How to make Mudjocky look good, with pics

Well, it had become apparent that we could not improve his looks, or functionality, so we decided to at least make his Jeep look better, and more functional. I owe a sirius(inside joke ) to my buddy Bill who is helping me with the build so that 'jocky actually stands a chance of seeing his Jeep before New Years.

Here are some pics of what we have been doing today.

First, you have to take all of the crap out, and there was a BUNCH of crap:

Then we could actually start building something:

That is it for Day One. Believe it or not, that there is a pretty solid 10 hours of work from two pretty skilled men. There is a bunch more tube to add and finish up the seat tie-ins, which Bill figured a super slick way to do, and then take the whole thing out for final welding and paint. We hope to have it to that point tomorrow night. We shall see.

Thanks to Mudjocky for allowing us to work on his sweet ride. I think you will be pretty happy, Jim.

Comments, suggestions??

Okay, new pics after Day Two. Another 10-12 hours were put into it today by Bill and I. This was detail day with making sure all systems work and fit. There are some tight details that had to be incorporated.

Got node??

If anyone says, "needs more triangulation" I will come to your house and strangle you to the death. :eek:
Actually, there will be V-supports behind the seats added tomorrow morning before paint so the B-pillars will be supported diagonally.

There is a bunch of headroom in this thing.

Here is how we made the rear seat safe and secure.

Here are the seat tie-in shots. The geometry that plays into these was mind-boggling. Each tube had to fit exact to make the criteria work. Jim wanted to drop his seat ~2" so his muscular legs would get out of the steering wheel and with the hip bars we really played hell making the seats fit and still be able to run the center console. You may not notice, but there are kink bends where the hip bars meet the A-toB pilllar lower bars to move the hipbar away from the side bolster of the seat.

Overall it is coming our GREAT! We have more time than expected in it, but there were some details that we really wanted to make right. Tomorrow morning we will add the B-pillar V bars behind the front seats, some small gussets, door handles, and then rip it out for final weld and paint.

:update: It looks like we will be having this powdercoated instead of painting to make the bling stand out.

The b-pillar height is the same as stock and some of the diagonals have a 1" rise for more head clearance.

Quote from "bmf24"

cage looks good.
now get that crap out of the way and get that cherokee out of the way. i have a shinny new shortstar sitting here waiting to go into a chasis.

Yeah, yeah... I hear ya'. BTW, we need to leave some space on the buggy skins for my powdercoater. I spoke to him today as we dropped Jim's cage off and he is willing to work with us on the buggy in return for some advertising. That will come in handy.

Quote from "bmf24"

sounds good to me. i wonder if he can coat a whole chasis...

That is already the deal. They do sprint cars so what we are doing should not be a problem.

Getting close. We got the cage and rear bumper/tire carrier back from powdercoating yesterday. Here are some pics with the cage in, but not finish installed yet.

And some of the rear bumper/tire carrier combo:

Here is our new hinge cap installed: