Picked Up A 71 For A Buddy Of Mine......

I too have found that standard grease will degrade poly bushings.
White lithium grease would work great.
I am using a food grade grease that is very similar to the grease provided with poly bushings.

 

X2. Food grade grease is what I used on my track-day Mustang with Poly bushings everywhere.

 

Last night got a bit sidetracked by some "other business".... but everything was productive!

Cleaned up the birds nest of factory wiring mixed in with the modern components.




Since I wasn't sore enough from working under the dash.... I decided to go under the jeep and button up the fuel line routing.
Seriously, this was way easier to do without any driveshafts/axle housings in the way!




I wrapped up the evening with marking out a tray for the ECM to ride on. This one will be similar to the one in my jeep, but less fancy dimple die holes.

 

Major shop and energy level envy here. You get more done in a day than some folks accomplish in a year! Can you bottle some of that? I'll take a case!
Thanks for sharing the stoke, good on you for taking that project on.

 

Had just enough time at lunch yesterday to knock out this crude ECM mount. It's not something that anyone ever sees..... so it will be just fine.
The side edge is notched out for the ECM plugs.
.035 wire and 18 ga steel is not recommended combination for welding.....





I threw a nice sloppy coat of paint on the bracket before heading back to work.
After work I installed nut zerts and some cushioning foam before installing the bracket.






This ECM is mounted an inch or two higher than where I located the one in my jeep.





The nut zerts allowed the bolts to go through the firewall for a much cleaner look...... and I didn't have a helper to hold one side while the bolts were tightened......
So the design was a win-win...





With that complete I moved on to one last tub repair.
The hat channel/body mount under the drivers floorboard was cracked and broken at the hole for the body bolt. I jacked up the tub and used a dead blow BFH to massage the caved upward floorboard/hat channel back down flat. A 6" long piece of 3/4"x2"x1/8" angle iron was welded along the hat channel on both sides.
The repair is very strong..... however it is not a fun place to weld and the result is not exactly aesthetically pleasing..... like I said, it is a strong repair!

 

Not much time over the weekend but a small amount of progress was made.

The rocker panels were beat up pretty good. Both sides had a pretty good crease from improperly fastened rock sliders.





Backing plates were made out of 1/4" x 2" flat bar to sandwich the body flat.





Inside the tool box.





In the footwell/toeboard area too!





Topped off both sliders with a strip of grip tape.

 

I like the backing plates, they should hold up to some Rubicon rash.

 

Big progress last night!

The rock sliders were finished up with 3 bolts and spacers through the floor on each side. These are critical to keep the sliders from bending upward and creasing the body.
This is the only place on a jeep that is it acceptable to use "pipe" as a structural item. Galvanize sch 40 pipe spacers were cut to go in between the floorboard and rock slider angle iron to prevent crushing the floorboard when bolted down.




The 3 through floor slider bolts are placed at the front dash pillar stanchion, the middle and at the rear floor riser for strength.





With all work completed inside the tool box an 18"x25" piece of conveyor belting was cut and wrestled into place.
This helps with rattling inside the tool box as well as heat transfer from the muffler to tool box contents!





Next up........
Front springs, shackles, axle and spring under plates!
Big shout out to Rocky Road for compiling a complete package of mismatched . Rocky Road is on a literal hot streak over here!
Rocky Road's work is so bad, you can't even make this stuff up!
The front shackle hangers come supplied with a bushing and a sleeve. The shackles supplied by RR come with holes for 1/2" bolts. RR supplies 1/2" bolts to mount the shackle to the hangers.
So WTF would Rocky Road supply front shackle hanger sleeves with a 9/16" hole!
I get it now..... When you by the Rocky Road kit you are actually checking in to the Death Wobble Hotel! Every morning the complimentary breakfast is a hot bowl of death wobble served at country road speed.
There is no excuse for this garbage.




Fortunately I had steel stock on hand to replace the shackle hanger bushing sleeves. A fresh set of greasable bolts were installed at both the shackle hanger and the spring eye.
Moving forward..... still thinking WTF....... It was time to install the front axle.

Remember these high clearance spring under plates from several weeks ago? Well it was time to install them!




The drivers side is about as straight forward as it gets.
The U bolts don't have quite enough thread on them. I can make em work...... but new U bolts are on order from Stengel Brothers!
If the new U bolts don't arrive in time I will make these work.








The passenger side is the difficult side of the equation.
Not only is space tight, you have to deal with the differential case webbing and larger U bolt.
A notch was ground in the spring under plate to clear the web on the underside of the axle.








Now it is time to grind on the axle housing for U bolt clearance.








Some grinding on the upper web is necessary for the U bolt to seat around the top of the axle housing.
Overall I am really happy with the results so far. These U bolts are also too long, new U bolts are on order from Stengel Bros.









I spent the rest of the evening exploring shock mounting options.
The drivers side shock mounting will be fairly easy, the passenger side will require some creativity and testing.

 

You are putting a great deal of time & effort keeping this thread updated. I for one greatly appreciate it!

 

Any of you ever get tired of working on Jeeps every day?
I'm not getting burned out by any means...... but I need a vacation from this thing!

Assembled the front hubs, brakes, ect..... yesterday. When I tore the jeep down the wheel bearing were re packed. Upon assembly the RF bearings were a little angry sounding.....
In the trash can they went and I went digging through Steve's spare parts for a fresh set! Much better now.
I started on the lower shock mounts and quickly discovered that the front brake hoses needed moved. The goal is to mount the front shocks behind the rear axle, a real challenge on a narrow D27!
Thanks to the firewall mounted master cylinder...... the combination of brake fluid leaking from the lines.... and the brake parts cleaner fighting back to clean it up...... we have a nice goopy mess of soft paint that will have to be addressed with a pressure washer once the jeep is mobile.





The narrow D27 makes it basically impossible to attach a shock bracket to the axle tube. Mounting the lower shock bracket to the spring under plate is the only option in this case.
After rolling around on the floor for what felt like all evening..... this is what I ended up with.
Not very pretty...... highly functional!

 

Looking good! Your past the point on the shocks where I scratched all the hair off my head.

 

I’m a few days away from the 1-year mark of doing this as a job. It’s definitely lost its charm.

 

2X that, big difference between doing something you enjoy and doing it because you have to.

 

Shocks shocks shocks!
Front lower shock mounts are done!
A few of you are going to see the front shocks and notice something different than most builds, stud top shocks. It has always bothered me that the majority of shocks on jeeps are exactly the same shock you might slap on your lifted square body Chevy pickup, cargo van, F150.... ect ..... Shocks play a huge role in ride quality/handling and while universal type shocks may get the job done, they hardly optimize performance. Adjustable shocks like Rancho 9000's do allow the us to somewhat tune the shocks rebound/compression however those are bulky, often adjust them selves back to the lowest setting and leave allot to be desired. Lots of manufactures now offer custom valving based on vehicle weight and spring weight, however that is a little overkill for this application.
Following along the lines of selecting the proper shock for vehicle weight/spring rate I decided to go with front shocks that matched the springs installed in the jeep. YJ springs paired with YJ shocks from the same manufacture. Old Man Emu shocks are not "universally valved" like many off the shelf shocks, they are specifically valved for YJ spring rate and vehicle weight. By the time this jeep is complete it will be similar weight to a YJ. No need to reinvent the wheel, just need to find a new way to mount it!

Drivers side.......











And the money shot, full turn up against the steering stops!





Passenger side


















The upper shock mounts cannot be fabricated until the jeep is sitting the springs, so that will have to wait till the weekend.
Moving to the rear springs and axle install!
The stock shackle hanger uses a 7/16" bolt whereas the rest of the jeep was upgraded to 1/2" bolts. Ruff Stuff provided the shackles with holes for 1/2" bolts.... so I had to come up with a solution to utilize the stock hanger and bushings with a 1/2" bolt.
New bushing sleeves were cut out of 5/8" OD x .505" ID steel tube. The stock replacement poly bushings were reamed out to a fat 9/16" and the new sleeves were pressed into place with a C clamp.




Remember when I showed you the thick and thin spring eye bushings? In this situation the thin spring eye bushings were used on the leaf spring to get the adapted width just right.





With the leaf springs mounted I heaved the axle under the jeep. The nice thing about these older D27's and D44's is they are light enough I can sling em around without help!
The Spring under plates fit perfect however the U bolts that I thought I was going to use turned out to be the wrong width...... After a little digging I found these brand new U bolts. This evening I will chop them off to the proper length and re thread them. If these were stretched and used U bolts I would never consider re threading them..... but being brand new the diameter is close to on spec to re thread.

 

I’ve gotta say it….
Be careful running new threads on u-bolts. Those existing threads are rolled into the material, not cut. Notice how the width of the stock isn’t as wide as the threads. There might not be sufficient material there to have threads cut in and grab the nut with enough strength.

 

I do have a few reservations about threading them. Worst case these will be mock up U bolts to hold me over until custom length bolts will be made.

 

X2 the free diameter is sized for rolled threads and will be too small for cutting threads.

 

Must be nice having a set of new U-bolts just lying around
All kidding aside, enjoying watching this build, learning a lot. Wish you were a little closer, would eagerly pay you to do the mods on my wagon.

 

I threaded one of the U bolts this morning at work. As assumed it was not the correct diameter to produce a full thread, goo enough for mockup.... but not good enough to wheel.....
While in town on an errand for work I stopped into a trailer supply house to see if they had any U bolts that would work.
Turns out that shop makes U bolts!!!!
A minute or so of BS with the guy, turns out he knew Steve well from the truck repair industry, he offered to make the U bolts on the spot and allowed me to watch!
About time Steve helped me get something done on this jeep!
Final assembly will move forward this evening.

 

I have heard it said "don't make your hobby your job or you won't have a hobby any more"