Chopped Top B2 on Wagoneer chassis

[crisd]

I built a rotiserie to hang the body on so it could be powder coated.

 

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It was powder coated and brought home.

 

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Bought some tubing and made an exhaust.

 

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I had the entire chassis, engine, suspension, drivetrain dry ice blasted. Not worth it :-(

 

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Needed to cut and move the track bar mount to accommodate the 6" lift. And welded in a new cross member in the rear.

 

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Picture of the plate welded over the welded seam where the frame section was spliced. 14mm bolts will go where you see the holes.

 

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Sorting out the wiring harness.

 

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Muffler is 3" in, two 2.5" out. A new 3" CAT was installed too.

 

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Another view coming home.

 

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If anyone has any specific questions I'd be happy to answer.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I had the entire chassis, engine, suspension, drivetrain dry ice blasted. Not worth it :-(

Why did you consider dry ice not worth it?
I have a very rusty pinto I'm going to be working on. Was considering ice, soda, and sand. I don't have personal experience with any. My racetruck was sandblasted but not the body panels.

 

[crisd]

Why did you consider dry ice not worth it?
I have a very rusty pinto I'm going to be working on. Was considering ice, soda, and sand. I don't have personal experience with any. My racetruck was sandblasted but not the body panels.

I had watched some videos where the underbodies of a Porsche, an Audi and an old Ranger were dry ice blasted and I was impressed. Those cars had a lot of grime and crud that didn't wash off in the video but came right off with the dry ice blasting so I was excited to have it done. Not even half the crud was removed from mine and it still looked like crap. I believe I could have rented a steam blaster and got better results for a fraction of the price paid getting dry ice blasted. As far as rust, dry ice blasting will NOT remove rust. For that I would recommend the soda blasting. Sand blasting can easily warp body panels if not done properly but will remove a lot of material really fast. It will also create a LOT of heat so be careful.

 

[crisd]

So I can build my own roll cage or hit the easy button and order one... does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

So I can build my own roll cage or hit the easy button and order one... does anyone have any suggestions?

So, I don’t know of any place to buy a Bronco II roll cage. Jegs does sell a Ranger cage which will fit in the BII, and that’s what I did with my choptop. I’m modifying it to meet what I want, IIRC it’s 1-5/8” tube though which seems to be a slightly odd size around here. Of course, none of the local Fab shops seem to own a tubing bender either for some strange reason. I bought my own bender and a 180* 1-5/8” die set for it so I can make what I need (JD squared model 32). Technically since I was buying the bender I could have made the entire cage, but what Jegs was selling the cage for at the time plus shipping was less than I would have spent buying all the steel locally, so it made sense to me to start with that and build from there.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

If you plan on racing look at the rules for cages. Specifically the tube size. My class I need 1.75".