J&L's Jalopies

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J&L's Jalopies

the place for car building, beer drinking old school cool sh*t

20/07/2026

Doesn't everyone have to push their trucks outside to slide axle shafts in? Damn small shop problems.

18/07/2026

The eagle has landed. Temporarily.. She is done with her trip to the spa and ready to get tested and tuned at our upcoming date with the engine dyno at R&R performance. Max was a couple weeks out so itll get placed in the chassis for a couple last mock ups before its time in the lab. The list is getting smaller and smaller. As always, alot of credit and appreciation goes to Joe Okun at Max Performance in finlayson for supplying the top notch part selection, machining, and guidance. Making power.

11/07/2026

I really want to be done working on this truck for awhile so im trying to just hammer it out on the nights I actually work on it. I got the front body panels mounted and pulled back off so we can paint tonight. My favorite process of the builds are always on the engine side of things. So with that my good friend at max performance set me up with a new cam, and fresh heads. He gave me some advice on how to do some light porting and let me learn on them. Then he touched up the valves and gave them a fresh surface. The motor just came in for a cleaning and inspection, but is leaving a little healthier. Im hoping the engine being done will push me along a bit to stay after it. A day at a time.

10/05/2026

Plenty of work left to do but i did get one of the last fabrication hurdles over. The cradle, front driveshaft and containments. Some day i will prob do full containments but for now its just getting the loops on each end. Motor went back in to check clearance and all was good there. Cycled suspension and actually measured travel for the first time since the re build. Mounting the shocks lower and at the 12° angle they are, I got 23" of usable travel. So thats killer. Kinda switching back and forth from fab work to paint. Rear and half the cockpit is painted. Ill get the rest of the cockpit done today. Damn does that custom rear end look good in there! I have some mud proofing panels for the back to put on yet but that will get done last after a start up.

07/04/2026

Life lesson learned today on my ls adventures. Stop assuming. Made it down to my engine dyno session today to see what the junkyard 5.3 made and didn't test fit my harness first. Turns out a stock replacement stand alone harness may or may not fit your injectors. Now to be clear I did not buy a holley harness or anything special. Just a cheap derby or dirt track type of harness and after going back to their website there was nothing stated as to what connectors they came with. Also turns out none of those cheap harnesses say online. Im pretty bummed about it, because I really wanted to know for future projects. But it will be going directly into the jeep tonight and if anyone asks its a 500hp ls just like everyone else says lol.

05/04/2026

The heartbeat for the liberty is washed up and ready for its trip to max performance. It had such little run time last year im just planning on disassembly, cleaning, Inspection and reassemble. A fresh drivetrain is prob a pretty happy drivetrain lol.

30/03/2026

Successful weekend in the shop plugging forward. All the tires have been mounted so now im officially part of the 14.9 club. Rear axle got its time on the operating table if you will. Tabs braced, axle tube braced, everything fully welded finally and center carrier welded solid. The f106s I bought were fresh out of a fire truck so the rear end was very narrow for the dually tires it had. So i cut out the center chunk and ran this square tube completely through, welded on 2.5 ton rockwell outer spindles and used rockwell hubs. Now its the same width as the front end without using spacers or big offset hubs. Beefy and should be mint. Now its off to go get its custom axle shafts. Like the world famous Paul Travis says, a project a day.

28/03/2026

Saved a couple hundred by shopping local and buying the wheels with the loops in them. 1.5 hrs, 1 cutoff wheel and 1 grinding disc per wheel later they were ready to weld. Little more time and effort than id like but at the end of the day its for a mud truck and id like to save where I can. I got to use my welding shop friends big boy welder so that burnt everything in nicely. The kids and I brushed on some rustoleum tractor trailer paint and these are ready to mount now. Thatll do.

23/02/2026

Once again, s**tty before picture. But the "hard part" in my eyes of mocking up the rear end is about done. Bumps and sway bar is in place. Radiator, trans cooler and fuel cell mount next. Then clean up and final weld everything on the rear of the machine. Someday hopefully somewhat soon ill have a bigger shop with brighter walls and lights but until then we will have to deal with the wierd camera angles and dim pictures lol. Still alot of work and time left. Party on wayne.

26/01/2026

I didnt take a before picture right before I started cutting tubes off with the axle swap. So picture number 1 is the best one I could find to showcase the stupid s**t I had going on with the chassis before. I think its heading in a better direction now. Just cycled the suspension tonight for the first time and everything is looking good to me so I can go through and clean up and burn in everything on the front end. There is a couple more braces and some axle trussing to do but im trying to work my way from the front back. Motivation and or time is kinda hit or miss. But small steps are better than none.

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