| For more local wheelin' check nnyoffroad.com |
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| Yes, it's stuck, and yes what you can see there is the top of a 38 inch swamper. This occured in a swamp behind my house, it took a John Deere and an F-150 together to pull it out, and then barely. |
house checking the articulation of my Scrambler. It sports a 454, NV4500, Dana 300, 60 & 44. A spring over clears 38 inch swamper TSL's. In the rear you can spot the remains of a trick utility body I built when I was in college. (New York road salt and trees removed the sides.) I fabbed it in my parents barn with a stick welder and a sawzall. I'll be rehashing that sometime now that I have better tools. I'll try to keep updates of my ongoing Jeep project on the site. I'd be happy to duplicate anything you might like on my Jeep or fab almost any off road hardware you can dream up. |
of the utility body. Even though I never got around to unifying the color, aka painting, you can see how the side appears fairly normal but the whole thing folds down to access several compartments so you can reach straps, tools or whatever even when the inside is full of stuff. |
| Here are a pair of shots on a powerline road near my home. I liked the right one just because we were ice breaking without doors. Here the sides of the box are still intact and my Jeep has weenie little 35's. You can also see the lengthed CJ-7 top to fit the shortened Scrambler body. |
| Recent Modifications |
| You may have noticed this is not a 454. It needed rebuilt and only ever got about 11mpg, and at least here in abysmal economy northern NY, we shop owners aren't made of money so the Jeep now has a mild 350. If you are patient you can build cool stuff on a tight budget. I bought a parts truck (the frame was broken in 6 places) and used the engine and rear end which had the Detroit already. After selling some parts from it I had a net investment of 90 bucks plus more parts to sell. |
| I ended up fabbing my own headers because I couldn't find good tuned in frame headers for this application. I wanted to avoid doing this because it takes forever (probably over 20 hours on the pair, which equates to about a grand so you might think twice before asking me to whip you up a set). I didn't want to run fenderwell headers out where the exhaust could be damaged and plastered with mud (some mud doesn't smell so good) and in frame headers were generally short unequal length deals which don't produce as much power so I made my own. |
| ...and presto air cylinder "springs".The cylinders are double acting and will be tied together via a solenoid valve, which creates antiroll stiffness like a swaybar, but can be disconnected for max articulation by the flip of a switch. As with the headers this was time consuming but the cylinders needed a very large rod to function corrrectly and were not available as stock items. |
| ...I spent some quality time with my lathe... |
| UPS delivered... |
| Here's the air "springs" installed. This is near planned ride height although that will be totally adjustable by the volume in the cylinder (I'll actually use nitrogen not air). I've got about 4 inches up travel... |
| ...and 7 inches of droop. The front linkage is a unique asymetrical two link. The passenger side has a torque arm which takes all the torque while the driver side has a locating arm only. It does change the caster as it cycles which isn't ideal but the links are over 40 inches which minimizes the caster change. Any link setup will change the caster if the links are not equal length and there just wasn't enough room for 4 links, so this is what I came up with. I expect it to work fine. I guess I'll see. |
| Here is the new rear end. I used XJ springs with extra leaves because they're longer so they can flex with less chance of breaking. That's a Chevy 14 bolt with a Detroit and I also custom made the brackets to fit the disc brakes. The top link controls axle wrap, if the position of the mounts is correct it does not hinder axle movement. I'm not sure what kind of RTI it'll have but it does use all 10 inches of shock travel. |