1963 Us Navy Dj-3a

I like what you are doing here.
Maybe consider this....
Cut out the entire tunnel section and raise it up to the same height as the rear floor.
That is what I would do if I were doing another tub.

 

Interesting thought!

 

Don't forget serviceability for your overdrive install. Think land rover construction for the tunnel

 

No overdrive on this one. One less thing to break on the trail. I can get my overdrive fix in the '71.

I do need enough room to pull the transfercase off though.

 

Made some progress last night on the crossframe.

We don't need these brackets where we're going. Since the welds are in tough places to get to and I don't want to waste an hour getting them off, the stubs will stay:


Some scrap angle iron cut and drilled for new frame anchors:


Marking up what needs to be cut (with some margin so I can trim to fit):


Removed!


After literally 15 visits to the creeper fine tuning the fit, the weld areas needed to be cleaned up:


I tried to align everything up as well as possible. The PO didn't square up the holes for the transmission mount when he drilled them. I had to slot the right one so the crossframe could go in straight:


I also straightened up the engine in the chassis while I was at it. It was 1/4" to the driver side in the front, but more like 3/4" to the driver side at the transfercase. Now it's a consistent 1/4" to the driver side.

Getting things clamped in place for tack-welding. I hate welding on my back under a car but it's the only way to get a good fit:


Tacked and on the welding table for finishing:


Overlaps trimmed and pounded into place:


Welded up:




In the Jeep. The crossframe is shoved up into the Jeep about 3/4". The picture doesn't show it well, but the crossframe hangs down about 1/4" lower than the transfercase drain plug. About perfect:


It just clears the AA clutch chain:


Now I need to figure out the transfercase snubber. The pad on the transfercase is about 1/2" away from the crossframe which isn't enough. The angle is also wrong because of the clocking:


I'm going with an F-134 style snubber for now, so I will need to french the mount into the crossframe.

If I have issues down the road, I can fabricate something like a V6 mount that goes to the frame rail. I don't have any good mounts or bushings for that right now and I don't want to stall this project waiting for stuff.

 

The mount I used in that position isn't much thicker than that. IIRC it was a mount for an old F250 with divorced transfer case.

 

Did the final hacking on the crossframe last night.

After a bunch of fitting and measuring under the Jeep, I decided the hole needed to be about 1/8" further towards the passenger side of the Jeep, but front/back was perfect. Marking the crossframe for cutting:


Initial cutout:


I decided to cut the inset piece form a chunk of 3" square tubing. The factory snubber fits inside it perfectly: Cuts marked and hole center punched:


Drilling the big hole with a Christmas tree bit:


After lots of grinding to creep up to the fit I wanted, here it is with the paint removed and ready to weld:


Welded in:


Since the pocket could collect water, I drilled a pair of drain holes:


The snubber is captured perfectly:


After a coat of Rustoleum satin black (It always makes my mediocre work look so much better):


Now I can bolt things back together so the Jeep can roll again while I start on the floorboards.

A couple other things:

I'm not a big fan of open element air cleaners on off-road rigs, so I scored a 60's Bronco air cleaner on ebay. It was cheap because it's got rust holes that need to be patched. It's going to need some mods to fit the Jeep, but it should be a fun project when I get to it:


Installed a better battery hold-down and put a cover over the positive terminal. I need to shorten the back of the headlight bucket and move the battery forward a half inch. It's a little too close to the spinning alternator blades for my comfort:

 

my brother "accidentally" did a burnout in a 71 blazer shortly after we had resurrected it, and before we had strapped the battery down. the battery fell into the fan, and gave the whole engine bay a nice coating of battery acid. cleaning that up was NOT fun.

 

Fireball!
I’ve been out of the loop for a spell so I just saw this, nice score and as usual nice work!
This will be fun to follow.

 

There was too much work to do around the place to get much done on the Jeep over the weekend, but I did get a little done.

The crossframe is bolted in place and everything seems to fit:


Well, almost everything. I didn't realize the shouldered area of the driveshaft flange bolts was now too long with the parking brake drum removed:


Since they don't come out without removing the flange, I double washered them for now. It's temporary. This is all coming out in a few months for Tera-Lo gears. I'll be switching both the front and rear outputs to standard 1310 flanges, and ordering new driveshafts. Ditching this flange for a standard one will gain a good 1/2" of driveshaft length:


Here's the view from the passenger side. Some driveshaft angle, but a lot less than people with D20s often have. There are some small aluminum shims on the rear axle and it looks like removing them with get the rear axle U-joint angle about perfect:


View from the passenger side. I need to starting thinking about skid plate designs:


The only other thing I had time for over the weekend was cleaning up the shop. Between this project and several others, it was a disaster. Now I can find my tools again.

