Budget Jeep Part 2

Today on Xtreme 4x4 project AJ is back as Ian and Jessi do some custom fab on their ultimate alloy Jeep plus New Mexico is more than the land of enchantment. It's a rock crawler's paradise.

Welcome to Xtreme 4x4 in part two of our AJ build up our ultimate Jeep build. Now, we know a lot of you guys wouldn't be building a Jeep from the ground up, but we thought this would introduce you to parts and ideas for any TJ or CJ for that matter. And I mean, come on, we had to go full bore on this one. Good to have you back. Oh, it's so good to be back for those of you. Don't remember last week, Jessey was rushed to the hospital and then take her appendix, but just like a trooper. She's back in the shop this week. I'm feeling better, but I'm still not 100%. So I'm gonna leave all the heavy stuff to Ian as usual. Come

on. That ain't even cool. Now, remember last time

we began the mock up procedure by hanging a curry high pinion nine inch front axle and rock Jock 60 in the rear on a Skyjacker, eight inch rock ready double flex suspension.

We completed the rolling chassis

by installing a terra

flex high steer knuckle package,

worn three wheel and hubs

and then added a set of pro

CX terrain tires

and polished aluminum extreme wheels. We then dropped this super cool

alu aluminum body onto the advanced frameworks hybrid frame

and that brings us where we are right now

and today we're gonna mount the winch, start dealing with the frame side of the roll cage, deal with some clearance issues that have come with the transmission, install some more parts. Then everything on there is gonna end up on the floor and that frame is gonna be sent out for coding. Bye

bye.

The first step is to drill for the body mounts

with the holes cut in the tub. We will go ahead and slip in this body mount kit we got from Skyjacker.

One thing you gotta have on a serious trail rig is a winch for AJ. We chose this W 9.5 T I thermometric winch. It's got a 5/16 inch aircraft quality cable and a rated line pull of 9500 pounds. The thermometric feature allows you to know that if the motor begins to overheat. This led lights up on the hand controls. All you gotta do mount this baby on the front where it's gonna get a lot of use.

After making a template,

Ian cut an eight inch plate for the mountain surf

then welded it to the frame.

Now, you may be wondering why we're spending all this time mounting this winch

when the truck obviously isn't close to being finished.

Well, the reality is,

is you wanna get done all this fabrication before you send the frame out to be coated, or you're gonna have to grind off that coating to do this welding.

Now, winches aren't cheap. So we went ahead and bent up this stinger bar to protect ours against off road obstacles.

I threw this tape on here to use as a reference line

because from this point back is where our roll cage is going to start. We're going to start with everything outside of the body. We're going to bring bars off the frame and back here to protect the engine. And then we'll also be putting the bars under the floor that are going to tie that cage into the frame

with the body on its mounts. We can go ahead and start making the frame side of the roll cage. There will be six mounting plates that I'll make that will mount onto the body. It'll weld onto the top part of this tubing and then there will be bolts that go up through the floor. I'll then gusted it from here to here for strength and then this end of the tubing

will actually weld onto the frame.

This all together makes a super strong roll cage

since we're making. So many of these floor plates, we went ahead and made a template, so we don't have to locate the holes over and over again. It'll save us a lot of time in the end.

And what we do is we take the floor plate,

line it up with the edges,

clamp it down

and then we can bring in the plasma cutter for the center hole and the drill for the outside holes. You can go ahead and use a whole saw or a drill press, but this will save us more time in the end.

Pretty cool little piece. Huh?

Well, Jessi finishes up those roll cage mounts. I've gone ahead and bent up our first piece of this front roll cage. I'm gonna tie this into the cage with some uprights and then gonna brace it against the stinger that we showed you earlier. All I have left to do is notch this piece

with these frames side mounts in place. We can go ahead and start planning some of our body protection to protect this aluminum tub. I grab this as a scrap to give us an idea right on.

I think

I don't look nice. Yeah, something along the lines works for me. Make sure you stick around. We'll have this thing completely figured out by the time you come back

after the break action from New Mexico's cliffhanger classic. When Xtreme 4x4 returns.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 in part two of our AJ project.

