Full Build: 1978 Jeep DJ5 Goes From Hauling Mail to Hitting the Trails

today on carcass we have a special delivery in the shop as we start a new project with a specific purpose we'll pull the body off and strip down the frame to prepare for upgraded suspension then head out to a salvage yard and search for some heavy-duty axles and show you what to look for when selecting a set of one tons for your next project [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you guys are probably wondering why do we have three vehicles in the shop today you're probably more curious is why do we have three retired us postal jeeps in the shop today well there's a big story behind these trucks and that all started when jimmy and i were looking for a right-hand drive vehicle we thought to ourselves what's the most readily available right-hand drive vehicle in america well that's the u.s postal jeep the lady we bought these jeeps from is a retired postal worker and she drove each of these things into the ground but the only way we could get one jeep was to buy all three so we shook hands and started loading them up the white one has seen better days but maybe we can scavenge a couple parts off of it the seafoam one is in pretty good shape but it wouldn't run so we had to pull it to the trailer [Music] the yellow one seemed to be our best candidate it was in decent shape and it fired right up this thing runs really good [Music] and it's the weirdest thing to be on this side we managed to get all three of these jeeps loaded up and back to the shop in one day and now that they're all here we need to talk about what the end goal is with one of them and that first starts with us trying to decide which one of these we're going to build my vote's on the yellow one because that one runs see i think the sea foam green one because i think the chassis and body are a little better and even though the four cylinder is in this one we should be able to put the six cylinder in it yep that's a good point well that pretty much decides it then but what are we gonna do to the green jeep we're dumping the wheels the axles and the leaf spring suspension we'll be replacing that with a four link setup all the way around we'll swap out the stock transmission for a setup out of a tj and when we're done with that we'll slap on a bigger set of wheels and tires bringing project junk mail to life now you've probably gathered by now that we're going to be building a four-wheel drive off-road rig now jeeps are known for their off-road capabilities and to keep with that jeep tradition we're gonna be taking our two-wheel drive jeep and converting it to four-wheel drive and the sea foam green jeep is gonna be the jeep of choice for this build because it has the least amount of rust dense and we're hoping it's going to come apart the easiest but we're going to keep the yellow jeep around just in case we need some extra parts and the white jeep is probably going to end up going to the scrap yard because the body has a lot of rust holes in it there aren't too many good panels on it and we really just don't need any of that and we got a killer deal on all three of these jeeps we basically got all three of them for the price of one so with this build we're gonna spend some money where it makes sense but we're also gonna build and fabricate what we can and that makes a lot of sense in our shop because we have a ton of capability here which gives us the opportunity to show you guys how to build things like a four-length suspension but as you said we're going to spend the money where it really matters like on a really good set of coil overs and we're also going to go out and get a set of junkyard axles but we're gonna spend some money on the internals of those axles because we're gonna show you guys how to make them handle a bigger set of tires but before we can get started on the green jeep we gotta get the other two out of the shop we'll pull the six cylinder from the yellow jeep so it can go down to engine power for some upgrades and that means a little more power to help us out on the trail you know jimmy the meat and potatoes of this build are all the way down at the chassis but before we get there we have to get rid of this body yeah let's drain the radiator so we can get the grill off and everything and also take the whole front clip off yeah but i think first the hood goes yeah i'll get some tools [Music] holy cow that's green you could probably reuse that well not the end there though random thing when i take part cars and trucks i keep the hose clamps yeah i do too you know unless you break them they're not really going bad then just stash them away for a rainy day it's a good thing we're keeping those other jeeps because this thing's kind of falling apart junk [Music] this literally is gonna break apart before i can get it out here or i may have to break it apart oh and it's hooked up yet yeah we don't need that push back in here oh wait maybe i can just pull it straight oh take the whole finger [Music] you all good yeah i'm good [Music] well now that we have the front clip out of the way it's time to remove the rest of the body from the chassis and as i pulled the fender out i noticed something deep down inside here somebody has welded the steering shaft to the u-joint that connects to the column now normally this piece is something that just slides out but while somebody welded it so for us to get the body off the chassis we're just going to cut it because you know what we're not using any of this stuff anyways [Music] you know loose over there yeah i'm free you free yeah start pushing yeah we'll get it onto the hoist make that thing do all the heavy lifting you know it's about to go down no it's going to go up jimmy it's going well the project about to go down right right it may have been good for delivering the mail but for our plans it all has to go we start tearing into junk mail's chassis getting rid of the old leaf springs and making room for some upgraded suspension [Applause] you all clear yeah that's plenty height right there now the body came off of the frame pretty easy but we still got a bunch of stuff that we have to do before we can start having some fun we have to tear off the engine and we have to get the chassis completely stripped of the old suspension to get ready for the new stuff yeah and we're not going to do that here so we're going to roll this thing out of the way get it out into the open and start cutting it up two horsepower jimmy two horsepower now hmm [Music] this is hands down the easiest way to pull this just like that that's state of the art that's easy way [Music] now that we have the engine and transmission out of the way it's time to get rid of the old suspension 2. there's many different ways we could go about doing that if we were to keep the suspension we could grab wrenches and unbolt everything or if we were being a little less cautious we could grab a cut-off wheel and cut that way but we're not interested in keeping any of this stuff and we just want it out from underneath here as fast as possible so the torch is going to be our choice don't take too long it won't trust me with our trusty torch we can throw caution to the wind and start cutting some metal the plan here is to keep most of the suspension intact so when we get ready to get rid of it we can just roll it right out of the way [Music] we'll also cut through the drag link and unbolt our shocks there goes yeah now the front well that came up pretty easy but here in the back we're going to take a little different approach the bracket that holds on the leaf spring is riveted on versus in the front it was welded so what i'm going to do is take the torch i'm going to knock the tops of the rivets off and then i'll come back with a hammer and just drive them out we got to clean the chassis up anyways and get rid of all the brackets so this is just going to save us a bunch of time while he's finishing up in the back i'm going gonna get started removing the front bumper starting with a few rivets and the rest will just unbolt [Music] to death awesome now while i was using the torch to get rid of the rivets i noticed one thing on the corner of the brackets they also welded these to the chassis so i'm going to use a cutoff wheel score a little line right down here on the edge and hopefully we'll be able to pound those brackets off [Music] with our welds cut our air hammer makes quick work of our brackets [Music] while we're at it we'll go ahead and take care of the rivets that hold on the rear bumper [Music] there it goes this chassis is a really good place to start but we're about to be missing something what's that set of axles yeah you know what i know a guy but it's going to require us getting out of the shop [Music] today is the day that we're going to find a set of axles for project junk mail and we've narrowed it down to basically two options dana60s from either a ford or a dodge pickup but there's one major issue with the dana 60s from the dodge pickups they have this thing called a cad or center axle disconnect what this means is the axle shaft is in two pieces and there's a big hole in the axle housing itself which can cause the axle to be weaker we don't really want to deal with potential issues when we're out on the trail so we're going to go with ford axles so we were talking to our friend next door mr tommy boschers and he gave us a lead on a ford pickers paradise so we're headed down to butler's garage now ford came out with a couple different axles underneath their super duties over the years so we're going to help show you guys the differences between those axles and we just want to come home with the right set of axles for project junk man reason why we're doing a 6d versus a 44 is basically on tire size so we can run a dana 44 all the way up to like the 37 inch tall tire mark and that's gonna be pretty much the extent of what you can put on that 44 just from all the internals and the axle shafts and stuff like that so if we go with the dana60 we're obviously there already so we can go with a 37 and you can just go up from there you know project junk mail really isn't going to be this extreme rock crawler or this rock bouncer by any means or thrashing the hills what it's really going to be is just a good all-around trail truck we will probably get into a little bit of rock but not much it's basically just going to be a good truck to get us up and down the trails you could probably even use it on a farm if you want to haul stuff with it i mean there's not a ton of room but i think it'll be an all-around good build and dana 60s are absolutely perfect to put underneath there yeah i feel like you could just kind of start off with something really good so you can build from there instead of if you decided to go bigger tires or this or that you kind of have to start all over right so we might as well you know go to a certain point start at that point obviously with dana 60s and from there we can always go up you know versus if we start with like a dana 44 which would be fine if we ever wanted to go with a taller tire you would definitely have to kind of reinvent the wheel to throw a whole nother set of axles underneath that truck so i think dana60s are a good starting point i feel like dana60s are just like no one's gonna give you grief over that yeah the dana 60 is just it's an all-around good axel yeah i mean they came underneath so many different things chevy rand dana 60s in their one tones ford runs them and they're one tons dodge runs them and they're one done it's just a good all-around builder parts are extremely available for them or you just take the one out of that truck now here in the row of axles you've got many different options and underneath the super duty you had two you either have the dana 50 or the dana 60. they both look very similar and we're going to show you the differences between the two so i'm going to go look for a dana 50 and i'll try to sort through this find a sadena 60. now there's a couple visual ways you can tell that you're looking at a dana 50. first is there's a very abrupt kick up in the casting on the dana 60 it's a little more gradual and the second is right here on the pinion this one's got a little bit smaller nut than the dana 60. that measures in at an inch and an eighth like jeremy said on the dana 60s the slope in the casting is a little bit more gradual and the pinion nut is a little bit bigger at an inch and 5 16. and throughout the years ford used a couple different styles of suspension on their newer trucks they used the radius arm style suspension where they had the brake tree on one side cast into the housing and on the other side it was welded to the axle tube that's going to take a lot of time and effort on rn to cut it off and get it ready for our four-link suspension but on the older trucks all they had was a couple spring perches that are easy to cut off and get ready for our new suspension and another thing to pay attention to on the rear axle of these trucks is the way that they attach the drive shaft on the newer series trucks they ran a pinion flange and on the older models they ran a pinion yoke and that's what we're after looks like you found us rear axle yeah i think we're gonna take one of these two for the rear and i'm pretty sure he's got a front one waiting for us all right i'll check these out see which one's a little bit cleaner and i'll meet you up there sounds good [Music] now one more plus side to running a super duty axle versus a dodge axle is that the super duty axles have a set of lockouts that means we can either disconnect one or both sides of the axle shafts now we got to do is get this one loaded in the truck we've talked about the external differences of a dana 50 versus a dana 60 but here's an internal difference on the dana 50 axle shafts you can see it kind of tapers down versus on the dana 60 the overall shaft diameter is a lot bigger which means it's stronger and the aftermarket support for a dana 60 is way better [Music] all right what do you say we get