In preparation for the Rubicon in a week, I worked on my belly protection. I put together a pretty nice skid plate yesterday, and it seems to be pretty beefy. Time will tell I guess. It is only out of 3/16" material, but I had some nice bends put on the sides to make it rigid.

I can still get to the oil pan drain plug.
Cut a couple holes out to let the heat from the exhaust dissipate.

Fixed up the tires today

Did a little touch up work to the tires. Not completely done, but you get the idea.

Belly UP please!

I was going to buy a clocking ring to rotate my tcase for some more ground clearance. Well, I thought a little outside the box and called teraflex to see if I could re-drill the 4:1 case for a different pattern. They said sure... so I did. This has been bothering me for a long time now and finally I can make a skid plate that I like and have a bunch more clearance. Check out the pics.
Before.....
Before.... driveline not in place, but it did hang about this low.....

After the case was re-drilled and studs in place....

New measurement. ....

New clearance and a driveline that isn't hanging as low....

Latest

Finally bumped a cover one too many times. So...... I built a new one. Just have to replace the front one (which is worse than the back one was) and I'll put a 1 year project to rest. I think that's how long I've had these rings around.

np231 upgrade

Finally solved my input gear issues with my 231. Granted it was a little overkill from what I was trying to accomplish, but I am very excited about it. Can you say 4:1 tera low? Talk about an upgrade.
Crawl ratio's
46rh tranny 1st gear = 2.45
Axle gears =4.88
stock 231 low =2.72
tera low =4.0

w/ stock 231 = 35.52
w/ tera low = 47.82

Got my new springs in!

I finished getting my new wagoneer springs in. I got about 1-1.5" of wheelbase out of it which I really needed for my driveline length. I did have to get these boomerang shackles made to clear the frame though. They look good and work great.

High clearance exhaust

I have had some temporary exhaust made up to be able to start it up in the shop for a while now, but I still wanted to build a complete high clearance setup to get rid of the factory manifold to O2 sensor piece. I started with a couple J bends from Summit and some extra tube as well as the mufler I bought a few months back that was on my temp exhaust.
Here is a picture of the stainless heat shield that I added to the muffler. After all, it is almost touching the floor.
Here you can see 2/3 of the exhaust after being fully welded. It looks really clean. I was able to add a flange on each side of the mufler to make it easily replaceable without having to redo the whole system.
I ended up using the stock collectors mostly because I had them, but I could've easily bought some at the muffler shop.
The tailpipe with a sweet turndown.
I routed the diver side pipe in front of the oil pan up out of the way. The passenger pipe joins in on the other side and increases to 2.5" pipe. You can see that the J bends make it very easy to route your pipes wherever you want and they make for a clean finished look. I may add some heat wrap or shielding around the oil pan if it ends up being a problem, but there is still a good ammount of space between the pipes and the pan. It will probably be fine as the factory exhaust was just as close (other than being below the pan instead of in front of it).
End result is an exhaust that sounds good, looks good, and is up and out of the way of rocks and stumps. I am very happy with how it turned out and will probably never have a custom exhaust done by a shop after experiencing how easy it is to put together and put exactly where you want it. Much cheaper too. I spent around $50 on 3 J bends, about $50 on the muffler, and another $50 or so on extra pipe and flanges. Totally custom, high clearance exhaust for $150. Hard to come anywhere close to that at a real shop.