"Broken Car 2" - My 2000 XJ Project
 

This project starts with the death of my last XJ, which was also my first XJ.
I refer to my current project as "Broken Car 2" because of a window sticker that was on my first XJ when we bought it. The sticker was for a clothing brand called "Broken Cartel". My wife bugged me for a couple weeks to remove it. When I finally got around to it, I started from right to left. I got three letters off and couldn't continue. It was just too appropriate.
I was on my way to work, pulling my trailer, when I was rear-ended by a lady who wasn't watching where she was going. She hit my trailer so hard that it bent my receiver hitch down about 20° creasing both of my frame rails. Totalled. Insurance gave me the standard insult of a payment and I had to start from scratch.

I was able to find a replacement relatively quickly, but given the "generous" payout from the insurance company, I had to sacrifice a few upgrades. It was in good shape. I don't think it had ever seen a rough trail. Not a scratch on any of the suspension or driveline components. The mileage was a little high, but it was real clean and the price was decent.
I had to wait a few months, but tax return time came and it was time to give this thing some personality. The first thing I did was the lift. I went with a Rubicon Express SuperFlex 3.5" Lift. I was able to customize it a little bit with Adjustable Lower Control Arms and an Adjustable Track Bar. I also went with ProComp complete rear leaf springs and ProComp MX-6 shocks.
First of all, I want to say that I was very impressed with the quality of the Rubicon Express parts. They seem very well built. As a company, they were great to work with. Very helpful throughout the process of choosing the right parts for my Jeep and any other questions I had. As far as I'm concerned, there's no other way to go, unless you wanna drop some serious coin. RE even has the long arm upgrade kit to make the transition to long travel easy and relatively inexpensive, considering you don't have to buy another complete lift kit for $1,000+. I was also impressed with ProComp's parts. The MX-6 shocks are amazing. Now, on to wheels and tires.

When my first Jeep was totalled, the insurance company, as part of their "generous" pay-out, offered me a whopping $250 for my wheels and tires. I politely declined, seeing as how that would barely cover the cost of a tire. So, I kept them in my garage until my new-to-me Jeep was ready for them. The time had come.

A Quick Note About the RE Quick Disconnects
 

I mentioned before that I had one issue with the Rubicon Express quick disconnects. What I'm referring to is the way they suspend the sway bar when disconnected. Don't get me wrong. The system is brilliant and, once installed, is beautiful. The problem lies in the installation.

You have to attach aluminum pins in the upper inner fender well for the disco's to attach to when disconnected. The locations of both are very difficult to get to from the inside of the engine bay, particularly the passenger side, as it is under the battery. Maybe I'm a freakin' idiot and there's a much easier way. Maybe not. All I know is that my vocabulary was augmented by several new 4 letter words that day.

Faded Black Trim - No Longer Faded
 

The next phase of this project was to do something about all the black plastic trim on the exterior of the vehicle that had turned gray (almost white, in places). I'm sure there are many ways to take care of this, but this is how I did it. Here are a few before pictures.
I went down to Home Depot and bought satin black spray paint that is specifically designed for painting plastic. I removed all the parts that I felt comfortable removing and went to work.
I didn't feel comfortable trying to remove the door trim, so I masked it with painters tape and brown paper. For some reason, I forgot to take pictures of this process. The following are of my first Jeep when I did the exact same thing.
Here's the finished product. The pictures aren't great, but I still think you can see how much better it looks with new-looking black trim.

Cold Air Intake & Exhaust
 

The next thing I decided to tackle was the air intake and exhaust. I'm sure there are plenty of you who are reading this who are of the opinion that a cold air intake, and maybe even the exhaust system, is worthless and is a waste of money. To those, I politely offer the invitation to not post comments expressing those opinions because I just don't care. I firmly believe that they do help and will get into that a little more as we move along. That being said, on we go.

Cold Air Intake:

I decided to go with an AIRAID cold air intake. Why? I dunno. Mostly because of price, but also because of reputation. AIRAID makes a really nice product and they're made right here in the USA (some of their stuff is made here in the valley of the sun).
I love the way it looks inside the engine bay. You can hear the increased air flow whether the hood is up or down. I'm working on a way to fabricate a ram air style intake, as well. Should be fun. Check back for that update.

Exhaust:

My OEM exhaust system was getting pretty gnarly. The pipe had become twisted between the muffler and the cat (not sure how that happened) and water was pooling in the muffler, which had caused it to rust through. I also wanted to open up the exhaust for performance purposes, so we killed two birds with one stone. Here are a couple 'before' shots.
After weeks of research, I decided to go with MagnaFlow. I didn't like the muffler that came with the cat-back kit, so I bought the muffler I wanted (14" x 8" x 5" oval; center/offset) and had a local shop build the pipe. I wanted to go with 2.5" tubing all the way out. This, for reasons unknown, caused the price to go way up at the exhaust shop. If I replace the catalytic converter, however, it wasn't as difficult and the price was roughly the same. So, for the price of install w/out the cat, I was able to purchase a MagnaFlow high flow 49 state legal cat and have everything installed. I hope that made sense.
I was really worried about how loud it was going to be. My brother has a 2009 JK Rubicon Unlimited. He recently had a complete exhaust system installed, long tube header to tip, due to the addition of a supercharger. I don't know what brand of muffler he went with, but it is unbelievably loud. The in-cabin drone is ridiculous. I was nervous that mine would be like that, especially with the high flow cat.

I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find out that it isn't too loud at all. Quite the contrary, in fact. It sounds amazing. It has a nice rumble when you get on it, but it's almost non-existent at cruising speeds. I'm extremely happy with my choice of muffler. The Flowmaster, I believe, would have been too loud and the 18" MagnaFlow would've been too quiet. As far as I'm concerned, it's exactly what I wanted.

The shop I used for the install is called Mad Hatter. They're located in Mesa, AZ. They do great work and their prices are reasonable. My only complaint, and this is more due to my ignorance and lack of research than anything, is that they did not use a mandrel bender to bend the tubing. Using a standard pipe bender compresses the tubing at each bend, which restricts air flow. I guess it's a good thing that I went with larger pipe. Someday, I may have someone redo the over-the-axle portion of the pipe with a mandrel bender. Until I have the money to do so, however, what I have now is great!

And for all of you naysayers out there, I'm getting 16+ mpg (up from 14) and there's better throttle response and gumption. Once I tune it, I'm hoping to get around 18-20 mpg and a substantial increase in power.

Wow, very well written and illustrated build so far, excellent job. Now I can see what mine will look like in the future when I lift it, thanks. :thumbsup: