In my on-going quest of eliminating DW, I ended up having to get a new D30. The current one's driver's lower ball joint housing was wallowed out so that was not helping me at all. So out with the old...


....put new reamed out knuckles, new ball joints, new axle seals, as well as cut off the sway bar brackets in the new (the one on the right) one...


...set the gearing up...


...put the new axle in...


and also installed the 1-ton steering from JCR (hence the reamed out knuckles mentioned earlier).


All of this to then take to the shop, get it aligned, and STILL have DW.
New adjustable UCA's and a Durango box are going in once the tax return gets here.

 

Im coming in wayyyyyy late obviously. I only read the last post (sorry lazy)

Have you inspected all of the control arm body mounts? Static and flexed?

 

Yup. Once the UCA's (and their bushings) and the steering box are done literally EVERY steering and suspension component will have been replaced. I'm also looking at stiffeners so the LCA body mounts will be redone too.

 

Got a few parts ordered and they're on their way:
4.5" RE coils and RockKrawler adj. upper arms

Also, I got called upon for the use of my winch the other day. One of the maintenance vehicles at my job got stuck so of course they called on me to get it unstuck. Got the XJ into a good spot, pulled out some winch line, and hooked a tow strap to the stuck truck (a Ford mind you). Hooked up the winch, went to pull in the line a little so I could toss a dampener on it and it did nothing. No "click", no movement, no nothing. So I tried spooling the line out with the remote and it worked like a charm. Tried reeling it in and again, nothing. So I now know I have a bad solenoid in my control box. Unhook the winch line from the tow strap, pull the rest of it off the winch drum (about another 50' or so), unscrew the retaining bolt, and toss my winch line into the back of the XJ. I then pull into the muck the Ford is stuck in, attach the tow strap to a d-ring on the bumper, throw it in 4-HI, and unstick the stuck Ford. Yay me. Only problem, I now have non-functioning winch.

So I call up Rough Country (the winch is a RS9500) and inform them I have a bad solenoid and would like a new one. Thankfully they have a limited lifetime warranty and it covers the solenoids. They tell me I'll have a new one in a couple days. That's the good news. A couple days go by, I come home from work, and waiting for me is a package from RC. This package however is far larger than what is needed for a solenoid. I pop it open and am greeted with better news: not just a solenoid, but a whole new control box, new wiring, and a new wireless remote (which means I now have 2). Yeah, it was a good day.

Also figured if I was going to be doing some winch parts replacing, I might as well go ahead and modify the fair lead mount as well (something I've been wanting to do). I've never liked how tall it sat, so off with the winch and fair lead mount (it bolted down, another aspect I never really liked) and out came the angle grinder. Drew a couple guidelines, and let the sparks fly.
Before:


and after:


I've still got to round off the top corners and I'm going to weld the piece that was cut from the top at a 90* so I can mount a couple lights on top of the fair lead, but I need more welding wire as I'm out. So coming this weekend is new springs, new uca's, removing the front bumper, welding on the fair lead mount, and then reinstalling it and the winch. Should be a good weekend.

 

I think it's actually going to make quite a difference in the appearance of the bumper. When you first told me about it I was like, ok, and but after seeing it it looks much better.

 

So, finally got the fair lead mount finished. Here's how it looked before doing any cutting...


Personally, I always thought it was a little too tall. So, it got cut down (see the pictures a couple posts back) and the front bumper got pulled off.


Hauled the bumper to the back yard and got everything all lined up and ready to weld...


Welding commenced, the mount got attached, and some sanding and paint followed.


Reinstalled the bumper and I love how much shorter that mount is. It fits the design of the bumper better and the winch line will be at the base of the winch rather than half way up it, which means a better pull angle.


From there it was just reinstalling the winch with its new control box and wiring. Ran into a small problem in that the winch was hitting the light tab on the fair lead mount so I had to cut the ends off the light tab, but other than that it came out to a nice, snug fit.

 

Got a couple more things done...

Got IRO's spacer in the mail for the new Durango box I swapped in.


Helped Red82 put in his new Bilsteins and in return he gave me his lightly used shocks. Why swap out my shocks for his old ones? Because mine were for a 3" lift where as his were for a 4.5" lift, which is where I'm sitting. I'll admit, it's nice having shocks that actually fit my lift specs.


And last but not least (for now), traded my stock Grizzly's and 33x10.5 BFG A/T's for 15x10 Pacer's with 33x12.5 BFG M/T's.

 

that looks so much better with meaty tires

 

Yeah, I like it a lot more with the 12.50's. The more aggressive tread doesn't hurt either.

 

Niiiiice.... that thing is USDA now!

 

Decided to use a gorgeous morning to get a couple things done to the Jeep.

First was the rear hatch. For a couple years it's been one of those "push right here while pulling the handle and hope it unlatches" deals. Thanks to a quick search on here, I found the repair write-up: remove the hatch trim, tighten the latch rod clip, adjust the latch rod to the proper length, reinstall the trim. Very easy fix. Now the rear hatch opens without any issues.

Second was the new steering box spacer from IRO for the Durango box. The crappy, stock, aluminum one wasn't doing me any good at all considering it was in 3 pieces. Between the IRO spacer and and the bumper mounts I have, I should be in good shape with bracing on both sides of the unibody rail..

I had already done the Durango box swap, so all the hard work on that was already taken care of.

All new hardware with extra washers for proper spacing (thanks again, Justin, for the hardware specs!)


And the finished product:


I should have new coils and adjustable upper arms this week and with a little trading, those plus a bull bar for the front bumper will be getting done next weekend.

 

Those seat are they power seats? And did they just bolt right in?

 

Nope, no power. The less power accessories the better IMO, which is why I really want to find a set of full manual doors. Less stuff that can go wrong when electronics aren't involved.

As for the seat install, ZJ & WJ seats can go into 95+ XJ's by swapping the XJ mounts/slide rails to the ZJ/WJ seats.

 

So you can't do that in the 94 and earlier?

 

Correct. 94 and prior have a different floor design, which means different seat mounts that don't match up to the ZJ/WJ seats.