A little 2001 XJ refresh
 

Hey guys, this is my first post though I've been lurking here for a while looking for tips on upgrades and gremlin fixes. :cheers:

My wife and I recently decided to fix up her 2001 XJ since we like to go camping and MTB riding a lot. It's got just over 100,000 miles on it, and was in generally good shape other than a few minor issues and a previous cheap paint job that didn't hold up very well.

The plan is ultimately to do a mild setup with 3" of lift to fit some 31's, fix all of the little gremlins it's got and then a budget paint job.

Here are a few 'before' pics from a camping trip we did a few months back.

This past weekend we did a couple of marathon days working on the XJ. My wife is awesome and helped a LOT with all of the work.

We installed Rusty's 3" lift kit with new leaf packs, LCAs, JKS discos, removed the rear swaybar, and in another day or two will be installing an adjustable trac bar and new steering stabilizer (once they arrive).

Check out what we found when we removed the rear shocks. One of them was dents, BENT and pretty much seized. :icon_eek:

The install took longer than expected (of course :laughing: ) and we hit a few snags, but it seems like we had much better luck than a lot of you judging by everyones' install nightmare stories. We broke a wheel stud, broke a couple tools, and busted a few knuckles but all in all it went relatively smoothly. We both couldn't believe how sore we were after two straight days in the driveway under the Jeep!

Here are a couple of quick pics with everything installed. I'm hoping the rear settles a bit so that it levels out. Seems like a lot of posts mention that it will, so I'm hopeful.

The tires are 31x10.5x15 Goodyear Duratracs. So far these are great, I was worried they'd be really loud but they're actually quieter than the worn Wranglers that were on the Jeep before! Can't wait to actually get them dirty.

Next project is going to be a new fuel pump, since we've been having to "ghetto prime" the thing for a while now. Once a few more small details are settled it'll be off to Maaco for a cheap paint job. I'm going to strip off most of the trim and do some prep myself so there will be less opportunity for them to get overspray on everything with a crap masking job.

We've also got some 1.25" wheel spacers on the way to widen the stance a bit.

One small oddity... I haven't gotten around to changing the speedo gear yet to account for the new tires, but I figured I'd use the GPS on my phone to see just how far off it is. Well according to the GPS the speedo is actually almost right on! I never checked it before but never noticed it was very far off or anything. Strange. Anyone ever have something similar happen?