Cheap Chief

[JAMESMOST]

Woooooo,,,, great read,,,,,lots of fabrication,,,,,everything is awesome,,,,,,Really really nice......

So ur wife thinks u bought it and just changed fluids and filters,Haaaaa?
Hope she doesn't read thread...
New Name For Thread "Most expensive Cheap Chief 100% Custom"

Thake a cruise up to NYC,,,well chill.....

Good luck Awesome Job.....
James

[Jjkage84]

This thing is Wicked Cool! I want that Bumper!!!

[ross80truck]

This thing is Wicked Cool! I want that Bumper!!!

Hopefully here pretty soon I will be able to start working on a rear bumper with a tire carrier, highlift jack mount, and a place for a couple of jerry cans. As always I will post pics as I build and the project progresses.

[ross80truck]

Well, you know what they say? "Idle hands are the devils playground". My idle hands just ordered new gears and lockers front and rear for the jeep from East Coast Gear Supply. I am going to 4.10s and also installing Detroit True Tracs front and rear. Everything was in stock, so I should have it shortly. But of coarse as busy as work has been and my buddy is still driving my jeep while we are working on his Burban, I have no place or time to work on my jeep. Or a jeep at this point since Andy is still driving it. At least someone is enjoying it and I can at least go out and look at it in the parking lot everyday when Andy drives it to work. On one hand I hope work slows down a little so we can get some of these projects done and out, but on the other I like when there is a lot of work in the shop and everyone is busy. I just hired another machinist on Friday, so hopefully he can help relieve some of the load. I will keep praying that work stays busy, after all lots of work pays for lots of toys!

[j2sax]

question on the Durango Seats... on the driver's seat of my 82 J10, the inner floor bracket is not made for a "Flat bottom" seat... I had to use a spacer on the opposite side which makes the seat high in front.

I am going to cut that bracket and re-position it, however, maybe the older brackets are different? I may have a set of brackets from a 78 Chero.

Great project!

[CherokeeJim]

Nice work Ross. I'm not part of that Jeep club you had asked about awhile back. How's everything going?

[243]

I have a question related to your bumper, it has a similar look to the Hanson bumper but I have noticed FSJ winch bumpers including the bumper you built generally mount the winch down low with the fairlead mounted to the face of the bumper. Is there a reason a winch should not be mounted on an FSJ similar to this Hanson on a baby Cherokee?

[ross80truck]

question on the Durango Seats... on the driver's seat of my 82 J10, the inner floor bracket is not made for a "Flat bottom" seat... I had to use a spacer on the opposite side which makes the seat high in front.

I am going to cut that bracket and re-position it, however, maybe the older brackets are different? I may have a set of brackets from a 78 Chero.

Great project!

I am not for sure, but I bet your J10 had a bench seat where the Cherokee had buckets. The brackets between the 2 seats I am sure are different. I did add spacers under the rear of mine to level the seats out a little. The bottoms where reclining a little more than I liked.

[ross80truck]

Nice work Ross. I'm not part of that Jeep club you had asked about awhile back. How's everything going?

It is going well. I finally got my jeep back from my buddy the other day who had been borrowing it for the last 4 months. Made a few quick repairs. The kick down linkage on the TF727 was not adjusted properly so I fixed that. Also, my twin stick kit that I put in with the Dana 300 needed adjusted as well. I have been driving it for about the last 2 weeks. Now I gave it to Jon Hix over at Hix Auto here in Temple. He borrows my trailer all the time and owes me a couple of favors and he is a good friend. So, he has it now and is going to install my new cam and intake for me. I could do the work myself, but I do not have the time and with the birth of my second son getting closer and closer my list at home keeps getting longer and longer. Done anything new to your Cherokee lately?

[ross80truck]

I have a question related to your bumper, it has a similar look to the Hanson bumper but I have noticed FSJ winch bumpers including the bumper you built generally mount the winch down low with the fairlead mounted to the face of the bumper. Is there a reason a winch should not be mounted on an FSJ similar to this Hanson on a baby Cherokee?