these things back to the shop because i want to tear into these things yeah i got to finish cleaning the rest of the chassis too yeah our jeep's getting a set of one tons we have a little more cleaning up to do we finish prepping our frame and stripping down our heavy duty axles getting them ready for our new suspension with our axles out of the yard and in the shop we got a lot of work ahead of us now we're going to end up stripping down both of our axles to just bare housings and we're going to do that for two reasons one we're going to end up rebuilding both axles pretty much from hub to hub and two we're gonna use just the bare housings to set up the suspension underneath our jeep and it's a whole lot easier to move around just a housing than it is a few hundred pound axle assembly and while he's finishing up the axles i'm gonna be finishing taking off all the unnecessary brackets on the chassis we already did it on the top side so we flipped it over and there's a few things left like the leaf spring hangers and the bump stops but that's nothing that an air chisel can't fix first i'll remove these bump stops by taking out a few bolts [Music] now these leaf spring hanger brackets are riveted in so here's a little trick that i like to use using a cut off wheel i make an x in the head which makes it weaker and that makes quick work for my air chisel with the brackets out of the way i'll grind the rivets down and punch the rest out with my air hammer well jimmy's been working on our chassis i got to take a good look at our front axle and i notice a lot of rusted nuts and bolts so i've been spraying it down with some crc power lube this stuff is fast acting it loosens frozen parts and should make disassembly go a whole lot quicker [Music] with our caliper out of the way we can take off our rotor [Music] followed by the steer [Music] then we'll pull off the hub followed by the c-clips and the washers that hold in the axle all right let's see what we got back here all those should be pretty easy now [Music] yeah it's moving with our hub assemblies and our axle shafts out of the way it's time to move on and make a little bit of a mess we're gonna go ahead and pop this diff cover and i'm gonna pull out the gear set and the pinion then we'll move on to cleaning up the rest of this axle [Music] it's a good idea to mark your bearing caps because when we go back to reassemble we don't want to make any mistakes so we're going to mark the left side with one mark and the right side with two with our bearing caps out of the way now we can yank out our diff and with a little persuasion the pinion comes right out with the gears out of the way there's still a couple things i got to take care of got to cut off the big bracket that held some of the steering on and i got to get rid of this spring perch too getting rid of these are pretty simple just follow the contour of the axle i like to leave a little bit of the weld and the bracket so i don't score the axle tube then i'll just come back with the grinder and grind it flush [Music] same principle applies with the perch and we can easily knock it off with a hammer did you made a ton of progress on this today yeah i got the front axle completely tore down still got some grinding to do i haven't even touched the rear yet but i'll get to that how'd the chassis go pretty good i got everything ground down and just needs a little bit of a wash but i can't wait till you're done with this so we can start designing the suspension oh yeah that'll be a whole lot of fun but we'll get to that later if you guys like anything you've seen on the show today why don't you check us out at powernationtv.com and well we'll see you next time you probably need this more than i do right yeah i totally need to start grinding but uh safety glasses first jimmy today on carcass rain sleet or snow project junk mail gets major suspension upgrades taking our jeep from a male delivery vehicle to an off-road machine that can handle all the elements we'll show you how to set up a race inspired four-link system that will conquer the trails and rocks [Applause] [Applause] hey guys welcome to carcass now our 1978 jeep dj-5 that we're calling project junk mail looks a whole lot different than the day that we picked it up that's right we got the cab off the chassis stripped all the old suspension brackets off and we even went to a junkyard got a set of axles and got them all the way down to the housings now we slid our axles underneath our chassis to give us an initial look at what we're dealing with and we're going to be prepping for our 4-link suspension but we're going to add a set of axle trusses to give us a good foundation for that suspension so we got to slide these babies out set them on a set of axle stands and start prepping [Music] to clean up our axles we're using some wire wheels we just want to knock off the rust and grime to give our trusses a good clean surface to weld to [Music] with our axles all cleaned up we're going to be adding a set of artec industry axle trusses that we picked up from summitracing.com we're going to be doing this for two reasons one it's just going to help strengthen our axle and the second more important reason is it's going to give us a great mounting point for our upper arms and for our shocks so what we're going to do is just tack this into place then we'll set our axles back underneath the chassis keep rolling on our suspension [Music] all right that looks pretty good get her back under the chassis got it yeah got a little heavier that's for sure [Music] we now have trusses tacked to both axle housings but there's one thing we need to do before we start designing our suspension and that's deciding where the axles are going to land and in the rear it's not too critical but we do know we're going to extend the wheelbase a little bit for stability but on the front end it is critical because the position of our front axle solely depends on the position of our steering gearbox because we don't want our steering to bind under heavy articulation so the next step is to mount the gearbox on the passenger side [Music] we mounted our new gear box using an existing hole from the original box now this is just for mock-up we're not sure if we're going to have to move the gearbox towards the back or toward the front of the jeep but this is just a good starting point now with our axle and our chassis set at right height i'm going to use a plumb bob and drop it down the center of our pitman arm and then we're going to mock up some steering and that should help us find the final resting position of our front axle [Music] well now that we have the steering mocked up on our front axle we now know that the stock location we chose for the gearbox should work out just fine what we also noticed is that the axle is now about three inches further forward than the stock location which extends our wheelbase and having a longer wheelbase well that always just helps out on the trail now this is the position of our front axle figuring out where our rear axle is going to sit well that's just a whole lot easier now the look that we're going for in the rear is pretty simple we want the tire to stick out of the back of the jeep just a little bit since we're running 37 inch tall tires all we did is measure in from the back of the chassis about 18 inches and we set our axle right here now that's eight inches further back than the factory location further extending our wheelbase now we're running a triangulated four link suspension and that is exactly what it sounds like we're going to be running a set of upper links and a set of lower links from the axle up to the chassis now what that's going to do is going to help center our axle from left to right it's going to give us some adjustability and it's going to give us better articulation when we're out on the trails now we got to figure out where we're going to mount all of this stuff and there's a couple of things that we need to know but let me show you what we're talking about what we're trying to do with our suspension is land on a value that value is called our anti-squat number to figure out our anti-squat we need to project some lines on our chassis the first line will be the center of gravity and for us that's basically the center of the camshaft which is about 9 inches above our motor mounts the next vertical lines will be the center of our front and our rear tire also known as the contact patch the third line will be our anti-squat line which is run from the contact patch of the rear tire to where the center of gravity and the center of the front tire meet where those lines meet will help us choose where we put our mounts for our upper and our lower links the position of those bars will create a point that's called an instant center and where that point lands in relationship to our anti-squat line we'll determine how our suspension will handle as you change the position of your mounts that will change where the instant center will land and that will determine how your suspension reacts and knowing these parameters will help you guys figure out where to put the mounts for your suspension and for us and project junk mail it's going to be an all-around off-road rig it may see some rocks it may see some mud but it's going to see a lot of trail riding so we're going to try to land as close as we can to that 100 anti-squat line but if we're above or below it by 20 we'll be just fine now the next step for us is to just start laying out some lines we have a plan we'll show you how to build a heavy-duty four-link suspension that can handle anything the trail has to offer now that we have the links mocked up on our suspension we can project the lines out to find our instant center and see how close we are to that 100 anti-squat line that we've been shooting for now to mount our suspension it's going to be pretty simple here on the rear axle we're just going to use a couple tabs but on the frame side we're going to have to build some mounts so we went ahead and used a piece of cardboard to help show where we're going to mount our lower links and for our upper links they're going to be pretty basic we're just going to weld a tab to the inside of the chassis here but this is just half of our suspension we're also going to need to build the links that connect the axle to the frame and now that we know where those mounts are we can actually start cutting some tubing and building our suspension [Music] for our links we're going to use two inch by quarter inch wall dom that we had laying around the shop it's super strong and should be able to take plenty of abuse we'll cut our lowers to 43 inches and our uppers to 38 this will give us a little wiggle room when we do our final mock-up [Music] now that i got some links cut out it's time to start assembly we're going to be using inch and a quarter by one inch rod ends now we're using these because of their strength and their flexibility these also come with some threaded tube inserts now there's a left and a right hand side to these inserts and we're going to be using both that way if we need to adjust our suspension when we're underneath the jeep all we got to do is give the tube a little twist and then we'll just lock down our jam nut but to get this whole party started i gotta tack in some of these inserts [Music] when welding these up you don't want to bottom out your tube insert you'll want to leave a little space to give you a nice channel to weld to [Music] [Applause] [Music] with our tube inserts tucked in we can install our rod ends now to go along with our rod ends we're going to be running some high misalignment spacers what these do is extend the radius of the ball and they give us more flex and articulation out of our joint they also add a little bit of width and they step the inside bore from one inch down to three quarters of an inch now with all this mocked up we can take our tubes over to our jeep keep rolling on our suspension [Music] all right let's see how this fits on the axle [Music] all right that'll work right there let's get a couple tacks on it to hold it in [Music] [Music] you got one corner done yeah the brackets you made down here on the axle are perfect but i'm gonna need you to do one more thing and that's make this big guy oh see this is why i love cnc plasma tables right you can use a new table and uh i'll go ahead and get started on the other set perfect coming up we design and build some custom mounting brackets for junk mail's off-road suspension jeremy and i have made some pretty good progress on our full-length suspension system for our jeep but we're at the point now when we need some brackets to finish it out he gave me this template but there's a few more things i need to do before we can cut it out on our cnc plasma table i'm actually going to take a few measurements and transfer this into our 3d cad program and then we can start cutting some metal [Music] [Music] everything looks pretty good so all we have to do is transfer it to a usb drive and take it over to our plasma table to cut out our brackets we'll be using our cnc plasma table from premier plasma in a fab shop like ours it's the ultimate time saver this table can handle a 4x4 sheet of steel or any other metal which gives the potential to mass-produce small brackets or build something bigger like the back half of a chassis this table is built with heavy duty components to give smooth motion and ensure accurate cuts another optional feature is the torch height controller or thc by nature metal sheets are usually boater wavy the thc keeps the torch at the optimal height to improve accuracy premier plasma can accommodate any shop they offer tables from 2x2 all the way to 5x10 and even have router attachments available for those who work with metal and wood and it's all made here in the usa with the outside brackets done now i adjusted the original template to accommodate the bracket that goes on the inside of the chassis rail so i have that and a few more pieces to cut out and then our suspension mounts are