Next stop is rebuilding the floorboards.

 

Last night, I was under the Jeep planning out the exhaust so I can order stuff.

The Jeep currently has a pair of passenger side manifolds with the heat risers removed leaving a flat sealing surface. The builder attempted to use flat gaskets to seal the exhaust pipes to the manifolds. Both sides were leaking terribly. I think flat gaskets are a bad choice on something a flexy as a Jeep chassis. Additionally, I broke the previously patched passenger side manifold when jacking up the transfercase.

My plan was to use Jeep driver's side front dump manifold on the passenger side (to have a cone sealing surface) and a driver rear dump manifold from a 70's Buick.

Her's the driver rear dump manifold mocked up on my spare Dauntless so I can measure things:


Sadly, while there is lots of room, the flange ends up wanting to occupy the same space the steering U-joint lives in (sorry for the bad picture):


The nicest solution would be the Novak headers, but I'm not really in the mood to blow $440 headers for this when I have tons of other stuff on the Jeep that needs money, so I dug in my parts stash and found another driver's front dump manifold with the cone seal. I'll be using these on both sides:


That leads me to 1 3/4" primaries, and I think I'll step up to 2" when they join and run that out the back.

It want it to be as quiet as possible, so it's getting the biggest muffler I can reasonably fit.

 

Does the driver's front dump manifold clear the PS pump?

 

Yes, it already has a front dump manifold in place. The power steering bracket has some welding on it, so it's probably custom.

You can see the exhaust snaking around the fuel pump and steering shaft here (I need to make a heat shield for the fuel pump):

 

I'm running front dump exhaust with stock Buick PS mount (high mount style) and everything clears.

 

Haven't had much time to work on this the past couple of days, but I did blow a bunch of money ordering the bits and pieces to make an exhaust, a dual master cylinder conversion for the brakes, and the 3.15 gears for the transfercase.

We're doing a dump run tomorrow and I want to throw the nasty old Camaro seats the Jeep came with in the to-go pile:


Before I got rid of them I wanted to verify the S10 seats that were in my '71 will indeed bolt to the Camaro seat rails and work without issue. Here's driver's power seat frame removed from the Camaro seat:


Huzzah! The frames fit the seats and everything ends up at the same height in the Jeep. Nothing like a free upgrade:


I do want to modify the back of the passenger bracket to lower it a bit, but that's easy.

Now I need to pull all that back out so I can start working on the floorboards.

 

Time to start working on floorboards.

This is a reminder I need to trim up the upper floorboards so I can access the upper bellhousing bolts. Roughly to the Sharpie line:


I wanted to see if the original front part of the floor would work. This "nicely" cut out shifter hole made it hard to slide over the levers, so I trimmed it out:


Here's the trimmed floor in place, but it's about inch from going home. At the very least, I would need to trim the yellow marked area, and it still likely hit somewhere else:


Since it wasn't that great anyway, I lopped it off so just start over. I'll use the outer portion where it bolts to the floor and build from there:


I trimmed out more of the floor with the intent of being able to remove the transfercase without having to drop the transmission Now I have a big hole to fill:


Installed some 1/4" Rivnuts to replace the janky self-tappers the PO used:


The tiny remains of the hump bolted back in more securely for mockup. I also had to masssage the top of it for bellhousing clearance:


Seat mount back in place for mockup. I don't really want to modify it, so my floor needs to clear.. I started an initial idea with cardboard from our recycling pile, but did't like either cardboard or my initial plan:


Part 1 of the new plan was to pick up a $5.50 pack of poster board from Walmart. So much better for making templates:


Part 2 of the plan is to make all the sides vertical and not angled. This may not look as good but will save me a lot of fab headaches:


Here's the general idea. A flat piece will cover the top of this. The will be a large hole around the shift tower for ease of install and a second piece that covers that hole and mounts the boot:


View from the back:

 

why is that?

 

I would seperate the transfercase cover from the transmission cover. Divide and conquer.

 

With a 4 speed transmission it is hard to get the drivetrain high and tight without modifying the floor.
The factory 4 speed CJ's used thick spacers to lower the crossmember so that the big 4 speeds would fit.

 

I've thought about that, but my experience building the floorboards when putting the T-18 in the '71 is that everything moves around when you weld it up. The less interfaces you need to line up post welding, the better.