JEEP SUB-FRAME BUILD
I have a long driveway and live in central Indiana. I used to live in Minnesota, and we got a lot of snow. I get less snow in Indiana, but enough to be a problem. Once I knew the 1971 jeep was a good runner, I decided that it would be my work horse. I then began the design for a subframe that would carry the force of a snow plow. I looked at a lot of factory setups and found a lot of good designs. This picture is the end result of my fabrication. The story below is how I got there.
There are no plow mounting kits on the market for 1971 jeeps. So, I made my own. The first thing I did was research other plow mounts for pre 1971 jeeps. I came across Derek Redmond from Oconto Lake Canada. His CJ3B is pictured to the right, taken from the page he started, The CJ3B Page. This guy is my hero. He took a great looking CJ3B and put it to work plowing Canadian snow. I modeled my plow mount from his setup.
Before I started fabrication, I modeled the plow frame system in SolidWorks. Here is a picture of my model showing the stock jeep frame, and my design of the plow sub frame.
The sub-frame itself is made from 1.5" black pipe and .25" A36 steel plate. The frame is basically a three step ladder. Two pipes on either side going the length of the jeep and three pipes connecting those at the ends and in the middle. Each tube connection is gusseted with .25" triangles. The ladder frame is then bent slightly to hug the front axle.
The top portion of the frame is from a Meyer plow mount for an old truck. I scrapped most all of it except the rolled structural angle that has the cylinder pivot. I used a double acting 2" bore hydraulic cylinder. The mount for the upper frame is made from .25" steel and doubles as the mount for the X brace on the sub-frame
Jeep sub frame showing the A frame of the plow mount attached. The pivot for the lift occurs just past the front bumper using 1" grade 8 bolts.
Here is the completed frame and lift. The A frame of the snow plow and the frame of the broom both match up to the pin mounts on the sub-frame. It works pretty well.