Project All in One Tonlimited

Let me Start by saying i am moving this build from Pirate over to Hardline, so I have a pretty good head start on the build. I hope y'all enjoy!! All intelligent criticism is welcomed.


My name is Chris Barron. I have been around here for a while, so I figured I would share one of my projects with y'all. I have been wheeling for about 10 years. I have had many rigs staring with a 1983 toyota on tons that I built. Next I moved to buggies, which I have had three in the past 5 years. Being in Mississippi we have to travel at least 5 hour to get to good rocks. I have a great group of guys that I wheel with and we travel pretty often, but the buggy sits in the shed collecting dust more often than not. After reading just about every build about one ton TJ's in the world I have decided to ditch the buggy program and move some a more dual purpose rig. I am looking for something I can drive on the street as well as go and kill some pretty serious rock with.

I am the General manager for a trailer sales company, the owner of the company also has a 30 or so acre salvage yard. I put him on the lookout for a TJ with light damage that I could use as my starting platform. It was not to long before I was the proud owner of a 2002 Tj SE automatic. Just to let you guy know this thing is a power house. In Mississippi if you take the time to completely document the repair and do all the associated paperwork you can have the salvage title on your vehicle changed back to a completely clean title. The catch is the vehicle must be returned back to stock form before they will inspect it. I got the jeep fixed up and rolling and now it is time to tear it apart.
Here is the plan,
Ly6/ 6l90 stak 3 speed
Dana 60/14 bolt 5.13 detroit in the rear Spartan in the front with Yukon hardcore lockouts.
Stretch the frame and tub to LJ length
Rampage soft top
42" Goodyear tires
8 lug Creeper lock wheels
16" Ori's
Jeep will be as low possible
Backhalf the rear
Tube the front in front of the motor mounts
Flat belly with UHMW sheets
Boatsides with UHMW sheets
Custom side built tub armor with flairs
Rockin sound system (have not figured this out yet)

What I am hoping for.






We got started on then stretch yesterday here it the progress

Here is the this morning pic.



Tear down begins:



We had drill the spot welds in the soft top belt retainer to get it pulled off. My LJ belt retainers should be here by Thursday




Cage out and rails off we are fixing to start marking to cut this baby in half.


We had to drill the spot welds in the floor of the cargo area to make the separation.

Spencer did a beautiful job of masking things off for us. We did some holes from the inside to give us an idea where to mark the cut line






Brian handles the cut for us.

Here are the plugs for the new frame sections. They slid in a worked nicely.

Break time


We lifted the front of the tub to give us a little more working room to cut the frame.


Frame was cut and the new sections mocked up.

Chris, what trailer sales do you work for?? I build trailers for the full time job.

Here is how she is sitting now. We still have to put a few body mounts back on the cab side and get it up level. We have decided to set the new motor and trans in place then start the suspension next. This way we can cut the wheel wells out be for finishing all the sheet metal.


We are building Brian(my BIL) a buggy at the same time that we are building the jeep so Dave and Chris at Daves Offroad and Performance hooked us up with this pallet full of awesome.

xjpaddler said:

Chris, what trailer sales do you work for?? I build trailers for the full time job.

Click to expand...

Staring Trailer Sales we have been a Wells Cargo dealer for 32 years. We also handle Load Trailer, Brimar, Delta, Top Hat

What manufacture are you with? Got to be Calico or Delta.

Innovative trailers, we build woodchip, carbon black, and walking floor trailers+ a lot of speacialty stuff, rear elevators, dropdeck walking floors, hopperbottoms for the rice guys.

A little bit of everything.

My original plan was to put the Ramjet 350 out of my previous buggy in this jeep. For some reason I just could not make my self happy with that idea. I have really wanted to run an LS motor in some thing for a while and that is really where my heart was. The ramjet is just so much easier. The wiring is simple, parts are abundant, it has plenty of power and it's kind of retro cool. I have done some looking around and some thinking in the last few weeks and have decided that an LS is the way to go. I have a potential buyer for the ramjet coming Saturday to check it out. Hopefully it will find a new home soon.


In the mean time I found a 2007 2500 HD that was a roll over truck. It has a 60k 6.0 LY6 backed by a 6l90 six speed transmission. I went ahead and picked the truck up and had it delivered to the house yesterday. The Ly6 is a VVT motor. It does not have the displacement on demand but is drive by wire. This particular motor swap is going to have a few challenges but will be worth all the hard work in the end. I am planning on keeping the Vvt, this allows you to run a smaller cam but build big power over a wide power range. I am planning on running the Texas speed vvt2 cam with this motor. I talked with the guys at Texas speed yesterday and the assured me with this cam, a set of long tube headers and the right dyno tune that this motor could build 325-350 rwhp pretty easy. I talked with Futral Motorsports in LA yesterday and he said dyno tuning it would be no problem. The 6l90e will be packed with a 2800 stahl which is a requirement for the VVT2 cam. The transmission is what I am most excited about. With a 4:1 first gear and .67 double overdrive ratio this thing should crawl like a beast and give me good fuel mileage on the street.

