Crawler/Overlander Yj Build-up

[Willy G]

Good morning all,
Here is a picture of an almost finished customer project to start a thread off. A full frame off Resto-mod Samurai. I'm still waiting on some parts, but this one is 99% done.



Now, this will be a build thread on my YJ Crawler. I sold my last Yj (blue one pictured below) when I bought this and highly regretted it. The goals I am aiming to meet are, 1.Increase the crawling ability, 2. Increase camping/roadtrip comfort. 3. Fix reliability issues. This will always be a rock crawler 90% of the year, so all modifications have to be easy to remove to keep it as light as possible.




Starting out with some light maintenance on the front axle. I heard a squeak from the front driver's axle and Proceceded to find a bad spindle bearing that started to snack on the chromoly shaft.




Also, I found out that I need to get the underside of my housing welded up. I might have hit some rocks with it.

 

[Willy G]

After work yesterday, I moseyed down to the local parts supplier and grabbed the 4L80e for this build and a transfer case for a future build. I'm still waiting on 2 quotes from the local transmission shops because both of them are backed up for a local end of the year drag race.



I couldn't pull the needle bearing out of the spindle with the 3 jaw puller that I have. I resorted to welding the inside of the race. This will shrink the I.D. of the bearing and made it easy to slide out! Then I cleaned up the old knuckles and greased the bearings.

 

[Willy G]

I started work on the other side of the front axle and discovered another bent tie-rod. Oh well, I'll add that to the order for today.



Here is a handy trick to keep all of your parts together in the parts washer.



Hopefully this will be together for a nice easy day trip on Saturday!

 

[Zeep]

It's a little unusual to see a dediccated crawler on this site!

 

[Willy G]

Yes, I know its a bit odd to post here, but I have some big plans for this thing. I just want to road trip this exactly how my friends in Costa Rica do. They aren't afraid to drive to the other end of the country and wheel, and then drive back! I put the front end back together and got the exhaust pipe straightened out with the torch. This helped the overheating issue quite a bit, but I will still be replacing the warn out 5.7. I normally plan a ride to get out of town when the college has it's parents weekend and that is exactly what we accomplished Saturday! GWNF through to Staunton Dam. More to come this week.

 

[Willy G]

I took the new-used 5.3 ls to a friends shop. We stripped everything down to the block for cleaning and upgrades. Then I broke the parts washer, and we still don't know how that happened. I'll be waiting on the seals and power-coating materials to come in due to some supply chain issues. But hopefully it will be done before the end of the week!

 

[Willy G]

Supply line issues are still biting this project in the behind. I received the wrong head bolts for one side of the engine. I managed to assemble the heads without loosing any valve keeps, and we elected to mount the one side and wait for the right bolts to come in.

 

[Willy G]

With hunting season and Christmas out of the way, it is time to start back on this thing. I finished up the Long block but didn't take any pictures of it. I took some friends down to Potts Mountain Trail for a day trip. The rain really makes that section fun and we only popped 2 valve stems. I got back to the shop and went ahead and pulled the drive train out, and it took less time to pull the engine than how long I was laughing at the little tires and wire wheels. After that, I finished up rebuilding a Birdhouse for the grandparents.

Also, on a side note, I spent some time helping a friend out with his new toy. Its a 60's CJ3A with a 1.6 Suzuki Sidekick Motor/trans and a Samurai transfer case. It's one of the most unique builds I've seen. It still death wobbles like a madman, but its fun/funny to drive.

 

[mbryson]

Subscribing and anxious for updates. I'm throwing some decent $ at my "YJ" based Jeep lately. I'd love to be able to drive it more than 2-3 hours on the highway, wheel it for a day or two and then drive it home. (TBI 350/700r4/D300 14 bolt/D60, etc)

 

[Willy G]

Right on! I'm definitely in the middle of throwing money at this thing now. Hopefully that trend will end soon.
After the motor came out, i finished stripping out all of the different harnesses, cleaned up the firewall of the leftover debris, and removed the dash.
I ordered some wrong parts during the lead up into Christmas. Notably, the 5.3 takes a different Flywheel and crankshaft spacer to run the 4l80e. Both parts are supposed to show up this week. I also found out that this is a 6 spline atlas 2, and takes a different input shaft than the one I was expecting. At this stage, I'm debating all of the small things I would like to do to it while its apart. Like if I will recess the 8274, how to mount a roof rack through bolted to cage (while remaining low profile), how to mount the engine skid plate, and all the small stuff that goes into these builds.

