05/11
Got a Hoodlift for my b-day, and love it. If you've got a little change sitting around get one. No more burning your hands trying to get the prop rod in place.

 

10/11
I got a screamin deal on some Hella 500 driving lights. My mind has always debated the thought of a-pillar lights, sooo i devised a plan. I never have fully agreed with the light brackets on the market, so i came up with a design that suited my style. These require no welding as they are one single piece of 1/8" steel each. Along with only drilling the back side of the pillars, then tapping the holes. Then paint, mount, and wire up the harness. Absolutely love these lights, such a great bang for the buck. Plus the location really allows them to flow greatly with minimal glare since my jeep is a dark blue.












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10/11
I had some cheap strobes in the front turn signals, but when i made the l.e.d. signals i moved them to the wheel wells. After a while, for some reason, the bulbs went bad. Thinking on my feet (best way to think) i got two blue l.e.d. strips and wired them to the strobe lights' wiring.

Also, finally mounted my fire extinguisher.

 

11/11

Riddle me this...

One day i chose to do some preventative maintenance (didn't know any better). I installed a flush kit, which is just a flushing tee in the upper radiator hose. This flush kit requires you to hook a garden hose to the tee, then run the vehicle with the water running to flush the system.

Installed the tee, hooked up the water hose, then ran the water to flush it some before cranking. Then cranked it. You ever get that horrible feeling like when your pride and joy runs unbelievably bad, smoking greatly, and spitting water out the exhaust? I did at that moment. I hurriedly un-hooked water hose and thank God after about a minute it returned to running normal sans a little smoke out the tailpipe. Whew, what a scare!

Next chance i got i performed a compression test. The results (only my second time doing this, so...) were pretty good. The best i could tell is cylinders 1-5 were around 120-130 and #6 around 150. Now i know your only suppose to have a certain percent variance between cylinders and i don't think that's within that variance. The engine has 180k on it, runs great except a moderate valve train tap (comes and gos).

Any input would be great. Oh, and its hasn't presented any of those symptoms since then.



Also, replaced my shock bushings as they had deteriorated beyond any usefulness. I gotta give a kudos to Doestch Tech as they sent me new bushings no prob.

 

12/11 Christmas time!

Pics and vids for all

 

1/12

Got some shiny new Chinese tail lights. Lol The Jeep 2500 tail lights to be exact. Quality definitely needs work as well as fitment. In my research for these i didn't know they create an inch gap below the housing.

I had to clearance a couple of the mounting holes on the passenger side housing.

The 2500 housing have a total of four tail/brake light spots (two per side), so i wired in two more tail/brake light bulb sockets. I also put L.E.D. Bulbs in all the tail lights.

A few weeks later i finally dealt with a pesky little problem. In the past one of the mounting "nuts" broke off, so i welded a nut to a washer and welded that combo to the backside of the quarter panel. Hard to get to so my welds SUCKED!

I still plan on adding side marker bulbs, L.E.D. reverse light or bulb, and something special for the turn signals.

They definitely modernize the back end.

 

1/12

Figured my dash needed some sprucing up.



So i thought it best to rip it apart.



That way i could find out what's behind all those gauges, not as interesting as you'd think.



Decided to paint the faces, kidding! They are glow gauge covers, and were tedious to get lined up right.



Got some blue L.E.D. 194 bulbs for the turn signal and high beam indicators. But with the stock green lenses they looked an odd color, so i made some new white lenses. Very happy with this.



The glow gauges make the needles near impossible to read at night so i wired the glow gauge faces so i could still use the factory backlighting to illuminate the needles. But i still wanted those to look nice as well so i put white L.E.D. bulbs in there. Then i learned the L.E.D.s didn't provide enough resistance so i couldn't dim them much at all, that's all the dim-able lights included. I first tried electrical tape on a couple of regular bulbs but that only made it harder to see, due to the smoke coming out of the dash. The fog machine was kinda cool but instead i chose to paint a few bulbs with hi-temp black. I have a combination of 3 L.E.D. bulbs and 2 blacked out bulbs in the cluster.



In the meantime the gauge bezel/trim got cold and turned blue, and i put it all back together. Wired (the correct way, soldered) and assembled.







This shows the L.E.D. back lighting and turn signal/high beam indicators. The back lighting looks blue but is actually a cool white.



And... Here's a video. It was done before the L.E.D. back lighting and turn signal/high beam indicators.

 

02/12
Sick of my terminals looking horrible so i got some new ones.

 

Any updates? this is a sick build