Took part of the day to address some random Jeep tasks and garage organization. Tucked away the original motor and gathered the intake and headers for the installed motor. Also, I wanted to get rid of the Classic Tube box that has been taking up space in the garage for over a year. It contains the metal brake lines, which I've been wanting to install for some time. I'm not sure why I was intimidated by that - maybe because you have to bend the lines to get them to fit right and I didn't want to kink the lines. They are pre-bent, but they are not perfectly aligned to the dimensions of the Jeep. It wasn't that bad - actually, pretty easy if you just take your time and be careful.

The original motor, tucked away. Covered it with plastic and built a shelf over it to get more stuff out of the way.

Clifford 6=8 intake manifold on the left. JBA shorty headers on the right.

Rear axle brake lines staged. It took some additional bending, but they are working out well.

The rear brake lines were a bit cumbersome to work with. As mentioned above, the pre-bending isn't super precise. It's very good, but you have to do your own bending to get things in place just the way you want them. I got them pretty well lined up, but the piece that attaches to the rear axle housing has a 7/16" hole in it and the thread in the axle housing is 1/4"-20, so I will need to find a suitable bolt to thread in there while filling the space in the end of the braided brake line. I think they're called shoulder bolts/screws.

Note for the front caliper banjo bolts - they are 7/16"-24.

Rear brake line attachment to extended stainless braided line (Rubicon Express) that runs down to the axle.

Front brake lines routed and bent some more.

While I was working on the front end, I figured I might as well try to install the steering linkage that has been sitting in its box for a month or more. These pieces are from Rugged Ridge and are quite robust, probably overkill for this Jeep build, but I think they will last a long time.

I'm not sure that my installation method was the best way, but the tie rod came assembled and I tried to just install it as is. The problem was that I couldn't get one of the ends in since the clearance between the tie rod and the leaf spring wasn't enough to get the threaded ball joint stud into the hole in the steering knuckle.

I loosened the nuts of the passenger side U-bolts so that the leaf spring would drop down enough for me to get the stud thru. It worked, but I'm not wondering if it would've been easier to disassemble the tie rod and put it back together after the ball join ends were installed in the knuckles?

Pretty beefy tie rod - just hope it doesn't hit the springs while driving.