First off, there are probably a lot of "opinions" where the winch should be mounted. I will give you my reasons why I did it this way. First, on an FSJ the frame rails are set wide enough apart that you can fit a winch down between them. By setting the winch directly between the frame rails this means that when you are winching you are not adding any extra leverage to the bumper. Second, mounting the winch lower does two things. One, it is always best to keep your center of gravity as low as possible, this means keeping weight as low as possible. Second, by keeping the winch low, it does not block as much air flow going through the radiator. In Texas, I need all the air flow I can get. Also, in a FSJ, you can set the winch lower like that and not really hurt your approach angle.

In the picture you showed an XJ. I have never built a bumper for one of those, so I am not fore sure if you could drop the winch lower or not. My dad has a YJ that I built a bumper for. I had to mount the winch high because it will not fit down between the frame rails. I could have moved it forward and then moved it down, but I would have had to move it forward almost 12" to drop it maybe 6". That would kill approach angle. I am sure that this was way more of a long winded answer than needed, but I hoped this helped.

Here is a pic of the bumper I built for my Dad's baby jeep. I built the roof rack as well.

[ross80truck]

Well, it is official, I made my campground reservations to go to Ouray in 2015. So, I guess I better get to work on finishing some stuff up on my jeep so it does not give me any problems. So, my buddy who owed me a few favors started working on it this weekend and is installing the new cam and intake. I will post some pics later on today. He did find a couple of things right off the bat though. I always thought I had a vacuum leak, but could not find it. When he took the intake loose, we found that it was not sealed very well at all. So, I think that was my vacuum leak. Also, we found that the lifters were worn really bad. I will swing by his shop today and see what the cam looks like and post some pics of that as well.

[ross80truck]

Here are some on the engine tear down pics.



The valley actually looks really clean.



Here is some of the wear that was on the lifters.



Here is the cam. It is definitely showing some wear.



This thing should run a lot better with the new Edlebrock intake and cam. Also found my AC leak when my friend was taking it all apart.

[twisted frame]

Did the engine give you any signs that the lifters were going? Noises? Or was this sort of a surprise?

[ross80truck]

Did the engine give you any signs that the lifters were going? Noises? Or was this sort of a surprise?

This was a surprise. The motor ran pretty good, but there were a couple of things that I did not like. First off, I felt it was under powered for a 401, but then I had not driven any other 401s so I was just guessing. I had driven some 360s and this felt like it had no more power than a 360. Also, it seemed to have a vacuum leak that I could never find, which I think we found when we pulled the intake manifold. I could pretty much close the butterflies on the carb and it would still idle. The last issue I had was the timing seemed off. If I ran it according to the harmonic balancer it would backfire. I had to end up timing it with a vacuum gauge. I am sure the harmonic balancer had spun. I am putting a new harmonic balancer on it while it is apart. Other than that I had no problems with the motor. It started every time and I had no over heating issues with it. This tear down was basically just because I wanted more power, you know the feeling!

[twisted frame]

Oh I know the feeling. I'm sure I'll find something like this when I do my intake swap. I've never been into my 360 so we'll see.

[ross80truck]

It has been slow going lately, but my buddy is making progress on getting my motor back together. It is looking good. He hopes to be done today or tomorrow. He is going to drive it for a week and get everything tuned right. He used to be into drag racing so he is a pretty good engine tuner.

[ross80truck]

I was driving home the other day and this thing somehow followed me home. I am sure none of you all have had this problem before. I was trying to run it off, and then I saw that is had a manual transmission (t-178, 4 speed) and then I just could not help myself. As I am sure all of you that have read this thread know, my jeep started off with a TH400, then when I got fed up with the chain in the Quadrajunk I swapped in a TF727 and a Dana 300. Now it looks like I am going to be swapping again to a T-178 which the Dana 300 will bolt directly to. The good thing is that my wife loves driving a manual transmission. So, she is somewhat okay with the swap. I probably will not get the swap done before Ouray, my list of other things to do before the trip is pretty long.

Rear Bumper
New gears
Lockers
Rear disk brake conversion
Oh yeah, get the motor back together

[Lumpskie]

Double post.

[Lumpskie]

^This is cool. My wife wants me to swap a manual transmission into our Wagoneer. I can't wait to see how the project goes!

[ross80truck]

Rear Bumper
New gears
Lockers
Rear disk brake conversion
Oh yeah, get the motor back together
Fix exhaust

Needed to add "fix exhaust" to the list. It is still running straight out the back. Need to angle it out the side.