Congrats on getting it out on the trails. Glad to hear you didn't break anything. When I took mine out after long arm swap and an auto locker in the front I broke a tie rod. I was fortunate a guy with a welder happened to ride by, he welded it up for me. I HIGHLY recommend carrying an extra set of tie rod ends with a front locker.

As far as the cat, been there done that. I had to cut a hole in the bottom of the muffler to get all of the catalyst out of it. I wouldn't bother putting a cat in something like the jeep - limited road use and very likely to cave in another cat off-road.

 

Got out for another good weekend in the XJ with my local 4x4 group. Weather was perfect and we did some great wheeling on New Hampshire's class 6 roads. Jeep did great.












I definitely need to move the rear axle back more if I'm going to keep 37's. They rub pretty good on the front of my tube fenders and it restricts a good amount of articulation in the rear.

 

Looks really good with 37s. Is the dog taking all the photos or driving? :-)

 

He never seems to have the attention span to take photos, but also he drives like he's steering with his feet, so I typically let him hang out to be passenger princess.

This was actually the first time I've taken him wheeling. It was funny. Took him about 2 hours to figure out how to not get thrown around, then he did good for awhile, then he got tired and was pretty over it. I normally wouldn't take him for a long day wheeling, but the wife was gone and I was on dog-duty. I really need to build a better platform over my gear in the rear for him to have a more comfortable area. I just had his bed with pillows and blankets piled on top of all my crap. It wasn't the best setup. I felt a bit bad.

 

After the last outing, I found a jam nut had loosened up. I spent awhile tightening them up, which always is way more annoying than I think it should be. Usually I just use a pipe wrench, but this time I bought some crowfoot wrenches to get it done.







Seemed to be working pretty good, until...







You can't tell me I didn't tighten that one.

So, made it work to do the other side







While I was under there, I noticed one of my control arms is bent at the thread. Shouldn't be an issue, but I thought it was interesting.







I changed the front diff fluid again to keep an eye on what's going on in there. Fluid came out pretty rough looking for how few miles it had, plus some good sludge on the magnet.








I will say, the front diff has at least been working well. Despite whatever issues it may or may not have, low gears and front locker have been great.


Got out and did some exploring for a day. Just the dog and I out driving some of the old roads doing some mapping and reporting. One of my favorite things to do.







And last weekend I did something I've wanted to do for awhile. I went to an offroad park for the first time!


Offroad park might be a bit of a stretch for the property that is Mountain Mud Run in Warren, NH, but it was private property wheeling! We got into some really great terrain. I pushed the Jeep probably harder than I ever have before, and it took it (mostly) in stride.















I did have a little oopsie towards the end of the day. Floored the gas up a short steep incline and broke a driveshaft u-joint. My theory is that the axle wrapped up far enough to do this, because there wasn't anything to hit it on where it broke. It was a greasable Spicer joint. I will be replacing it with a non-greasable.





Also, while I was in that boulder field, I abused the hell out of my power steering. Was completely putting my full body weight into trying to turn and really forcing it. I definitely got the system very hot. On my 2 hour drive home, I noticed what sounded like a bearing noise when I was about 10 minutes from home. I thought it was a pulley. A couple hours later I moved the Jeep into the garage, and it promptly vomited the remaining power steering fluid onto the garage floor. Looks like I blew the seal out of the front of the pump. Can't complain that it waited until it was home to have this issue.







And as of today, the snow is flying around here, which means its time to put the Jeep up for the winter and get into working on it. I have a long list of things I'd like to do, but I am going to start by moving my rear axle back another inch. The 37's rub on the tube fenders pretty bad, and I think an inch is all it will take. Of course, that won't be good for axle wrap, so a traction bar is on the list. Unsure if I'll get to it.

Another issue I really need to do something about is my front driveshaft hits my exhaust downpipe when wheeling. Not entirely sure how to handle that right now. Might need to make a custom downpipe.

Hydro assist is also now on my wish list, but good chance that doesn't happen over the winter. I'm going to swap in a WJ power steering pump to replace my now blown pump, and leave it there for now.

I also want to do high clearance inner front fenders, swap in my NP241, actually setup my OBA and lockers nicely, fix up the interior, address about 1000 little issues, and a whole bunch of other things.

I have big dreams, that's for sure. We'll see what I end up actually getting into.

 

Quite the update! Looks like fun. Hope this winter is productive for you. If you're interested I recently bought the stuff for hydro assist and it's on the shelf for now until the stroker is wrapped up. Likely will install this winter too. I went the cheapo route (I'm on 35's and mainly doing it for bump steer elimination purposes). I DO have a blue top ported box also which was not the cheapo route in that regard but otherwise not so bad.I didn't have great experience with the WJ pump but won't try to convince you otherwise - I think some have found success. I'm running the psc pump now and can't complain.

