Baystate Jeepers

Well as most of you know I did this at Rausch Creek the end of May......




Which resulted in this.....





Plan "A" was to pull out the roof line and other damaged areas of the uni-body to "good enough spec" slap on another rear door/fender/hood, get replacement glass for the sunroof, and call it O.K. That was working for the fender area but not so great on the roof line so it was on to Plan "B"......

.....After several people on Craigslist not bothering to respond to my replies to their ads, one person in Nashua DID get back to me Two hours and $250 later (THANKS AGAIN FOR THE TOW KURT!) I had this '01 sitting in the yard...


It didn't take me too long before the "new" Jeep was looking like this....


Pretty much everything that you don't see in that picture will be finding its way onto my Heep All four doors with power windows/locks/mirrors that'll make for some fun electrical work, rear quarter windows (the tint and trim match the donner doors), roof skin and cargo rack, one roof bow, the "T" section of the roof line and B pillar, and just for the heck of it the hood, fenders, header panel/lights (more electrical work) will give the front end a face lift.

Friday night and this evening (Sat and Sunday were just too hot and muggy) finally showed signs of forward progress!
It was out with the bad.....


And in with the better (pic is before I broke out the welder)


The "T" has been tacked into place and hopefully I'll have it fully burned in within a day or two
Once that's done I can start prepping for a little roof line protection I have in mind

You, sir, are a man amongst men. Awesome job and can't wait to see more. Let me know if you can use a hand on some of this. You obviously have a solid plan but if an extra pair of hands are needed? I'd like to help, if I can

Same here.
I'm just down the road if you can use an extra pair of hands.

Thanks guys

Since the RC trip I've been back to the regular grind of working 7 days a week at the store so all the work of tearing/cutting the doner apart and tackling the Heep has been a few hours here and there in the evenings as weather and life permits.

One unplanned challenge was the parts wagon having power window/locks/mirrors. I got to spend several evenings parsing out the wiring harness to the point where I'll be able to just connect power feeds and grounds. www.car-service-manuals.com has OEM manuals that can be downloaded for free which was a godsend with the excellent wiring diagrams

Last night I managed to pretty much finish burning in the "T" section and grind down the welds in the areas that will show. Then it was on to cleaning down some of the 3/16" strap steel and hitting it with Dupli-Color weld-through primer (got a 6 pack of it off Amazon for $39 that should last me a bit) and spraying the exposed side of the roof bow with Rustoleum charcoal gray because it's easier to do it out of the Heep than after it's installed

johnsxj wrote:.....Dupli-Color weld-through primer (got a 6 pack of it off Amazon for $39 that should last me a bit) .....

He shoots and SCOOOOOOORESSSSSSS!!!!!!

Good deal. I had to shell out $20 (or maybe $25?? not sure, but I remember it was a lot) for a single can of SEM Copperweld

Oh yeah - this is an awesome article for Tracks, hope you don't mind that I hi-jack it errrrr share it with others

Share away Cahl

Here's the "T" section burnt in and more or less cleaned up.


It was said that it sounds like I have a plan. Maybe an idea and vision would be a better way to describe it.
Here's a pic of the idea I'm working on for protecting the roof line.


1x3/16 steel in the valley 3x3/16 on top of that burnt to the 1x via access holes and burnt to the inner structure once properly notched. Burn what's left of the gutter edge to the underside, run some tie ins from the 3x to the cage, fit and burn the "new" roof skin into place, then add some toob down the edge where the gutter was. Hmmm.... maybe I have a plan after all

Great job John I think shes gonna be top heavy with all that metal , ha ha. You know you will never hit that area again just cause you fixed it ! FjR68

After all the nice hot and humid weather we've been having I can now say I've been able to make some more forward progress!

Last Sunday I pretty much wrapped up the extra steel work on the passenger side.
This morning I finished up the extra steel work and started prepping the underside of the roof!

Driver's side basically done.


And the passenger side.


It's so much easier painting the underside of the roof with it off the Jeep!


Annnnndddddd it mostly fits!!!!!!!


I did have to break out the panel pliers to bend the sides up a bit so that the roof will sit snugger to the bows. It's easier than trimming and checking, trimming and checking, trimming and.... and will be easier to draw the sides down with the big C grips for welding. I did manage to get the back of the roof tacked into place. No pics of that as it was a wee bit dark out by the time I wrapped up for the night.

Now if the weather will just play nice I might be able to catch up for lost time! My goal right now it to have it ready for the GAJR which gives me about 1 1/2 months. I know I'll have it back together by then.... all one color or like back in the day remains to be seen.

Looking good!

I know what you mean about the hot then rainy weather. It's been hampering my projects too

Wow. Really amazing what you did so far

The welds ain't pretty but that's what they make grinding and flap discs for




^^^^Lucky for me I was planning to replace the rear quarter glass anyway I guess the tempered glass didn't like the weld splatter after a while and next thing I knew it went "POP"

Got the passenger side of the roof tacked in place this morning. Hope to finish burning in the upper and lower sides this evening.

At least I still have just over a month until the GAJR

I have seen it in person, it is going to be a really cool XJ again. Nice work, John and good to see you again.

Dang! It's been a spell since I did an update

When we last left our "hero" he was in the process of welding the underside of the roof uni-body to the new steel when a window broke.......

......while welding the other side of the Heep it happened again!


After cleaning up another mess, there's more booger welds to grind and sand down.


While I've had the welder and grinder out I took care of the inner brace that I had previously pulled to "good enough" spec.


I've got to remember to stop saying "It's a only a small hole, I can patch that up in an hour". The "small hole" started out as the oval opening just above the body rail. By the time I got done exploring the hole grew a little bit.


Fortunately I had a goodly sized chunk of steel laying around that I could get a patch out of


Speaking of patches, the inner rocker right in the area of the lower seat belt mount had seen better days as in I only had to give a slight pull and twist to remove the belt winder And of course some of the floor found religion too The donner Jeep gave me a solid section of inner rocker, but it's same section of floor apparently goes to the same church as my floor so I had to scrounge some more steel.


What is it with me and windows That one gave out AFTER I was done for the night and had put the tarp back on On the plus side there's toob up there now in the form of 1" black pipe. If it's good enough for my rear bumper, it's good enough for a roof rail.



And a quick pic of the toob on the passenger side before it was completely burnt on (at least I didn't blow any more windows )


With all the major welding done I've started in on prepping the doors for some color. The plan was to strip the doors of glass and seals and such, clean and rattle bomb the jamb side of the doors and get them hung. Great idea until I remembered these doors have power windows that are UP and won't work until they're mounted and the harness is plugged in. So I just bombed the lower areas that would be a pain when mounted and moved on to some other small projects such as seam sealing the DS under the roof rail, redoing the cage to seatbelt tie in tab, grinding some of the booger welds, and figuring out how much I have to change up inside for the late model console and parking brake handle.

Now that I'm down to T- 3 weeks to the GAJR I've got to get my backside in gear and get-r-done! I know I'll have it back together by then. If it's going to be all one color or back to Dr. Heep'enstien's Monster...... who knows!

Some forward progress!!!!

Major grinding is done, and I'm on to mounting doors

Very Nice!