67CJ5 Kaiser offroad build on a budget ..

So I hope this is the correct place to share our build.. I must say that this site has helped a ton with this project on the little things so thank you to everyone that has shared their knowledge guys like myself who are rookies really appreciate it. Set out to build a low $$ jeep to take out and beat-up for the most part.. So we found the 67 cj5 in Orange CA, not much worked correctly but everything was there.. it barely shifted into gear, the drive shaft fell off with my pal trying to test drive it hahah..yeah really. So we still ended up bringing her home for 2k. We are about 90% done with stage 1, basically our plan was to make it real safe and able to take a beating with the drive train that came with it.. original Dana 27a frnt, Dana44 rear, spicer 18, v6 225 3.7, 4 offenhauser intake, Q jet, Saginaw 4 speed trans, and had a Saginaw manual assist steering, on some nice Western looking wheels and 31" nice Toyo tires.. Really I had no clue what we had found being this is my first Jeep and my pal who is building this with me is a Landcruiser pro and has some knowledge on Jeeps but not as much as his old FJ's.. So after reading a bunch it sounded like we had a pretty good little platform to start with.. So this is what she looked like when she came home..[/URL][/IMG]


So we got her back to the shop "Banister Iron Works" in Escondido CA owned by my friend who well.. lets be honest, the one who knows how to fabricate and build amazing offroad stuff and by profession is a Iron Works job shop..and as we started "really" looking closer the light went on.. "damn this is going to be a lot of work!" haha.. Rust was pretty bad on the rear end and the body from the A pillar back had some serious bondo efforts haha.. This is not a frame off restoration at all, it was suppose to be a "cage it, strengthen it, and take it out and see what she can do offroad and have some fun.. issue number #1. linkage from Hearst shifter and Saginaw trans does not work period..so after undoing and redoing about 100 times we finally got the Hearst shifter to catch 1,2,3,4 but could not get reverse..

so we did what we thought may be to our advantage on the trail in a sticky spot..gave reverse her own stick.. unorthodox but so am I.. After we got her shifting and able to drive down the street (with a milk crate and gas can) it was time to put our plan into play..
1. Well first off I am 6'3" 260 and the ole Cj5 just is tiny..so for me to fit comfortably this was going to be some work.. started by chopping the rear end body completely off.(sorry to offend anyone with this but we had a vision of more buggy like rear end completely caged and the body was rough and rusty anyway)..



2. we wanted to lengthen the wheel base a bit so we put it up on the rack and then found out all sorts of stuff haha...

First thing we found out that she needed all new leafs, bushing, mounts etc. then we had to weld the EBrake threads from the back of the Ebrake.. and on and on..
3.So we cut off the old and installed all new springs, made our mock up shackles..went with SkyJacker 2.5" Softrides.. read that they are decent, and planning on the Rancho 9000 adjustables..

4. Made some u bolt sliders and put the new springs in..

5. Lengthened the frame 6" to get a bit longer wheel base and this let us better mount the seats where they need to be for me to fit in this little Jeep..

6.Next we wanted to see how the new springs and wheel base twisted...not bad!


7.On the ground with new springs and stretch

More to come.. back to work now..

 

on to the "making it safe" part.. started from the bottom



on to seats.. mounts etc. I went with the Corbeau seats and retractable 4 point belts, the seats tilt and slide which I wanted for some comfort..


more cage work.. we wanted to give her a specific looking rearend more of a buggy prerunner almost.. Juggy if you will for future mods..Well the B pillar ended up getting changed 4 times .... this was the first attempt..

On to the fuel cell.. we decided we wanted it as close to the center as possible for weight distribution.. went with a 16 gallon jegs..
made all of the brackets and mounts tied into the frame..

and another attempt at the Bpillar vertical bars haha..

on to the rearend of the cage.. All I can say to this is everyone has there own idea and eye of what they like..

ok well this is what we ended up with for now..sheetmetal and jewelry to come..

and then we made the bumber with some holes and the stinger ..this will most likely change as well..

The cage is 95% done so on to the real stuff... the search was on for the power steering conversion.. found the power steering pump bracket at the junk yard (only one in the entire yard..lucky) purchased the A1 cardone box and fabricated her in..all DD bar with flaming river joints..




So I still need to find the pitman arm, press the pulley on and get the belt.. Anyone know what pitman arm to get ? my old Saginaw manual assist box has a slight drop with a smaller diameter spline..

Then the steering wheel tilt..figured we'd try this out..and actually seems to work ok..we will see when she finally gets on the dirt..

Then built the final shackles for the rear end.. and put the Curry Johny Joints in the rear.. I read they work pretty good and they make sense so they are in.. when we lengenthed the frame we also moved the perches and put the Johny Joints in ..

so here is where we are at.. I left out that I redid most of the brake lines, new fuel lines, lucas oil treatment, cheapo cherrybombs, 44" LED light bar..still need to get the drive shaft lengthened, do some sheet metal, and redo the floor pan over the trans.. I will post some more as we go.. but as of now here is how she sits.. we started this build exactley 2 weeks after Tierra Del Sol in Ocotillos wells which was on March 1st 2014.. All I can say is that Justin Banister at Banister Iron Works is one bad dude when it comes to metal..cant say thank you enough.. true pal.
1967 CJ5ish Juggy

 

Hey it looks good , and your making allot of headway......and nice to have a large shop to work out of............What did you use for tubing?

Power steering sector shaft as you have already figured out is a larger OD..............you need to get all the weight in it first and see what your steering box needs in the way of a Pittman arm to keep away from any Bump Steer.......Dropped Arms are also shorter in length ..........so hopefully that doesn't effect where the steering gear is now mounted...............Might want to check your castor in the front end also with those long shackles , you need about 5-7 degrees.

 

Yes very fortunate my pal works with metal for a profession and talked me into doing this build. watching a master craftsman you can learn a ton which is what I am doing hahah... tubing just 1 3/4 x .120wall rolled..
so I found a pitman arm (at the junkyard again) that has a bit more of a drop in it than the prior pitman arm on the manual assist saginaw box the po had in.. seems to work well as of yesterday. I will need to make sure as you said to double check the castor good call.. the shackles on there are for mockup to see how they sit and move when fully loaded we will whip up some xtra strong permanent rock smashing shackles haha.. but here is my issue at the moment and you may have already answered my question.. my passenger side tie rod knuckle or ball joint is hitting my leaf spring when turning left restricting full turn by about 3/4" .. wondering if my castor would be the cause of this after puting on the Skyjacker 2.5" lift and longer shackles?? or did the PO not have the correct tie rod? kind of confused ... again hahah.. yesterday we got all of the power steering hoses put together, fuel lines ran, next on to shock mounts and have to lengthen the drive shaft and she should be ready for a shakedown.. I appreciate the input and the answer to my questions Tarry99

 

It should not be the Castor as the spring hanger is fixed to the axle & spring unless you have moved them?...............A picture would be the first thing that would help........................Above you already mentioned that the New Junkyard Pittman arm has more drop..........that is more than likely part of your problem!...........If you still have the D-27 under the front then perhaps a "Tie Rod" flip ( there are kits for that )to the high side of the knuckle will help solve your problem or another Pittman Arm that has less drop.
Another thing to think about and this may not be related to this problem...........but when getting junkyard Pittman arms the key in the spline is not always in the same location...............meaning from application to application a non-standard arm may be offset enough that it turns more to one direction than the other...........

 

I can get a picture and post it after work today. no we did not move the spring perches at all on the front, just added the new skyjacker 2.5" and some longer shackles for mockup.. I will check and see if a "strait pitman arm" changes anything first.. It still has the Dana 27a, and I was thinking exactley what you are saying, "flip" the connecting joint of the tierod.. the pitman arm keyways "clocked" just like the previous that was too small.. (third one worked the other one fit but as you said were not aligned haha). We were also thinking a spacer where you would potentially add your shims for castor would give it the .5" lift needed for clearance.. just a thought. so the "TieRod Flip"..this sounds great and I would get more clearance from the ground it would seem.. how and where do I find that? Or do you fabricate it yourself with a ball joint of sorts?? thank you for the advice!
Mike

 

Google up "Jeep Tie Rod Flip" .........several folks make them and have different approaches to get to the same point.........do some research ..........I've used the .......www.goferitoffroad.com .....

