Baystate Jeepers

Decided to just patch the holes with steel. Then I'll do a bit of bondo work to get it reasonably straight. Then I'll hit 'em with some spray on truck liner to hide some of the sins!
Thought about getting some skins on eBay, but the money is starting to add up and the cheap ones would be just as much work to fit and have looking right as doing two patches on each side.

One patch welded in 3 to go! Bumpah parts all cleaned up and in final primer. Picked up a pint of paint $26.00 thank goodness I've got reducer and clear coat in the garage

The front left fender flare is back on after fixing the mounting strips. Didn't take any pics of this fix but here's another cheap tip for the XJ owners out there..... we all know that unless your XJ is brand new (which is impossible as the newest XJ is now 11 years old ) when you try to remove the nuts off the flare mounting strips, they're gonna snap If the strips are not rusted out, grind the remainder of the offending studs off (leave the head on!), drill a 3/16" hole, then slip a 10-32 by 1" long stove bolt through the hole. Use a nut to hold it in place, then zap the head of the bolt in place with your trusty welder. Vola! A new stud Cost me all of $.98 and about 20min to fix five snapped studs

One of the other little details that needed doin' was to change the gear for the speedo sending unit. According to my math (and the charts on the web) the tires I put on need a 33 tooth gear and what was on Blue Cross is a 35 tooth gear. I've got a small pile of gears as a result of years of stripping down XJ's Digging though them all, I came up with a 34 tooth gear but no 33 toothers To make things even more fun, starting in '97 Jeep used a gear with a shorter shaft and of course mine are all long shafts. So my next cheap tech fix was to just swap the shafts! The plastic gear part are all the same height and there's a hole on the end so it's possible to press the shafts out and swap them over I think I spent more time finding something to fit the gear hole than I did swapping them over.

Rocker patch #2 is fully welded! Rocker patch #3 is pretty much fitted up.

One of the interior issues was a really wobbly driver's seat (not a good thing). After removing 2 bolts, one wrong sized nut, and cutting off another bolt... the seat was out and this is what I found


The nut for the seat track had pulled through and a piece of the seat base came along for the ride. Combine that with someones attempt to put a coarse thread nut on a fine thread stud and you could do a "bar stool rodeo".


The borken off piece and radiating cracks all welded up. I put a nice big heavy washer on the back side to help support things when I bolted the slider back on

After fixing the seat, I started welding new metal into the big holes on the rockers until daylight faded away (unlike Joe, I'm not that great at welding in low light conditions )

One nice thing about my job is that I have access to a spray booth and equipment for doing smaller jobs. Anyone who has ever seen my garage knows it's not the ideal place to attempt any kind of a decent paint job So I tossed the bumper and end caps into the truck along with some jack stands, drove about 150 yards, and spent some quality time doing this.....


Tomorrow the front end might just get to be back in one piece again

Looking good John : FjR68

With the exception of a couple minor pidley things........

BLUE CROSS IS DONE

Today's 12+ hour wrenching marathon included wrapping up the welding/grinding/bondoing/glazing/truck bed coating of the rockers, welding in a mount for the middle of the exhaust, bolting the front bumper and end caps back on, installing front directionals and headlight trims, new wiper blades, and heck I even glued the fabric back up on the rear sound bar

My pidley list includes... changing front diff fluid (still ) front swaybar bushings (if they ever get back in stock from 4WD Hardware) and the DS rocker panel needs another coat of bed liner. That wouldn't have been an issue except that the 2nd can that I had bought was defective Damn near threw my elbow out trying to get the ball to rattle (which it never really did) and when I would try to spray it, the stuff came out like black Cheeze Wiz "Ya got my Cheeze Wiz boy?"

Once my niece gets it registered and insured, I'll take it for a road test and check the fluid levels

Pics tomorrow when there's daylight to take them.

And here are some pics....

One rocker all patched up and ready for a skim of filler.



Rocker panel all done.


A shot of the passenger side.


The front.


The drivers side.


And just a reminder of what the drivers side looked like when I got it.


All told, there's about $1800 into Blue Cross (including the purchase price and fuel/tolls to get it home) and I don't want to think of how many hours/cuts/mosquito bites

Blue Cross is at it's new home in Cow Hampshire. My niece picked up some floor mats and a cover for the steering wheel.
She has good taste in wheel covers