I’ve never made a post about my Motobilt front half with the three link, sooo here you go. I decided to lop the front of my Jeep off on a Friday afternoon right after I got out of my classes. The goal was to get it driving again by Monday so I could get to class. I don’t know how I did it, but I made it happen.
The Jeep was already long-armed, so the links weren’t in the way. I had some coilovers I found on Facebook off a Can-Am Maverick that I made fit. I used TMR extra-tall towers to french onto the frame. They stick up so high they literally rest against my hood. I converted my coolant bottle to an old Gatorade bottle, which has somehow survived daily driving for the past year, so hell yeah. My windshield fluid bottle is an old lotion bottle I stole from my fiancée—then girlfriend at the time.
But to the main point: the important thing I haven’t seen anyone else do on a Motobilt front half is run a three link
and keep a factory radiator. Both of which I somehow pulled off.
Given that I needed the Jeep back together by Monday, I prepped and staged everything the week before and hoped I had all the parts. I broke out the Sawzall and started cutting… then realized it was probably a good idea to support the frame and engine first. So I did that real quick and then started slicing.
I used an old under-reach tube from a tow truck as donor steel. It was three eighths thick, and I used a chunk to sleeve and support the area I cut out for the JL steering box. I found the cast-iron JL box on Facebook for $250, and somehow the hydraulic lines bolt right into the Jeep TJ fluid lines. So that was cool. I stole that idea from
@carrotman. I reinforced the area behind the box cutout with the three eighths steel, welded it all in, and hoped it wouldn’t warp. Luckily, it didn’t.
I got it all fitted onto the frame tubes, squared it up, then realized I had to pull it all back off the stubs under my tub to grind the factory paint so I could weld it. By this time, it was about 3 AM Sunday morning. I had been working for around 16 hours straight since Saturday morning and decided I needed to sleep.
Got up bright and early Sunday, finished the grinding and welding, made my bars for the drag link and track bar, got it back on its own weight, bled the steering reservoir with the new box, rewired my headlights, painted nothing, and somehow finished around 2 AM Monday morning.
Then I decided I’d skip my morning class because it was a worthless geotechnical engineering class and just go to my 2 PM class instead. That was basically my whole personality in college—give myself every opportunity to show up to class and then blow it off because it was too early in the morning.