Now, the only thing better in building a jeep like AJ is the chance that we're gonna have to take this thing out to some of the most extreme off road places all over North America

like Rubicon Moab

or maybe even the place where we're gonna go to now.

And when you're talking extreme rock crawling, the sandstone cliffs in New Mexico test, even some of the most experienced drivers

can

located on the borders of Arizona, Utah and Colorado. Farmington, New Mexico is rock crawling. Nirvana.

There's no real restrictions on where you can and cannot go.

So it's pretty much you come out into Choke Cherry Canyon, you just go at it.

Farmington

has to have some of the best wheeling people come from miles, hundreds of miles

all over from the US to do four wheeling. Even as far away as Iceland

with 50 trails in a five mile radius. There's enough fun for everyone. Like more places we could drive for two or three hours and get three climbs. We're gonna drive for 30 minutes and do 15 climbs. Some of them are pretty easy. Some of them are really hard. Probably in the five range. Some of the competition climbs

for a one shot deal. You either make it or you don't.

Oh,

it was a hell of a ride.

Pretty scary.

Kind of fun though.

I say it moves as good as on its roof as it does on its tires

for the regulars, scraping some metal ain't no thing.

That's what I come out here for just to unleash the beast. You know, I'll hear that metal mashing and then horsepower rumbling.

You wrecked, you wreck,

get up, come back harder.

You want to get body damage. It can be extreme enough to wear your total rigs and

within two or three seconds sometimes it happens. That's how extreme it can get.

And sometimes the saves are as breathtaking as the carnage.

Everybody likes to climb hard and you know, make the big climbs that

it'll always happen

to make it happen.

They have to conquer this Farmington terrain.

We have huge, huge ledges to find.

Sometimes it takes a lot of horsepower. They're a one shot deal. We call them suicide crime.

It's slick, it can get really slick. They call the slick rock and Mo

App. But, uh,

that stuff has more grip than

this does. The sandstone out here is so flaky in some areas that you can spend all day on it.

And out here you've got to do what we call a bump.

What that is is get up against the led. You get your front end up on it

instead of just trying to crawl up things which you're not gonna do in Farmington

is you just power, break it up

and then use the torque and the motor

to carry you up. The, the bump,

the more power you got, the easier it is to do that. And you never run out. If you've got to find

Jerry's 98 TJ has what it takes.

We put a small block Chevy in it. It's got 410 cubic inches,

400 horsepower and about 500 ft pounds of torque

out here. Relying on horsepower and torque won't get you far. Our Jeeps are set up real low to the ground

and real long

and that's perfect for our train because we've got a lot of vertical climbs and we want to keep them until we can find

the shocks are the key to making anything climb wise. We use the uh the fox shocks.

Then we use the limiters straps on it

and then we use also bump stops

because we don't want to overextend those shocks because that's what tears up shocks is over. Extend them. Either one.

We also use a P power assist ram. What that does is it multiplies your steering capacity by three? So when you get up against a rock, when you want need to turn right left and it's, it's jammed up against it, you can still turn and still get to be where you want to be.

He's already spent 60 G on his rig money well spent for the thrills. He gets,

every time he battles the trails in Farmington, a little bit of adrenaline rush. Every time we get going up that climb, even if you've done it before you still get that Drena rush. Basically. We're all adrenaline junkies and we love it.

The guy with the red shirt and the little goatee, that was one of my compadres from back in my days in Wyoming. Hey Spencer, you always told me that it was a pretty cool place. I'll be out there soon.

I like how they have to bump their way up the hills because the rocks are so slick. It takes a lot of skill to wheel out there. Power breaking. It's true.

Now,

check with us after the break because we've got a couple more things to mock up on AJ and then we're gonna tear this truck back apart.

Got an idea for the show. Drop us a line at Xtreme 4x4, tv.com.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 and our aluminum Jeep project. We're about halfway through our frame mock up stage by adding the winch mounts and began our roll cage structure.

Now, we're gonna go ahead and build these rock rails so we can protect the body when we're going over the rocks and we're gonna be using our roll cage frame side mounts as a guideline.