done [Music] for our brackets we're using 3 16 hot rolled pickled and oiled steel the pickled and oiled version is better than normal hot rolled steel because it doesn't have the mill scale on it and the 3 16 material is going to be plenty strong for our suspension [Music] [Applause] i got a puzzle for you whoa those look just like the brackets on the axle yeah so like the trusses uh in the big pieces there's slots and then the internal pieces have a tab on them so that it goes into the slot and it's going to make it a little bit easier to line up and it's going to give it some internal support yeah i think this is going to be a whole lot easier to do this on a bench versus the chassis yeah i'm going to work on the inner upper mounts too all right i'm going to go put these together just like the axle trusses there's a few pieces we need to put together to make these brackets first i'll start assembly then i'll add a couple attacks and it's back over to the chassis for a test fit before attaching our mounts we'll grind away some of the rust on our chassis giving us a good surface to weld to now we can clamp in our mount and tack it in [Applause] wow that landed on my leg because the width of our heim joints the inside of our four-link bracket extends past the chassis just a little bit so we designed this top plate to help strengthen the mount now when i put the two pieces together it doesn't leave me much of a surface area to weld to so what we're going to do is grab a grinder and bevel the outside edges of both plates creating kind of a trough now what that's going to do is give us better penetration and a stronger weld nothing too drastic just enough to give us good penetration for when we go back to finish weld it later [Music] with our lower mount tacked in we can move on to the upper mount that jimmy knocked out on the plasma table then from here we can cut the bars to length and finish up our rear suspension [Music] with our mounts in place we can measure our links [Music] cut them to length [Music] weld in our heims and bolt them up [Music] with our links installed that wraps up the bulk of our rear suspension and it's time to transition to the front and that's pretty much rinse and repeat with the exception of one thing and that one thing is a clearance issue i've already designed and tacked in the upper mount on the axle and pretty much wherever we put the other mounts on the chassis the four link bars are going to hit this crossmember but we do have a solution we're going to end up getting rid of this crossmember completely and we'll build two separate engine mounts and just weld those directly to the chassis now we're not too concerned about losing the support of this cross member because when we put the bumper on the front of the jeep we're just going to weld it to the frame anyways so the first thing we got to do is get that crossmember out of the way so we can keep rolling on our suspension [Music] just like the rear we'll clean up our chassis and weld in all our brackets once in place we can measure for our link bars and cut them out 28. [Music] then we'll tack in our rod ends and set them in place dude this thing's looking so trick and i am so glad that we got that plasma table yeah everything turned out pretty good all we got left now are the shocks junk mail gets a coil-over suspension that will help us crush any terrain when it comes time to picking out the shocks and struts for your next project you need to remember that they are key to ride quality and the foundation of your suspension system well summit racing has a wide variety of shocks and struts to choose from so let's take a look at a couple options a gas adjust shock has performance advantages over a traditional twin tube design like an increase in steering response and stability the monotube design responds instantly to driver's inputs and delivers an increase in handling an on the car adjustable shock makes it easy for you to dial in your desired level of comfort and performance quick bolt and installation can be done in minutes and it's designed to be used with your stock style springs an integrated air spring and shock absorber system like this one replaces your car or trucks metal springs with a pressure adjustable air bag and these are great because you can adjust them from inside your vehicle a direct replacement coilover shock gives you the ability to adjust and re-valve to fit your needs they allow you to tune them to different driving styles plus their direct bolt in for a lot of vehicles making them a popular swap and lastly the universal coilover shock is designed to be used with dual rate springs they come in a wide range of travel lengths making them perfect for custom suspension setups and for us in our four-link jeep these things are going to work perfectly with the suspension linkage all done it's time to move on to that last piece and to get the shocks installed it's going to be pretty basic what we're going to do is weld some tabs onto the axle and then we're going to build some shock hoops and weld those directly to the chassis but we're not going to use the shocks to do any of the mock-up and the reason for that is because the chassis is already at ride height so with the shocks fully extended they're not going to work for mock-up so instead we have this tube that mimics the length of the shock at ride height that way we can accurately place the tabs and the shock coupe and to get all this started first we got to take a couple measurements to put on the tabs these measurements aren't too critical we just want the bracket inboard enough to clear our brake components and outboard far enough so that the shock body clears the chassis then we'll tack in our tabs [Music] now that we have the tabs on our axle it's time to figure out the hoop section and basically what we're going to do is we're going to take a tube and bend it 180 degrees and weld it to the chassis but we have to figure out what length of tube to cut so if i stand up this tube that represents our shock it stands up about a foot off the chassis and a little bit shorter on this side but it's best to have some excess and we know from experience using our bender the 180 degree section is going to take up about 18 inches of tube 18 plus 24 is 42 and that's the length we need to cut [Music] for our shock hoop we'll be using some 120 wall dom [Music] [Music] with our shock hoop bent up now the first noticeable thing is that our simulated shock does not fall in the center of it but the idea here is the shock hoop is going to fall on the box section of the chassis to maintain strength so the compromise is to lean the shock over a little bit and let the tabs fall right in the center but before we get to the tabs we gotta tack this thing in [Music] we'll give the chassis a quick grind before installing our hoop [Music] go ahead we'll make sure this thing is square and drop in a couple tacks [Music] then we'll head back over to our plasma table and cut out a few tabs to mount our shocks [Music] you know that plasma tamo came in pretty handy building all these brackets it's a great machine the suspension is all tacked in underneath our jeep and from what we can see everything should work out pretty good still got a couple things we got to do we got to tie the shock hoops in front and rear but we're going to do that after the body's on it so all we really have to do now is build up the axles put the drivetrain in the chassis and put the body on it so we can really see how this thing sits well i think we'll save that for the next time if you guys like anything you've seen on the show today why don't you check out powernationtv.com and uh we'll see you next time can't wait to get this thing on the trails it's gonna be a good time yeah it's gonna be awesome today on carcass our dj5 jeep has made a drastic change from its days delivering the mail with a four-link suspension and coil-over shocks we take it another step further with new gears and lockers for our one-ton axles to help us conquer the trails plus get the dry train in and mounted then we'll tackle our steering to get junk mail rolling once again [Applause] [Applause] hey guys welcome to carcass our 1978 jeep dj5 has made quite a big transformation from the two-wheel drive x-postal jeep that it was into this four-wheel drive fully functional off-road rig and we've done a ton of work so far with our jeep in the shop we stripped it down all the way to the bare chassis and remove all of the old suspension brackets then we went to a junkyard and picked up a set of one ton axles from a ford super duty we cleaned those up [Music] added a set of axle trusses and then we threw them under the jeep so we could fabricate our custom four-length suspension so the plan today is to build the complete front and rear axle and set the drivetrain in the chassis we also want to put the body on it to make this thing a roller so the first thing we have to do is get the axles back out from under it now we're building our jeep on a budget that's why we're spending the money where we want to and saving the money where we can that's also why we built our own four-link suspension and went out and got a set of junkyard axles well to build out those axles we went to summitracing.com and picked up a whole bunch of good parts and that starts with richmond gear 488 ring and pinion gears now these are a huge upgrade over our original setup these get bolted to a yukon grizzly fully mechanical locker now this provides 100 power to our tires when we need it we also picked up a set of stock replacement 35 splined axle shafts now we don't know how many miles are on our original axle shafts but they'll be a good backup set for when we're out on the trails we also got a set of mile marker premium locking hubs and a summit racing aluminum diff cover now all these parts should make our dana 60 pretty much bulletproof the first thing i got to do to get this whole build started is put the ring gear on our locker with our ring gear on we can add a few bolts to hold it in place we'll add a little thread locker to the rest of the fasteners and tighten them down finally we can torque them down to 110 pound feet with our ring gear on our carrier and torque down the next step is to install the races for the pinion bearings then i'll go ahead and install the pinion drop the carrier in and we'll start taking some measurements we'll give it a few whacks with our hammer and we should be good that's seated with our axle flipped over we'll knock in the race for our inner bearing now that our races are installed it's time to set up our pinion we're using some setup bearings now these bearings are made to slide on and off our pinion shaft without using a press the reason why we're doing that is there's a shim down here at the bottom that sets our pinion depth now you can either buy or make these and we just chose to make ours out of our old set now to get started all i gotta do is slide these on and check our opinion with our pinion in we can now check our backlash i already installed some setup bearings and some shims on the carrier so now all i got to do is drop this in and see how close we are jimmy can you uh give me a hand here yeah let's do it nice and easy i like my fingers i'm gonna let go now now we'll just set our bearing caps in place and making sure that we line up our reference marks and then i'll just snug them down [Music] now with everything snugged up we can check our backlash it shows about 11 which is pretty close i think we can move forward from here well now that everything checks out we can disassemble the case pull out our pinion and press on our real bearings once disassembled we'll head over to the press add our new bearings to the pinion [Music] and then reinstall it in our axle [Music] all right that should do it [Music] we'll check the preload and that looks pretty good now that we have our pinion bearings in place we can add our new bearings to our diff the press makes quick work of this and we're ready to install it back in our axle [Music] we'll snug down our caps and then torque them down [Music] that is exactly ten to check our contact pattern we'll add a little gear marking compound to the ring gear and give it a few turns yep that right there that's a good pattern then we'll slap on a fresh gasket bolt on our new diff cover [Music] and slide in our new axles that we got from summit racing with our axles in now we can start working on our hubs and our old bearings were worn out so we went to autozone and picked up a set of duralast hub assemblies duralast has a full line of steering drivetrain and chassis parts all of which are designed manufactured and tested to meet or exceed oem specifications these wheel bearing assemblies eliminate noise with lubricated maintenance-free bearings and come with a two-year warranty and to wrap up our hub assembly we'll install a set of manual lockouts [Music] with our front axle pretty much wrapped up now i gotta transfer over to the rear finish that one up too we have to make some quick adjustments and fabricate some brackets then we can mount our drivetrain in our chassis hey guys welcome back now we got our axles pretty much buttoned up but before we can slide them underneath the chassis we got one more thing that we want to take care of here on the front end we're going to be doing a brake system upgrade using ebc brake pads and their rotors for our rotors we're going with their gd sport series they have wide slots that draw in cool air between their brake pad and rotor surface and that keeps temps down they have a thermic black coating to help with corrosion and another advantage is their ability to maintain a flat pad surface throughout the lifetime of their brake pad setup speaking of brake pads we're also going to be using their yellow stuff pads now these have a high friction formula that helps improve braking by up to 30 percent they're available for light truck jeep and suvs and now all i got to do is set these on our front axle and then we can slide those underneath our jeep [Music] while we're freshening up our brake system we went to rockauto.com and got a new set of caliper mounting brackets and calipers to go along with our new evc brake pads and rotors [Music] with our axles all buttoned up and slid underneath our chassis we went ahead and dropped in the engine and the transmission but we're running into a little bit of an issue i was going to put in one of the upper four link bars and it's already hitting the starter without the suspension even being cycled so this is a great example of why you mock things up because you can always go back and change them later and by changing the position of the upper link mount well that's going to change the geometry of our suspension but this is just one of those instances where we're going to have to change some stuff to make everything work out so the first thing we got to do is just cut out the mounts we'll use a cut off wheel to make quick work of our tacks now that we have our brackets cut out i found a pretty simple solution all we're going to do is tilt the bracket down a little bit that way we get the vertical clearance on the starter and our links won't change length that much now we got to do is tack this back in hook up our links and cycle the suspension [Music] all right i think that's gonna work with our suspension dialed in now we can finally move on to mounting the engine and if you guys remember we had to take a crossmember out of here so we have to make some stand-alone engine mounts and jeremy actually had a pretty good idea on how to do that the motor mounts that bolted to our six-cylinder engine were two different styles on the driver's side it went away from the oil pan but on the passenger side it actually went underneath the oil pan and that's not going to work for us because of our suspension but there was a solution to this i went out to our parts jeeps and i grabbed another driver's side motor mount so now i have two motor mounts that bolt directly to our engine and go away from the oil pan i also went to summit racing and picked up some polyurethane mounts so now what i got to do is assemble these put them on the engine and then we'll start working on the chassis side [Music] all right jimmy we're all set awesome with the mounts on the engine it's now time to focus on the chassis side of things so i'll take a couple measurements so we can cut them out on the cnc plasma table [Music] yeah we'll call that three-quarter the chassis is about four and a half tall [Music] once we have our measurements we can start cutting out our new engine mounts on our premier plasma table [Music] then we'll add a couple quick tacks and mount them onto our chassis [Music] with the engine mounts tacked in it's time to move on to our transmission cross member now we already know from taking a couple measurements that the transmission won't sit directly in between the frame rails with the transfer case attached but there's a simple solution to this what we're going to do is actually clock our transfer case down about 13 degrees and that's going to help with two different things that will allow us to center our transmission it's actually going to help with our front drive shaft angle now they do make a tool to do this it's called the clocking ring you guys can go out and buy these but since we have a plasma table we took a couple measurements and made up our own so what i have to do now is bolt this to the back of the transmission punch out drill out a series of holes we'll bolt up the transfer case center our transmission and then we can get on to building that crossmember [Music] there we go you got the heavy end now make sure we go on the holes there we go oh that slid right in there all right how's it over there perfect we gained at least two inches of clearance so we're pretty good on this side yeah all right now um i'm gonna start making the trans cross member but we'll actually take this back out and i'll take some measurements and cut it out right you'll go around obviously the drive shaft on this side yeah perfect let's get it out here you want to bring it my weight yeah and then i'm gonna put it on the table [Music] it's about eight [Music] with our measurements we can start cutting out our transmission mount then start piecing it together on our welding table [Music] all right this thing looks like it fits perfectly so all i've got to do now is finish weld it and then we can move on to the transfer case coming up we'll tackle our steering and get junk mail ready to roll now we're making really good headway on the drivetrain install of project junk mail and it's time to move on to the transfer case now we're running a 32 rh transmission but we opted to go with the 241 rubicon series transfer case now these two bolt up but they don't seal it but we do have a solution went to summit racing and picked up a teraflex seal extension so all i have to do is pop out the old seal pop in this new extension piece we'll throw the transfer case on and then we're moving up front to work on some steering [Music] wow there goes [Music] all right well the transfer case is in now let's move on to the steering for our steering system we're going with the psc hydro assist setup that we got from summit racing this kit includes everything from the steering box the reservoir the pump the hydraulic ram and all the fittings and hoses needed to complete the kit on our jeep we're going with crossover steering and 37 inch tall tires and this kit is designed to handle the higher steering forces and even if we went with a bigger tire this kit would still handle it no problem so the first thing we're going to do is mount this pump then move on to the rest of the steering we'll mount up our pump using a bracket i fabricated on the plasma table [Music] then i'll take a few measurements five and five-eighths make a few marks on our frame and then drill some holes so we can install our steering box [Music] i've got our steering gearbox in its final resting place but there's a few reinforcements i want to do to make it stronger in the meantime we can move on to some other components and finish up our steering the next step in the process is our tie rod bar now i've already taken a couple measurements so i know the length of tube that i need to cut then from here we'll head over to the bench and i'll weld in a couple tube inserts then we'll keep moving on our steering [Music] with our tube cut i want to make a few bends so that our tie rod bar will clear our new diff cover wet a 20 degree bend to each end of our steering linkage to help with clearance [Music] that should work [Music] we'll hold it all together with the tig [Music] all right let's see yeah you take that side i'll wait for you to get yours before i start mine let's have it we'll just hand tighten this for now let's cycle this once and see how much room we have on the diff cover yeah plenty yeah that should work good nicely done let me get the cylinder and we'll get that on here too sounds good can you hold this while i tack it yeah you know where you're gonna put it just as far over to the passenger side as i can just to avoid the pumpkin over there that'll work all right ready yep we made sure our toe angle was relatively close before burning it in [Music] with the cylinder installed we can finally add some hoses and finish plumbing up the system then we can set the body back on the chassis and see what this thing looks like we'll have to make a few more body mods before we get junk mail rolling we're making really good headway on project junk mail we've pretty much buttoned up the suspension we threw in the drivetrain bolted our shocks back up and we even mounted a set of wheels and tires but before we final weld all the suspension we want to throw the body on it to do some final checks and we do know we're gonna have to cut some holes in it so we can clear the rear shock hoops and the easiest way to do that is to roll this thing over to the lift and see what we're working with [Music] turn a little bit here oh it's hard to tell where we're at it's pretty close yeah let's grab some plum bobs and we'll drop them down from the rear mounts and see how close we are [Music] tires off the ground that's probably and that's probably good yep that's a nice piece right there okay i'm gonna go down slow and let me know when we get close because the hoist arm is going to block me so [Music] stop right there yeah it's good we'll mark out the area that needs to be removed our lines don't have to be super precise just straight enough to give us a guide yeah something something like that [Music] we're using cutoff wheels for our application but you could use a plasma cutter as well either way makes quick work of our floor [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] we'll yank off the wheels and tires and remove our shocks so we can lower the body down onto our chassis [Music] full speed see what happens keep going stop like that look close oh look inside it looks nice yeah i think we should be able to get the shocks in there yeah that totally fits i think the shocks will fit we'll throw in some new body mounts and drop our shocks back in before setting the body back down [Music] here we go a lot of room between the firewall and valve cover all right i'm down on the back hoist arms are coming off getting close keep going yeah how are you looking transfer case is clearing everything yeah oh cool we're off on the front how much room do we have between the firewall uh inch yeah there's some wiring there but we're good let's get the front clip on it then yeah the fender's in the grille shell make it look like a jeep again yeah it's a good idea i'll go grab [Music] all right let's see how these fenders fit a pretty good idea that we were gonna have to do some trimming here so i think if we just cut out this indent right here on the inner fender that should allow the fender to slide in and match up with the grille shell to cut out our fender i'll use a cut-off wheel it makes it easy to follow the desired shape we're looking for to make room for our shocks jimmy you want to grab the back side and bolt that in that should be good for now [Music] this thing's looking so good and the parts are really coming together yeah but now we got the big order of tearing this thing all back apart because we still have to finish well the chassis we want to paint the stuff underneath we got to get inside and there's a laundry list of stuff to do before we go wheeling yeah well that's for another day if you guys saw anything you liked on the show go to powernationtv.com falling in love with this thing more and more it's awesome [Music] today on carcass junk mail gets a few body modifications to make room for some bigger wheels and tires plus we address some safety issues on our interior by adding a roll cage then tear it all apart to add some color [Applause] so [Applause] hey guys welcome to carcass we still have a lot of work to do before we can take our 78 dj5 jeep out on the trails but it's made quite a transformation from the two-wheel drive postal jeep that first rolled in the shop our 1978 dj5 postal jeep has been a blast to work on we cleaned up the frame and prepped it for new suspension we picked up a set of one-ton axles and added bomb-proof goodies to help us handle anything the trail could throw at us then we slid them underneath our chassis mounted up our four-link suspension and coil-over shocks next we dropped in the drivetrain and added a four to one transfer case taking it from two-wheel drive to four we put the body back on and made some modifications to give us some room for all of our additions and we have a male bag of stuff that we need to do we need to fab up some bumpers front and rear and add a winch we got to make some body mods because we have some clearance issues we're going to get inside the cab strip out the interior and add a roll bar then we're gonna come back out and throw on a fresh coat of paint but the big question is is where do we even start i think i'm gonna take care of the winch and the front and rear bumpers cool i'm gonna do the body mods awesome on the front fender it's gonna be pretty basic all we're going to do is follow the line from the side of the fender across the front and then we'll arc it over here on the end give it just a little bit of design using the tape as a guide we'll use a cut off wheel to make our modifications cutting them out this much should give us plenty of room for our 37 inch tall tires [Music] simple as that while jeremy was cutting out the fenders i took a few measurements for our winch plate and i've already transferred it to the computer so now we can cut it on the cnc plasma table along with a few other brackets and then once we get it assembled i'll be ready to start on the bumpers [Music] with the winch plate cut out we can tack and weld in our riser brackets these will lift our mounting plate up to match the contour of the frame making everything level [Music] then i'll drop on the winch plate that's going to be nice and fully welded in [Music] with that in place i can install our winch all right time to move on to the bumper with the clearance issues taken care of in the front of the jeep it's time to move to the back now you guys can pretty much see that these big tires are going to contact the body as the suspension flexes out but the simple solution to that is to just come in here and cut a big chunk out of the rear quarter we also plan on running the stock doors because we love the look of them but there's an issue there as well as you slide the door open the corner of the door contacts the tire now i have a fix for that but we'll get to that a little bit later to get down to the corner and get this whole thing started i gotta slide the door out of the way [Music] now that our door is out of the way i'll loosen a few bolts that broke and remove the track just like in the front i'll lay down our cut line using some masking tape now we can start cutting out our quarter making sure to follow our line as close as possible [Music] with