1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

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Glad the Impaler
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Glad the Impaler »

The coil overs arrived Yesterday - plenty big and ready to party!

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14" of travel - As recommended by a few of the guys that I've wheeled with in the past (they all went with 12" and wish they had gone with 14" on the same super duty Dana 60 front with long radius arms).

Today I got to tear into the 1993(ish) NV4500 I'm going to use. It seemed very tight and smooth just from shifting it and spinning the input shaft in all gears but I felt I'd regret not at least popping the lid on it to take a peak inside for any obvious issues. I'm glad I did - I found NO major issues and only one thing that I wanted to fix.

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The reverse shifter fork is exactly as it should be for an early GM NV4500 model - but it is missing the slider pads that sit on it. $8 from TorqueKing4x4 for ease of mind!

The other issue that you'll commonly read about on NV4500s is the loosening of the coupler nut holding 5th gear onto the output shaft. One thing that I learned in researching this further and taking the tail housing off my own NV4500 is that this issue is primarily only found in high HP/Torque applications - namely diesel applications. Another thing is how it happens on the output shaft and the fix for it - It happens because there is just a thin coupling nut holding 5th gear on and nothing behind that nut preventing it to back off, the fix is to either add more threaded grub screws to the coupler nut to lock it in place or place a spacer behind the nut so it essentially has no room to back off.

The early GM NV4500s don't really have this 5th gear issue though - and taking mine apart you see why. The large harmonic balancer (which is in great condition!) is essentially a spacer so 5th gear could never slide off fully. The coupler nut holding 5th gear on mine had 0 play - this could also because it lived behind a relatively modest power engine too!

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I also got an input shaft seal that I will replace for ease of mind and then RTV this thing back up and get it ready for mock up! I'm fearing a custom crossmember may be in order for the NV4500 mount + NP241. This is only because of the experience I had last week fabbing one up for my buddy with the exact same engine/trans/tcase setup - the front output of the clocked NP241 hangs right in the path of his straight cross member but he did not use the factory GM NV4500 rubber mount - so that may buy me enough drop height for clearance. We shall see during the mock up stage!
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Stuka
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Stuka »

Ahh, the holy grail of NV4500's. The harmonic balancer is interesting. Does it balance the whole rotating assembly, or just 5th?
2017 JKU Rubicon
Pevious Jeeps: 1981 J10, 1975 Cherokee, 2008 JK, 2005 KJ, 1989 XJ

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Glad the Impaler
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Glad the Impaler »

Stuka wrote: Wed Oct 13, 2021 7:56 pm Ahh, the holy grail of NV4500's. The harmonic balancer is interesting. Does it balancer the whole rotating assembly, or just 5th?
It's locked to the output shaft - so I believe it's balancing the whole "in gear" moving mass. 5th gear is the only gear that rotates freely on the input shaft, all others rotate on the output shaft. Pretty interesting being able to play with it as I've never opened up a big transmission like this before.
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tgreese
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by tgreese »

Glad the Impaler wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 9:41 am ... I'm not 100% sure what transmission I have - It doesn't look like a T-18 so I think it's a T-15? The T-Case is a Dana 20 I'm pretty certain. ...
Just regarding the three speeds ... The T-150 is a Ford passenger car transmission built on license by Tremec for Jeep, and never appeared in a FSJ. It was used in '76-79 CJs only. The 258 six got the T-14 through 1975, and the T-15 through 1979. The Buick and AMC V8s got a T-15 through 1979, with a very long input shaft and either a funky long bell (Buick), or a 5" thick adapter (AMCs). From 1980, the 3-speeds were gone.

This is a T-15. It will say T-15 or 13-07 on the side. It should also have a tag under one of the top cover bolts, with "T-15", a Jeep PN and a Borg-Warner number.

An early CJ-5 or CJ-6 owner with the 225 V6 might want the whole setup. It's a bit long for a CJ-5, but the T-15 is strong and it can be made to work. At worst, the T-15 is valuable parts ... as well as FSJs, the V8 CJs 1972-75 and the V8 Commandos got the T-15, and there's no source for gears now, other than another transmission. Somebody will want it.
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Glad the Impaler
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Glad the Impaler »

tgreese wrote: Thu Oct 14, 2021 11:18 am This is a T-15. It will say T-15 or 13-07 on the side. It should also have a tag under one of the top cover bolts, with "T-15", a Jeep PN and a Borg-Warner number.

