To say?

AJ left a bit ago, we did some work on his Jeep...hey, Ford use to make Jeeps back in the day for Uncle Sam...so it's on topic

Got most of what he wanted done, did some engineering changes along the way to make things work, but pretty sure he'll be able to get everything ground down and painted up and looking purty in the next week or so.

Man, I have to get a new ground lead for my MM35, made some ugly welds (too low of juiice) for his foglight mounts, should have easily been able to weld good on "3", but had to turn it up a notch to get it to burn.

Good thing AJ has a grinder at home...hopefully he's good with bondo too, so he can cover up my ugliness.

We had a pretty good day of it today, actually measured and marked, and drilled to suit, and most of it turned out pretty good.

Disclaimer/warranty on the work:

As usual, I warrantied all work I did...until AJ's back wheels hit the asphalt...hopefully he didn't lose anything on the way home!

 

That was some day !!! I'll post some pictures tomorrow most likely. We (or, should I say mostly Mike) fabbed up a super strong winch plate and customized my twin tube bumper to accept Fair Lead for the winch, tow bar mounts, and relocated the off road light tabs due to the winch controllers location interferring with the original location.

It was a lot of work and it took all day. I appreciated all the work and every minute of the time Mike spent on this. We had a quite a few laughs and really enjoyed the day. FTE friendship at it's best.

Yes, I still have couple of holes to drill, some grinding, sanding / prep work and plus some painting. However, I should be able to get this all done by Sunday and I will show off the finished product at that point. It's very compact and one of the best set ups I've ever seen for a Jeep.

I plan on taking the Jeep behind the Motorhome next week on a little Pre-Christmas run down the coast. That will be my little vacation this year and I hope to be back to work by mid January.

We also looked at how I'm going to build up a 390 for the F100, talked about Thumper a bit, and figured we'd hit those project as the new year rolled around.

Mike - Thanks a bunch !!! I think I'll be buying the beer for the next year. ;-)

 

It's posts like these that inspire me. I'm going to look into taking welding classes and\or metal working for the Spring semester. The sooner I gain these skills the quicker I can have weekends full of fun like like mecinoid and 3m6 just did.

Kick ***!

 

It was a good time for sure, but cold when we hit the shade, was going to do some work on Clints trailer today, but it hasn't warmed up enough for me to get going on it!

Guess I'll just keep sipping coffee and procrastinating about the things I need to get done

 

Yes indeed, knowing how to weld and/or do body work would really come in handy for all the project cars I seem to buy over the years. Can't believe I never got around to learning either one.

 

Yesterday, I took off the bumper, winch, skid plate, etc... I painted it up and bolted it back up.

Today, I upgraded the bolts and retapped a couple holes, double nutted stuff, wired up the winch, rewrapped the cable around the drum, wired up the driving lights, lubed front end, and some other misc stuff.

I'll post up pictures shortly. Man, that hammered paint came out nice looking.

Now, all I have to do is set up the towing lights on the Jeep. Should be nothing but a thing. ;-) Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.... Then again Sunday is a day of rest so maybe I'll finish this all up on Monday.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

 

Well, I thought I'd post the pictures I promised:

Original bumper - Note: no tow hook, no winch, light location different, bumper ends really stick out there:



Fabrication of winch plate and tow hooks at Mike's:



After fabrication / prior to paint:



Finished product 4 days after start of project:



Love the hammered Blk / Dark Gray finish:





Please notice the headlight bezels. During this process I also sand blasted the chrome off there and resprayed them body color to tone it down a bit. ;-) I like. It took like three hours to sand blast that chrome off there though. ;-(

 

Looks good, cool thing is your lights cover up my ugly welds for the brackets

Gotta get a new ground cable soon!

 

One more picture to see how the original light brackets look like after they were cut off, ground down and painted:



I'm wondering why Smittybilt felt they needed 3ea XRC8 Stickers on the front of the winch. I think I'll have to take off two of them on a sunny day.