Offroad Truck Camper Build Ep07: Ruffstuff Front Stiffeners & Front Axle Overhaul

Description

The Jeep is almost completed. This video is a little behind my current progress but it covers a lot of finalised work with regards to the mechanical aspects of the vehicle. Mainly it covers the Ruffstuff Front Frame Stiffening Kit that the guys kindly gave to us to help us out with the build!

We are almost ready to go and if you check out the Instagram page below you will see the internal storage draws me and Megan are making to organise our gear.

Join me on the next episode where we finalise the build, I show you all the gear we are taking, the roof top tent and more.

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 Mike from MC Hugh bushcraft here welcome to another episode on the build series in the last episode we cut the sill or rocker panel as it's known in the States out of the Jeep and put in two by six box section to create a slider we tied that back to the rough stuff frame stiffener just to really reinforce and strengthen up that area but I've been focusing on the front now we're kind of getting to a point where the vehicles ready to be driven out of this garage and its back on the road again and I can get more into the gear that we're taking with us and water-purification storage clothing camping gear but the front is well on its way I've got one side sorted out completely then we'll move on to the other side and get that one sorted the lighting is gonna be really poor but I've got a high lift jacket with front bang here we've got two packs or stands basically and one supported on some blocks of wood obviously I wouldn't use bricks because they can kind of crack under the pressure so I've got some tires under there as well then I actually touchy and they're just there in case something goes wrong so I feel pretty safe working here the vehicles very sturdy can usually tell if it isn't because if it wobbles horrific Lee but this is this is quite rigid that we've got a tire on the other side it's all good we're gonna get that coil spring out and then the shock out we're not gonna use spring compresses I'm just gonna use a bar just lever a tight so some of the no compression because those things are pretty dodgy [Music]

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just checking the bearing for a bit of play up and binary it feels like it has got it has what it has got a bit of play the other one over the other side was pretty solid this one I can it's not this not that that's a problem that's just the diff in that there'll always be a bit of play it's it's the fact that it can it can move outward like that that's gotta be changed then makes gonna be happy more expense [Music]

so I've grown back everything to bare metal and I've done it a little bit differently to the way I did the Center sniffing if you remember on that one I just ground away little patches where I was gonna weld to on this it's a little bit different I just decided to do the whole lot mainly to check the integrity of the metal and I'm happy to say it all looks really good a little bit of pitting here and there where the spot welds are in some areas but nothing to really have a worry about in my lifetime we're actually going to paint this with well through primer and spray the whole thing so help you protect it but also allow us to weld through us anyway so that's why it wasn't particularly fussed about stripping it all back and it's a little bit different to the center stiffener the center stiff know went round underneath the frame see how to drill I have drain holes there's a possibility that water can get in between the two surfaces say you had to be really careful when you fitted that and be quite methodical with this it's not so much the case because they're just side plates and they come in three pieces basically you've got this piece at the front then you've got this piece here and then another piece just at the back it goes like that so they're just plates on the side so there's not a huge risk of water getting in between and also if you do what I did to the other side which is use tremendous amount of undercoat afterwards you seal up all the gaps and it forever remains sealed so it literally goes together like that and then this piece has to be bent in so we're gonna need some clamps basically to pull this in I'm just doing the bolts up snug tight and one thing you need to bear in mind about this frame is a pace - on a standard XJ is it has tie throughs in it cylindrical pieces of metal that go between the two parts of the frame so you can never crush the frame using bolts up very tight so if you're putting these in and you haven't done that don't do the bolts up society rush your axes crush the frame [Music]

so we're all tack welded in managed to get it to a dear to the shape of the frame quite nicely using the clamps it pulled it in and you can see that there's very little gap underneath the actual stiffener it's all all looking quite good and you just have to watch this lip up here you see this piece of metal that comes down on this side not the other side surprisingly but this side it's not uniform so it drops down slightly here along the does here which meant this part here didn't work quite as well I didn't want it on top of that lip because then you don't have a big gap underneath so you don't have to play about with it a bit but it isn't that difficult and using clamps you can get it to have the frame [Music]

