beautiful fab work as always, Dude. You've built quit a rig.

 

[Dev]

Back from the Rubicon and I have to say HOLY SHIT IT WAS NICE!!! I've done a lot of camping the last few years but this trip was by far my favorite. An absolute dream of a trail with amazing camping locations. I heard from a lot of people that the trail isn't very challenging but it really surprised us how technical it actually was. We did take all of the hardest sections though.

Knowing I only have a 15 gallon fuel cell and the last gas station was an hour from the trail I mounted up some fuelpax cans underneath my cargo tray before we left. I welded the mounts onto the tray so that hardware wouldn't be sticking up, preventing anything on the tray from sitting flat.
I also strapped another 5 gallon can on the tray so I had 10 gallons of extra fuel.

There was supposed to be around 5 rigs in our group but most people had to back out so it ended up being mine and my dad's jeeps but it worked out really well. We parked our trailers at the tahoma staging area and drove to the start of the trail on the street. For some reason they decided to do road construction on the busiest time of the year with all of these jamboree events going on so that held us up for a while. We started the first day on Tuesday and finished the trail on Friday. It was really nice being able to take our time and soak it all in.

The famous sign!

Came across a small group coming the other direction as we first got on the trail. Pulled off and stretched her on a rock to let them by. I was finally able to see the rear fully flexed. The front still has quite a bit more travel so I still have yet to see that.

Gatekeeper was actually pretty fun. There are some optional lines on each side to mess around on. Here's a pic of my dad's jeep at the end of it.

The bowl:

Camp: night 1

Little sluice:

Soup bowl!:
It took me a few times to get lined up correctly for this line. The silt on the rocks made the rear slip off every time but I eventually got up it! Cheeeow!

Old sluice:
This was by far our favorite section of the Rubicon and the hardest trail we've ever done. Super technical crawling. It's hard to think about how this was the main trail back in the day. I couldn't see how full size rigs can easily get through this without caving in some doors. My jeep felt like the perfect size, if my wheelbase was longer it would've been pretty rough. Having essentially 90 degree approach and departure angle was SO nice here. We had smiles on our faces the entire time.

I broke a steering AN line just a couple minutes after starting this section. Without hydro assist on this new steering box there was a lot of pressure on the circuit. Do you guys remember that I mentioned I accidentally built two similar steering lines and I installed one as a fuel line? Well that saved me. I didn't have an extra 130° fitting so I was able to pull my fuel line off and use it as my steering line. I installed a 90° fitting on the steering line and used that as my fuel line because there's some flexibility with the factory fuel hardline. I'm definitely packing some more parts going forward.

Our 2nd night we camped at Buck Island. We found this rad spot right by the lake. Water was perfect. Here's a little night shot.

This is the bridge that leads into rubicon springs. I had to slap my sticker next to Backcountry Beagles. Big fan of their YouTube channel.

We camped in the rubicon springs property right next to the main area and had an absolute blast playing in the water. For anyone going for the first time make sure you check out the springs area.

We ended up heading out super early Friday morning to beat all of the pre-jamboree traffic. We boogied it up Cadillac hill pretty fast so we didn't get any pictures. I'll tell you right now the videos you see on YouTube does not show how steep this hill is. It's pretty mind blowing these guys tow their offroad trailers down this section fully loaded with gear. On our way out we came across 50+ rigs coming in so we got out at a good time.

We camped another night at a campsite in truckee because my dad had a gnarly mtb race the next day. From spending a whole week on the Rubicon with non-stop wheeling and no showers to crushing a mtb race right after is insane.

Overall this trip was the DREAM and we loved every minute of it. It's now my main annual vacation trip.

 

[NashvilleTJ]

Awesome trip, and great pics. Sounds like a great time with your Dad.

Did you wind up needing the extra fuel?