 

perfect will do. I appreciate the help!

 

I bought my tie rod flip kit from OK auto and 4WD. You will need a total of 3 and a specific reamer to make it work. PN: ROK781543 they are around $11 each. I have the reamer and would be willing to let you borrow it, just pay the shipping each way. It fits in a USPS $5 flat rate box.

 

thank you for the offer jzeber! We have a couple reamers here at the shop.. I was looking at the "Go-For-It" Tie Rod Flip bushings, they say all you need to do is use a 3/4" drill bit to bore out existing hole and drop the bushing in, weld and your done... So now I was hoping to have a local shop lengethn my drive shaft but it seems they want at least $200.00.. thinking on just buying a new rear drive shaft from Tom Woods..

 

I have goferit also worked well for many ,many yrs but are now worn out ,,,,, I have heard Goferit has been taking A<LONG< TIME!!! to ship ...... PM Supertrooper he got the same thing from a different company ,,, or check thread in builds and fab

 

Love the build so far, thank you for the pics and keep the updates coming.

 

I ordered from goferit a couple months ago and received in about two weeks. Not super speedy, but not bad either.

 

X2. My jaw dropped when I saw this tilt mechanism. Genius at work..

 

Im not into the tube buggy look but the tube work looks great. Impressive amount of progress for such in such a short time. Is the tilt column from synergy manufacturing? Im tall too, 6'7", and was looking at that tilt setup but I just hard mounted it higher than stock.

 

I will do so.. thank you for the headsup cj6/442 !

 

Thank you for the complement on the tubing.. the plan was to "build it for the future" which someday I want to have a 4x4 that can rock crawl and still smash through the desert at high speed on a lower budget than an Ultra4.. haha much lower..so we made it safe. being 6'3" and 250 there was no way I was going to fit with the rear fenders and the way the old steering was.. since we did the power steering mod with all new DD and flaming river joints I wanted to add a tilt column to go with the tilt and slide seats..I couldn't make up my mind on which way to go and then one day remembered that ORW (off road warehouse) in San Marcos, CA had a weld on offroad tilt mechanism.. well there it is for $135.00. We were going to make it our self's but figured at that price we wouldn't be saving too much $$..

 

Todays update.. damn the budget keeps getting raised hahah..finished the rock sliders, we removed the seats and fuel cell, finished all of the welding on the cage bumper to bumper seat mounts etc. started covering the trans and hole in the floor pan with sheet metal..(pic later).. my shocks came today stoked!! will start mounting tonight.. rs9000xl for the price they just seemed like the way to go for now.. btw its a buy 4 get one free right now online.. next will be finishing the floor pan and sanding/scrubbing the cage and putting a clear coat on her (may get painted we will see)..

kind of off of the subject but I know there is a ton a talk on mounting the saginaw power steering box (I got the 4 bolt re-manufactured from Oriellys)so here is a photo of our finished mount.. basically just reinforced the outside of the frame with 1/4" plate and fire wrenched holes all the way through the frame followed by round stock that goes all the way through to bolt holes on box, and welded, and then gusseted and plated everything together came out strong as heck and looks real clean.. nice work Banister..his idea on that... more to come! [/URL]
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So we did make some progress on Sunday.. we went 9 for 9 on the sheet metal panels which is pretty darn rare for this build, there is usually one or two do'er'agains on any given day as I'm sure you know..still trying to figure out where and how the best mounting positions for the shocks will be.. we will use the stock front upper mounts, all other mounts will be made. primer is coming up soon for the cage.. need to wrap up the rest of the rear sheet metal and hidden compartments then primer and paint.. well at least primer haa..[/URL][/IMG]
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