 

[mbryson]

I'm going to stick with my low power TBI 350 as it will be OK with some 5.13 gears with the 40" tires. The Jeep's just not worth it to me to swap in an LS (I've had the Jeep since 2003) based power train. If I truly win with the drive to trail, drive the trail, drive it home concept, a powertrain upgrade could be downright handy and make driving it that much more fun.

I'm doing ORI on all 4 corners, regearing the axles from 4.56 and shoring up the D300 (is that even possible?) before I drop the $ on the Atlas (maybe I just go there and be done? I've killed a lot of D300 over the years). We'll get the ORis in, gears and and see where we are at with the D300. It doesn't cost anything for me to stick with the D300 and I have drivelines and spares for those already.

 

[Willy G]

I'm going to stick with my low power TBI 350 as it will be OK with some 5.13 gears with the 40" tires. The Jeep's just not worth it to me to swap in an LS (I've had the Jeep since 2003) based power train. If I truly win with the drive to trail, drive the trail, drive it home concept, a powertrain upgrade could be downright handy and make driving it that much more fun.

I'm doing ORI on all 4 corners, regearing the axles from 4.56 and shoring up the D300 (is that even possible?) before I drop the $ on the Atlas (maybe I just go there and be done? I've killed a lot of D300 over the years). We'll get the ORis in, gears and and see where we are at with the D300. It doesn't cost anything for me to stick with the D300 and I have drivelines and spares for those already.

This TBI did pretty darn well until it got up to temperature, then it was worthless (the block is being donated to science).... I think the 5.38's I have in mine where a great choice for 40's. This rig was built by one of the club members in 2005, so its been around the block a time or 2. I had the 5.3 on the shelf and it needed a good home, plus old motor would barely do a 2nd gear burnout with the wire wheels and 5.38s. The Ftoy I used to work on would do rolling 3-4th gear burnouts with a 22re, 5.29s gears, and rollers. I also wanted cruise control.

ORI's are awesome and worth the price. I'm not going to be messing with the springs for reliablilty, predictablity of wheeling, and 2 spare main leafs are easy to carry. I know my driving style and wasn't going to build a D300 rig. The atlas is a wonderful upgrade and burning the fronts while using front dig will help alot in the technical trails. Alot of our club/friends run D300's with smaller tire rigs/lighter rigs, and they hold up great (if your right foot weight/vehicle weight are balanced)! I knew going into this build that I would be upgrading the 1310 cv rear shaft, so Its a no brainer to cut down some new shafts, and I'm still tossing the idea to do a carrier bearing for the front shaft.

 

[Willy G]

I'm still waiting on some stuff to come in for the atlas, but it looks good internally and I'll just slap it back together when the input arrives.

After that I cut the rails out of the new Winters shifter to allow panic reversing and panic 1st or 2nd. The old shifter was a ratchet shifter that you had to pull the front lever to move, I know it makes it easier for some to drive, but I like this style better.

I finished the engine accessories and didn't like how close the driver side manifold was to the power steering pump. I ordered some center dump manifolds and that should clear everything up!

 

[Willy G]

Got some progress over the weekend. The input finally arrived from Advanced Adapters and I slapped the atlas back together. Then I went and picked up my 4l80e that finally got rebuilt. In a rush, I accidentally put the 5.3 to 4l80e spacer on backward and threw it in the jeep for mock up. (the first picture shows the spacer on correctly). I also threw in an ls swap radiator and I really don't like how the upper hose goes across the top of the hood. I'm going to get one of those Cross flow radiators and see how that works.

Sunday I started looking at that 8274 and I remembered how much the Old jeep overheated while driving down the interstate with the 8274 on top of the frame, so I cut the old mount started to recess it as low as possible. And since I off-set it to the passenger side to clear the steering box, it lined up perfect with the grill mount to use this as a suck down winch. After that I started on making a new set of motor mounts for the block huggers.

Bonus picture of the new seats in the samurai.

 

[Willy G]

No real progress on the build this week. We plow snow for VDOT and that took up most of my free time this week. I stripped down the spare LS harness to match the swapped harness I bought.



Then convinced a friend of mine to get a crawler, so He called me in to co-drive up to Maryland and inspect his new marketplace find.