GIjoe

the Cherokee is looking good my man! and those pics of the moab are SICK!!!!!! I live in Indiana so I am soooo far away, which is sad. I don't think my Cherokee could make the drive there lol!

djcallao

Dude, you have one sick XJ. I have the exact same one. Just 2000. I just got it last week. What was the process for painting the undercarriage parts?

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gvns8

Definitely worth it to go there sometime if you are really into rock crawling or just like the sights- you could always tow or rent, but that gets expensive. It is pretty funny just to drive down the town and every single vehicle is a jeep, or very well built lifted truck.



Nice man, good choice on the color. Got any plans for it, or just keeping it stock? As far as undercoating I did that awhile ago and I think I just pressure washed it down at DIY car wash and then get some of that rattle can spray on undercoating-about 4 or 5 cans worth and covered the underbody. I didn't have any rust luckily, so I didn't have to worry much about sanding that down. It made it quieter, protects it from rust hopefully and looks better in the wheel openings.

GUNNARxj

Great looking XJ!! those trails in colorado look amazing. Im trying to get mine built similar to yours before I move to colorado in august so I can enjoy some of these awesome trails

djcallao

Yeah I have a build thread that I started up. I picked up a RC 3"lift. Still gotta put it on. What did you paint your axles with? The same stuff?

gvns8

Thanks and yea man colorado has plenty of legit trails to keep you busy. Take a look at Traildamage.com, and they give you a good idea of how many good trails there are out here.

gvns8

Here are the other things I have finished over the last few days:

With all the nice weather we have had in San Diego I decided to make my doors removable.





It was kind of a pita honestly, due to having to cut off, drill out and retap two of the bolts that seized/snapped when I was removing the hinges to modify them.



Here is what I did to the hinges-

Usually with the 97+ cherokees you have to use a quick release pin or cotter pin, but that means you need two people to remove the door and I wanted to make it so I could remove my doors by myself. So, I followed the writeup over on jeepforum which basically said to put Grade 8 M10 1.5 bolts through the hinges, weld the head of the bolt, then cut the upper hing bolt to about 1/3 the length so that you can get the door on without hitting the pillar.

However, instead of welding the bolts into the holes I tapped the thread and tightened down a nut on the top to act as a locknut. This worked great since I had no access to a welder, and now I can remove my doors very easily. It gets cold fast though with wind chill, I don't know how some guys with wranglers do soft tops in the winter.




Lower hinge:





Upper hinge:



Another thing I did this past week was polish my rims with some mothers billet polish. It took me like 5 hours even with the drill attachment, but it was worth it.

Before:



After:



My new axle also had no breather tube or place to plug it in, so I tapped it and installed a nipple for it.






The knuckles on my new axle are also kind of worn and cause the brakes to chatter, so I installed some little brake caliper repair thingies on the pads.





I also cut down my track bar 1/2" due to it being too long for my lift. Seriously some heavy duty tubing there is no way it is ever going to break.



Here are the other items I have completed on the jeep in the last week or so:

-Installed the last U-joint in my spare drive shaft finally

-Replaced nuts or bolts on the the fan shroud, uca axle bolt

-Cleaned the interior super well after having Moab red dust/sand covering everything.

-Adjusted/tightened my steering box by turning the hex nut about 1/4 turn- a little too tight now, I think I need to to turn it back about 1/8 turn.

-Cleaned/reoiled my Air Filter

-Replaced the mirror I broke on Lefthand Canyon

-Cut off the last 8" of the exhaust to keep it from vibrating against the leaf spring anymore

-I picked up some extremely long brake lines yesterday at the junk yard, off of a Chevy van. They are about 24" long versus the about 16" stock lines.

-I did the second alignment on my jeep in one week after adjusting my track bar. Took forever to get the drag link right due to having a curved driveway.

-Finally, I dropped both of my driveshafts off at a driveline shop to have them balanced once and for all. I am just sick of having the shafts vibrating. The pinion angles are all correct, but they still vibrate.

Oh... and I ordered some Rough Country Shackle Relocation Brackets today. Yeaya more flex and a smoother ride will be nice. Hopefully they will also level out my ride since I also realized that my springs in the rear have settled so I have 4.5" of lift in the rear now instead of the 5.5" that I had a couple weeks ago.

It has definitely been a productive week and there is more to come, so I will have more updates soon.

gvns8

Here is another project I completed since getting back from Moab.

I did this pretty sweet mod to my bushwacker cutout fenders flares to make them into pocket flares (you will see what I mean in a minute). Basically it allows me to have much more room for my tire than the traditional bushwacker cutout flares. I got the idea from the dude I purchased my front axle from. The guy said he no longer needs bumpstops because he can stuff his tires so far up... I was definately sold.

