Still too chilly to hunt leaks, it was time to make some stuff.
I picked up up a variety of 3/16" wall steel from the supplier at work and set off with a vague game plan in mind...
From left to right... Rear cross member, rock sliders, slider arms ( on the ground )
In addition to the tube stock I picked up 120' of 2" OD .125" wall tube to be used in constructing a roll cage...
Sliders cut to size...
Ends capped and prettified...
Slider arms tacked in place...
At this point I decided to replace the rear bumper/cross member with a much more betterer one of my own doing...
old cross member gone - replaced with 2x4... Note the nastyness of the rear part of the frame... I didn't...
New rear cross member construction...
The shackle tabs are 1" thick and are fully welded on both sides of the tube...
Crossmember tacked in place...
Remember a few lines ago when I said to note the nastyness of the rear frame? Yeah... it was bad... the PO had most of the drivers side of the rear part of the frame stuffed with cardboard and held together with bondo...
Time to remake the rear frame!
I wanted to replicate the frame as accurately as I could, so I traced the shape and remade it out of square tubing...
Old frame cut away...
I wanted to reuse the crossmember I made so I planned around that... I also added a full fishplate joining the segments of tube making up my curved frame...
Braces were also added out of the 2" tube... the bolts protruding into the center are the mounting locations for the rear shocks...
somehow when I cut the old frame 'U' away, the good part of the frame splayed out an inch or two... I had to cut my pretty crossmember and widen the 'U'...
The I cut a filler piece the length the frame section needed to be widened and tacked it in place...
I tacked the new frame section onto the rest of the frame and cut away the rear quarter panels to make life easier...
I added some 3/16" x 1.5" angle iron on the 4 edges as a fishplate securing the 3 sections ( left, right and the spanner ) together... Ignore the surface rust... it was rainy...
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2008 Xterra 4x4
1986 CJ7Lots of custom stuff...
Gone, But not Forgotten...
2003 Sport - 'Fire Engine' RedDetours KJ Backbone
Skids
Boulder Bars
JBA 4.5 A Arms
245/75/16 Wrangler Duratracs's on Cragar Soft 8’s
Spidertrax 1.25" Spacers
Superwinch LP 8500
Frankenlifted