Very recent prices for hydro assist for reference

 

It has been fun! Overall, I'm very satisfied with the results of my axle swap. The Jeep drives better and performs better now than it has in a long time.

Are those part numbers and prices from Surplus Center? I've had a cart going there for awhile. I was pleasantly surprised to see how affordable some of those components are. The box itself is the most problematic part of the equation. I haven't weighed my options of how I am going to get a ported box.

What was your experience with the WJ pump? I've only done a small amount of research on it, so I'm not going to claim to be an expert. How has the PSC pump been better than that? Also how does the PSC pump perform without assist set up? One concern I have going to a bigger pump without a ram on this system is the excess flow will be heated up too quickly because of how much needs to flow through the bypass. Seems like the bigger pump and ram are needed together to keep the system balanced.

 

Yes, surplus center! Sorry.. that would have been helpful info to include.. As for the WJ pump here's the post I did on my build thread so I don't take up too much room on yours.. The PSC pump I got is the OEM Replacement one not the high flow one. AFAIK it's the only available non refurb option for the application. While I have heard that it is slightly "bigger"/more powerful, I have not heard the same concern you mentioned though the logic is sound for the high flow.

 

I did the WJ power steering pump and it is awesome!!! I bought the pumps from Orieylly's and went through 2 of them before getting one where the reservoir didn't leak. It was cavitating and leaking. Once that was good, I absolutely love it. I'm on 33s locked front end. Went from struggling with the steering when you're bound up to being able to turn easily.

I drilled out the orifice, forgot the dimensions but it was just a hair bigger than it came. I've had it for many years now and not one regret.

 

That's encouraging to read! I ordered a used OEM WJ pump off eBay this morning. I read several posts of people saying the same thing you just did; that they had terrible luck with aftermarket pumps. I figure I'll try my luck with a junkyard pump.

I'll drill the orifice out a bit. I've done some reading that that people say 3/16" or 5/32" works well.

 

Now that you have the sizes, I believe I went with the 5/32". Start with the smaller and you can always go up in size but not down lol

There was a website that I used that went over everything and I also think they did the 5/32 drill bit.

 

Preparing for the winter season, the first thing I did was wash the Jeep. I put on old snowboarding gear and a face mask then proceeded to crawl under the rig with my foam cannon and pressure washer. It was 37°F out. I got wet. Not the most pleasant experience, but I'm glad I did it.





Looking at the puddle of power steering fluid that was left on the ground, I could see there was more than just fluid there. Lots of silver and gold flakes.





So, the power steering pump is on the short-list, but I wanted to work on the rear first because I felt I could check all of those items off the list fairly easily. Step one was installed a new gas tank skid. I happened across this Skid Row Offroad skid plate on Facebook marketplace for $150 brand new in the box. Even had the sticker to come with it. These retail for $500. I don't know who is out there paying $500 for a gas tank skid plate, but thank you to whoever did. This is way more robust than the OEM ZJ skid I was running. It fits pretty good and install was easy.







Most of the reason I wanted to look at the rear end is because the tires are rubbing on my tube fenders. My initial thought was to drill a new hole on my leaf perches to move the axle back a bit. After getting in there, I found I was not able to do so, and even if I could, I really don't actually want to.

Tearing into the suspension, I found my front leaf spring bushings were pretty shot. No surprise, I run OEM rubber bushings. I was a bit surprised to find the rear bushings were in great shape. I guess those fancy flex bushings on the Clayton shackles are doing a good job of taking up most of the twist.





I replaced the two front bushings. One went fine, the other one was a problem. Somehow the spring eye on the main leaf had gotten pried open a bit such that the bushing was loose in the spring when at a relaxed state. I tried bending it back into position. No dice. Ended up welding the bushing in. Not thrilled about that and kinda expect all the welds to break the first time it flexes. We'll see. Probably the only fix here is to replace the spring, which sucks.






The springs aren't in great shape anyway. They've taken on quite the "W" shape. I would consider rearching them to bring them back to life, as they are nice springs, but the bushing eye is a problem.







The reason I broke the springs down to just the main leaf was to cycle the suspension and check clearances. I'm glad I did, because I quickly found I do not have the clearance to move the axle rearward. In fact, the diff cover already hits my gas tank skid as it currently sits. Note that the axle is already moved back 1 inch from the OEM position.






It really only needs like a 1/4" to clear, and this only happens at full bump. I actually think it would clear if the gas tank skid was not there. Just the thickness of the skid is the difference between hitting and not.

I decided not to do anything about this right now. The axle will still slide its way up if it needs to, and this condition does not happen often. Really, I just did not want to drop the skid to notch it out because it seemed like a lot of work for not much gain. Add it to the list of lower priority stuff.