so I finished welding it in and it's all looking pretty good it wasn't too difficult the slot welds are alright as well actually quite simple to do as long as you focus on the metal behind and work down as opposed to up which is what I'm used to and I also put in a small plate as well just to connect the two together and I had to put a slots down it and bend it so a dear to the slight angle and those welded in so I've stitched weld this all up the back there stitched wild it all along the top you can see that in the front obviously we've got the slot welds as well I've reinforced it around some of the joining points and it's looking pretty good it's in there solid I'm just gonna grind down a few of the bits that are sticking out now and probably just leave the world's there maybe fill them a bit with some seam sealer and then undercoat it and that's done some of you who are familiar with the Cherokee are probably wondering about the one of the upper control arm bolt holes that isn't taken into account in this actual kit I've left a small hole there just to mark the area so I know where to drill so I'm gonna get a 20 mil drill bit and also you drill that out at the end but for the time being because I've got a drop bracket set you don't actually really need to access that so provided it remains tight I won't have to bother with it [Applause]

so after everything was filled I let everything dry Sam that it down primed it painted it and then gave it a good coating of undercoat so a little bit like the other videos are actually in the future by about three weeks from Annie laughs saw me in that clip fitting that front stiffener there and there's a reason for that things got pretty hectic obviously times against me me and Meg's have moved out of our house and pretty much everything we own fits in the back of the Jeep now and we're living with my parents and her parents for a couple of weeks and then when the vehicles done we're gonna go off going to Wales for a week basically live out the vehicle kind of drive run it and then our fairies books for the first of May and then we'll be on our way so um it's getting there but I've still got quite a bit to do in terms of what I've done on the front end

a lot has happened in those three weeks and I've got quite a lot of clips and I'll run you through it one of the issues I had to sort out is where the caliper bolted to the steering knuckle the thread had gone on the steering knuckle so I had to drill that out welded in a nut and replace that thread another thing I decided to address was the bar pin eliminators at the front and I had rough country bar pin eliminators and I wasn't happy with the geometry of the way they sat and it stressed the bushes out and chewed them up this is a bar pin and this thing here in my hand and what you normally do with the bar pin eliminator is you you cut them off you pull their mag and you're just left with a bushing like that and then you put a sort of hollow piece of metal tubing through and then the bolt goes through that and it sort of just raw the buff and Eliminator gives you a greater range of shocks that you can use they're not vehicle specific anymore but it also for me tidies up the mounting points and a lot of places in these old vehicles they can be a bit corroded and it just tidies that area up but um the way it's Sat was really kind of weird so if you imagine this torque wrench is axel and we're looking you're looking head-on on the vehicle it's act like that so when the axle flex down it would do that and it would stress the bush I really bad so I've turned it so it's like this and I've kind of permanently welded the Barbican Eliminator to the main ting face now on the axle and when the axle flexes it just pivots really nicely and doesn't wear that well where the bushes out real badly anymore so we'll see how that holds up over time but I'm hoping that was a sensible choice we also discovered that wheel bearing at God on my passenger-side in this particular vehicle and we needed to get some new wheel bearings so I bought two new hubs before putting these on though I decided to pull the axle shafts and I did a sort of unusual mod a while ago mainly I got advice from other people about this too on that the Jeep owners club for him and it's a good mod actually and it did do what it was supposed to but you probably noticed I've got outer axle seals on the down of 30 at the front of my Jeep now those aren't the oil seals the oil seals on that X are actually right up by the diff and I put two brand new oil seals in this as well I'm since because I had the whole thing pulled apart but these guys are actual seals have worn away and when they start worrying away what happens is is they they let water in and they don't let it out again and that can be really bad for the oil seal for the diff especially for the the carrier bearing because that's right next to your seal and you can get some contamination getting into that oil but also just for the axle shaft itself you know if water gets in there it's just gonna stay in there and they're not gonna know about it until you take it apart op hearing some problems so what I did

about a year ago is I packed the axle tube full of grease and then put the our axle seal on I knew that would get contaminated but the idea was it would protect you all your seal right by the diff give it a lot of protection so you've got all that grease to get through before you get to the actual oil seal and it to be fair it didn't do too bad um in fact in all honesty I think it made it worse because what had happened was when I pulled the actual shaft out is a shaft look brand new that Greece had done its job there but where it mixed with the water what had happened was is it rotted out the oil seal and then it affected the side carrier bearing on the diff on the other side of it and that had some rust on it and pitting and it needed replacing so I had to clean all that out and I've got a special tool for that it's basically a bit of threaded bar with a hole saw Chuck on it and a wire brush you send up the actual shaft to clean it all out clean out the areas where the oil seals painting I made at all of the old steering tire off to hammer in the new oil seals because that can be a bit of a tricky job when you're on your own especially on the longest side of the actual housing got that all in there so we've got T brand brand new oil seals in there I had to get new side carrier bearings for the diff I wasn't happy with the preload in the diff the side carrier bearings it came out way too easily and I decided to reach him the whole thing not on the backlash side of things on the other side which is where you add to the preload for the bearings all this stuff's in the manual I'm not going to go into it in too much detail but basically tested the gear pattern tested the backlash everything was really good very happy with it test run it you know everything is running fine and I decided to not put grease inside the axle tubes though but actually rebuild the outer actual seals to make them even better and the inner axle seals for the Dyna 30 fit in as replacement oil seals for the outer axle seals in that housing that you can buy you actually have to press them in using a press but they compression fit in and I put a big thick rubber ring doughnut inside as well so you've got to oil seals and it provides you with a much sort of tighter fitting hold around the axle shaft so not a lot of water can really get passed and I've just put a little bit of grease in there on the axle tubes and around the oil seals just a bit not too much like I did last time he was three three or four tubes of this stuff went into but I'm really happy with the way it's turned out so what new bolts new bearing hubs new brake discs cleaned up the calipers new brake pads also painted the front differential cover - and decided to do the Pro Comp steering stabilizer because the paint on that flakes like dandruff and it's just rubbish so got that stripped off and painted that to the mast I was doing these jobs I got a pretty good deal on some 12.9 tensor strength bolts so higher than grade a and replaced everything under there with new hardware new washers all stainless even did the same with a lot of the self-tapping screws you get around the Cherokee because they just rust so why not put stainless ones in one thing I did do as well was rebuild the track bar mounting point on the axle side I noticed a slight overhang out of the original hull and decided to rebuild it out of 8 mil steel also drill it out and refitted it with an m12 10.9 turns off strength bolt as opposed to the standard m10 I also upgraded the bushes on the anti-roll bar or sway bar as you may call it in the States and that poly bushes now to make it more rigid ride on the road and then one of the biggest jobs in fact you'll probably already clocked it if you're familiar with the Cherokee this is the old steering tie rod and it isn't great so I replaced it with a rough country one and you can see the rough country along there it's massively thick compared to the factory one it uses standard tie rod so I guess that's where the weakness will be or being the tie rod ends now not in the actual bar itself but that has toughened it up no end and to do the tracking I strap two planks of wood to each tire measured front and back and got it all I think was about 75 and a quarter inches so it's equal now and the tracking seems correct I will get that tested but in terms of other things I've done I had to put arch extensions on I think a Norwegian guy actually sets me right at the start of video that's not going to be rare legal in Europe because your wheels but

