Around here the police don't harass us too bad about flares and flaps. I did get pulled over once by a university cop for flares, but I don't hear many people having problems. However, the inspection stations have really cracked down over the last few years. I think they are under a lot of pressure and liability these days now that everything is recorded. Nobody wanted to touched my Jeep with a sticker last time I tried (until I found the right person).

Its pretty common to find for pipe insulation (cylindrical shape with a slit to slide over a pipe), but is harder to find in sheets.

 

I'm happy to report the Jeep has been being used and abused a good amount recently! Definitely a lot of clunks, bangs, squeaks, squawks, and every other noise under the sun, not to mention wires hanging from the ceiling, unidentified smells, broken plastic, flaking paint, and a sore back, but I've been having fun!




Our annual overlanding/camping/drinking trip was quickly approaching. Our plan was to get up to Nova Scotia and drive the Cabot Trail Dual Sport & Adventure Guide and do some backcountry camping. Truthfully I was a bit nervous about the plan because it was about 2000 miles roundtrip. I wasn't sure the Jeep was up for that trip, but was willing to send it anyway!

I had a few things to take care of before the trip. First was my failing wheel bearings. I replaced both front wheel bearings, and one of the front axle side u-joints. After digging out all of my parts I had quite the pile lol





I also was bored (apparently) and hadn't used my welder in awhile, so I made these jerry can holders out of some scrap I had laying around. When I envisioned them, I pictured them angling outward because they tucked into the tire carrier nicely that way. Would've given a better view of my tail lights and had a lower center of gravity, but it didn't look nearly as nice in reality as It did in my head.







The can holders turned into more of a project than I anticipated, especially considering that I'll use them maybe once a year, but it was fun. Definitely nice to not carry them inside.


Before going to Nova Scotia, I was feeling like I did not want to go there on my 35's. Its just a lot of pavement on expensive mud terrain tires, and very taxing on the Jeep to push these around. A friend of mine offered to let me borrow his 31" all terrains for the trip, which I thought would've been very nice to use instead. Well, fortunately and unfortunately, they didn't fit. His wheels didn't clear my calipers in the rear. Unfortunately because I couldn't use them. Fortunately because it looked way goofier than I thought it would






One of the last things I did before the trip was finally get a robust nav setup. Too many years I've dealt with my phone just floating around, falling off my crappy mount, stuck under the seat, etc. I moved my RAM mount off my bike and onto the Jeep, and also added a mounted tablet to my setup. I LOVE the nav setup. I have been using it even more than I thought I would. On my trip I ran Gaia and Avenza simultaneously side by side which was very nice because each app serves a different purpose so having them both available without having to toggle back and forth was great. The mounts are both sturdy enough so that they don't vibrate and nothing fell out/moved even when wheeling.







So finally after months of researching and planning to get to Nova Scotia, the time had arrived. However, mother nature had different plans. There was a hurricane blasting straight up the butthole of Nova Scotia the day we were supposed to arrive there. We watched the weather very closely for days leading up to our departure, and ultimately decided it would be irresponsible for us to go there during that time. It was a tough decision, but probably for the better.

So I dug out some of my previously made/downloaded routes and marked campsites and threw together a Vermont trip in a few days. It was a bit clunky, but we did some awesome camping and had a great week. Covered about 800 miles, many of them off pavement. Got into some pretty remote territory and places not many people go. Drank many beers and had many laughs around the fire. Jeep did awesome, for the most part. The biggest issue was I overloaded the crap out of it when we first left. These new leaf springs are certainly softer than the other ones, plus hanging a spare tire and 10 gallons of fuel off the back, 100 L of full coolers, a large EZ-up canopy, plus a ton of other gear paired with slightly aired down tires and no sway bar had my Jeep feeling really scary. Honestly hard to keep on the road at normal speeds. I ended up throwing some weight in my buddy's truck, which made a significant difference. Lesson learned there. Gotta find a way to keep some weight farther forward.













