My first Jeep Build in nearly a decade...

[Keith]

300 miles into the 500 mile break-in and everything's going good. Drove in the snow this weekend in both 2WD and 4WD and I can tell you that the only difference I noticed is the turning radius is larger in 4WD with the front locker. But as far as making it impossible to drive or the vehicle not turning just didn't happen to me. Maybe it's the difference in driving styles, or maybe the fact that I have a limited slip in the rear as well, but I don't understand why people complain about locking the front. If you're on the fence, just do it, you won't regret it.

Just ordered a new oil pan and gaskets. I was amazed at how rusted that thing is... It looks paper thin right now but it still holds oil, so hopefully it lasts until I can get back under there! From what I've read, you have to drop the y-pipe to swap out the oil pan; So it looks like I may add a set of headers and new muffler while I'm at it. If I go that route, I'm going to try and wait until spring to replace the oil pan (to save up some more money).

Speaking of mufflers, has anyone used the Magnaflow cat back turn down style muffler? It basically ends before the rear axle, instead of having that pipe snake its way through to the back of the Jeep. Any thoughts?

Im glad to hear everything is working well with the new axles and that the lockers work that well too. I want to put lockers and gears in my WJ but I’m not investing any $ into the Dana 35 so that’s on the back burner until I find a Dana 44 to put back there.
I have run a flowmaster with just a turn down by the rear axle and it made it almost a week until I got rid of it. Having a turndown at the rear axle made it excessively loud inside and I just didn’t care for it, but that was on a daily driver. If your not worried about the noise (wranglers are loud anyway) then I can’t see how it would hurt anything. You would probably gain a little ground clearance depending on how it’s run, just don’t expect big horsepower gains from an exhaust (mine wasn’t noticeable).

[2002wranglerX]

The banks cat back is on sale for 215 shipped from 4wd. even my wholesale price was only like 10 bucks less. for 200 bucks it's a win.

https://www.4wd.com/p/banks-power-si..._/R-BKQC-51314

[ridgerunner97]

Pretty sure for inspection, exhaust cannot exit beneath the passenger compartment. So on a Jeep it's gotta side dump or rear exit

[AngusGT]

Pretty sure for inspection, exhaust cannot exit beneath the passenger compartment. So on a Jeep it's gotta side dump or rear exit

I didn't know that, Thanks!

[AngusGT]

The banks cat back is on sale for 215 shipped from 4wd. even my wholesale price was only like 10 bucks less. for 200 bucks it's a win.

https://www.4wd.com/p/banks-power-si..._/R-BKQC-51314

Nice! I like the sound of those too. Plus it exits out the back, which makes it legal

[AngusGT]

So it's been a while since I posted about my protect and that's because not much has been going on. I finally hit my 500mi break in on my axles. I was a bit concerned when I changed the diff oil on the front, it had more bubbles than I'm comfortable with.

But, it didn't separate and there were no other signs of water getting in, so I assume it's just a side effect of the locker. Plus it was freshly driven, so I'm sure that contributed to it. Like I said, it was more than I was comfortable with, especially on a brand new axle.
That's all the updates I have for now. Soon I'll be adding a body lift and tires. And if I have any money left after that, I'll get a SYE and tummy tuck on before summer.

[AngusGT]

Today I got 5 new BF Goodrich KM2's in 33x10.5R15. Quite a considerable upgrade from my existing tires. I'm not quite ready to put them on, but there was a sale at 4 wheel parts and I couldn't pass it up. So now it's time for the body lift and fitment of these beasts.
[IMG][/IMG]
[IMG][/IMG]

[2002wranglerX]

i loved my 33x10.50's. i stuck with aluminum wheels though. i've always noticed a difference powerwise with aluminum vs steel. But i love the size.

[AngusGT]

i loved my 33x10.50's. i stuck with aluminum wheels though. i've always noticed a difference powerwise with aluminum vs steel. But i love the size.

I feel like you get better traction with the 10.50 than you do with a wider tire. And I agree about the aluminum wheel, but steel was in my budget.

[AngusGT]

I was trying to wait until I had the body lift on, but couldn't take it... I had to put the new tires on. They make such a difference! I love the look, and it'll be even better with the body lift.

