Another Rebirth For The 3b

Ex's . The jeep of your old avatar. Missed it.

 

The ball is rolling.
First shipment of stuff arrived. New seat covers for the horrible plastic racing buckets



and new 5-pt harnesses.



I’m going to try to get the front axle out this weekend so I can drag it into work next week to see if it’s salvageable.

 

I am replacing a set of those seats. Not bad once you are in depending on your size. Some 3M spray adhesive and foam attached to the back
of the seat covers helps.

 

I ran those seats for years. When I was smaller they didn’t bother me, now that I’m , larger they were uncomfortable. I’m running the Coribeau JP xl seats now and they are super comfy.

 

And we're off and running!

 

I’ve been putting off asking for a key to the shop due to the inherent “Hey, could you go unlock the shop on Sunday morning so Joe Blow can pick up his rig…” that comes with it, but the benefits are outweighing the costs at this point.

I took the axle in last weekend and got to working on it.



I tore it apart to assess the damage. The Warn hubs are salvageable, the calipers will work, the ball joints are surprisingly good, the carrier/R&P is… fine, but it needs new rotors, wheel bearings and seals, the tie rod and drag link are horrible, and the housing’s casting is cracked and leaking under the DS tube. The truss is basically all that’s holding it together.

I started on the tie rod first, since it’s easier to work on the knuckles without them flopping around. I dug a like-new aftermarket tie rod out of the scrap bin that came off a JK and shortened it. I cut it, faced it on the lathe, then bored the center to accept a 7/8-18 tap I just happened to have in my tools from the Varg build.



These TREs are massive. I had to drill out the holes to 7/8” and grab some tapered inserts from our stock. They were already drilled to 3/4” for the heims that were in there for 20 years, so no great loss.



The drag link is getting a shortened link from a TJ. Here you can see the size comparison. I might weld on some type of strapping to support the arm where the casting is thin. I worry about snapping that off at the TRE.



The drag link got shortened by butt-welding the pieces together, turning the weld down smooth on the lathe and sleeving over the butt-weld.





Next up is pressure washing the housing to see how much welding/straightening/supporting it needs. Polishing a turd, but it’s getting me going again.

 

No shortage of that stuff here either and not too bad a drive from Spokane.

 

That smaller drag link is a perfect failure point. Just like a shear bolt in a mill. The bolt breaks before the machine has a catastrophic failure.
Way easier to replace a tie rod end out in the sticks rather than repair a steering box ripped off the frame or a broken knuckle.

 

I appreciate the offer, but the engine is actually the one piece of the puzzle that doesn’t have issues aside from a few leaks. This whole charade is only a bandaid until I can build the other frame and do a body swap. Thanks though!

Don’t ask how I know, but I’ve found that a pitman arm will bend before even a stock TRE will shear.

 

Here’s the proof…
This is sighting down the pitman arm. Notice the twist.



This happened in a race when I was turning and clipped a tree with the leading edge of my tire. The force bent the pitman arm, and the fluid pressure blew out the front cap on the steering box.

I replaced the pitman arm with one I found at work that’s 1/2” shorter and perfectly flat. It’ll slow my steering down a hair and raise the drag link to the upper end of “no bump steer” range.



I found some ubolts at work that are in way better shape than mine, they just needed the threads chased a little.



Cleaning out the old hubs, I found a twig. Im not sure what was in there, but it wasn’t grease.



I had a bad run with Rock Auto supplying my with wrong parts, but I finally figured everything out and managed to get everything I need, some locally. New wheel bearings, seals and rotors.



I’ve been watching for a good used winch on Craigs-ketplace, but everything under $300 is a joke. So I looked into what I could get through work, and I found a Rough Country 9500# Chinesium special for $264. Perfect!



I started checking prices of winch plates, and talking to my coworker about cutting one out on the CNC, when I ran something out to the scrap bin… Look at what the bin provided!



This’ll get sliced and diced and made to work. It’ll be tricky fitting the winch and keeping the plow hydraulics operational, but I have a plan.

By mid-day today she was back on all fours!



I started to investigate the looseness in the front driveshaft and found this…


https://i.imgur.com/rOECrqO.mp4

I pulled the yoke and nothing came out. Oil is overrated! I almost feel bad about the level of neglect and abuse this thing has endured.

