I love all the work your doing.
Thanks for the build thread on this.

 

Thanks Dusty!

I've been driving the Jeep around town now, and while no old project car is ever truly finished, this thing is feeling like a normal vehicle. It's a very strange feeling, since for the past two years this thing has been an anchor, a rolling piece of yard art that sucked up my time. Now it's actually got utility and value, rather than the time and money sink it has been.

Anyway, a few more updates.



I installed a new battery and some 4 hole injectors from K-Suspension. The Green Jeep's injectors were horribly cracked from years of being next to the cast iron headers of the 2000 emissions system, so despite them being lower mileage, I used the 250k mile 1999 injectors for the first shakedown runs. Now that it's running well, I figured some fresh injectors wouldn't hurt.



The Green Jeep had a set of Cibie 5x7 headlights, high wattage Hella bulbs, and a Headlight Services relay harness. The Amazon LEDs I had previously installed on it wouldn't melt snow, so I went all out on a halogen setup. These bits finally made their way over to the Red Jeep.



I finished off the front suspension refresh with some new Moog upper control arms. Every moving part of the front suspension is new!




The easy way to get upper control arms to line up is with some ratchet straps pulling the axle back.



For lower control arms, I find an emergency scissors jack like you find in many smaller cars works well to push the axle forward. I guess the factory jack would work fine, I have no idea why I grabbed this one out of my Miata! The floor jack keeps the control arm from falling out.



I bought a new exhaust hanger bushing for the one near the rear axle. I couldn't get the chassis hook barb through the new, much stiffer bushing, so I took it out, used an angle grinder to reduce the size of the barb, and splashed some paint on it. Check out how clean the chassis area around it is!



I know I said I was going to swap to the 2000 exhaust hanger, but that would raise the exhaust 2-3" by my eyeball measurements, which is way too much. I'll swap it at some point, but for now, a little pry bar action tweaked the hanger bar enough to eliminate the exhaust rattle!

Also - check out that ZJ transfer case skid.



Here's the side view of the ZJ transfer case skid.




Plenty of clearance to the transfer case.



I'm pretty proud of the view here - It's like nothing you could ever buy like this, but still so factory looking. Full gauges from the 2000, NP242 transfer case, manual windows, WJ seats, factory floor mats, and of course, the overhead console.

 

Nice write-up and good work with the Jeep

 

Today I decided to finally fix the battery cable situation I've been ignoring.



The body ground had broken off some time back, and the terminal was clearly a cheap replacement. The extra wires are for the headlight relay harness.



Here's a little washer I added to the new terminal. It seems the clamp nuts always cut into the lead terminal, so I flat spotted the side of a washer and threw it on there to hopefully mitigate the damage. I got new "Mil-spec" terminals off of Amazon, expecting to just to crimp on some new terminals and have it all fixed for $18 or so. It didn't work out like that! The terminals came with lugs, but they were sized for 2 gauge wire. I wasn't interested in crimping that on to the 6 gauge wires that the Jeep came with from the factory.



The body ground bolt put up a heck of a fight to come out. I ran a tap through the threads and used a bore brush to finish cleaning it out. The bolt itself got some wire wheel action.



Much better. The body ground is a 4 gauge, 12" wire, and the block ground is a 4 gauge, 32 inch wire. Both were a bit longer than stock, but fit perfectly fine.



The devil is always in the details. This vacuum line rests right on a sheet metal edge. I put some rubber edging between it and the sheet metal to prevent abrasion... even though there were no signs of it! I've got this stuff lying around, may as well use it!

 

Alright, time to come clean.

This thing has been leaking coolant ever since the rebuild. Within one minute of starting it for the first time, I saw coolant dripping down. I looked at the engine and saw coolant dripping from the front freeze plug. I was pretty disappointed, but decided to drive it around so I could see if anything else leaked. This week, I finally took the time to deal with it.



It's worse than I thought. X marks the leaks! I did a fair bit of research on this topic before I did it the first time, and every single bit of advice I could find was contradicted somewhere else. It's hard to know what to go with when there's no consensus.

Some say drive it in with a socket that fits inside the cup. Some say only drive it in by the edge, don't touch the center. Those that say only drive it in on the edge say you can just drive it to be flush with the block. Some swear by brass, some by steel. Some say put it in dry, some say with one of 20 different sealants.

Anyways, here's how I got 3/5 of the freeze plugs on the side of the block to leak - I applied Permatex Indian Head sealant to the plug, then drove them in with an oversized seal driver until they were flush with the face of the block. Don't do it this way.

The freeze plugs themselves are slightly flared so that they are a crush fit, with the widest part right at the end of the cup. The bores in the block that accept the plugs are beveled right at the edge, so if you only drive them flush with the block, you're not using the portion of the plug that will give the tightest seal.



