The steering box brace is one of those upgrades that will only serve a purpose off-road, but it was worth it. Right now, my steering box is performing beautifully--no leaks, easy and fluid turns, no slop in the steering wheel at all. What this brace does, thanks to TT Fabworks, is lock the steering box tight to BOTH frame rails. (It's bolted to the left rail as its standard mounting point, and this brace ties it as well to the right.) As a result, in an off-road situation the box mounting points won't be stressed or torqued much, if at all, when the tires are in a jam.
The brace is a steel tube that T's into a flat steel plate that is bolted to the inner right frame rail directly across from the steering box. My frame rail might be slightly out of true from the earlier mentioned front right ding courtesy of the PO. As a result, I had to use some Grade 8 washers to adjust the fitment of the brace against the right rail (a space is welded into the bracket to account for the offset mounting holes in the rail itself). Before I added the washers, as the brace extended over to the steering box, it didn't line up properly for the mounting brackets. Two washers later, it's good. (While we're here, note the wiring nest up above the alternator in the background. That'll be dealt with soon.)
The brace clamps around the pivot shaft of the steering box just above the pitman arm. Once it's in place and lined up, with the nut and bolt on the outside of the steering box set loosely in place, just use a pair of vice grips to hold the longer legs of the bracket in place against the extension arm before drilling holes for the mounting hardware. This gets a custom fit every time, specific to each application.
This was a half-hour project, mainly because of the alignment issues. Here you can see the brace in its entirety.
And now for the roof rack.
I found this roof rack on the same '88 GW at the San Bernardino PAP. I and several others on the IFSJA forum are picking this rig clean. It was $18 out the gate, and it's in great shape. Now, most FSJers refer to these as vanity racks because they aren't as rugged as a safari-style rack. But those are hundreds of dollars, and I don't like to carry a lot on top of my vehicles anyway, so this'll do for me.
To get the project started, I had to pull the headliner trim pieces and drop my exceptionally ugly headliner down a few inches to access the underside of the roof. Then it was a matter of disconnecting the dome lights and rear seatbelt attachment points so that I could drop it down fully.
That's when I learned a little more about the complexity of the project at hand and the usefulness for doing it. By pulling the headliner out completely, I could see the roof support cross-members, two of which were dented/sagging (the one farthest forward in this pic and the one closest to me).
Here's a closeup showing how the cross-member is supposed to be attached (with some kind of adhesive) and is bent down.
My solution of choice. I use some industrial adhesive, a 4x4 leftover from my new fence, and a small carjack to get the roof and the cross-members back into some semblance of their original position. An inelegant solution, to be sure, but I'm just looking for better, not good. Besides, I bought this thing in part because it was ugly and in need of some knuckle-busting.
Below you can see the sinkholes in the roof (those metal slats are supposed to lay flat across the roof). I just worked my way around the passenger compartment, jacking up the dents and then using some metal screws to hold the roof up tight against the slats.
In the pic above you can see the mounting holes for the rack. Apparently a little rubber grommet with a metal thread insert is supposed to go in each of those holes. As a small torq-head bolt is screwed into the grommet, the rubber expands to fill the hole and hold everything tight. Um, no. I tried and was not successful in any way. Perhaps the mounting holes were expanded by a previous owner--who knows. So plan B, which should have been plan A, was sprung into action. I found some steel L-brackets, cut them at the bend, and used them to mount the rack to the roof. Here's an undershot.
I used RTV in each bolt hole to help seal things up (you can see some squeeze out from the nearer end of the bracket). And then I caulked around every metal screw I used in the slats to hold the roof in place. It's definitely water tight and will remain so.
A shot of one of the roof rack mounting points. There's a plastic "seal" sits between the roof rack's foot and the roof itself. That also was treated to some RTV (I had a lot extra) to keep things sealed up nicely.
This thing is on securely. When I grab it and move it side to side, the entire Jeep rocks and there is absolutely no play in the rack itself. While I won't be hauling cinder blocks with the rack any time soon, it's certainly not a vanity rack anymore.
It was nice to make some improvements on the roof itself as part of the rack installation. At times, over large bumps, the roof would make a buckling sound (like when an oven cools after baking bread, if that makes sense). It doesn't do that anymore because of the increased rigidity of the repaired cross-members and the increased attachment points with the metal slats.
The final product...
Nath took this pic sitting up on my shoulders. He's quite the photographer.