I wanted to see for myself where the tires are rubbing, so I put one on and cycled the suspension around.

Full Bump:






I wonder why my springs are W'd...


Another component I was putting eyes on through all of this is my tailpipe, which is super haggard and not looking great. Look at how the bolt from my leaf spring clamps are wearing into the tailpipe. Don't look at my custom hanger extension. Also, the truss hits the tailpipe.






With all of that said, I'm actually quite pleased with how everything fits and cycles. Flexing the rear end, the 37 inch tire fits like a glove in the wheel well. This video is at full shock extension on one side, and very close to full bump on this side. I would've had to have done this a bit differently to put the full weight of the rig on here to get that side to squish the bump stop the last inch.



So really the tire only rubs at the extremes of flex in the current setup with the 10 inch travel shocks. Now, I would like to put longer shocks on it (when I win the Facebook Marketplace lottery), and also do not want to raise the ride height. If anything, I want to lower it. As it sits, I measure about 4.25"-4.5" of lift with 2.5" of up travel until the bump stops touch the frame and 5" of shock travel available. I really can't go any lower on ride height without also removing an equal amount of bump stop, all of which would require reworking my wheel wells to allow the tire to stuff deeper.

This picture has yellow paint pen on the areas that would need to be cut out in order to get another inch of stuff out of the tire. The biggest offender is the tube fender, but really its not that bad. I don't plan on making any modifications to this (yet) because the wheel well mods were fairly recent, but I wanted to get an idea of what it would take.




Note the tire is fairly well centered in the wheel well. I'm pretty happy with how everything came out when I fabricated all of this. It actually fits quite well. The rear suspension is 85% of what I would like it to be, and works pretty good as it is.


While I was going through all of this, I found the issue that led to me breaking the u-joint at my pinion. This is how much misalignment angle the u-joint had before it contacted the thread on the end of my pinion. I could see a gouge in the end of the pinion where the cross of the joint contacted.




I ground down the threads that were sticking out of the nut on the end of the pinion. This u-joint now has much more angle available before it binds.


Feeling content about the rear end, I put everything back together without making any major changes. Felt a little silly doing all that work for really only doing leaf spring bushings, but I did learn a lot. Finished off working on the rear end with a diff fluid change and inspection of the rear end. Confirmed that its still in there. Good! Fluid didn't look too bad. Everything as expected.





Spun the Jeep around to face the other way in the garage. Time to get down on the steering.


Pulled my power steering pump off and quickly found the issue. There was a ton of play in the pulley shaft.



Here's a side-by-side of the XJ pump and WJ pump. They look very similar other than the WJ pump having two return ports on the reservoir.





Flow restrictor size difference between the two. The XJ's restrictor is 0.130". The WJ's is 0.335". I don't really understand why the WJ pump can operate well with the large orifice that those are spec'd to but then whine when people run them on an XJ too large of a restrictor. I followed what many others recommend and used the XJ fitting drilled out to 5/32" (0.156").





The WJ pump bolted right up. The pulley is identical and the high pressure line fits perfect.


Curiosity got the best of me, so I dissected the XJ pump to see what happened. Overall, the internals of the pump looked decent. The only thing that was obviously wrong is the front bearing was well chowdered.





That's where I'm at for now. I ordered a cooler and a filter to install on the system, and also just ordered a rebuild kit for my steering box. Seeing all the metal in the fluid has me concerned about using the box without giving it a thorough cleaning. I considered just flushing fluid through it, but figuring I want to tap it for hydro assist anyway, it feels like I can get two birds stoned at once here. There's a really good youtube video that details rebuilding these step by step. I feel more comfortable tearing into the box after watching the video. We'll see how it goes.

 

Nice work! Nice of you to take the time to write all this up for our enjoyment!

 

great update! I love my WJ power steering pump upgrade. really helped with steering effort.

 

It would be an overstatement to say that I've been very productive on the Jeep this winter, but I've gotten a few things done.

One thing was to create some clearance for my driveshaft against my downpipe. The driveshaft has been hitting the downpipe since the front end swap. Remaking the exhaust seemed like a bit much right now, so I wailed on it with a sledge hammer for awhile. I had a whole setup to do this. I wedged a board between the pipe and the body behind where I was hitting to stop it from moving, and placed a long pipe on two jack stands such that I could hit one end of the pipe with a hammer and the other end of the pipe was hitting the exhaust. It worked well enough. Was a bit tough because I was hitting directly on a welded seam, but I successfully created some clearance without cracking the exhaust. We'll see if this is good enough and if it lasts.






Another thing I needed to do was trim my front fenders more. 37's proved to be a bit much for the trim-job I've had for years. I mangled the fenders up pretty good.







