Jeep XJ Overland Build Ep05: Ruffstuff Frame Stiffeners Install

Description

The guys from Ruffstuff were kind enough to support our trip by sending us some Chassis frame stiffeners for the center and front of the Jeep. Although these are certainly not essential for this specific trip this has always been something I have wanted to do to improve the longevity of the uniframe. Offroad use takes its toll on the vehicle.

In this video I show a full installation of the center chassis stiffener from start to finish.

Thanks for watching

Center Stiffeners -https://www.ruffstuffspecialties.com/catalog/XJRAIL.html

Front Stiffeners - https://www.ruffstuffspecialties.com/catalog/R2093.html

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Video Transcription

hi there guys might remember Sookie bushcraft here and welcome to another episode on the build series if you watched the last episode you would have had a bit of an idea of what's coming up in this episode or the next two or three the guys at rough stuff in the United States really kindly sent me some frames stiffness for the front and the center portion of the frame on the Jeep Cherokee before I go into this video just wanted to say a big thanks to the guys at rough stuff really appreciate that this is something I've wanted to do for a long time hopefully get that all installed and it's a big job but massively appreciated and that really brings me onto wire would fit such a thing they're probably a lot of people out there watching this sinking one earth would you do that well the a lot of companies make this kit I think they're 3/16 about five mil in terms of thickness so they've really stiffen up the actual frame of the vehicle and unlike other vehicles the Cherokee is a uni frame and what that means is if you look at like an older truck you can lift the body off the frame with the Cherokee it's not like that you have a frame but it's permanently welded to the actual body of the vehicle there are pros and cons to this mainly cons in a heavy off-roading perspective but there are some pros the vehicle weight means it's much lighter about 1.6 tonnes kerb weight so actually quite light for the type of vehicle it is if you're gonna off road it turning them into rock crawlers getting every giant boulders and scaling vertical faces which obviously I'm doing none of then you're gonna want to stiffen up the uni frame but one reason I'm doing it really is the longevity in the vehicle obviously I've restored this thing and I've always wanted to stiffen up the body of the vehicle take away that flex give it more longevity and it makes it actually a more comfortable ride when you're going over lots of corrugation when you've got a stiff body on the vehicle the suspension does a lot of the work and the body remains very rigid instead of it transferring into the body and causing it to flex and gyrate quite a lot and you don't really want that over long periods of time plus I will be off-roading it after the trip stiffening it up really helps means that when rocks bash the actual frame they don't dent it they just scrape off of these plates here I've got the front and I've got the center portion ready to go in you saw how I installed it on at the end of the last video or I've run it back to the sill as well obviously the sills are rotten in my Cherokee and they almost felt it's MOT on the rotten sills last year as I've said and will be putting in box action and obviously tying that back to the stiffener so our first job is to unbolt everything underneath the vehicle around the frame that might get in the way of us preparing that area to weld this in so some of the things we've got to remove on this side which in my case is the driver's side in the states it would be the passenger side I have a side exit exhaust that needs to come out because obviously it's all around the frame here we're going to need to drop this crossmember that holds the transfer case and that's going to need to just be dropped I'm not going to take that off I'll just drop it down and put a jack stand an axle stand sorry underneath it to stop it coming free and we can need to remove this rough country support that's for the control arm drop brackets and that's basically it and then after that we have them the job really of removing all the undercoat underneath the vehicle and that is not as hard as it seems it's a messy job but a blowtorch and a scraper and a couple of hours down the line and it should be done

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got to spot-welds just there holding this bracket on I did that just to secure it some time ago I didn't do it on the other side so I'm gonna have to get the angle grinder in and just cut those and then this bracket will come free

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so we're gonna start clearing away the undercoat on the majority of this frame here on this outside portions that underneath and on the side but it's a very long job this you're gonna need a scraper fairly rigid one and a torch to heat up the undercoat if you've got access to a shop plaster and it will be way quicker and probably still be as messy