our winch plate in place it's time to start on the front bumper setup i kind of have a unique design on my head that starts with a hoop that goes around the grille and then it'll tie into the front bumper so right now i just have to cut this tube put a couple bends in it and then we'll be ready to put it on the truck all right it's 74. [Music] with our tube cut to length i'll head over to the tubing bender with the design i'm going for the tube will need to be bent to 120 degrees on each side [Music] with that done i'll head over to the jeep can you hold this while i attack it sure i'm good now that our main grille hoop is in place i'll head back over to the bender and start the main part of our front bumper we have to bend it past 90 degrees in order to account for the spring back once bent i'll use a grinder to notch the ends set it in place and drop in a few tacks all right it's time to tack it then building off of the main hoop i'll finish out the front bumper and add a plate to the front to give it a clean look [Music] now that i have the front plate tacked in the front bumper setup is pretty much done there's a couple things i want to do still like add some tube caps here and also run a bar on either side to connect the hoop in the front bumper but once we're done with all that we can move on to the back now there's one more thing we have to take care of before we jump inside and tackle the interior we plan on running the stock doors because we like the look of them and they're functional but when you open the door the corner hits the tire well we came up with a solution on how to make this line so we can cut the corner off of it if we just use the old piece of the quarter panel set it up here on the door i'll just trace this line and we'll get to cutting [Music] all right now all i got to do is cap the edge of this door off here take care of the sharp fender lip and we're good to go [Music] we tear into our interior adding some support and safety measures with a few custom touches [Music] we made a lot of progress on the exterior of our jeep i finished welded the front bumper setup and i also reinstalled the winch just to make sure everything fits and it's all looking really good we took care of some clearance issues on the front fenders and the rear quarters we notched out the door to fit around our bigger tires and i even finished off the edge for a nice clean look i also fabricated the rear bumper which was a lot simpler than the front but kind of kept it the same style with the two tubes stacked on top of one another and now it's time to get to work on the inside inside we got a little bit of work to do we got to get rid of the seat and the package tray and then move on to bending up our roll bar [Music] we'll start by taking out a few bolts that hold in our seat [Music] followed by the mail tray all right [Music] all right yeah that ain't gonna work with the seat out of the jeep we started cleaning up and we found something the floor inside's basically shot and the plan is is to tie our down bar in up here and that's just not going to work with the shape that this thing is in so what i want to do is just quickly cut this out and replace it with a brand new one that way when the down bar comes in we got something nice and strong to weld to while jeremy's working on the floor i'm going to start in the back on the roll cage and the first thing i got to do is cut out some base plates on the bandsaw for our plates we're using some eighth inch steel cut into three by five rectangles this will give us plenty of room for our roll cage to mount to once they're cut out i'll head back over to the jeep grind off some of the old paint [Music] add a few tacks to our mounting plates to hold them into place [Music] then go back and finish welding them to the body [Music] we've got our base plates welded in now so we can start to measure for our main hoop and jeremy's going to hold up a cheater tube that we have so we can figure out the length of the tube 20 and a half measure vertical that's 27 and a quarter plus whatever the bend is if we add up the measurements we took plus the amount of tube it takes for the bend we got 60 inches but that's only half the hoop so we multiply it by two to get 120 and we'll add a couple inches for a little bit of wiggle room so we'll mark it at 122. once marked i'll take our tube over to the chop saw to make our cut [Music] then it's back to the tube bender i'll make our first bend at 90 degrees [Music] on a piece this big i like to flip the machine vertically and check before bending the other side making sure our bends are on the same plane perfect [Music] [Applause] let's see how it fits [Music] all right this thing is fitting perfectly it fits really tight to the body so we can tack it in now and then we can start working on the down bars [Music] looks like 42. with the measurement of our down bars i'll just cut notch [Music] and tack them into place as well then we can repeat the same process with our crossbar and get it installed you want to hold this up there yeah and i'll pack it sure tight to that side off of this side okay yeah i'm good whenever you're ready [Music] with the floor in jimmy can now come up front and finish out our cage and i'm going to transfer to the back tie in our down bars to our chassis and build a cover for our shock hoops [Music] using the plates that jimmy made for our roll cage i'll drill out a few holes bolt in the bottom plate and weld in our support tubes that attach to our frame doing this will help strengthen our down bars on our cage once this is done i can head over to the slip roller and start making our cover for our shock hoops [Music] before installing it i need to cut out some of the old floor so we can come back later and install our shock hoop braces [Music] let's uh see how this thing fits that's pretty good let's weld it up [Music] well with our cover and our cage in place that pretty much wraps up the interior now we got to start prepping for some paint [Music] we tear everything apart so we can finish up our chassis getting it ready for paint [Applause] with everything wrapped up on the inside of junk mail it's time to rip the body off of this thing so i can take it down and start prepping for paint and i also have to take the chassis and suspension completely apart so i can finish weld it add some gussets and supports where it needs it and i'm going to clean the chassis and paint it too jimmy you want to put your eyes on the front i'm going to pick the body up yeah [Music] good [Music] with everything blown apart it's time to final weld the chassis with the body out of the way welding up all of our brackets and tabs is super easy when welding this much you want to make sure you don't stay in one area for too long i like to bounce back and forth to let the metal cool [Music] [Music] [Music] i finished welding all the brackets on the chassis but i did find a crack up on the frame rail that i need to take care of i'll start by cleaning up the area using a benchmark abrasives zirconia flat disc they're manufactured using uniform particle size and a premium blend of ingredients that exceed other flat discs by packing up to 50 more abrasives on each flap benchmarks products are made to exact specifications to provide reliable quality products [Music] now that it's prepped i'll weld up our crack go back and grind it smooth with that taken care of we can start cleaning up our chassis i'll be using a knotted carbon steel cut brush that we also got from benchmark abrasives these carbon steel cups are great for cleaning up rust and removing paint on ferrous metal aluminum and other non-ferrous metals using a carbon brush on stainless creates contamination which leads to rust the knotted wire style brush we're using is best suited for heavy material removal like we have on our old jeep frame with our chassis prepped it's finally time for some new paint i did wipe everything down with a little bit of acetone to give us a good base for our new spray paint and this stuff is going to protect it from the elements on our first coat i'm just giving it light coverage to give us a tacky surface to give our other coats something to adhere to you want to make sure you're in a well-ventilated area when spraying we have a huge shot with an exhaust fan but i put on my mask once i start applying heavier coats that wraps up the paint for the chassis but i still have to paint the four link bars and the axles a matching color so once those are done we can start putting this thing back together [Music] bodywork is done now it's time to give junk mail a facelift with a fresh coat of paint [Music] well jimmy's been down in the shop thrashing on the chassis i've got the jeep body in the booth and we're ready to lay down some paint now we're going to be paying homage to the old postal jeep theme so our colors are going to be red white and blue what i'm going to do is paint the top of the jeep white so what i have to do now is mask the bottom of the jeep off then we'll spray the top with some sealer and move on to some color [Music] all right with everything masked off we'll go ahead and mix some sealer and start spraying we'll be using a primer sealer that we got from summit racing mixed to a five to one ratio with a hardener this is going to help fill in some of our sand scratches and seal the surface so we have a good base to lay down some color we'll be applying two medium coats letting it dry for up to 30 minutes between each application [Music] once our sealer is dry we'll mix up our single stage white that we're using for our top [Music] and i'll lay down two coats allowing it to flash about 10 minutes between each coat [Music] with our top sprayed we're gonna move on to our second color so i'm gonna mask the roof off so i can start laying down some paint now we know the bodywork is pretty crude but we also know that this thing is an off-road rig and it's gonna get beat up and scratched up when it's out on the trails all we're looking to do here is change color and give it a completely different look [Music] i'll mask and cover the white we just sprayed [Music] using a tack cloth i'll clean one last time making sure to get rid of any dust or dirt that may have been kicked up while we sprayed our top with it clean we'll spray the sealer on our body and our panels just like we did for our roof [Music] now that the sealer has had time to dry it's time to move on to some color and just like the top we're going to be spraying some single stage paint that we got from summit racing and the color of choice is royal blue pearl this is mixed in a four to one ratio just like our white summit's single stage paints offer a premium finish with exceptional durability it's resistant to yellowing and doesn't need to be top coated for uv protection since our paint is a pearl we'll be laying it down with a 75 overlap to achieve maximum coverage spring three medium wet coats allowing for five minute dry times between each coat for the final application i'll be applying a drop coat to give us a uniformed look you know this thing turned out really good and i didn't realize it had metallic in it yeah it actually laid down really nice how did the chassis turn up uh it turned out pretty good i mean it's spray paint but it's gray so otherwise i mean we got plumbing wiring got to get it running and then we can hit the trail then we can hit the trails and i actually still have one more thing that i want to do on the paint side we're going to lay down a red pinstripe on the top of the jeep that pretty much wraps it up for us today so if you guys like anything you've seen on the show why don't you go to powernation tv.com jimmy and i will see you next time let's go take a look at this chassis yeah spray cans man i went through like a dozen is that like way quicker than spray paint yeah today on carcass it's been a long road but we finally start putting junk mail back together we take care of all the wiring and ignition to give it some spark we add a few components to help our engine and transmission stay cool then finish up our fuel system and exhaust getting our dj5 jeep ready to fire for the first time [Applause] [Applause] hey everybody welcome to carcass we put a ton of time into our jeep making it something that's off-road worthy and that's a far cry from what it used to be a two-wheel drive us postal jeep it all started with us wanting to do a right-hand drive project and we came across three us postal jeeps for sale so we bought all three and brought them back to the shop after choosing which one was the best one we started tearing it apart to make room for some upgrades we cleaned up the old frame removing the old leaf springs and mounts then we went to a salvage yard and grabbed a set of one ton axles and after cleaning them up we added new gears and lockers making our axles pretty much bomb proof and we also fabricated a four-wheeling suspension with some good coil-over shocks next we dropped in a drivetrain and added a four to one transfer case making our jeep four-wheel drive after dropping the body back on we made a few modifications to make room for our off-road chassis the interior got an overhaul as well adding a roll cage for safety with all that done it was time to take it all apart and start prepping the body and chassis for some paint for our paint we went with a familiar theme common to us postal vehicles the old red white and blue as for our chassis we finished welding all of our suspension brackets and gave it a quick cleaning to protect all of our work we hit it with a fresh coat of paint and that brings us to how junk mail is sitting right now we've got a ton of stuff that we want to take care of today because we want to get this thing fired up we've got an entire fuel system to run a cooling system to plumb in and a mess of wiring to straighten out and that's exactly where we're going to start now on the wiring side we're going to be doing some of the basics we're going to be installing a new starter and a new alternator but on the ignition side we went to holley performance and picked up an msd digital 6 off-road box this is fully potted so it can withstand high vibrations and wet conditions it'll give us crisp clean throttle response at low rpm which is great for rock crawling and it's selectable between four six and eight cylinders and since our jeep's got that iconic six cylinder in it well this thing's gonna work perfect now what i gotta do is just figure out where i'm gonna put this thing over at the jeep we got a couple options where we can mount the box we can either put it outside in the engine compartment or we got a better solution we can come inside here to set it up on the firewall that way we can read the display and make adjustments if we have to once we have our location i'll mark our holes using a punch and drill them out [Music] then we can add our mounting hardware and screw it into place [Music] using a hole saw i'll drill out the firewall making room for our wiring harness [Music] and plug in our connections [Music] [Applause] [Music] next i'll drop in our duralast starter it's an oem replacement and bolts right in [Music] for our charging system we're gonna be bolting up a duralast alternator that we got from autozone and it bolts right on to the stock bracket [Music] with that in place we can add our new belt and tighten everything up another thing we wanted to install was a new set of gauges because we want to make sure we watch all the vital signs of our newly rebuilt engine the gauges we got are super easy to install and fit perfectly into the existing holes in our dash [Music] i'll feed the temp sensor through the hole in our firewall we made earlier and screw it into our freshened up engine to finish up our electrical i'll drop in a new duralast battery then we'll bolt up our starter solenoid [Music] and connect all of our wiring [Music] when out on the trails you want to keep everything cool we make a few modifications to accommodate a new radiator and a transcooler now it's time to start on our cooling system we're going with this aftermarket aluminum radiator we got from summit racing it's very similar in size with the inlet and outlet locations close to the original radiator we're doing this because we didn't have any luck finding a stock radiator for a dj5 and the two radiators we had from our parts jeeps were in really poor shape but mounting something like this doesn't come without its own set of issues so we got to try and sink this thing into the grille shell and that's where we're going to start using a scribe i'll make a few marks where i need to make my cut to make this cut i'll be using a cut-off wheel being very careful to follow my mark as close as possible [Music] once it's cut we drop in our new radiator and mark our new mounting holes all right got a marking drill right there and right here now we can drill the holes [Music] then i'll measure that's one and three quarter offset cut bend [Music] [Music] drill a few holes [Music] and mount our new brackets [Music] now that i know our brackets work there's one more thing i have to take care of because the radiator is pushed into the grill shell the filler neck is kind of shrouded by the grille shell itself so we have to make some clearance for it and what i'm going to do is take some tape then put it on the paint to protect it and then we'll use a hole saw to cut it out [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] with our hole finished i'll clean it up with a cut off wheel and make our edges smooth using a flap wheel now we're ready to pull off the tape and install our radiator for the final time [Music] [Applause] [Music] put it in for the last time oh yeah [Music] we've got our cooling system pretty much wrapped up the only thing i still have to do is loop the heater hose inlet and outlet and then put some coolant in it when it comes time to fire this thing up with jimmy having the cooling system buttoned up underneath the hood there is one more thing that we want to keep cool and that's our transmission now with low speed driving and rock crawling transmissions have a tendency of heating up so we went to summit racing and picked up a stand-alone transmission cooler we're running out of room underneath the hood to put this thing so we got to come up with a different solution and i think i know exactly where i want to put it and that's underneath the truck underneath our jeep we have two cross members that this lands on almost perfectly puts the cooler out of the way of the suspension travel and it'll be a quick run for the cooler lines up to the transmission i'll hold it in place using some locking pliers then we can drill out our holes [Music] [Applause] and bolt it up to the chassis once secure i'll hook up our lines to our cooler as well as our transmission [Music] right as rain if it doesn't run we can't have any fun we tackle our fuel system to get junk mail ready to breathe again with the wiring and the cooling system taken care of there are a couple things we have to do before we can fire up the jeep and one of those is the fuel system and part of that is the fuel cell the stock tank in the sheep was up under the cab but because of our axle and suspension it's not going to fit so we're going to put it behind the seats in the cab and the other half of that is underneath the hood so i'm going to be working on the intake and the exhaust manifold we'll slap a carburetor on top of that and we'll start running some fuel lines for our fuel system we're going with an rci 15 gallon aluminum fuel cell that we got from summit racing and to get the fuel to the front we've got earl's vapor guard hose and to feed our six cylinder engine we have a 450 cfm carburetor from quick fuel technologies to get this whole thing started i got to find a way to mount the fuel cell to mount the fuel cell i'm going to run a couple straps from this cover over the top of the tank around to the floor and i'll secure it with a couple screws i'm going to make these out of aluminum to try to change it up a little bit so all i really have to do is measure bend the straps and drill a couple holes [Music] nine and a half [Music] with our measurements and the aluminum straps marked i'll head over to the bandsaw and cut them out using a break i'll make sure our straps are square and make a few 90 degree bends [Music] now it's time to drill out our holes i'll round off the edges over at the belt sander [Music] with that done we can install them in our jeep to make it easier to locate the screws i'll drill a few pilot holes and attach it using some self-tapping screws and a piece of foam to help keep tension on the strap [Music] with our fuel cell installed i have just a couple things left to do i'm going to drill a couple holes in this panel and install some grommets then i'm going to run one line out the back for a vent and run the other line up to the front for the fuel pump to make our holes i'm using a one and a quarter inch hole saw [Music] with our holes cut i can add our grommets install the fuel hose and tighten it down [Music] now i can run the hose from our tank up to the engine bay all right now the last thing replace the old fuel pump with a new one our old fuel pump would probably work but since we have a fresh engine in all new parts it's a good idea to go ahead and update this as well [Music] before installing our new pump i need to remove what's left of the old gasket using a razor blade with our new pump ready to install i'll add a new gasket it's also a good idea to add some gasket maker to the engine block to make sure we don't have any oil leaks now we can install our new fuel pump and bolt it down [Music] last thing i need to do is install the fuel hose from our tank and tighten it with jimmy taking care of the fuel system in the back i'm going to start in the engine bay now the intake and exhaust manifold share the same mounting points on the cylinder head so we have to put them on in pairs what i'm going to start with is a fresh gasket then we'll bolt up the exhaust manifold with a couple bolts and we'll move on to the intake [Music] before we install our intake we're going to add a little gasket maker to make sure our seal is nice and tight all right now we'll bolt it up [Music] with the intake and exhaust manifold on we'll add our arp bolts and grab our torque wrench to tighten them up we're using our matco tools 3 8 drive fixed head electronic torque wrench it's easy to use and simple to set up just dial in your setting for us we need 23 foot pounds it has four torque alert modes and an lcd display so when you land on your torque spec the led changes you hear a beep and the handle vibrates it only needs five degrees of swing to grab the next tooth and it's fully programmable it also has an angle feature for those times when you need to add a degree of rotation to your bolt after you reach your torque spec [Music] with our intake on we'll add a gasket and a spacer all right let's throw this carburetor on here [Music] with our carburetor installed i'll go ahead and snug it down [Music] the fuel lines go on next and get fastened [Music] with our hoses attached to the carb we can now run our new lines over to the pump that jimmy installed [Music] all right well that takes care of the fuel system there's still a couple more things underneath the hood we got to take care of before we fire this thing up we build a custom exhaust then it's time to light the fires on junk mail we're getting really close i'm going to go grab a couple more parts so we can finish up sounds good with the wiring the fuel and the cooling system taken care of we're almost ready to fire up project junk mail but there is one more thing we have to do and that's the exhaust now we can't run a traditional exhaust system underneath the jeep because our upper four link bars are in the way but we do have a solution the plan is to run our exhaust out the passenger side and then we'll just end it underneath the floorboard now there is one piece i do have to make and that's down here on the manifold to make our exhaust i have to flare one end to match the bevel on our manifold that's about 45 degrees so i'm going to grab some tubing and head over to the machine using a piece of two inch tube i'll use a female ball socket to match the taper of our exhaust manifold followed by a flare flange to finish it up [Music] since we have a tight turn i'll need to cut it yep that fits perfectly to finish the downpipe i'll grab another piece of two inch tube that has a 90 degree bend in it and swage one end to step it up to two and a quarter inches [Music] i'll take the pieces over to the table and tig them together [Music] all right now we'll just throw this 45 on here that gets us under the floor and we'll just add a muffler with our downpipe in place i'll tack in our 45 the muffler and the exhaust tip now we'll just take it off weld it up on the table to finish welding our exhaust i'll be using the mig welder [Music] all right let's get this thing in here so we can fire this thing up [Music] at this point our exhaust is all wrapped up and looking real nice so now all we got to do is top off the fluids like fuel power steering transmission and coolant before firing up junk mail for the first time [Music] okay so all the fluids are in it we did prime it a little bit because we got fuel pressure i think it should start right up let's hear it here we go oh there it is we're super close to hitting the trails now we still have some stuff to do yet we got breaks to do drive shafts and we still got to button up all the interiors hell yeah but that's it for this episode so if you like anything that you've seen go to powernationtv.com fire this thing up we'll check atf yeah we'll check that one more time it does run good today on carcass we put the finishing touches on junk mail we address the last pieces of our interior on our 1978 dj5 plus figure out how we're going to shift the transmission and transfer case then we install our brake lines and head out on the trail to see if our old postal jeep truly can deliver the goods [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey everybody welcome to carcass our jeep that we're calling junk mail has made a huge transformation from the two-wheel drive jeep that originally rolled into the shop into this four-wheel drive off-road rig and it all started with a 1978 postal jeep that originally had a four-cylinder engine in it but because we bought three jeeps we have the option of putting a six cylinder in here along with a custom four link suspension one ton axles coilover shocks a roll cage for safety and some fresh coats of paint and today is the day that we get to take this thing out but we got a couple of things that we got to do we got to wrap up the brakes install the complete interior add some shifters then we're going to throw in the drive shafts load this thing up and go have some fun let's start on the interior sounds good for our seat situation we're going to be pretty resourceful we found a matching pair of seats from the other two jeeps that we bought so that's what we'll use this particular seat is looking pretty weathered and we do have a way to fix that later as far as mounting it goes it's really simple there are still holes in the floor for the rear part of the bracket but because we replaced the floor pans we're gonna have to drill two new holes for the front part and that's where we'll start i'll line up the rear brackets with the existing holes so that i can mark the front mounting holes [Music] once marked i'll remove the seat and drill the holes using a matco hyperstep drill bit now i can install the seat and snug it down [Music] now that jimmy has the driver's seat installed it's time for me to hop in and take care of the shifters for the transmission we're going to be running the stock one for the transfer case we went to summit racing and picked up a krc shifter now if you guys remember the original floor had a small little transmission hump in it and now it's completely flat so to install this shifter we got to make a small