An early CJ-5 or CJ-6 owner with the 225 V6 might want the whole setup. It's a bit long for a CJ-5, but the T-15 is strong and it can be made to work. At worst, the T-15 is valuable parts ... as well as FSJs, the V8 CJs 1972-75 and the V8 Commandos got the T-15, and there's no source for gears now, other than another transmission. Somebody will want it.
Thanks for the confirmation - I may scrape a few years worth of gunk off to confirm the numbers you gave!

I do have a CJ builder interested in the setup - I'm assuming pulling the bell housing would be worth it before scrapping the block as it sounds unique.

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Glad the Impaler
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Glad the Impaler »

Some progress on the engine side of things...

With the old engine out it gave me an opportunity to clean up the frame rails for new beginnings...

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The manual steering box remained but that soon too would be removed to make way for a flat rail and new mounts for a power steering box.

The cleaned up rails got some 3/16" plate welded to them for a little reinforcement when smashing stuff.

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My new 50a plasma made relatively easy work of templating these plates out - I really got it for boxing the rear part of the frame rails with 11 gauge material. I'll be getting a simple dimple die setup too to put 1-1/2" dimpled holes in the rear frame rails for wires/brake lines/fuel lines or whatever else might fit in the rails.

The next hurdle for me was figuring out what power steering box to use. Turns out the J20 Saginaw box is highly sought after in the 4x4 world so that made my decision very easy. I bought a cheap rebuilt one at auto zone with the intention of just using it for mock up stage. My buddy runs chevy astrovan steering boxes in his build since he lengthened the wheelbase but kept the OE steering box mount location. He has a spare he ordered so I figured ahh I wonder how similar they are to the J20 box - since both are Saginaw boxes but info on them and their mounting hole pattern was hard to find. Turns out they have the same main 3 bolt hole locations that nearly all Saginaw boxes have!

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So this was great news - I will return the J20 cardone (car-done) steering box and just mock up with the astrovan box. Most of the later Saginaw boxes lost the extra mounting hole that the astrovan box doesn't have anyways - so the strength is there with just the 3 mounting points alone and this will help me avoid any interference issues I might have with that 4th mounting point and the truck front clip mount boss.

Makin progress!

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Glad the Impaler
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Glad the Impaler »

Chipping away at it!

Got the engine mounted on a stand and cleaned up a bit.

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I also managed to extract the snapped exhaust manifold bolts - which seems to be a common LS task!

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The trick is to simply MIG weld some extensions onto them - the combination of the heat from the MIG welding and the cooling thereafter must break them free because damn - they came out easy after that! Well easy as in, they came out. The still required careful and diligent use of a pair of vice-grips!

I will be replacing a few things on the engine:
  • Engine oil pick-up tube o-ring
  • Engine oil pick-up tube reinforcement bracket
  • knock sensors & harness
  • valley cover gasket
This way hopefully I can do anything else while the engine is in the vehicle down the road.

I also started prepping the rear axle by shaving the brackets off

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Little by little...
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Stuka
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Stuka »

At least you had the engine out to get those bolts out. Its a lot harder while inside the vehicle.
2017 JKU Rubicon
Pevious Jeeps: 1981 J10, 1975 Cherokee, 2008 JK, 2005 KJ, 1989 XJ

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Glad the Impaler
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Glad the Impaler »

Managed to get the LS tacked in this weekend!

Started out by assembling all the parts - semi-cleaned LM7 + NV4500. Heavy assembly!

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Pulled the truck into the garage slightly so we could maneuver the heavy load on smooth concrete. After some wiggling it fit in like a glove.

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I spent a little while then messing with fine tuning the position and angle of the tranny so it would mate up with the stock cross member nice. On a side note - I discovered something very interesting about the stock cross member - at least on my vehicle. The frame rails were dual drilled to have the cross member both in an "upside down" position slightly forward (for short trannys I assume) and this is how it was when I pulled everything out of the vehicle originally. In this position the cross member is forward and slightly higher and the tranny mount will sit in the 'valley' of the C-channel shape of the cross member. additionally - this allows the 'notch' recess in the cross member to be positioned for a passenger side drop front drive shaft.

I started looking at the cross member and the frame for ideas since I was 100% trying to re-use it for this build out of simplicity. I noticed that if I simply rolled the cross member over then flipped it left to right it now fits in a set of holes already drilled in the frame and already spaced back for a longer tranny. I now have the notch in the cross member positioned for a driver drop front drive shaft and I have the OEM NV4500 tranny mount positioned 'on top' of the inverted cross member. I drilled new holes for the OEM NV4500 tranny mount but will need to off set them slightly after fitting everything this weekend (appx 1/2"-3/4" forward and I need a 3/4" vertical shim to boost it up slightly). The rearward holes I am using were factory made - they have dowel spacers in the frame already (that I had to slightly finagle back into position and clean the dirt out after 50+ years of not being used).