[JeepGeneral]

Is there a small suspension on the Jeep currently?

[AngusGT]

Yep. I put a 1.5" budget lift on it. The game plan was to wait until I put on the 1.25" body lift, but I couldn't wait. Eventually, it'll have a proper 3.5" lift, but that's probably next year's project.

[dorick]

I was trying to wait until I had the body lift on, but couldn't take it... I had to put the new tires on. They make such a difference! I love the look, and it'll be even better with the body lift.

Those tires look really aggressive. How's their road noise and handling? Need to replace my tires on my TJ, and I'm choosing between the KM2 and General tires Grabbers AT2.

[AngusGT]

Road handling and noise haven't been a factor. Although, like many aggressive tires I've had, the road noise typically comes after you've put a thousand or so miles on them. So we'll see what they sound like later this summer. As for the handling, they ride great. I've had them in snow and rain and didn't have any issues.

[AngusGT]

Busy day! Got the body/mm lift on, swapped out the front springs/spacers for a set of old man emu heavy load springs, and stuck the front bumper on just for kicks. The jeep looks sweet! Those springs eliminated the rake on the front end, and now the front is a tad higher than the rear. Once I stick the winch on, it should be perfectly level.

After that we took it out for a test run. Everything seems in order, now I just have to order the rest of my parts before Wednesday.

[AngusGT]

It's been a while since I've updated, here's what I've done since the last post:


I added a winch and lights to the front bumper:

Wired the lights into an OEM looking toggle switch:

And added a hitch to the rear:


Took it out for the monthly wheeling trip to Johnstown/Seward and found out the body/suspension lift is causing my transfer case linkage to be a pain in the butt. I'm going to order a new shifter cable from Novak to replace all the linkage and eliminate that problem. Other than occasionally popping out of 4Hi and having troubles getting and keeping it in 4Lo the Jeep ran great.


All that's left for me to do (until fall or so) is replace the transfer case linkage, exhaust, and Oil Pan. After that, I'll be getting into the tummy tuck/SYE/underbody skidplate phase of my build. But that'll have to wait until I can save up some money.

[2002wranglerX]

It's been a while since I've updated, here's what I've done since the last post:


I added a winch and lights to the front bumper:

Wired the lights into an OEM looking toggle switch:

And added a hitch to the rear:


Took it out for the monthly wheeling trip to Johnstown/Seward and found out the body/suspension lift is causing my transfer case linkage to be a pain in the butt. I'm going to order a new shifter cable from Novak to replace all the linkage and eliminate that problem. Other than occasionally popping out of 4Hi and having troubles getting and keeping it in 4Lo the Jeep ran great.


All that's left for me to do (until fall or so) is replace the transfer case linkage, exhaust, and Oil Pan. After that, I'll be getting into the tummy tuck/SYE/underbody skidplate phase of my build. But that'll have to wait until I can save up some money.

http://www.azzysdesignworks.com/stor...se-linkage-kit

cables tend to suck. This is good stuff from a VERY local guy.

[Azzy]

Body lifts really screw with the 4x4 linkage, you turn a leverage situation into just wiggling a stick with 2 or 3 joints. If you have a tcase drop, it gets worse.

We have hardware on order for the TJ kits, but are out of stock for at least 2-3 weeks (I have custom stuff made for these in batches of 1000) . Thanks for the recommendation! We get a lot of attention with those.

[AngusGT]

Finally got around to installing my exhaust. And the new exhaust sounds great!
https://youtu.be/M_luk-NJ-BE
I also dropped about 40lbs of weight from the jeep when I cleaned all the mud out from the skid plate. That thing was packed! The pressure washer hardly touched it, had to drop it to clean it.

[AngusGT]

Another work day on the Jeep. Swapped out my old shift linkage for a new shift cable from Novak Adapters. It was a pain to get set up, mostly because I refused to drop the skid plate again. But it's in and the shifting is way improved. Bonus: it doesn't pop out of 4Lo any more. I have to admit, setting it up was trickier than I anticipated.