One thing is for certain, I NEED deeper gears and bigger brakes. It has to happen this winter. After asking a lot of my Jeep on this trip pushing 35's and all that weight, I am very motivated to make it happen. I've got a ton of parts laying around, time to get the Jeep back in the garage and get to work.

 

 

scammer

 

Bots, They search forums, use keywords and then make random posts. all of their posts have spam links in em.

 

What its 2014 again? Or the forumn is the scammer itself

 

I regret what I once typed way back then - what was I thinking!?

Also - weird.

 

LOL no worries. You weren't wrong. I definitely hacked up what was a pretty clean nice looking rig. See many people go down the path that I've gone down and not seen it through resulting in the meaningless destruction of another XJ. The weird part is that my memory was jogged enough by that comment to go back and look for your comment from almost 10 years ago. Apparently you struck a chord back then haha.


That makes sense. I didn't think about the small barely visible links at the bottom of that post.

 

Well, over a year since I wrote that and it still hasn't happened. Plenty of good stuff has been happening with the rig though. Let's catch up.

Early November last year I got working on my JK 44 axles to put under the XJ. Step one was removing brackets. I had recently bought a plasma cutter which made this a piece of cake.






On the front axle, I unfortunately had to hack up some work that was already done to make it work for me. The coil buckets on the JK are wider than the XJ, so those had to come off, as well as some of the truss to make room to move them in. Also the track bar bracket and C gussets came off. It wasn't pretty.





Continuing with the theme of hacking into this axle I spent a ton of money on, the next thing I did was turn the inner C's. The JK axles only have about 6 degrees of separation between the pinion and caster angle, which is not nearly enough. I ground out the weld and wailed on them with a hammer until I got another 6 degrees out of it for a total of 12 degrees of separation. This was scary, but really wasn't so bad once I got into it.








I then proceeded to pull my dana 30 out for what I thought would be the last time and got the 44 placed under the rig.









I was feeling like that axle looks right at home under there. My long arms nearly bolted up. The upper control arm brackets are in the same location on this axle as the 30, and the lowers are very close, just angled wrong a bit.

It was during this time I realized every joint and bushing on my front end was smoked. The jam nut on my track bar was completely loose and the flex joints on my long arms had a good 1/4"-1/2" of play in them. Needless to say, everything needed some R&R.

I contacted TnT about getting some rebuild parts for my long arms. They proceeded to tell me my kit is VERY old and obsolete. I ended up sending them to TnT where they cut both ends off the arms and welded on new bushings and flex joints with updated versions. This took awhile and was not cheap. In hindsight, I wish I had just built a 3 link instead, but I wasn't prepared to tackle that project.

While those were gone, I added some fish plates over the seams in my frame stiffeners. This is something that I had been thinking about for awhile.







Started mocking up my steering links. Reamed my pitman arm for GM 1 ton taper. At this point the plan was to use 1.5"x.250 DOM and RuffStuff offset 1 ton TRE's for the tie rod, and the usual 1 ton TRE's for the drag link.






During this time I did a transmission and transfer case fluid change, as well as cleaned a lot of the gunk from my engine bay and undercarriage,


After getting my arms back, I had decided the OEM control arms brackets were not going to work. I ordered some Artec 10 degree lower brackets and got those on.






Checking clearances, I noted my control arms were interfering with the lips that point inwards on the unibody, so I cut them off and plated over them










I had made up some steering links and coil brackets. I was trying to keep the coils in front of the axle tube like they are from factory, but that didn't work at all. Here are some pictures of me foolishly thinking I could get a track bar in there somehow.

Impressed myself with the TIG welder while burning this bung into the knuckle.










Yeah, that didn't work at all. I ended up buying the Artec coil buckets which put the coil springs right over the top of the axle tube. That gave me more clearance for a track bar bracket.






So, by this point it was late April and I was realizing this project was not going to be done soon. I decided to abort the axle swap project for the moment and put my Dana 30 back in so I could wheel the Jeep for the season instead of spending all summer working on it.