So here is a little overview of how I did it. Maybe I will make a writeup for the site if I have some time also. I was ready to throw out my bushwackers, but thanks to this simple ingenious idea, I will keep them on.

First I removed the bushwackers and marked a line with masking tape of where I would cut the inner plastic out about 3/4" from the outside.



Then I used a jigsaw to cut out the inner plastic part (a razor won't work). I used sand paper to clean up the cuts.



Next I had to cut back the fenders on the jeep further than they had been before.

Before:



As you can see there is a lot of space between the bolt holes and the edge of the fenders. I used painters tape to protect the surrounding paint and mark off where I planned to cut- about 3/4" below the bushwacker holes. I made sure to remove the windshield wiper fluid reservoir before cutting.



I then used an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel to cut the fenders out. I tried to make mine look good, but honestly it doesn't matter how perfect the cuts look, because you already drilled holes for your bushwackers so you are never going to use those fenders without the bushwackers unless you re-cut even higher above the holes you made for the bushwacker bolts. I also painted along the edge to keep it from rusting.



After cutting and painting:




Then I put the fenders back on and here is the final product...looks the same but thats the whole point:



View from underneath.



Previous space between fender and tire: 7 1/2"




New space between fender and tire: 10 3/4"



So I can shove the tire up a total of 3 1/4" higher than previously before I hit the fender.

Now all I need to do is flex it out, and set the bumpstops up properly, aka leave maybe one hocky puck, and get the proper length front shocks. Pretty easy and cheap way to add over 3 inches of extra clearance without changing my lift or throwing out my bushwackers.

gvns8

Today I bought myself one of these 12V puma air compressors to fill my tires on the trails.



I have been debating what to get for like 5 months. I almost got a C02 package then decided I didn't want to deal with the refills, the belt driven system would have been too much work since I would like to keep my air conditioning (and only outputs I think 4cfms?) and then I almost got a warn VTC off ebay for about $450 (~$600 retail), that puts out like 20cfms at free flow and 8cfm at 90psi-seriously ridiculous. Then I decided thats too much money and decided to settle on the ARB High Output to fill tires fast and not take up too much room...But I found this puma compressor and it seems to have a lot of good reviews, it has a flow rating of 3.4cfms 40psi or 3cfms at 90psi, so its higher than the ARB and it is 100% duty, and it has a spare tank to to keep it from working too hard. Overall a perfect package for what I need, plus I could still run an impact gun on it if I wanted on the trail. I will probably take the pump off the tank and mount a larger tank somewhere-we will see though.

gvns8

I got my driveshafts back today from the "shaftmaster" driveline shop. They said they were actually in great condition, and were already perfectly balanced. I have had driveline vibes on and off, and it is good to finally rule that out as a possible source of vibration.

The noticeable vibes I have now are going over 65mph, and they come from the rear and hum pretty loudly while accelerating. After measuring the angles, the pinion angle is 1 degree higher than the shaft angle. I just adjusted the angle a couple weeks ago, but I also recently realized that my rear leaf springs settled after wheeling moab, and I now have a total of 4.5" of lift in the rear instead of 5.5" which I had before. That probably caused the angles to be off right now.

I plan to install my new RC shackle relocation brackets next week which will hopefully raise the rear again to 5.5-6" to be level with the front. I will put the correct shims in to fix the pinion angle after that and hopefully the vibes will be gone.

I also went to get my tires balanced today at a "Big O tires" thinking that I would like to have it done right with the sticky weights on the inside of the wheel that don't fall off when wheeling. Unfortunately my experience there was pretty rediculous. They tried to tell me I absolutely needed new tires due to them being 5 years old, and that my front bearing hub units were bad (they were not when I checked them a week ago), next they insisted that I should pay them to do a toe in alignment for $75, and finally came around and said they still want to balance the tires, and would charge $80 but that the balance would not be perfect (hoping to convince me to buy new tires). I don't take well to dishonest mechanics, or those who try to take advantage of every situation to drive up the bill, so I told them that I would like my keys back and left. So no balanced tires. They didn't charge me anything luckily and I got a free computer checked alignment printout so I know my castor is 3* now and that my toe in is about .45*which is the upper limit of acceptable perfect for these larger tires when I get on the freeway. I will just go to a small tire place next week and pay them the 8 bucks a tire to do a balance with the clip on weights.

gvns8

Had some free time today and got my tires balanced at a small mexican tire shop down here in san diego, for like $30 and they used the stick on weights which won't fall off when wheeling like the side clip on ones I had on before. Great deal, and wow it made a world of a difference. Jeep drives so much smoother now. I guess wheeling really screws up your balance on the tires.

gvns8

I have been trying to get all of the issues I have with the xj dealt with the last couple days before I drive it back to Colorado from San Diego. So here is a little recap on what has been going on and what I've done:

I installed two new unit bearing hubs today, due to my old ones actually being pretty bad. It made a huge difference in my steering and make the jeep drive noticeably smoother.