little modification using a straight edge i'll mark a line across the bracket then i'll use a cut-off wheel to make a relief cut i'll bend the tab up to 90 degrees [Music] and finish it by welding it up back over at the jeep we need to cut a hole in the floor for the shifter arm to go through now i already went underneath and i found out i got to come over 23 and a half inches and forward about 16 inches so we're gonna put a little mark on the floor and then we'll just get to cutting [Music] with it marked i'll draw a line to mark the slot we need to cut out drill a few holes [Music] and then connect the dots using a benchmark abrasives premium cut off wheel with our shifter in place we need to find a way to connect that to the transmission now the idea is to use a piece of solid stock but we can't do it in a straight run because the new transmission crossmember we built is in the way so the plan here is to use a piece of tig rod and we're going to feed it up where it needs to be and add some specific bends to it so we can get our shape then all i need to do is transfer this over to our piece of solid stock on the table we'll match the bends we'll come back and do a test fit [Music] using a piece of 3 8 stock i'll use my template to mark where my bends should be [Music] then using a torch i'll heat up the area to cherry red place it into the jig and use a little bit of muscle to make the bend [Music] i'll use the same process on the other end [Music] [Music] yeah it's pretty close [Music] see how it fits all right let's see how this works then from here or right we can drill some holes install the shifter yeah that'll work perfectly with the holes marked i'll drill them out drop in our shifter and tighten it down [Music] now we can install our linkage for our transmission all right let's try this reverse neutral drive second first perfect now we'll move on to the transfer case with the location set we can drill and cut the floor just like we did with the other shifter [Music] [Music] with the shifter body installed we'll slide underneath the body and bolt up our handle [Music] after a quick test run it's time to mount the transfer case linkage all right shifters are installed and it's time to button up the interior but before we get on to that i want to throw a fresh coat of paint on this one we'll show you a quick and easy way to update your seats plus install some stopping power for junk mail [Music] with the shifters installed we also threw in the set of seats that we got from our donor vehicles and like jimmy said these things are a little worse for wear and we want to put a set of seat covers on them the only issue was is we had no idea what they originally came out of but as we were pulling them apart to clean up all the brackets we noticed on the back of one of these covers was a little ford insignia and a seven digit part number well armed with that information we went to the internet and turns out we have a set of seats from a 1983 ford mustang we took that information and headed over to covercraft and they confirmed we truly do have mustang seats so we ordered up a set of carhartt style precision fit seat covers and these things should work perfect in junk mail carhartt fabric is the perfect choice for protecting our seats from water mud grease oil and dirt they're crafted and sewn from the highest quality duck weave water resistant material which makes it easy to clean and will hold up against anything we can toss its way it has a classic carhartt styling and they're made to perfectly fit around our seats they also have a foam backing for added comfort these covercraft precision fit carhartt custom seat covers are perfect if you have children pets work in construction or just love the outdoors they're great in cold and hot climates as it maintains an even temperature and it comes with a three year warranty with jeremy wrapping up the interior we can move on to the brake system and all starts with this master cylinder that we got from summit racing and then we can move on to some lines [Music] with our master cylinder installed we can start bending our lines it's a good idea to put a few coils in the brake line as this provides some strain relief the body and chassis can shift relative to one another which can stress the brake lines [Music] all right that's looking pretty good just gotta connect it to our other brake line we ordered brake lines from summit racing for a ford truck which would have a six to eight inch lift this gives us the extra length we need for our suspension to articulate [Music] so [Music] that wraps up the front brakes so we'll finish the rears bleed them we'll be ready to go to make it move we'll need some drive shafts then add a few more components so we can hit the trails [Music] all right try that jimmy how the brakes feel yeah that's a good pedal perfect well now that the brakes are taken care of we still got a couple more things we got to do we got to throw the drive shafts in it then we're going to install the bump stops and we'll move on to those limit straps now for our drive shafts we went to tomwood's custom drive shaft so they could build us a set for our jeep now you guys know we have a fully custom suspension updated powertrain and one ton axles we wanted to make sure we had a set of drive shafts that would hold up to our 37 inch tall tires and the abuse this thing's going to see when it's out on the trails now the drive shafts that they sent us utilize a double carton style joint on the transfer case side what that does is allows us to reach full suspension travel and get all of our articulation out of our drive shafts when we're out on the trails for the bolts we're going to be using arp bolts and we'll add a little bit of thread locker [Music] when measuring for drive shafts you want to make sure your vehicle is at ride height also you'll need to know what series u-joint fits your pinion as well as the angle of the drive shaft [Music] all right let's get the front one in [Music] sweet if you roll that in underneath here we'll pick this up we'll check for flex check for binding and then we can check for the bump stops as well let's see how it does that's good right there actually yeah that'll work go ahead i'm gonna take a look at the drive shaft make sure it doesn't touch anything keep going keep going stop there okay so that's about a finger width between the drive shaft and the upper four link mount that's impressive yeah so i think we're good there to probably take a measurement for the bump okay it's probably safer for you to take that measurement yeah you're on that side just see what it reads from the chassis to that axle truss uh like five and a half okay and our bumps are like four and three quarter or something like that yeah okay do some math we'll figure out what we got to do there we'll build a bracket and we'll get set up yeah sounds good you go back down with this just to make it safe no watch straighten the tire back out there you go perfect that'll work the most important part of mounting our bump stop is to mount it close enough to the axle housing so it's functional so my idea here is to take a piece of quarter inch plate put a couple bends in it that way it's offset from the chassis rail so that starts with cutting our quarter inch piece of plate to length [Music] with our measurement made i can head over to the iron worker and cut out our piece then use the horizontal break to make our bends [Music] i'll do two 45 degree bends on each side and punch some holes for a rosette weld on each end [Music] back the fab table i can drill our mounting hole [Music] then head over to the chassis to prep the area for welding and install our bracket [Music] with the bracket fully welded i'll do one final check before painting it and final install [Music] now one last thing to go along with our bump stops are limit straps one thing to remember is that these things are going to stretch out about an inch over the course of its lifetime per 12 inches of strap so that's one thing to consider when you guys take your measurements and order these things up now what i got to do is install these things and then we're going to go hit the trails we head to the trails to see if junk mail has first class performance [Music] all right it's finally time we're out here at adventure off-road park we have almost 600 acres and over 120 trails to choose from the trail system here at aop ranges from anything from mild to wild stuff like your side by sides or your weekend warriors all the way up to like project junk mail and some rock bouncers but today is the day we're gonna see if junk mail truly can deliver let's do it let's go i'm excited this'll be fun all right we'll uh start it off a little easy this shouldn't be too bad it should be kind of fun to see how it handles really yeah the best part is we don't have doors right so we can just stick our heads out ain't nothing nope they can do a lot more than this yeah totally this is george winter trail let's run this one this will be a little tougher all right this is one of my favorites up here at the top i don't think we'll have our work cut out for us but it's going to be a little more difficult it's just rocks using the throttle a little bit mud just crawling it's like we're not doing anything no this thing's doing great just let it cruise a little bit oh i'm truly impressed right now i am too this thing is great it's not even struggling nope it's not even struggling like we're just cruising away delivering the mail all right let's uh i'm gonna spot you now okay then we'll just start placing tires in right spots and then we'll get up this not that we need it we're doing really good yeah so hard driver okay like that yep [Music] yep perfect all right i gotta know what do you think it's awesome it's like your first time out so yeah first time off-road like it's kind of sketchy but like addicting at the same time cool i think we should keep going it's like kind of downhill from here yeah we'll go play one more spot yeah you drive all right yeah you got to get a feel for it i can drive this thing we're going check it out over here yeah let's let's try it this way once looks like we got a little bit of mud yeah not bad try to play around in here how are we looking on that rock yeah you got room little body you got it oh ouch that's a little deeper than it looks still not a problem like no that just walked right through that no issues that's a gold down yonder huh a little bit of mud on these trails yeah kind of fun something different a little slippery we better square back up on that one that was kind of crazy that was a little bit yeah how about that sure that's an easier way to get around that one life gives you lemons make lemonade yeah a little more mud you know what's amazing what's that this is the first four link that you or i have ever built right and it's doing pretty pretty dang good i wouldn't say we're doing bad by any means yeah i think it's performing like it should yep oh another yeah i see that frog down yeah get out the way watch out froggy [Music] we're having a little bit of fun yeah and this thing has really handled everything we've thrown at it we've gone up some harder trails some easier ones mud right a little slick rock yeah i think i'm having a blast yeah it's a lot of fun to drive you know the bars in the cage ended up being like perfect exactly where we need oh yeah nothing else to hold on to up here right awesome out here though i'll take it all day long i will take it you know the jeep pretty much did exactly what we wanted it to do it took us where we needed to go but there's a couple things we could improve on yeah i think there's room for some upgrades in certain areas but like overall this thing has really proven itself and we've built a pretty gnarly trail rig yeah we got a little bit of daylight left so i think we should go have some fun yeah if you guys like anything you've seen on the show today why don't you go to powernationtv.com and jimmy and i we'll see you next time and we're going to hit some more trails in the meantime yeah this will be a little bit of fun i think we got like you know five eight gallons of gas left a couple hours a day like a couple hours of daylight [Music] yeah today on carcass junk mail was such a blast that we had to bring it back we have a few more goodies to add making it the ultimate wheeler we also fabricate some new doors for added safety on the trails and then take it out for some more adventures [Applause] [Applause] what's up everybody welcome to carcass today we've got project junk mail our 1978 dj5 jeep back in the shop and this thing started out on a down on its luck mail delivery vehicle and we've turned it into this after we stripped it down to just the frame rails we got to work we built our very own four-link suspension assembled a set of one-ton axles dropped in the freshly rebuilt drivetrain and we rounded that all off with a paint scheme that paid tribute to the male jeep's roots then we headed out to put all of our hard work to the test and today it's all about improvements you know when you build a rig like this you just build with the money that you have available and then when you gain a little bit more money like when that stimulus check hits you can rush out and support the economy and buy some jeep parts throw it at your trail rig that's what we're going to be doing today so we're going to convert this thing into fuel injection take care of some steering upgrades and build a set of custom tube doors to help us feel a little bit safer when we're out on the trails and jimmy let's get started let's do it for the fuel injection set up underneath the hood of our jeep we went with an efi master kit that we picked up from fitech it comes with everything you need to install it underneath the hood you've got some hoses and some fittings a little fuel filter here you've got your handheld controller that helps you watch your vital signs and your throttle body setup now we went with the go street 400 horsepower throttle body and it works