The Garbage Jeep

I bought this Jeep because it is a 2 door with a 5 speed. And it has a cool visor thingy.

It needs help. Lots of help. The Rockers and shot. The floor is shot. There is no patching. Oh, and the engine is blowed up. It came with a replacement.

I call it "The Garbage Jeep" because the former owner left it a mess... candy wrappers, cigarette butts and whatnot all over. It was kinda gross... If I was smart, I would have made them clean it out... maybe next time I buy a piece of garbage. Ha.



It did have a bumper... but we pulled it off trying to pull it home. We dont need no wimpy bumpers anyways...



They used liquid nails to glue down a sign in the back.



Rust is a terrible thing...



I figure this ought to be good for an additional 5 or 10hp...

Is it the 4.0 i6?? How did he manage to blow one of those up???

Yup the 4.0 I dont know, they said it was a bearing. Actually drove it about half way home. Didnt seem to like 5th gear. Started up and hill and it started screeching and loosing power.

Im going to pull the head off and see if theres anything interesting going on there, it turns over, but it turns fast so i assume theres no compression. Kind of excited to see what it looks like...

If the floor and rockers were solid, I might have looked into getting a donor Ram 1500 318 5 speed truck and do a v8 swap. That would have been fun...

Forget a 318, put a 350 chevy or 5.7 hemi in er lol. But if the spare engine that came with it winds up being good, it oughta be enough.

Im a firm believer that if its a Mopar, it needs a Mopar powerplant!

Although... there was some thought to put a 5 cyl diesel in it. Better MPG and free fuel...

True, I don't like mixing manufacturers either, but the 350 chevy is hard to beat. But a 5.7 hemi would be awesome. Jeep is shooting themselves in the foot by not at least offering the 5.7 in the wrangler. Instead they give it the 3.6 v6...same engine thats in the caravan. If jeep really wanted to sell a lot of them, they would put the 5.7 in it.

Yours would be really fast with that weight reduction us northerners are blessed with

Motor trend did a couple 318 budget builds and got close to, and over 400hp. One with pretty much bolt on parts.
Considering Ive got access to few 318s... thats the only logical course of action.


It ought to have good air flow anyways...  

Not to say I wouldnt want a 7.5 Hemi... but Id save it for something else... or trade it for a real Hemi from the 50s-60s.


The rockers are pretty sad, Im thinking about rebuilding them before I put in the floor. that way I have something solid to weld the floor to. Im thinking some 1/8 for the main structural part.
Just need to figure out the best way to build it.

You can put in a 340 too, same block as 318 so it will just bolt in.

Problem with the 340 is I dont have any of those laying around.

Made the fist mistake today. Just a speaker wire is all...



...wasnt planning on putting those speakers back in anyways...



This is the worse of the 2 rear inner fenders.
I assume theres nothing wrong with trimming it to good metal?



This is one of the worst bits of rust in the frame.



Ive been using a hammer and chisel to peel up the floor, and break it off the spot welds. Some Ive manage to chisel off pretty well flush... I used the angle grinder with a cutoff wheel to score the floor into sections to make it easier to remove. Ill go through after the floor is all off and grind the spotwelds flush.

Had a though for the back... instead of getting brand new metal, going to the junk yard and liberating some metal from the bottom of a truck bed. Figure it would be cheaper, and it would have them fancy groove thingys....

The downside to that, there is more space between the frame and floor that isnt getting welded... maybe that not really a problem... ?

Yeah a truck bed sounds like a good idea. I'm a ford guy, but they tend to rust out. A chevy bed will probably last the longest.

Ill have to browse the Dodges first... gotta keep it in the family you know?


On the same note as the truck bed... Maybe I can liberate even more from a roof or something for the front floors...

Im not sure what would have thicker metal though, I wanted to replace it all with something thicker as that would be a bit easier to weld.

I would think that truck bed floor would be thicker. Stock stuff was 18ga so says the internet experts.

usually the unibody breaks where the front of the leaf pack connects to. that general area...