On the bright side, I removed my garden edging fender flares. They've served me well over the years but have become an eyesore. I'll have to figure something out to get flares back on here sooner or later. Fingers crossed I don't get pulled over. I haven't had a valid inspection sticker in like 5 years.

I spent way too long deciding how I wanted to cut the fenders such that they didn't look too ghetto. Mocked up some ideas with tape. Didn't really love any of them. I wanted to keep straight lines in the cuts to match the rear fenders and the body lines of the vehicle, but just making three straight cuts looks rough and removes way more material than is needed. I cut a bit conservatively, leaving some material in the corners with the thought I could always remove more if desired. During this, I also removed my windshield washer fluid reservoir. I'll have to figure out another solution for that.





Also, I guess I don't have any great pictures of this, but I trimmed the front of my rock sliders and rear of my front bumper wings. I found the tires were hitting both of those spots, so those had to get trimmed with the fenders. You can kinda see where I trimmed comparing the previous two photos. After cutting I welded plates back over to seal the rockers up and keep the structure on the bumper.

Through all of this cycling, I was able to get a good understanding of where the tires are hitting under certain conditions. Turning one direction at flex, its the inner fenders. No surprise there. Turning to the other side at flex, the tires hit the shocks. That did surprise me a bit. Nothing I can really do about that as the shock body touches the unibody rail when flexed the other direction. If anything, this really just pushes me towards wanting coil overs as they will package much better. Problem for another year.

The last thing I've been working on throughout all of this is my power steering system. Which, frankly, has been kicking my ***. The pump replacement was easy enough. I then tore the gear box apart for a rebuilt and to port for hydro-assist.


First step was scrub-a-dub-dub. Gross.





The fluid that came out of the box was nasty:







The inside of the box was coated with this disgusting film of slime:







Got it torn down completely and cleaned everything up. Popped some holes in and tapped 1/4 NPT for assist ports.







Resealed, reassembled, repainted, reinstalled. I also plumbed in a cooler and a Magnefine filter.







All seemed to be going well enough, then I blew the seal out of the sector shaft while bleeding







So, back apart the box came. Everything in my life covered in power steering fluid again.


Upon disassembly, I noticed something I hadn't previously. The worm inside the piston has chipped teeth at the end. Unsure when or how this happened. The ball bearings don't ride on this part of the gear, so I decided to just ignore it. Fingers crossed..









The question was "why did the seal blow out?" I had gotten pretty well into bleeding before it happened. It blew out with the engine running when I turned full lock. I had some theories like the filter or a line was clogged, or the high-pressure bypass in the pump was clogged.

I reassembled the gear, this time bypassing the filter and cooler. I also pulled the high-pressure bypass in the pump apart and cleaned it out.

I had another theory at this point. When tapping for assist, one of the ports is very shallow. It requires sending a fairly large thread into a very small port. NPT threads are tapered, so the depth the threads are tapped to is fairly important. And, well, I think I sent the tap a bit too deep on that shallow port. My theory was that the plug I put in the tapped hole was partially blocking the port and restricting flow from one side of the piston to the other. To remedy, I pulled the plug out and cut a thread off of it before reinstalling.

While this seemed to help, I was still experiencing some weird issues. While turning the wheel from side to side rapidly, I could go about a full revolution before I started to feel resistance in the wheel. If I forced through the resistance then let go, the wheel would spring back. If I forced through the resistance and held for a few seconds, the wheel would stay put. It felt to me like there was still a fluid restriction somewhere.

So, out the box came again, for the third time. I tore it down again, noticing this time there was a bunch of Teflon tape all throughout the box. I cleaned it out again and reassembled it again, paying close attention to each step now that I had a good understanding of how it all goes together. The one change I made was to measure the thread depth of the shallow assist port and cut a second thread off of the plug such that I was sure the plug was not restricting the flow of that port at all. I also was careful to not put Teflon tape far enough down on the threads that it would come close to the interrupted threads. I used the tape as well as pipe dope.

Going to reinstall again for the third time, got kicked in the nuts again. I stripped out one of the mounts on the box. Fortunately I was able to tap it to 1/2-13 and could easily drill the mounting hole out to accept the larger bolt.






Got it all squared away again, reinstalled, replumbed, refilled with fluid. Been working on slowly bleeding the system, which has been more troublesome than I would've figured. Maybe the cooler is making it hard to work the air out. I've gone through several rounds of work the wheel back and forth until the level drops, refill, and do again. Haven't quite gotten it to the point where I'm confident in it. The behavior of how its taking fluid has been weird. I don't really know what I'm doing. I'll get there.

Yesterday I noticed this play in the input shaft. Unsure if this is normal or not. Trying to get an answer from the brain-trust.





If I have to pull the box apart again I'm going to scream.