 

I had the same winch for several years. Pulled me out of several sticky situations. I put it underwater, for maybe 3 minutes, a while back and it didn't recover. I bought the cheap(er) Warn this time.

 

Just catching up a bit. Sorry to hear about the divorce, that couldn't have been easy to go through. Looking forward to seeing what this build evolves into and how many Volvo's are involved

 

I’ve had a few days to dump some time into this thing. The new harnesses have different mounting hardware than the old ones, so I needed to make/weld some brackets onto the cage. Nothing pretty or even worth documenting, since the cage is going bye-bye in the rebuild. I noticed my seat is cracked in a few places too. It’s probably going to break off its mount and snap in half in this weekend’s bitterly cold temps.



The shocks are destroyed on this thing. Most of the bushings are missing or pounded through, and the valving is gone on half of them. I managed to piece together four good ones. To give an idea of how bad they are, this was a “good” one.



The shaft is slightly bent and discolored from heat, its showing signs of seepage, and the eye is mangled. But, it still had good damping throughout its travel, so it’s a runner. I installed the upper bolt, and as soon as I pulled the lower eye down to connect it….



She bled out.
I found another one in my stash and swapped bushings. Again.

With the shocks done, I moved onto the leaky exhaust.



I built the header back in ‘98, and it’s getting a little thin. Fixing holes is like welding lace, but I got’er done. There was a major rot-through around the flange on cyl #2, and a few random holes here and there.





The one thing I couldn’t decide if I wanted to put the time and effort into right now was the winch. I had exactly 4 hours to get it done yesterday.
Why not. I like a challenge.

This is what I started with. Front crossmember, tow bar mounts, A-frame for the pivot, hydraulic cylinder and mount - it all had to come out and somehow be replaced with the winch in the mix.
Time starts…. Now.



I started by chopping everything out.



I pulled this 8274 mount out of the scrap bin and saved it for this purpose. Step one was cutting the excess off the top, since my winch will get mounted to the bottom, not the front.



I cut the old hyd. cylinder mount off and formed it to fit the back of this plate.



I had to notch the plate to fit between my crossmembers.



Drilled some holes, did some welding, notched the A-frame to fit in behind the front lip, mounted the winch… bam. Done.







I’ve got a little bit of wiring issues to fix, and she’s ready for Saturday’s beating!

 

I wired the winch this morning (it works!), then I took hedge trimmers to the wiring and cut out any obvious fire hazards. What a mess. No wonder that has released magic smoke a few times.

I’m not entirely sure my alternator works. I’m hoping the problem was the ammeter that I just bypassed. The terminals were loose in the housing, and it was reading full resistance on the ohms tester when tested post to post. Surprised that didn’t melt down at some point. My bones were too frozen to fire it up and try it.

It’s as ready as it’s gonna be!

 

Found another pic. This was after I welded the plate in, but before I added the little fillers at the corners.

 

So after this…



I obviously needed to address a weakness.

First goal was to find out why it happened. I thought maybe a rock contacted it and weakened it, because there were rocks-a-plenty dragging along the underside all morning.

But on further inspection, I could see that axle-wrap was allowing the joint to max out against the u-joint u-bolt. This puts bending stress on the tube, and adding that while under torsional stress, it has a tendency to turn tubing into a bow tie.



For those of you who’ve never built or rebuilt a driveshaft, here’s how.

Grind down the weld until you begin to see a hairline crack where the tube ends.



Whack it with a hammer to separate.



Find some tubing that fits. This just happened to fit tightly into some 1 1/2” schedule 40 pipe. Perfect for this application.

Normally, I’d painstakingly go through the process of tacking the pieces while having it mounted on the jeep, and (have someone) spinning the tire while I’m underneath with a soapstone holding it just right so it only marks the high point of the wobble. Tap the high point with a hammer, tack, check again. Repeat until there is no high point.

Since this one won’t see highway speed and is semi-temporary, I just eyeballed it. Good enough.



If I plan on continuing to wheel this as-is, I’ll need to address the axle wrap on this now that I’ve upgraded the tubing. Next to go will be a u-joint if allowed to happen again.