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what we'll do now is zinc Prime the whole frame but this will just give us some rust protection on those areas we've cleaned them so that should help that frame survive a little bit longer just putting that primer on but you may ask why we've put primer on we're gonna weld straight to it doesn't quite make sense unless we use something like this a weld through primer which you can weld directly through and this is a good quality one you pol make good stuff but we're not gonna use that all on that frame because we don't really need to we just need to use this just on the areas where we actually are gonna grind back to bare metal and weld to so that's why I used a slightly cheaper primer that helps prevent rust on the majority of the frame we clean down if we look at this stiffener here we are going to use the same method on this this is the inside of the stiffener that goes against the frame and this is where we will be welding so what we'll do on the inside of this is we'll spray this with weld through primer as well so really we given it a brilliant chance at living for many many years on from here and no rush or water should get in between those two surfaces at all given all the measures we took on the other side and we'll do the same this side one thing we do need to do is remove this extra piece on the end of the stiffening kit I run the standard short arm lift on my vehicle you can get a long arm lift where the arms stretch all the way to the center of the vehicle giving you ridiculous articulation but I don't have that kind of setup so this piece can go and they leave this there in case you do have a long arm kit on your Jeep [Music]

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so that's all in there pretty nicely it'd be helpful if we have more jacks than this because you can see it's cut so it can be folded into the frame and then you weld this down to make it solid against the frame so what we're going to do is take some G clamps push it up flush against the frame where we've got it jacked up then move the jack and do the whole thing marking out where it needs to actually be ground away to weld [Music]

one tip I will give you for doing the other side which is where the fuel lines are is not just a chunky clamp on and start doing it up real tight because you could crush the fuel lines so you need to make space in between them to put the G clamp in there is enough of a lip at the bottom so you can get the g clamp in and tighten things up and I haven't to do anything with the fuel lines but you just want to be careful what's behind what you're working in a pan can't get into these areas here so you can obviously just use the stiffener as a stencil

and then just clean it down afterwards with a rag before the paint dries that's it we're all marked up just lower that down gently

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that primer needs to set now and let it dry it completely overnight it's supposed to be good stuff went on well looks good let's see how it welds tomorrow you polish space to be a very very good brand a lot of their products are good their actual prom is very good so let's hope this is too so I'll see you guys in the morning well it's the morning the weld through primer on the frame is dry and it's dry on the stiffener too but I did some editing last night and I looked at the footage of where I was grinding away back to bare metal to do the welding and obviously when we do welding that area is gonna get really hot and it occurred to me that I didn't grind away nearly enough of the primer back to bare metal and what will happen when we weld is it'll all just burn away and flake anyway so I ground away a much bigger area this morning around well I'll be doing those welds and primed the whole frame with weld through primer from the beginning I probably could have just sprayed the whole frame with weld through primer but hopefully that zinc primer will be doing something where it remains but this is ready to tack weld and place in there we're gonna do this bit by bit I'm gonna start here get this tack welded and move down the frame so we've got this front portion in place now and if we look at the installation you'll actually see a slight gap between the stiffener and the frame and this is where the G clamps come in we need to pull this into the frame your snake adjust tack welding this in or us we have a slight gap so there we go the shadow is pretty much gone now and this is pulled in nice and tight so we can actually tack weld that in

well the world through primer welds okay it seems to be welding all right smells a bit weird though so that's all tacked in and looking good and we're ready to permanently weld that to the frame but my frame as I said in previous videos is filled with cavity wax and what will happen is when we start welding permanently it's gonna create a loss of heat and the wax on the other side is gonna liquify and start running out of all holes in the frame so you want to have a tarp on the ground or something at least to catch that but at the same time you don't want it to ignite either so I've got two tools here one's a hose and I feed that up inside the frame if I hear any kind of bubbling that sounds a bit strange and a lot of smoke and you just blow into the frame and it blows it out very easily it doesn't really take much to blow the stuff out if things get really bad I've got a co2 fire extinguisher here and this is an old one and it's useful to have around so you can just blast a shot of co2 up into the frame and it puts anything out but even doing the other side didn't have any issues at all just using the pipe was enough but let's get it permanently welded to the frame [Music]

so that's the welds on the side pretty much done you can see I haven't welded along the top here and these welds here I've simply just welded along the bottom ajan into the corners to the actual frame the frames roughly around two mil thick but the floor pan is about naught point nine mil thick so I'm not personally gonna weld this to a naught point nine mil thick piece of steel five mil to naught point nine to me just seems like it's really quite pointless in a respect it might be worth welding them along these thicker seams just here where you have a couple of bits of metal welded together which we may do but these welds here that you fill in along here to strengthen the shape along the bottom and obviously we've got a weld all the long way along the bottom here and then stitch world where it meets the frame the other side will be more than enough to hold this in place what I'm gonna do now though is pop out get rid of these get some welding gloves we'll get back to it [Music]