I had some pretty gnarly rubbing going on ever since lowering my lift down a little. I added another hockey puck onto my bump stops, and I took the opportunity to clearance my bumper and inner fenders a bit. I cut the bumper back, and I beat the inner fenders with a sledge hammer until I was dripping sweat. It made a good difference. I also heated the bottom corner of my washer fluid reservoir and reformed it slightly to get another 1/2" of clearance from it. I'll relocate it eventually.

Something I thought was crazy was how far laterally offset the axle moved when it was drooped out. I can't believe I've gotten away with running this setup for as long as I have. Don't let anyone ever tell you that you need to do an axle swap to do cool stuff.















During the process of preparing for the new axle, I had converted my shocks from bar pin style to regular bushings. To get the dana 30 back in, I made some bar pin eliminators, but this made my shocks too long, I ended up removing the OEM shock brackets and made these custom ones which sit lower.







With that, I got her going again and was itching to do some wheeling. As things go, I ended up with a seized caliper first trip out lol






To be continued...

 

Thanks for the motivation to get out there and work on my pig. I am in process of installing the front frame stiffeners and it's not the funniest of work.

 

I have memories of frame stiffeners being one of the worst jobs I've done. Just gotta push through. Its worth it.

 

Continued through the summer doing plenty of wheeling! I've gotten pretty involved with my local group, ExploringNH, and primarily the mapping group within ENH. The places we wheel are a bit unique compared to most other states. In New Hampshire and Vermont, there is no law which automatically discontinues roads after a certain period of time without being used. The result of that is a network of old roads that are quite literally old wagon paths that were created in the 1700s-1800s. Many of them are simply two-track dirt roads through the woods that still see some traffic. Others are completely grown in with trees in the middle and have been completely consumed by nature. The best ones, however, have erosion damage that expose rock and create gnarly washouts. This is what people tend to hunt for, and there is some pretty solid terrain out there on what are legally considered roads.

These fall under the legal designation of Class 4 roads in Vermont, and Class 6 roads in New Hampshire. I've become quite an enthusiast of these old roads. Not just for wheeling, but also from an exploring and history aspect. The roads are frequently lined with stone fences and there are many old stone foundations and remnants of long abandoned homesteads. There's a ton of history to be found out on the old roads. Something tough about them is that they largely exist because they have been legally forgotten about. In New Hampshire, there is no true source which has information and maps for all class 6 roads. Everything is on a town by town basis, and some towns are better about documenting than others. Many roads have legal disputes regarding ownership and usage. Many people want to see the roads closed because they cause more headache than benefit. I've gotten quite into mapping these old roads and reporting on them in our group's internal forum. Its a fun way to get out and see places that many others don't get to see, and makes me feel like I'm part of something bigger by working to share info about the roads.

So that's really what I'm building this rig for, is to get out and explore these old roads. There are not a ton of places that offer very extreme obstacles, so I don't want to over build my rig so that the terrain we do have is boring. I'm still leaning towards sticking with 35" tires after the axle swap is done for that reason, but the allure of 37's is strong. I need this rig to be very streetable and still want to be able to take it on 1000+ mile road trips.



So got out a bunch in the summer and did some scouting. Also went to the group's annual season kickoff wheeling trip and had a great day on some of the more challenging terrain in NH. I was finally able to get my air conditioning fixed, which was an absolute godsend to enjoying a hot day in the Jeep. I never realized how much having the sunroof helped to move some air through the cab. I'm still glad I deleted it, but having air conditioning is important.





After a month or so of enjoying cold air, my AC compressor pulley bearing starting growling again. Ended up buying a replacement pulley and clutch kit. All was well after replacing that.







I bent my winch roller fairlead (again) because I kept driving into rocks. I replaced it with an iron hawse fairlead, which Warn says is good to use with steel cable. This has much better clearance and looks way better.







To be continued... again..

 

Ended up finding my exhaust manifold cracked, and also my passenger side upper control arm bracket tearing off, again. This time I spent 2 hours fixing it rather than 1, so it came out a bit better. I didn't do anything about the manifold at this point because it wasn't affecting me at the time.







About this time in August I was preparing for our annual overlanding trip. Nova Scotia was back on for this year after getting denied by a hurricane the year prior. Honestly, I was not feeling overly confident about driving the XJ 1000 miles up into Canada and back. The rig had been performing well recently, but not that well. I was just gonna send it and hope for the best.

I guess the Jeep had other plans. A week or so before we were planning on leaving, the rig developed a pretty significant vibration that I tried to resolve but ultimately ran out of time and I had to make the decision to ride passenger for the week rather than take the Jeep. After all was said and done, I think I had way more fun being passenger princess with my buddies rather than driving the XJ. Plus I drank way more beers lol.

The Nova Scotia trip was unreal. I felt pretty proud of us for finding our way and succeeding doing an overland trip in such an unfamiliar area. We went up to the very northern tip of Cape Breton Island at a spot called Meat Cove. Essentially the end of the road. We also were planning on going down to the southern end of Nova Scotia and ferrying back to Bar Harbor, but the ferry was canceled because of rough seas, so we had to pound pavement all the way around again. I still have a ton of photos that I haven't edited, but here are a handful that I do have












To be continued... again...




again...

 

After getting back from Nova Scotia, I ended up diagnosing that my rear driveshaft was bent. How? Couldn't tell you. It didn't have any scrapes from rocks or anything. Maybe a log? Ended up having my driveshaft guy replace the splined section.


While diagnosing, I checked if my axle shafts were bent. Check out how much runout there is by seeing the caliper move back and forth.


Replacing the driveshaft fixed the vibrations. The bent shaft flanges don't seem to cause too much trouble.

Got back out for some wheeling!




This year I went to a Vermont wheeling/overlanding event called The Pilgrimage. Its really just a campground takeover by a ton of people who like wheeling, and you get provided maps of VT class 4 roads. Everyone breaks out into groups and goes hard for the weekend. It was my first time going and I was fortunate enough to go with a great group of people who were well involved and connected with the community. It was an absolute blast and I beat the crap out of my rig.

 

My Jeep survived The Pilgrimage, but definitely took a battering. I annihilated my exhaust. Muffler was pretty smoked, cat and muffler were touching the floor, and my exhaust manifold leak had gone from not really a problem to is definitely a problem.




The muffler touching the floor set the insulation on fire. Was driving home from what I had said would be the last outing of the year. After going up a long hill I was quickly overwhelmed with a burning rubber smell and the cab filling with smoke. I pulled over quickly and started tearing all my crap out. I was able to snuff out the smoldering insulation without trouble, but it was a scary moment indeed. Had to stop a couple more times on the way home to let stuff cool off. Pulled into the driveway with the rig literally smoking on the inside. I was ready to call it for the season lol.

So I washed it one last time, then moved the Jeep into the garage for build season. First things first: remove the dana 30 front axle for the last time again.





Knowing I was going to replace my manifold, I also replaced my motor mounts, trans mount, and exhaust hangers. I used a Mopar trans mount.







The center exhaust hanger next to the transmission mount is an obsolete part. I drilled the rivets out and replaced the rubber block with part DEA A5208 / 53000101, which I had to modify to fit. I used #10 screws to put it back together. Pretty simple way of refreshing that hanger and getting the exhaust pipe away from the crossmember by holding it slightly higher.









I pulled my whole exhaust system out from the block back. The muffler had a huge hole in the top, and the manifold was very broken at the collector. 4 of the 6 runners were also cracked.










I debated for awhile which manifold to use for replacement. Seems like the cheaper ones can be so hit or miss, so I ended up buying a Banks. I won't lie, I've always thought the idea of doing a header is pretty cool. These weren't cheap, and they really won't gain my anything, but they are shiny, came with a cool sticker, and hopefully will make me feel better that they wont crack. I really wanted to get the aFe manifold, but they're real proud of that product.