like too far then they protruded out two and a half inches which is even too much for this country I think you can get away with an inch but two and a half's pushing it but I really don't like arch extensions I think they look terrible I bought some flexi arch extensions with wiring so you can bend them to a dear to the shape of the vehicle and they look really good for arch extensions but they looked I just don't like them I mean I could see on the Jeep's face when I was fitting them that it knew something was going on back there that was not good so a lots happened to the vehicle in this time and it really doesn't end there the front bumper needed quite a lot of modifying to fit because that front bumper there that winch bumper that I've got actually you would sat flush with the original frame when it went Adan so he's suddenly adding six mil of Steel either side it isn't gonna go anymore and it didn't so I had to cut the mounting points bring them out six mil and reinforce all of that and I decided to build some hi-lift jack points at the front for that front bumper so I could get the hi-lift jack under there pick the whole thing up he also strengthens that modification that I've done making that mounting point a bit tougher now and it just adds some side protection to the bumper and even though it doesn't stick out as far as I'd like it to as a slider what it will do is it means that when I get back from this trip I'm going to make some cheap steel fender flares for its marches I have cheap steel and it's a meriting point for that much like the actual sill that we've made the rock slider sill to give the bumper a good home to bolt onto I recycled an old si Rock kit that I used to use on the outer of the frame and you step on the inner of the passenger side of the frame on my vehicle as a bracing plate along with sometimes the cylindrical pieces of steel that I mentioned earlier that going inside the frame and all in all it gives it a very very tough structure sandwich in the frame and on the driver's side where the steering box is obviously still got the original C rock reinforcement plate there that the steering box is connected to so all in all the bumper is acting as a cross member and the frame is pretty tough with a steering point another thing you'll notice is it's got the front runner sillim line to roof rack on it and that's the aluminium roof rack nice and lightweight it was really happy with the way of it I didn't want a lot of weight up top all the way I've added to the vehicle is actually pretty low down and that's kind of where I want to keep it the roof tents arrive - it's in the back of the truck just manage to get it in there it wasn't there or else to store it basically so that's the front runner feather light 1.3 I think that's 40 kilos that roof tent lightweight along with the lightweight roof racks and we've capped a lot of the weight up top as low as possible really and you know I'm quite happy with that but I wasn't happy with the drip rails or I should call them gutter rails on the actual Cherokee you probably notice in the overview video when we're in that quarry driving around I touched on the restoration work are done on the Jeep and one of the things I've done was restored the restored the drip rails basically the gutter else got these all cleaned up now there's a typical area all these old cars all these seams where you have two bits of metal joined together they always rust they were never designed to last basically so that got cleaned up about a year and a half ago and I was really happy with the job I did it looked great but obviously some modifications took place and I just I just wasn't happy with it this wasn't happy with it so I wouldn't even be happy with it stock to be honest even though I know a lot of people out there would argue against me because they run big heavy steel roof racks of tons of kit on hundreds of kilos and they don't seem to have problems I quite like looking at things from an engineering perspective and I just thought it could be made better basically that's that's the bottom line so I got some new channel from a hardware store

to mill walled and cleaned up the drip rail all the paint that I put in there previously it was good to see no reoccurring rust so that's obviously held up well stitch welded that in and then I got a piece of rubber pipe pushed it in the U channel and then fill it over it

Brown the filler back for this ding disk and then pulled the rubber out so it left me a clean steal you channel basically a drip rail painted it got it all sorted out made it look really nice and and the front runner um gutter mounts

slot into it really really positively and you actually just sit there because of the the wall on the side and it's a it's just turned out really well I'm really happy with it very solid made some changes to the actual mounting points of the front runner gutter moment so it was mainly that piece that comes in the underneath like that it needed to be changed I've added two allen head bolts that the pull it in as well as pull it up so it keeps it flush like that they're actually made our spring steel so they flex a little bit it makes it nice and tight makes a good positive fit so the next video will be me back in that quarry I'm gonna show you everything I've done to this in terms of last storage and all the kit we're taking with us not in huge amount of detail but just show you mainly on a storage organization or from what I've done to the vehicle the roof tent the roof rack all of this gear I know the Lighting's not great in here so when I will do a video there and we'll summarize all of the work and then I'll show you the gear we're taking with us and then that'll be it will be on our trip will be camping and you can see us doing that kind of stuff and hopefully you'll enjoy that would be very very mixed content more away the uploads will be as frequent as I can make them but anyway until the next time I hope you enjoyed this video just want to say at the end of this video a really big thanks to the guys at rough stuff now they are thanks for watching guys I hope you liked this video appreciate it and see you very very soon in another one take care

you