is that there's smoke absolutely flying it free

I think it's on fire maybe I should just lie here and go up with it that's the hard part done all the welding is finished and just to recap on where I've welded I've done all the plug welds along the sides I've done everything underneath as well there's plug welds that you fill underneath if there's drain holes for the actual frame I haven't filled those in I've just done around them

so the actual stiffener is sealed around the drain hole and the drain hole can still function as normal I've also stitched welded all the way along the back of the frame where it actually ends and the normal frame begins just to tie it off also reinforced it around the front where the control arm bracket hangs down and heavily reinforced it round the back where the leaf-spring hanger is but the main thing I'm gonna do now is get the wire wheel on the drill clean everything up thoroughly all those welds want to be cleaned down so they're nice and shiny then we're going to use the fat disc on the grinder take it all back flush with the stiffener and then you seam sealer and p-38 to seal the whole thing off so water cannot get in between those two surfaces and then after that we'll drill all the factory drain plugs out and use the seam sealer around there as well so the water can just go straight out the frame and not go between the two surfaces

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so we're all finished with the seam sealer and it's a fairly straightforward job

the main place you want to apply it is at the top lip where the stiffener ends and the floor pan starts and that way that'll stop water and grit getting up behind that panel usually from the back of the tire and then going between the two surfaces that's the most important place really if you're going to go wading through deep water then they're probably not a lot you can do and water will always find a way but you can do the best job you can and that's all you can do I've put it in every nook and cranny I can rubbed it in the wells to make sure it's filled any pinholes I've also gone round the other side of the panel and put it in between those surfaces as well but I've also used p38 which is like a cement and I've used that to fill all the gaps in all the welds and reinforce various areas and just smooth them down so when they're finished it will look almost like the original and you won't be able to tell the difference unless you've got a keen eye whilst we're waiting for all that to dry I've had this can of dinner trowel through one to five cavity wax in some really hot water just warming it up because the weather's cold today and we're going to put this pipe with the diffuser on the end inside the frame and line the inside of it with wax and replace all of the wax we've burnt away when we were welding and it's really important you do that or as you're leaving exposed metal inside so now the p-38 and seam sealer are dry I've sanded it down with a fat disc will also use some sandpaper just to give it a good finish and everything's flush and it looks really good also I've taken a drill and marked up all the drain holes using the other side as a reference and drilled it with a pilot hole then used a bigger 12 mil drill just to give you a decent hole for water and dirts to drain out off having done this job though my advice would be to do that before you put the stiffener and actually permanently fix it to the frame it makes it easier and although the stiffener does have some holes already cut in it for factory drain holes my advice would be to put them all in simply because what will happen is you have the existing frame with a hole and then you put a big thick plate beneath it and you create a depression and obviously water can go in there and just get between the two surfaces you do not want that so by drilling that hole it means the water could come straight out and if you put a bit of seam seal around it or p-38 some kind of sealant basically to make that hole just one straight cylinder instead of it being like a ridge for the lip then you should have the best possible chance of the water just coming straight out and not getting between the stiffener and the frame what I did as well was put the cavity wax hose just above where I drilled the hole right inside and went giving it a good spray and it just diffuses all the wax into all the nooks and crannies where you've drilled the hole and hopefully seals it up so the water can just come straight out and not get trapped between the two surfaces I've also given it a good coating of zinc primer but that's really where the finish ends in this video because in the next episode I've got to cut these sills out and put in two by six box section and then we're going to tie that back to the frame with legs like I've shown you in this clip on the other side and that'll make it incredibly strong and also reinforce all these pillars on the actual vehicle and stiffen it up quite a bit and it does replace my rotten sill which is the main reason I'm doing it because the sill is literally rotten and falling apart and it fails its MOT because of it had Hachiya but it's come to a point really where it needs doing and now I've got the time and the resources I should probably do it so after we've done all that we'll give it a heavy coating of undercoat much like we've done the other side and then the previous videos on the vehicle you've seen the undercoat I use it's very reliable and heavy-duty and it doesn't ship like paint and that's why use it really and I've had very good results with it so I appreciate you watching if you've enjoyed this video and you want to see other videos like it check out the playlist there should be a few more build videos coming up soon and then we'll get into the inside and get it kitted out for when we do our trip because I've only got six weeks to go before we leave thanks again for watching and I'll see you soon take care you