well with vehicles ranging from 150 to about 400 horsepower and since our jeep's got about horse this thing will work perfectly now another big part of their setup is their force fuel module this works in conjunction with your factory fuel pump and what that does is puts fuel into this module this module converts it into enough fuel pressure to control the injectors in the throttle body and you're all set to go like i said super simple to install where we're gonna start is right here with the module okay so to mount the module we could go back here on the firewall but it gets a little close to the exhaust manifold we could go down in some of these little crevices but it could make it hard to plumb so we think we're going to mount it right here on the shock hoop now you can mount this completely vertical or horizontal and we're going to go kind of halfway in between we'll mount it right here so all i got to do is just make a couple mounts we'll get this thing installed all right let's make our bracket about three and a quarter using some one-inch flat strap i'll cut some pieces drill some holes and weld it all together all right so now we'll just bolt these brackets onto this module and then we'll just weld everything in the jeep [Music] okay so we'll just get this set in place here on the shock coupe and then we'll grab the welder weld it in all right [Music] okay we'll get rid of a couple fuel lines get this carburetor out of the way and we'll set our throttle body in place all right now all we do is set our throttle body into place and it bolts right up to the existing flange that the carburetor sat on all right so that's the two major parts of our fuel injection system installed so now what i have to do is hook up some lines that go from the module to the throttle body and then we'll run one from here back to the fuel cell [Music] for our return line we went with braided stainless steel to give us a little more protection underneath the jeep [Music] with the return line installed we'll hook up a couple quick connections [Music] all right one of the last things we have to do is install an oxygen sensor because our efi needs to see an air fuel ratio in order for it to work correctly and phytech sends this little adapter so all we have to do is drill a hole into our exhaust clamp it down with the supplied clamps and that just means no welding involved all right so we don't have a lot of room down here on the exhaust because it's so short and the idea is to stay far enough away from the manifold before we get to the muffler and we want to put this on a flat not any type of a curve so i think the spot to be is going to be to install this right about there using a step drill i'll drill a hole in our exhaust and install the sensor bung and our sensor like that all we have to do is just plug in the connector all right that wraps up everything underneath the hood now we'll go inside connect the handheld and fire this thing up [Music] so with our handheld plugged in i got to do the initial setup like tell it we've got six cylinders 258 cubic inches and we'll set the idle speed to about 850 and this thing should fire right up just like that perfect so now all we have to do is a couple more things to button this thing up and then we're going to head right back out on the trails [Music] coming up we built some custom tube doors for junk mail giving us some added protection at this point jeremy's finished up our efi conversion so what i'm going to start doing is working on a set of tube doors for our jeep the last time we were on the trail we were lacking some side protection in the rare vent that we tipped this thing on a rock so what i envision here is coming off our roll cage bar with a set of hinges that make the door easily removable come straight across kind of contour the body and then go back across maybe put a plate in the center to make it look cool and really that starts with cutting some tube [Music] i'll start by cutting out some inch and a half dom for the door then i'll cut out the chassis side of the hinges and put two 90 degree bends in each one [Music] all right so i've got one half of the hinges cut out and bent and what i did was i mounted them on a piece of 3 8 rod and what i'm doing here is just making sure that they stay in alignment when i go to tack these onto our roll cage bar so i'll just prep this tube place our front half hinges here and that way i can put the other side of the hinges on this tube hang the front tube and then build the rest of the door from here instead of trying to float the whole door in here and then try to mount it later so i just got to prep this and then tack [Music] with one half of the hinges tacked in i'll mount the door side of the hinges using a couple bolts okay all right just gotta tack it all right it doesn't bind or anything so we can start building doors about 29. [Music] when making tube doors like this it's just a lot of cutting and notching until you get to the desired design that you want [Music] all right two more tubes one down one across and then we'll figure out something in the middle [Music] i just got to make sure this tube is level with the top one and we'll tack it in [Music] all right so the door is almost done and we have one more tube to make and actually on the door itself i'm gonna put a notch in this tube going down that way we can run it to from up here down to here and it'll stick out a little bit on the bottom just like this side [Music] all right so we got this end fitting pretty good the only thing now is notching this tube so that you know it can slide up farther and meet this one get a good weld around it and then we'll figure out something [Music] all right with that tube in place we start working on the cover for the door cover we're using eight inch plate for added protection all right that looks like it fits pretty good but i'm not going to put this on yet until i can weld the tubes all the way around so for right now i'm just going work it on the latch and then we'll finish the door for the last we're going with an auto lock bear claw that we got for summit racing these are pretty universal you can use them for a hot rod or a jeep and i just gotta mount this one on a plate weld it to the door itself and then i have to make a plate to mount on the inside to mount the pin so once that's done this thing will be fully operational all right let's see all right so the only thing left is to weld this whole thing up and give it a fresh coat of paint up next we take our steering to the next level what do you think dude i love the doors cool they work perfectly on the jeep so that's one thing we took care of the other thing is we switched this over to fuel injection so we took care of that now the last thing we're gonna do is some steering upgrades now if we ever move over to a bigger set of wheels and tires it's a good idea for us to do some steering work so we're going to be moving away from the hydro assisted steering and go to a full hydro setup and something that you get with a four link and crossover steering setup is bump steer and inherently bump steer isn't a problem especially in a rock crawling situation because you're going so slow that you have full control over your vehicle but if we were to take something like this down the highway that can quickly turn into a dangerous situation so full hydraulic steering eliminates bump steer and like you said if we want to go to a bigger set of wheels and tires that will eliminate any potential issues now we already have psc steering underneath the jeep so a lot of the parts underneath the hood are interchangeable so it's just an easy solution to use psc again but what i do have to do is get rid of this assisted ram down here in the gearbox and then we have to go to the full hydra ram and you have a solution on how to mount that right yep i'm going to cut it on the plasma table cool well i'm gonna go grab some tools and i'm gonna start getting rid of some parts all right we'll loosen up some of the fittings on the hydraulic ram to get them out of the way [Music] then we'll get started on the drag link and the tie rod bar [Music] all right now we get the gearbox out of the way [Music] get this heavy thing out of the way [Music] all right so while jeremy's been taking apart the jeep i've been designing the bracket for a hydraulic cylinder so i'll cut it out on the table here take it over to the jeep tack it on and see if we can make this thing work [Music] for our cylinder bracket we're using quarter inch steel to make sure this thing stays where we want it to [Music] once it's cut out i'll grind the paint off the axle and start tacking the pieces into place [Music] now the hydraulic assisted steering we had underneath the jeep used this smaller cylinder in conjunction with our steering gear box but now that we're going to this full hydro setup we're going to be using a two and a half inch bore eight inch stroke cylinder and that works in conjunction with this orbital now this is kind of the brains of the operation it accepts the input from our steering wheel and turns it into a hydraulic pressure and that moves the ram to the left and to the right now we got all of this from psc and it came as a kit everything from our fluid hoses and fittings and it even came with all of our steering now jimmy's already got the mount made for the cylinder so that's where we're gonna start wow perfect timing jimmy you ready for the cylinder yeah let's get it in there at least tack it i'll hold it up here for you all right ready yeah that looks close with the mounting blocks tacked in we'll remove the hydraulic cylinder and permanently weld everything up [Music] then finish it off with a couple coats of paint [Music] that looks pretty good thanks yeah i already took some measurements for the tie rods so i'm going to go get to making those it looks like you're going to mount that yeah i'll set the orbital up here i think it's going to go up on the inside chassis rail so sweet get that in there somehow i'll let you get to it and so i'll set the orbital up here on the inside of the frame rail so i just gotta kind of mark it we'll uh grind all this paint off i'll take the bracket in [Music] we'll throw on a couple tacks to start then fully weld it up and paint it to match [Music] we'll install our orbital hook up our steering and connect our hydraulic lines [Music] all right dude i got some tie rods for you perfect i'll get those installed and then uh just top the whole system off with fluid sweet and i'm gonna bend up a skid plate so we can protect everything we just did and then we'll be ready to hit the trails sounds awesome with all of our new additions we take junk mail back to the proving grounds [Music] all right everybody we're back out here at adventure off-road park for the second test of our jeep we've got full hydraulic steering on this thing now a couple other upgrades efi and we got some doors on it to give us a little more confidence and honestly any day that we can get out of the shop it's good for us to take so let's see what we can do yeah let's uh let's have some fun right yeah so there wasn't anything wrong with the jeep before but you know you can always do improvements right yeah or not improvements i think upgrades is a better term there yeah i mean it's kind of natural going from a box setup with a you know ram assist to a full hydro that's that's just what you would do if you're trying to get a little bit more out of your rig right right so i mean so far this thing like it's just a little easier to drive probably yeah 100 we're gonna take it out of gear we're just gonna let the uh gravity do our thing right now because yeah she's a little slick out here yet yeah look at that again no issues just a walk in the park man walk in the park and here look at this super tight turning and it just running around dude that's just good old-fashioned fun right there and efi too like there's ways to get a carburetor to work off-road with the weird angles and stuff but it's just getting this thing turn the key and you're gone right and i'm barely touching the gas like it's the idle's not searching yeah it's just solid steady it's at 884 rpm yeah and no hesitations right you know just walking you know you really couldn't ask for a better day nope not to be outside wheeling that's for sure yeah shaded by the trees right i mean aop is such a great place to come anyways yeah there's a lot of different terrain really there's something for whatever rig you got right you know this is different than what we did last time we're in the same park and yet it's different which is just nuts like a little tricky here let's see what happens hey that's all that took yeah i spoke too soon yeah yeah yeah just like that there you go now simple enough now let's try this one yeah this may be a little trickier because we got wet tires now yeah so we want to go forward go forward yeah go go go go go yeah frickin spotting yeah that was perfect dude we sat and that was 45 degrees at least that was a heck of an incline oh i love that yeah that's good right there oh yeah oh body damage whoops little tree rash all right my bad my bad you can't ask for much more than that and if you guys want to see more of what we're doing go to powernationtv.com and be sure to check out our build pages where you can see the square body tow truck the rally honda and more of this jeep we're super close to the truck but i say we hit a couple more trails and then uh we can call it a day yeah let's do it because you know it is doing exactly what we wanted to do right now yeah just creepy crawling through the woods

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 2,566,021

Keywords: Car, PowerNation, howto, how-to, diy, automotive, cars, trucks, automobile, do it yourself, automobiles, auto, powerblock, carcass, full build, mail jeep, 1978 postal jeep, jeep, junk mail, Jeep DJ5, off road, custom suspension, trail rig, postal jeep

Id: DBwMEFrORiU

Length: 148min 7sec (8887 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 07 2022