It took us a while to come up with a rock bar design that we liked.

The part we were really watching out for was the front corner of this tub. Now, although body damage may be an issue, the real thing we're worried about is something getting jammed in here and hanging the truck up. So we want to wrap that bar around here to give us a smooth radius edge.

What that will do is if we hit an obstacle, it will just basically roll down this bar and the Jeep will be able to continue on.

I've got a few more pieces to build to make our rock rails even stronger.

This piece will tie the two frame side mounts together.

This piece will tie the frame side mounts to the rock rail.

This piece will tie the rock rail

into the roll cage and then this piece will tie the roll cage back into the frame at the towers.

Building one side of that roll cage and rock fire is one thing making this side of the Jeep match up is another. Now, before we start, we want to install a bunch of stuff to check for fit and make sure nothing's in the way we're going to start with this brake booster that we got from master power brakes. It's a direct replacement for a CJ brake, but it has an upgraded booster that's gonna give you more braking power when you need it.

Now,

we also needed all new brake lines. So we went to in line tube

for some pre vent pieces. Now, the nice thing about pre bent is a, you always know they're gonna fit and B

these ones are stainless steel. So not only are they gonna last a long time, but the finish is going to match the Jeep. Really well, these things will fit right in place.

It's easy as pie.

Whenever you're building a one off custom rig

you're gonna run into snags. And in this case, no one had a listing for our header application.

So Patriot Exhaust Products was kind enough to send us two sets and the one that works, they'll add to their application guide. So let's check it out.

All right. Now, it looks like this set would be perfect if we wanted to run our exhaust right near our bell housing. But of course, we don't want to do that. So let's try out the other set.

All right. Now, that's more of what I'm talking about. We don't have any clearance issues. So this will be the set that we're gonna send out to get ceramic coated

to narrow our options down to just two headers. We looked in the Patriot catalog and found that they had a specification list for their full length headers. All you have to do is take three measurements off your block, call them up and they'll help you choose what header is best for your application.

We're gonna mock these ones into place so we can check them against the brake lines and the fuel lines.

We'll get the truck up on the hoist and show you another clearance problem. We ran into

the transmission pan of our 700 R four is contacting the skid plate

to solve this. We're going to cut a piece of it away and we'll bend a tube up to stretch the skid plate around the entire transmission pan.

Not only will that get the transmission down, it will protect the entire pan against the rocks.

Looks pretty good. Do you think it's actually gonna protect that, uh, transmission? Well,

we'll throw a couple more tubes underneath here and maybe plate the whole thing before we're done right on. Make sure you stick around because during the break, I'm gonna finish out the roll cage and then we're gonna run some brake lines and

then we're gonna tear this truck apart

before we strip this frame naked. There's a little more prep to be done.

What's gonna be close? We started running our brake lines, finished our driver's side rock rail and driver's side engine case.

The last thing we'll put on this frame for the mock up is the advanced framework, spare tire carrier they included with the frame.

Now, the best thing about their spare tire carrier is it uses a modified spindle for its pivot point. And all you have to do is pack the bearings with a lot of grease and it's guaranteed not to seize up on you.

Now it's time to get her on the hoist and start stripping her down.

Ok. Go.

Yes.

All right.

Now with the body off the frame, I can go ahead and drill all the holes that I marked out earlier for our brake lines. It's easier to do it this way because I have more room to move. Now, it's imperative that we get all this done before we send the frame out for coding. Because otherwise we're gonna be drilling through the coding or having to grind it off for other purposes. Now, I can go ahead and start tapping the holes

with the hard lines in place. We can mount these tabs to the frame for a new flex lines that Skyjacker sent with the kit. Skyjacker includes a longer flex line whenever it's needed. All we have to do is weld these tabs to the frame.

Well, there you have it a super tough frame for a super tough Jeep. Nothing like building a Jeep and then taking it all back

again. At least next time we see it, it will be coded and we can put it back together again. That's true.

And next week we're going to start again on the ranger. We even more crazy build ups and then wait, do you see the engine that's going in this thing? It is awesome.

We'll see you next week.