The rest of the jeep build was a mess. What should have taken 4 days ended up being 3 weeks due to rework, wrong parts, and stupidity.
Some quick and dirty floor repair
This piece had rusted off of the body and the extension for the body mount had completely rusted off.
Repaired the crossmember and made a template.
Bada bing
Bada boom
Voila
Drilled for rosette welds since I didn't feel like welding overhead on rusty sheetmetal
For the rest of the project I ended up having to redo almost most of the steps that I didn't personally supervise. Here are some of the highlights.
The transmission crossmember mounting hole was eyeballed and almost 2" off center.
some metric LS bellhousing bolts were about 2 seconds from getting impacted into the 350.
a 12 point ARP torque converter bolt was rounded off (which is honestly pretty impressive) since he was using an obviously wrong size socket.
The wrong size u-joint was bolted in the the differential (the caps of the joint were squeezed between the U-bolt and the little retaining tab that keeps them from flying off).
The oil pan was set 1.5" below the bottom of the bumpstops, thankfully the engine mounts were only tacked in place when I caught this.
The "block hugger headers" he found on marketplace ended up just being late 90's GM log manifolds and the steering shaft wouldn't clear the ribs (The jeep is RHD).
I took it as an opportunity to practice some texturing with the carbide burrs
I'm pretty happy with how close it looks to a cast iron surface finish
This is the radiator that was used for the I6 that was in the jeep. It's the right size but the inlet and outlet are on the wrong sides for the 350.
This is where I started to run out of patience. His claim that "a lot" of the build threads he read used the original driveshaft was baloney. The nose of the water pump touches the radiator.
Annoying, but I can change the mounts to push the radiator forward so there's just enough space with a low profile electric fan.
I stripped, primed, and rewelded the mounts.
I thought this text was pretty clear.
However this is what showed up.
He was aware that the radiator was larger but didn't think think it mattered.
I could just barely squeeze the width in but the extra height meant that it ran into the steering box. Either he needed to get the right sized radiator, or the engine needed to move back, or the grill needed to move forward.
I told him that we needed to get a either get the current driveshaft shortened or buy a new driveshaft and push the engine back 3".
He got pissy/argumentative and said that he couldn't justify the money for a new driveshaft or the time for the radiator to ship. It turns out he had no idea how much a driveshaft cost and the deadline was artificial.
So I gave him what he wanted.
6 feet of sheet metal nicely bent and blended.
It looks twice as stupid in person.
Funnily enough the radiator still didn't fit (the bottom of the radiator hit the bumper mounts). I was done putting in any effort so he sawzalled the bumper mounts and welded some extensions to push the grill forward another 4 inches.
It was a very frustrating way to spend 3 weeks and I've been burnt out on any fab work.