[AngusGT]

Well, it was a frustrating week of repairs. The front Passenger caliper froze up last week. I order what I could from Advanced Auto but had to get some stuff online. While I was replacing the calipers, rotors, and brake pads, I decided to swap out the hoses for some longer, Stainless Steel Braided hoses. Unfortunately, those took forever to ship. I had given up on receiving them in time for install (Tuesday), and decided I'd swap them out later. I completed swapping everything out Tuesday, but had to wait until Wednesday to bleed the brakes. I wasn't counting on how much mud I would have to remove just to get the calipers off.

Bled the brakes on Wednesday, they didn't feel right, but had too much going on to re-bleed them. So Thursday, I was going to re-bleed the brakes but then the new hoses showed up. So, of course I'm going to put them on now. What should have been an extra 20-30 minutes turned into 3 hours, two trips to the store, and two busted T40 Torx bits. The bolts holding the old cables were so corroded, I ended up having to use a chisel to bust them loose before I could get them to budge with a T40 bit. But now everything's swapped out and the brakes feel much better, plus I don't have a frozen caliper... so all in all it was a win, it just sucks that it took me three days to replace my brakes.

[anodyne33]

two busted T40 Torx bits. The bolts holding the old cables were so corroded, I ended up having to use a chisel to bust them loose before I could get them to budge with a T40 bit.

Same thing got me on my ex-ef's YJ. Of course I decided to break out the blue wrench and found out really quickly that there wasn't enough fresh air down there it keep it lit and said **** it, I'll let someone else deal with this. The shop simply cut the head off the hex bolt and tacked the new line down. Yeah... I could have done that myself dude.

[AngusGT]

Same thing got me on my ex-ef's YJ. Of course I decided to break out the blue wrench and found out really quickly that there wasn't enough fresh air down there it keep it lit and said **** it, I'll let someone else deal with this. The shop simply cut the head off the hex bolt and tacked the new line down. Yeah... I could have done that myself dude.

I thought about cutting off the head but figured I'd try the chisel method first. Thankfully once it got a little past 1/4 of a turn I was able to run it the rest of the way out with the torx head. I replaced it with a hex head bolt so now I shouldn't ever have to worry about it again. Chrysler got too carried away with those torx heads of you ask me.

[joshs1ofakindxj]

Torx bits are favored for automated assembly and they can handle more torque than a hex of equivalent thread size if you can believe that. Usually stripping a torx head means it's time for a higher quality set of torx bits, but rust does get to them too.

[AngusGT]

It's been a while since I last posted on my TJ. I haven't done a whole lot in the way of upgrades lately, mostly because what's next is going to require a bit more money than I have. But I did manage to upgrade my lighting. I bought a set of JK headlights off of Ebay and put them in. Then I swapped out the bulbs for LEDs. I paid around $100 total for everything and the difference in lighting is amazing. I went with a company called SEALIGHT off of Amazon for my bulbs. I was hesitant, but for $50 I couldn't pass up giving it a try. Here's a shot of old vs new:


Other than that, I found my next upgrade: I'm ordering adjustable control arms from Rusty's. The last wheelin' trip mangled up my rear lower control arm on the drivers side. So right now, I'll order the rear lowers. Next Payday, I'll get the front lowers. And eventually I'll get around to the uppers. Here's a look at the damage:



I've also developed a squeak/chirp from this last trip. I'm yet to figure that out. Hopefully I can get under it this weekend and find it. Basically it's not engine related as I can rev the engine and idle with the clutch dis-engaged and nothing happens. But when I'm driving, at random times in different gears I'll get the chirping. I'm also experiencing a bit of vibrations at certian RPMs when the clutch is engaged. Makes me think it's a u-joint on the rear driveshaft going bad.

Anyway, after that, I'm putting a hard stop on upgrades until I can afford my tummy tuck. I am sick and tired of that ginormous, stupid skid plate catching on every freaking thing. The game plan is to do a SYE, tummy tuck/engine skid, new oil pan, new headers and cat, and a 62mm throttle body. This way I'm not putting the skid over top of an old rusted oil pan. Plus since I have to drop the cat from the headers for the oil pan, I'm going to take that time to replace all of that. And since I have to take the intake off to do the headers, I might as well swap out the throttle body and actually get some improved HP/torque from the new headers/cat.