Here are some pics of the truck.



The body shop pulled the front cap because it was still good. Should save us a little time getting it out.


Few parts for the 14 bolt and some yukon hardcore lockouts. Thanks to EMS Offroad. Their prices can not be beat on gear and drive train components.

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I ordered some umhv for the skid plat and the boatsides yesterday. McMaster Carr don't mess around. It showed up this morning. Along with some fasteners I am going to use.

Got some stuff done over the weekend here's the scoop:

I got the LJ belt rail from jeep. (Little over $50 for both) I put in the top slug I cut from the old tub section and test fit the rails they where perfect.



We got the 2500hd in the shop. Finally getting a chance to pull the motor out of it. I have been trying to get this done for a couple of weeks with not luck. We mad short work of it since there was no front cap to deal with




Here is a comparison of the stock LY6 oil pan and the LS oil pan. The pan did not come with a windage tray so I will have to run one down.



We removed the wiring harness off the motor to send it off to be trimmed up. We got the gas petal pulled and added to the harness. The TCM also needs to go. On the 6l90 it is located inside the transmission.

This requires dropping the pan and filter as well as the valve body. If you are doing this we found it was easier just to pull the valve body all the way out. Don't worry there are no little ball or springs that are going to fall out. Also you must lift the white plug that is inside the transmission right behind the plug for it to release the plug. We are dumb Mississippi boys, that one took us a minute.

I went ahead and welded in the top slug.




We did a lot of measuring and adjusting to get the tins right where they needed to be.



Dad started building some new motor mount.
We are going to build them out of 2"x2"x 1/4 wall square tubing.




Carey (my brother) cut all the old brackets off the frame so we could test fit the motor.

We went ahead and cut the frame off that we did not need so the motor would fit better.

We started work on putting the tub back together, starting with center floor section.
Using out homebrew sheet metal break we build a box for the center pan.

Side pieces where next



We mounted up some tires just to start getting an idea out where the axles are going to be and how we need to trim the tub.

Subscriberd!

The wiring harness is on the way John @ Speartec to be trimmed down and tuned. He has the most knowledge of the 6l90e of anyone I could find. He does a lot of conversions with it. We were having problems with the exhaust manifolds hitting the frame so i ordered a set of LS3 exhaust manifolds. Also,my fbody oil pan came with out a windage tray so I pick up one for an 01 Camaro to fix that issue.

I picked up my transfercase the other day. I did some wheeling and dealing with a local guy and end up with a nice stak unit. I guess I never asked him about what side drop it was (the deal was good enough for him and me so it really did not matter) the case ends up being drivers drop. I have a passenger drop axle so...
I have been really struggling with what to do about this front axle and transfercase set up. I really want to give the stak a shot but finding a ford 60 that I am ok with and reasonably priced is proving difficult. So, i have decided to take on the task of building my first steering 14 bolt. I have a brand new set of reid outers sitting in the shed. I picked up and NIB set of reid inner today off a dude in New York whose project has gone by the way side. I have good old Daves Offroad and performance hunting me up some shafts and gears as we speak. I am going to be ordering the Crane revolution 14 seal kit tomorrow

http://shop.cranehiclearance.com/product.sc?productId=41&categoryId=11

Monday night i was surfing eBay and ran across a dude selling a brand new shrifter six. What is a shrifter six,you might ask, it a wirelessly controlled tap shifter. Built for all you tap shifting needs. i have been looking at these ever since i decided to use the 6l90 Transmission. I was an expense that i just could not with a jeep that is still basically in 2 pieces and so much other stuff to buy. This dude was asking $400 for his. I made him and off off $250 and low and bhold he took it. So watch out, i may not have a ramjet anymore but I will be tap shifting like a big dog.

http://twistmachine.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=39

i need some chevy spindles and hubs if anyone has some laying around they want to get rid of,

Tap shifter is in my hand. This thing is really nice.







Got a few things done this weekend. Carey and Spencer put the new windage tray on the motor and permanently installed the oil pan. They also got the motor, trans and tcase all put together. Dad got the motor mounts finished up and they spent the rest of the day and night buttoning things up on the motor and getting it put in place. Getting the motor lined up in the hole straight and level has proved to be a chore. We finally gave up about 9:30 and decided to start on it next time. We were tired and frustrated and the work had begin to suffer from it. Dad has been good about reminding ups that we are not compromising speed for quality on this build.







Vince built our side patch panels. It was his first time to use a plasma cutter and he did an awesome job on them. He got them cut in and trimmed good enough that even I had not trouble welding them.

Because I refuse to not have a flat belly (it will be a first for me) we have started the first of what will be a lot of tub trimming. The three speed Stak is a monster case. Making room for it to be flush with the frame is a some work.

I like your style. One of the few regrets on my Jeep was not keeping the A/C. The condensor will fit somewhere ,somehow.