My cousin bought a mint (and i mean 100% stock, not a bad spot on it, rust free mint) xj with a 4.0 5 speed and 2 door for $300. ran and drove great. all hacked up now on 33s, lockers, 8.8, gears, bumpers, winch, ect...

ill never buy a old vehicle up north here again

Ha. Thats exactly where there is a hole on each side. Its going to get plated around there, and up fron and back where Ill mount some home brew bumpers. Possibly, in the future the whole thing will be plated.

Theres still good solid vehicles around... few and far between. If I had the $$$ Id go out west and buy something.
Ohwell...

Hahahahahaha today on my way to school I followed a red and black jeep cherokee 2 door, you must be making some progress! Nah this one was missing that visor, but otherwise looked identical. Not sure on the drivetrain though, my car is a little low to see in lol

Haha this thing has a ways to go before it will move under its own power

Gona get a buddy to come over and assist with the engine swap, atleast to get the blowed up engine out. That will be a little while yet, not untill its a bit warmer during the day.

Untill then Ill be grinding spot welds off.

So I spent a few hours grinding today...

After gri9nding the spotwelds flush Id hit em with some cheap spray paint. After about emptying a can I got to thinking if there was any real point as Id just have to sand it off when I put the floor in.




Also, since the front is up in the air... Stuck this grody ole dry rotted ole worn out ole grubby ole... on there for the fun of it. 31 10.5. Crappy as the tire and wheel are...

Totally needs big tires.

Heres bad places in the frame, where Red said theyd be.





The will be plated sides and bottom. Id like to try get something on the inside aswell.
Gona have to get some prices on metal before I decide what to plate it with... Im thinking 1/8 should be good.

Aperson can buy frame stiffeners that would cover that, they are 3/16 and about $100 I dont want to spend.


I need to get some braces inside the cab, that rail going across should be connected to the body. It is on the passenger side, driver side not so much. It didnt rust off, it broke. So the drive side sits about 1in lower that it should.

Here is the plan for the rocker panel...

The red is what I have that is still solid. Grey is what I want to make out of 1/8in material.
Does this look like it should work? Seems like it would to me but...

So in removing the oil pan, I had to unbolt and jack up the transfer case... I also managed to tweak the body so the passenger door hits the visor... oops.
Hopefully some strategic plating on the frame will stiffen things up and remedy this problem.


Come to the conclusion I dont want to try to make the back from 1 piece, as there wouldnt be much room for error. I can use 3 however and have loots of room for mistakes. Hopefully not too many.
Butt welding 2 pieces of sheet metal doesnt sound like fun. A flange will make for some easy plug welds.

So I got a cordless angle grinder. Along with a cordless sawzall I should be able to get just about any piece of metal from a scrap vehicle.





And tires... I got some of those too. They may be older than me, but they arnt dry rotted and have decent tread. Should be good enough to get inspected.

Got a welder ordered. One of Lincolns small units that can run both solid, and flux core wire.

Im excited....

use your wirefeed when it comes in.... rather than try to run a continuous bead initially, stitch it every half inch or so with a button (tack) weld until the panel is in place and lined up.... THEN you can weld it up fully, with much less distortion


and 1/8 inch is far more than needed.... try 16, 14, or 10 gauge

Yup, I dont want to tweak the body any more than it is....

I like the idea of 1/8 for the bottom of the rockers, more solid is always a plus. The floor, if I have to buy material that will be 14ga. Thats what I need for my pps43 and kp44 so if I have extra thats a plus.

TheBeal wrote:

Yup, I dont want to tweak the body any more than it is....

I like the idea of 1/8 for the bottom of the rockers, more solid is always a plus. The floor, if I have to buy material that will be 14ga. Thats what I need for my pps43 and kp44 so if I have extra thats a plus.

LOL yeah, don't wanna be a tweaker

Already messed it up taking the oil pan off.


Anywho... I got a new toy....



Probably one of the low-end models, but hopefully this will do the trick.