92 RoxAlot MONSTER XJ
 

So my first XJ was a 99 sport that was beautiful, but I was a dumb kid and traded it for a riced out Honda Del Sol, I wanted to be fast and furious. Well now that I'm older and somewhat wiser I realized how much I missed the old Xj. Therefore I went out and got this beauty 2 years ago, from a guy off good old craigslist for 700$. It was in pretty rough condition engine and cosmetic wise. The guy thought it had a blown head gasket but upon ripping everything apart I found out that it had two, TWO broken rings on the 6th cylinder piston. Which had left there mark on the cylinder wall.

Day I brought her home, had to trailer her from Idaho Springs to Denver.
http://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/...5/IMG_0027.jpg

Engine Pulled and broken down somewhat. I don't think the previous owner EVER changed the oil. :hammer:

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Gouge in the 6th cylinder.
http://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/...5/IMG_0084.jpg



Well long story short I did a full rebuild on the engine, got it bored over 20 with bigger pistons machined the crank, new cam shaft lifters all the good stuff.

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Painted the block grabber green.
http://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/...5/IMG_0261.jpg

Threw it back in the heep.

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Once I had her on the road I remembered how much light comes through these things, and peoples wandering eyes. So I ordered some window tint and tinted the back windows.

Before
http://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/...5/IMG_0021.jpg

After
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Okay so now fast forward to this last March (2012). I trimmed the fenders, bought some 33's for 100$ from a member off colorado4x4 and bought 5 crager black window d's, I know everyone has them but I like and thats all that matters. :w00t:

I also painted it...WWII Olive Drab, paint from Gillespie Coatings, only way to go if your going to do Olive Drab. Some people think paint prep is tedious and boring, I find it completely relaxing....not.

Pre-Spray
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Finished
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And bigger tires on, sorry its not a better picture only one I have from then.
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In October I decided it was time to jack it up!!!! So I started planning and looking at parts.


Originally I planned on doing a 3.5" lift so I wouldn't have to worry about control arms, SYE kit ect. Well I saved up some money since I wanted to order everything at the same time. I was going to get everything from Rusty's offroad, I got on my computer and started choosing my parts. When I got to leaf springs something caught my eye.....they had their 6.5" leafs on sale for the same price as the 3.5" leafs I was just about to order.

Now any sensible person would say, "that's a pretty good deal, but in the long run I'm going to be spending more money on other parts to lift my XJ that much, and why would I need my XJ to be that high any way, that's a ridiculous amount of lift."

I didn't. :w00t:

I ordered Rusty's 6.5" leafs, some rear shocks and nothing else. I wasn't ready to see the amount of $ I was about to spend on lifting my Jeep...

So over Nov-December 2012 I lifted the back.



Old stock leafs vs new Rusty's 6.5" pack
http://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/...ace5/jeep5.jpg

Back Done, I also made some new hard lines for the rear brakes, the stock ones were in poor condition, and home-brewed bar pin eliminators out of the old rear sway bar mounts. Lowered the Tcase 1.5" and shimmed the rear axle 2 degrees until I get a SYE and cv driveshaft around tax time.

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Beginning of December I got myself some early xmas presents, to myself :icon_lol:. Ordered some Rubicon Express 7.5" coils and Rusty's shocks for the front.
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After Xmas I ordered some creeper joints and bungs from trail gear.

The man in brown dropped them off this Wednesday.

Can anyone take a guess at what I'm going to do with these???? :brows::brows::brows:

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Where in Denver?!!!

subscribed, love the color and like the bar pin eliminator idea, definitely doing that

also if you don't mind me asking what was the bottom dollar after boring the engine and new internals?

SE of Denver, actually technically in Parker, I should change that haha.

I paid a total of about 650$ all said and done for the complete rebuild. I did all work myself except for the machining, head rebuild and connecting the piston rods to the pistons. I think it was 350$ for the machine work, valve lapping and 300$ for the rebuild kit that came with new camshaft, timing chain, all oversized bearings, pistons, piston rings, all gaskets, new high capacity oil pump, lifters everything.

looks like a good start, and i love the color.

Im guessing the joints are for some home brew long arms?

ok not bad at all, and i'm thinking the joints either long arm upgrade or custom steering set up

Those would be for control arms...either long arms or lower arms

just build long arms now, instead of lowers, then regrete doing, and bulid long arm again.

Looks good!!! Looking forward to seeing more!

Ding ding ding. We have a winner. The joints are for homemade long arms! Ordering the Dom tube next week. Building the mounts to the unibody this weekend, hopefully they will be complete in the next two weeks.

right on, well im subbed to watch the progress.

Can't wait to see this beast! sub'd

Great start. Looks like what I plan to do once I get mine back. Keep up the progress.

It's all the same

Textbooks set me back almost $600 for this spring semester, so I wasn't able to order my tubing or get any of the steel to build my cross member and mounts yet. I get paid Friday and will aim to get things rolling next weekend, at least the build of the cross member, I'm ordering my tubing from onlinemetals.com after shopping local they had the best price for 1.5" ID x 2" OD x .25" Wall Dom tube.

Going to make a clone of Clayton offroads long arm cross member like many other self builders do. http://claytonoffroad.com/product_in...697e765fa45ef3

The long arms are going to be 4link radius style made out of said tubing with creeper joints at the unibody mount, grease-able bushings at the axle mount and johnny joints on the uppers.

Every thing is measured and planned (measurements subject to change of course) just need to get the steel and DOM.

Update:

Okay so after what seems forever I finally have everything coming UPS to start building my long arms. Tube got here this morning, I landed up ordering claytons longarm crossmember to save time, so busy with school that it would be weeks for me to take the time to build it myself.

I have a link end and ballistic bushing coming for my upper. I revised and decided to do a y-link long arm setup with the y on the driver side, like IRO's. Will be putting it all together this Friday and over Saturday, hopefully be done and on the ground Sunday :D.

Also ordered an adjs trac bar and a 3.75" drop pitman arm from Synergy.

Will have pics and updates to come on Friday. :thumbup:

Okay, the much awaited photos.

Cut, welded and installed everything this last weekend.

Forgot to take some photos of the bushing mount being welded to the arms and a few other things if you guys want some let me know.

Started with this, .25"wall DOM each lower is 33" long, upper is 16".

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Welded in the bungs

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Test fit everything

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Made mount on the driver side are for the ylink setup, cut off the old lower control arm mounts and installed everything. Cycled the axle to see if there was any binding in the arms that would limit travel, which there wasn't.

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Installed my front shocks and adjustable trac bar this morning with a HD bracket this morning. All that's left to do is throw in my drop pitman arm, front driveshaft and bleed the brakes. :thumbup:

Side note, made a trip to the U Pull U Pay and picked up a 5.2L grand cherokee front driveshaft, 5" longer compressed than the stock xj one, and a 99 xj center console :). There were some decent seats in the xj that I thought about taking but it was getting pretty nippy out by the time I got to it.

I'm likin it!

New photos,

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Tested the front articulation before work the other day.

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Next things to do is drop some change on a SYE and build some bumpers.

Surprisingly after this lift I don't have any "death wobbles" which I did get when I had it stock height and threw the 33's on. Even did a tape measure alignment. Every thing is pretty sound. Don't really want to take it off road yet or even throw it into 4hi/4low until I get an SYE to put in the rear driveshaft is pulled out a good inch.

Very nice! I really need to tint my windows. Makes a huge difference. Any updates on the SYE?