It Begins

This day began like any other project would first thing you do is go get the project. We arrived at the owners house about 11am. He opened the garage door and I got my first upclose look at my nightmare. This was supposed to be a 1980 Jeep J-10 pickup and at first glance it was. The day just went from good to bad though. We started loading it on to the borrowed tow dolly when the first disaster stuck the winch strap broke from age and the massive weight of this beast (6200lbs). The next sign was we broke the left taillight on the towdolly. Also to top things off after we finished pushing the jeep up on the dolly the tire straps wouldn't fit over the tires so we had to flatten the tires on the front. Then we noticed that the rear tires were rubbing the wood bed which had been put on the truck. After 2 hours of babying it we finally got it home.

We got it to my brother in laws and immediatly started to work on it. First we took off the wood bed and started looking things over. First thing we noticed is that the driveshafts wouldn't work. The previous owner had installed a th400 automatic tranny behind the 258ci 4.2L straightsix. This setup is 4" longer than the factory setup and caused all sorts of problems.The transmission mount would not bolt up to the tranny and we didn't have room to move it back the 4" it needed. The next obstacle was the differentials. The front d44 was out of a 1979 Jeep J-10 and had 3:54 gears the rear AMC20  was still 1980 and had 2:72 gears. As you know that won't work. The t-case shifter wouldn't work either. Also the speedo cable wasn't long enough. So we started researching my problems on www.ifsja.org and found alot of answers and some cheap parts.

So now that we had found solutions to alot of problems I started thinking about what I really wanted this truck for. Simple answer it was to be my getaway to the great outdoors. So offroad it was. Next I started looking at lifts and thought man I can't afford this stuff. So back to the drawing boards right? Wrong more like a trip to Panther Steel in Morristown Tn. I bought 4 foot of 3 1/2"  1/4" wall box tubing. We got that back to my brother in laws and 2 days later had the rear lift done.

Rear bracket rear lift with shackle flip

Rear Lift Complete

With the lift completed it was time to get back to serious matters and we started with the transmission crossmember. So a friend of mine named Rob fabbed me up an extension for the tranny mount so it would bolt up I cannot use a regular tranny mount but get no noticible vibration from it. Next was correcting the mismatched gears. So me and my wife made a trip to North Carolina and met up with Bull Gear Inc. Owner Toney Casey and made a trade for the parts I needed. While we were there Tony and some of his friends took us wheeling at Uwharrie National Forest and we had a great day.

 When we got back it was back to business getting the jeep put together. We got the rear diff changed out and then it was time for driveshafts. For this job I turned to Fergusen Driveshaft in Morristown Tn. He cut a rear one for me but wanted to much to lengthen the front so I used a piece of 1 1/2" 1/4" wall square tube for it. The tubing fit tight I actually had to hammer it on after cutting the original in half. I welded it up at both ends and it works fine.

Now that we had the driveline back together it was time to take it back apart and put in a new t-case chain from bj's offroad. www.bjsoffroad.com and all new seals in the t-case as well. Then we installed the 4" drop pitman arm and put all the interior back together as well.

As you can tell in these pics we already have the rear diff dropped and have added 2 6" offroad lights to rear bumper.

Front spring bracket for rear lift

Well after the rear lift was done it was time time to do the front. On the front we just did the basic SOA lift. The lift netted me between 7 1/2" to 8" total and I am pleased with the results.