I am also pretty stoked about picking up some of these babies today .Two Bilstien 5100 shocks for the front.



My old Rubicon Express shocks were made for 3.5" of lift. I decided that since my front lift is finally at the height I plan to keep it (~6.25") I'd buy my shocks now before going on my trip back to colorado to give me a more comfortable ride back with proper length shocks. Luckily a local shop happened to have the exact shock I wanted in stock so I picked them up today and installed them.

Here are my old RE shocks next to my new Bilstein 5100's meant for 6" of lift.



Got my bar pin eliminators transfered over to my bilstein's which took the most time, then I installed them and took the jeep on a drive. It made a HUGE difference.



It's amazing how much smoother it rides now. Bilsteins are definitely worth the money.


And other than that I also got some brake fluid to install my new 24" brake lines...



...and a couple quarts of power steering fluid, so I can flush my power steering pump...



...and some electronics cleaner spay to take apart my starter motor and clean it out following this writeup: http://jeep-xj.info/HowtoStarterClean.htm



Another thing I have been doing the last week or so is troubleshooting why I still get vibrations above 70mph and then a full fledged humming above 75mph. I balanced my tires, driveshafts, made my pinion angles perfect, replaced my bad hubs, cleaned the dirt out of the yokes and rotated my tires (to check for a bad tire), and although many of these improved my ride, none got rid of the high speed vibration.

Yesterday I put the jeep on Jack stands, took off the rear tires, ran the engine up to speed and got under the jeep to figure out what might be causing the vibes. The main thing that stood out to me was the transfercase chattering very loudly. I did some research on the noise and came to find that the chain is probably stretched and hitting against the case. So I drained the t/c, looked through the drain hole and moved the chain around with a screwdriver and....I definitely think its stretched. I am thinking it might be shaking the t/c at high speeds making the shaft get out of balance.

I decided that I need to replace the chain and rebuild the t/c with new bearings etc. before going on my road trip back to Colorado to avoid a break down in the middle of nowhere. Hopefully this will also fix my vibe problem.

I called some places today and luckily found a parts store that had a new t/c chain in stock along with a t/c rebuild kit for a super competitive price $170 total- I could have pulled a t/c from the Junk yark for that price, but who knows what new problems I would be adopting.



So that is my plan for all day tommorrow- rebuild my transfercase and maybe do the brake lines, p/s fluid, or starter. I swear it never ends with this thing

gvns8

Well here is an update on the jeep.

Here is the story with the transfer case. I rebuilt it, but due to working on it into the wee hours of the night, I ended up putting the pump back in the wrong order, and broke 3 of the four prongs off. I found a way to slide some very thin cut out metal tabs in the grooves to keep the pump level and reassembled the t/c so I could get back to colorado on time. Well, those little peices of metal I cut, ended up keeping the t/c from sealing properly, and I got a leak in pheonix, AZ on the drive back from San Diego to Colorado. Needless to say, it was a huge PITA. I luckily found a replacement pump and reassembled the t/c in the parking lot of the 4 wheel drive store on a Saturday.

I managed to destroy my speedo gear though during the time I was running low on t/c oil. So I pulled it out and now have no speedometer.

But the good news is I made it back (a day late) and the jeep is fine. What a crazy experience. I really need to get a trailer or something.

gvns8

Also here are some other updates:

-Rebuilding the T/C completely fixed all the humming and vibes I was experiencing! Turns out there was a bad bearing I think. The chain ended up not being stretched but it was pretty worn out and easy to move around.

-Those Bilsteins are one of the best upgrades I have ever done on the jeep.

-I tested out my new PUMA compressor and filled my 33x12.5x15" tire up from 15psi to 32psi in less than a minute. Pretty dang fast. Its super quiet too. Highly recommend this compressor.

-I replaced my CB antenna after countless attempts to solder it and thinking I was getting a ground. I have come to realize that the cb radio is actually at fault, I think I broke it by running the grounded antenna for a little while- so I kind of wasted my money buying the new antenna...

-My steering is absolutely horrible right now. I came to realize that one of the lower control arm bushings are completely shot and I can rotate the control arm around while the jeep is parked. This means I can basically steer my jeep with the gas pedal and brakes. Worst part is Rubicon Express is out of business. But I found out that daystar just started making rubicon express replacement bushings so I ordered a set. I can't wait to get those replaced. I think that many of the bad steering problems I have had in the past could be attributed to this bushing being bad and continually getting worse over time.

-I am going to install my Rough Country shackle relocation brackets tomorrow. I will report back on how those work out. It will be nice to hopefully level out the rear and also have smoother ride/more flex.

FlemingXJ

What new parts went into your 231?

Edit: I didnt read two posts above this. How long did that take?