Project: 4th times the charm

[justtorchit]

yeh, they have the casing of the hmmwv....

im more talking tread pattern itself,

the retreads kinda remind me of a big all terrain tire, but im thinking they would work good for them hot sticky days on dry rock ledges around here,

the others are just grooved. i was curious if the larger lugz would work better around here when mud gets worked into the equation.

all i know is that for 175 a tire thats "brand new" with a warrenty....
im kinda impressed even if i just keep em for long distance trips where i dont wana feel every lug of a tire for 5 hours strait.

[WAD357]

id go with the retreads a million times to 1 over the HMMWV tires

times 2

[Pedro]

Definitely would go with the Retreads, just sucks they made em in MTR pattern

[justtorchit]

Well I have a little downtime at work and figured I would share the build up of this jeep finally. I should have documented it a little better as I progressed but it never seemed like a good enough chunk of work to really share. I'm posting this all on my cell phone so bear with me as I get everything together.

So ill start with my plans.....
Over the passed few years I have missed out on really enjoying my jeep and thought throwing my one tons in was the only option..... Well the time has come where I just want something mildly built and can go where I want when I want. I'm not made of money and without a truck n trailer the big oneton dreams are to much for me right now.

So the plans:

Suspension:
3 link front
5 inch coils
4.5 inch leafs
Shackles

Axles
Hp D30 front, trussed 4.88s locked
D44 rear, trussed 4.88s locked

Steering
Otk one ton

Body/Frame
Fully plated front to rear
Bumpers
Crossmember
Skids
Rock sliders

[justtorchit]

So where did I start.....oh. With this POS



The thing was in rough shape because i beat the snot out of it for a good year strait with no major upgrades.
Pro comps only lasted a few months

[justtorchit]

First things first. I had to plate the front portion of the frame
Template:



Rough cut:



Cleaned up and drilled holes:



Fully welded:

[justtorchit]

Next came the mid frame stiffeners that I made with the crossmember mounting nuts welded to the backside and inserted into the frame. It was a bitch and took way longer than expected



The crossmember mounts with 5 half inch bolts on each rail. 3 on the sides. 2 underneath.

Start of the crossmember



One big thing with this build is I'm taking my time. So I decided I'm going to TIG as much as possible to get better

Lower Link mounts :



Almost finished. I drilled out the tranny mount and beefed up the link mounts after this pic:

[justtorchit]

Next I had to start thinking about the upper link mount.

So I played fully around the frame rail and came up with this mount :

[justtorchit]

With the links mocked up:



Next came the upper mount on the axle:

[justtorchit]

Otk steering, I picked up all the tre's off rockauto for like 80 bucks and had a bunch of 1.5 x .25 wall dom laying around:



Then somewhere along the way I decided a truss would be a nice touch:





Then I got myself a good quality set of shoes, 35" MTRs:



Final link for the front was the track bar:

[justtorchit]

And this is how it sits now

[Burton58]

[Calabrate2]

Nice work

[DrThunder]

Nice job dude. I admire the time your putting in!

[Zullock Holmes]

Looks awesome dude!

some killer good lookin' fabwork as well