I still wanted to drive them only on the edge, and not on the flat center portion. So I had my friend start up his lathe and make me this freeze plug driver. The center section is just under 2", so it will slip inside the freeze plug bore. It's about 0.16" proud of the rest of the driver, so it will drive the freeze plug in that far past the face of the block. This was an arbitrary measurement based on pushing them just past where the factory put them in.

This way I don't have to worry about getting the plug square to the bore. I used a regular oversized seal driver to get the plugs flush to the block, then I used the homemade driver to push them the last 0.16".



Check that out - fully in the block, and square to the face.





Once again, I applied some RTV to the first exhaust port to ensure that the rust divots won't affect the gasket seal.


After getting it all buttoned up and filled with coolant, I took it to a nearby dirt mount to make sure the system was fully burped.

No leaks so far!

I'm really hoping the two on the back of the engine that can't be accessed without pulling the engine are sealed tight. I haven't seen any signs of leaks from there, but it's not easy to check.

 

Over the past few weeks, I've driven the Jeep on two 1,200 mile round trips to it's former home of North Carolina. The only issue has been the CEL coming on twice, but my code reader comes back with nothing every time I hook it up and it has gone away on its own.



If you need proof, here it is in front of Pilot Mountain, just starting out the long drive home.


I also wanted to test its off road chops. So on the season opening day of Holly Oaks ORV park, I took it out with some coworkers. After disconnecting the swaybar and dropping it in low range, the Jeep felt unstoppable.









I haven't done anything about fixing the stereo, AC, tailgate wiring, or any other little issues that are still present. No, those sound boring.

Instead, I've wasted more money. Here are some upcoming projects.



Yesterday I grabbed this 8.25 off FB Marketplace. My axle is fine, but this one has a Detroit TrueTrac in it! The seller said it was installed into his '98 last summer and only removed for something beefier, and that all the seals and bearings were replaced at the same time. I did have him open it up to confirm there wasn't an open diff in it.

I plan to check the gear mesh and gear oil condition for peace of mind, then clean and paint it prior to install. Of course, I'll have to swap over my disc brakes as well. Thankfully it's not too rusty for a Michigan axle.



I picked up these fog lights a long time ago. They're original Jeep branded ROL lights, and don't look to have ever been installed. I got them cheap off marketplace. Getting an OEM switch to make them work was the hard part. For some reason I couldn't find a fog light switch at my usual junkyards, they were all either not equipped or had been removed by others. I tried a new yard and got my pick of three different XJs! This one is super clean.

 

So I noticed you don't have factory fog lights in the Jeep.
You might want to give my write up a read about installing them if you haven't figured out how you want to do it already.
The only thing that you will not pay attention too is sourcing the connectors for the factory fog lights that I wrote about.
Guessing you could try to find some of those connectors or just cut them off and wire them straight.
But you might be interested in a couple of the other aspects of using a factory switch.

https://www.cherokeeforum.com/f2/fac...e-them-220836/

 

Ralph, I actually have your how-to bookmarked! I am not sure how I plan to wire them up yet, I may make my own harness, or just buy a cheap relay harness and modify it. I'll probably set them up to come on any time the headlights are on, regardless of low/high beam. Thanks for the link nonetheless!

I gave the axle a once over this afternoon. The gear oil was more glittery than I'd prefer, but I stuck a magnet in the drain pan and couldn't hardly get any metal flakes on it. I also checked the ring and pinion mesh, and while I've never played with a diff before, it looks good to me. I'll chalk up the metallic paint look to resetting a used ring and pinion, and to breaking in a helical gear based differential. Opinions welcome before I swap this thing in!

 

This week I decided to finally get around to fixing some of the things that have been bothering me.

First, I got the AC working again, it's getting too hot to not have it. All it needed was some oil added to the accumulator since I swapped that a while back, and a vacuum and charge. Halfway through the charging process, the clutch stopped engaging. I immediately started going through the electrical system, but turns out it was just the AC clutch being on it's way out.



I pulled the 0.020" shim from behind the pulley, cleaned off the rust, and finished the charge. It's been working well these past few days.

Next project was the trailer wiring harness.



One of the wires had rotten insulation (I believe due to sun damage) and had corroded through. Another didn't look to be far behind. Depinning this thing was a pain, and I had no idea where I'd find another donor connector. Thankfully, I keep just about every wiring harness I've ever come across....


Turns out a WJ power seat harness uses the exact same connector. I depinned it, cut some donor wires, and soldered them in to the trailer hitch harness. Everything should work now!



I got the axle cleaned up a bit soon after I brought it home, but haven't done much with it since.



And this is why - seems the previous owner didn't line up the centering pin and crushed the spring seat a bit, and then cut the hole out larger and used some other means of centering the spring. No thank you.



I cleaned up all the rust off the damaged area.



And laid down some welds to fill it back in. Then the extra bracketry was cut off, and I leveled the surface.



I made a template based on the good side.



Then transferred it over to the damaged side.



After some work with a die grinder, it's got a nice round hole again and should bolt up like stock.

Once it's cleaned and painted, I'm probably going to experiment with a better way to mount the rear brake soft lines.

 

Nice score on the 8.25... It makes you wonder what was going on that they needed the locator hole so far off center.. It couldn't have tracked correctly no matter what the case was..

 

It definitely seems like it could have had a rough life. The sellers Jeep was pretty built, so I was surprised he would have gone for a Truetrac and not something more aggressive.

Worst case, the axle currently under the Jeep is an 8.25 29 spline as well, so if I run into any issues I can always swap the differential over into the current housing.

 

Went for a little adventure the other day. A dirt/gravel road visible from the highway had always made me want to check it out. I finally did and it lead right into a national forest / wilderness area. I didn't realize it was right next to the Appalachian trail too. I'll definitely be coming back.





It doesn't look like much, but there were parts of the trail that were so washed out that 4WD was definitely a need. The limited slip would have helped immensely, but at some point I'm going to need new tires. I'm thinking spring of next year, these still have some miles left in them.

It was also running hotter than I would have liked, so I decided to work on some cooling improvements.


I went with a stock replacement Hayden 2625 fan clutch.



I also picked up a Hayden 678 transmission cooler. The brackets were copied from Outjeepings youtube video on the subject, I couldn't bear to use those through the radiator zip tie mounts.


A little clamp keeps the lines nice and tidy.

The steering on this Jeep has always had a fair bit of slop. When I first bought it with a 2wd axle, one of the ball joint nuts was completely missing. The 4wd axle swap fixed that, but there was still slop in the steering, and the pressure hose was leaking. I kept the steering box and power steering pump off the Green Jeep since they were in good shape and had 100k less miles. With the bumper already off, I was tired of the spare parts taking up space in the garage and went about installing them.


All three mounting bolts sheared off at the spacer when removing it. I cut the spacer off and welded on some nuts to get them out.


I cleaned and painted the steering box black.





The new hoses were from Sunsong - the cheapest on Rockauto.

I have had luck with them in the past but I wouldn't recommend these hoses. In my test fits, the o-rings seemed too large and were getting pinched. More annoying, the steering box end hard lines were not quite exactly like stock, the height before the bends wasn't right. As delivered, the hard lines interfered with each other and couldn't be installed, the return hose was too short and wouldn't thread in with the pressure line installed. I had to do some bending to both the pressure and the return lines to make them fit.

I haven't driven with it yet, I've only bled and burped the system. I didn't realize a completely drained power steering setup would take over a quart of fluid!



And of course, I spent some more time at the junkyard. These are the seat hinges off of a TJ Wrangler. Forward folding seats will give a little more room for sleeping in the back, so I'll swap these onto my WJ seats. I was also lucky to find a 2 door Cherokee, so I grabbed those seat backs and swapped them over to my XJ seat bases. I'm keeping the stock seats around just in case I ever want it to look completely factory.

The next project is going to be addressing my oil pan. It had always had a slight drip from the drain plug, maybe one every few days. After changing the oil... it's now dramatically worse. You can't leave it without a catch bin for 20 minutes without getting a stain on the driveway. This is, needless to say, immensely frustrating since it was a brand new part installed on the engine stand.

 

I kinda did the same thing. I have a lot of experiencing taking '97 and up XJ seats apart. LOL.
One day on Ebay I saw a TJ hinge. And thought to myself that looks a real lot like an XJ one.
So one day a passenger side popped up for about $13. Said screw it and ordered it.

So I played with it with some extra seat parts I had.

I had to put a small slit in the factory seat cover for the little **** cause if I did not felt it would bunch up too much.

But fortunately did not have to punch a small hole in my very expensive CoverKing seat covers.


I did it so I could lean the seat a little more forward just incase I wanted to put something in the Jeep that was longer.
I really hate ratchet straps. LOL.

 

Good to know others want the tilt forward function as well! Unfortunately none of my tilt hinges have the plastic handle covers, the sheet metal is completely exposed. I'm not sure how I'll try to address that.

 

I noticed on Ebay not all did. So I made sure I got one with it.
Plus for Ebay $13 shipped for one was a steal. And I only really wanted one for the passenger side so that worked out.
Every once in awhile I come across the covers on Ebay.
I think the part number is 04796720. Older part number is 4796720.
Most place show it N/A. But some don't.

https://www.moparamerica.com/oem-par...r-****-4796720

https://www.moparfactoryparts.com/oe...QtMGwtbDYtZ2Fz

I am betting they don't have them. Those things probably got lost all the time.
So the price is OK but when I put it in my cart one place wanted almost $10 shipping and the other was almost $21. LOL.
More then happy to keep my eye out for you. But you can do me a favor too.
Post that you are looking for them, if you are of course, on my looking for XJ parts thread.

https://www.cherokeeforum.com/f2/if-...-parts-259817/

This will help me remember and also bump the thread so.........
Oh and just so you know. The part number is the same for 2 door '97 to '01 XJ's and the TJ's.
So if you are in the boneyard again you will know to check out both.