That said - here's the (hopefully) final resting spot for the LS...

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And for good measure I threw the t-case on the tranny. I need to custom make a 3/4" vertical spacer to get it into it's 'happy place' but other than that - re-using the stock cross member was a huge win in my book!

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This is my first LS swap and my first FSJ - so if anyone sees any obvious interference issues let me know! I'd rather cut a few tack welds now vs. saw off an engine mount later haha.

My biggest concerns/unknowns right now are:
  1. Passenger side header interference with FSJ heater core box
  2. Passenger side valve cover mounted ignition coils interference/cable routing around FSJ heater core box
  3. Engine position longitudinally with regard to radiator so that I can still use the GM thermal clutch driven fan
  4. Engine position vertically with regard to FSJ hood
  5. Engine position vertically with regard to oil pan clearance and super duty front Dana 60 axle
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TurboJ4000
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by TurboJ4000 »

That intake looks like it will certainly clear the hood.

How far is it from the back of the intake to the firewall? Ill try and measure mine this week I manna say its about 6" from the back of the block to the firewall in the middle but the driverside head is only maybe 2" from the firewall. And I fit the factory GM fan and clutch. But in order to take the flan off I have to remove the shroud with it. Its very tight.
1970 J4000 / Chevy Frankenstein in progress
Soon to be Lq4 6.0 and 4l80e on 35s

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Glad the Impaler
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Glad the Impaler »

I have around 4-6" to the firewall. I felt it was close, but not too close. Mostly going off of subjective data out there on FSJ LS swaps so I didn't have any concrete numbers to work around.

After looking around a good bit - it looks like most people are mounting their engines so that the headers sit just under the heater core box. I just ordered the following LS conversion headers so I can do some more accurate alignment before burning in the engine mounts.

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www.amazon.com/dp/B09B9H7765

One alternative I am considering is going with an in-cabin heater control system. Ideally I could add A/C down the road - it does get hot out here in the desert summers! But for now the convenience of freeing up all that firewall space would be huge and moving the heater core into the cabin would make my life easier for engine bay work and simplicity...

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Glad the Impaler
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Glad the Impaler »

Engine is finally in it's happy place! Dropped it about 3/4" and slid it back another 1/4" so that the headers fit nice.

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There is ample clearance on the driver side between the headers and steering shaft. I plan on doing hydroboost brakes so the clearance from the valve cover to the master cylinder looks great as well.

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On the passenger side - the big reason for dropping was being able to keep (most of) the stock heater core so I have heat for now. There is approximately 5/8" clearance between the 3rd header tube back and the heater core box. If needed I'll chop away part of the heater core box provided the heater core itself isn't in the way - if it is then I'll still get creative but I'm 9/10 of the way there now with the engine repositioned!

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On the rear of the engine by the firewall - tons of room!

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I also was able to make a final shim spacer for the transmission - about 3/4" of extra material that sits on top of the stock GM NV4500 mount to space it up and give the front drive shaft output flange ample clearance.

Now that the engine is rough set, I am moving to work on the rear of the vehicle. First job was taking the heavy bed off. Thankfully I've seen plenty of others use the beam across the inside of the bed technique with an engine hoist so this was a trivial job.

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In my case, the beam was the rear drive shaft. A near perfect fit! I might turn the driveshaft into a spud gun or just repurpose the material for something else at some point (unless someone needs it?).

With the bed off I now had access to the frame...

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Which brings me to the next project - boxing the rear frame C rails to add some torsional rigidity while it's flexing it's 14" of travel on the trail!

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I will be doing GM 63" rear leaf springs with 6" shackles. I am now working on removing the old suspension mount and pretty much all other mounts that I most likely won't need. Gotta say - chassis rivets are a B!%@H of a job to remove! I had to go out and buy a long barrel air hammer to blast these SOB's out! I watched a few 'how-to' videos and besides burning up a few bits, this seemed like the easiest solution. I first cut a slot or 'X' in the domed head of the rivet (not the 'riveted' side), then I use the air hammer with a chisel bit to cut the rivet head off. I then use a long air hammer bit I custom made (took a long shank chisel, cut the chisel off so it's just a ~7/16" hardened steel shaft with a blunt end) to push the rivet out through the frame. It works.

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It's not pretty, It's REALLY loud... but dammit it works. Just gotta bust a few more rivets now and onto templating the inside of the frame rails and plasma cutting some 11 gauge sheet steel to fit.

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Glad the Impaler
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Glad the Impaler »

It took a few tries to get into the swing of things with the air chisel for removing rivets but I managed to get all unnecessary chassis rivets and attachments removed.

I mocked up the rear suspension to get a little motivation to start the day out.

37" tires

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GM 63" rear leaf with 14" damper

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At this point I had separated the cab from the frame. I used some all natural organic jack stands (still safer than Harbor Freight) to hold up the cab and get some separation from the frame in anticipation of templating and welding the boxing sections. I also took the time to level out the frame by using [metal] jack stands front and rear and applying some shims to get the same angle from front to rear.

Next I moved onto cleaning and prepping the frame for boxing all the unboxed section from halfway under the cab back.

Wire wheel treatment

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Rust stopping black enamel

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Frame boxing sections all cut out from their cardboard templates. I plasma cut these from 11 gauge (most similar to current frame thickness) and painted the inside portion so that the entire inner frame would be painted to try and head off rust for the foreseeable future. I live in the Rockies where we don't use road salt (we use mag chloride) - so this truck's lack of rust for it's age is no coincidence - I feel that my effort in painting should be adequate in preventing rust for a good while.

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One thing I am going to do yet is cut 1-2" diameter half circles on the bottom of the frame boxing plates to allow drainage in the low points. I don't think I'll need many but since the outer original frame section has holes I need an effective way to let water out when crossing rivers/streams.

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Glad the Impaler
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Glad the Impaler »

Boxing day came early this year!

The frame plates were notched to have ~2" diameter half circles in the low spots (at least 2 diameter lengths away from an edge, if possible, for strength reasons).

I also put 4" diameter half circle 11 gauge plate gussets where the old damper mounts were on the frame. I placed them on the inside of the frame rails and stitch welded around the perimeter then filled in the holes on the outside to try and mitigate some of the fatigue crack propagation that those mounts always seem to have on our frames.

The plates fit nearly perfectly and I tacked them into place to try and get the perfect "corner joint" style weld.

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I'll be burning these into place tomorrow and hopefully starting the rear leaf spring mounts soon thereafter!
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Phils67
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Phils67 »

Glad the Impaler wrote: Tue Mar 30, 2021 7:43 pm Does anyone have recommendations on finding a tailgate?

That is the one thing this jeep did not come with that... well it really completes these ol vehicles haha. I have some fears that these are highly sought after and more expensive than I'm initially thinking. I got the jeep from a guy that recommended the "Jeep Ranch" up in Montana (https://www.montanaoverland.com/) - I've been meaning to give them a call - probably tomorrow.

They're now reproduced through BJsoffroad but pricy. Theyre not stamped with the letters but at least they're straight
1967 Gladiator J2000, 1998 4.0L OBD2, T18, D20 twin sticks, D44HD/D60, Detroit lockers, 3.73s, 4wheel disc brake, FSSR, Dakota digital, etc.
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Phils67
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Phils67 »

1967 Gladiator J2000, 1998 4.0L OBD2, T18, D20 twin sticks, D44HD/D60, Detroit lockers, 3.73s, 4wheel disc brake, FSSR, Dakota digital, etc.

Topic author
Glad the Impaler
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Glad the Impaler »

Frame is now fully boxed from the front to the back!

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Next step was to get the new leaf spring hangers on the frame so that the rear wheel would sit about where it normally does...

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With that done I had to recover the rear Ford Sterling 10.5" axle from the snow and get it ready for it's new home...

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Through a combination of lifts and more lifts, I got the axle on the GM 63" leafs in a SOA fashion...

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And finally - the 37" tires are now on the rear of the truck!

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The next step of the project is the front. I am going with a 2005+ Ford superduty Dana 60 and tube style radius arms. This will require out-riggers under the cab portion of the frame to increase the mounting width to the SD60 radius arm bushing width (only about 3-4" extra width is needed). I am going with coil-over's up front so I will need the frame rails by the engine mounts for the towers.

And so it begins... Front has been completely chopped off. This time I decided to simply chop off the post mounts of the leaf springs to keep it easy. Not 100% sure if I will remove those mounts or not... Honestly, removing the rivets for the rear suspension was a total pain.

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Next step is to get the radius arms fitted to the axle for a dry-fit mock up!

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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by 5jeepsaz »

Great progress!
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Stuka
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by Stuka »

Great work, and in freezing temps too!
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Pevious Jeeps: 1981 J10, 1975 Cherokee, 2008 JK, 2005 KJ, 1989 XJ
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TurboJ4000
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Re: 1969 J-3000 Crawler/Cruiser Build

Post by TurboJ4000 »

This looks awesome I'm curious how wide the SD Dana 60 will be up front.
1970 J4000 / Chevy Frankenstein in progress
Soon to be Lq4 6.0 and 4l80e on 35s
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