Lol I’m usually too busy breaking what I got to think about fancy upgrades like that hahaha. And if I did that then I’d have to do the rest of the wish list, then the mustang would get jealous.
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Old red was a beast, sadly both those jeeps are dead now, my new ones better equipped but nowhere near as rowdy
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Last week, my buddy who sold me this Jeep had an accident. He had bought a used JK for his girlfriend and was driving on a dirt road doing a shakedown run. He was doing about 40 MPH when the front end locked up on him and he hit the bankment. He rolled the Jeep twice, but luckily only had a bruise from the seatbelt. Come to find out, the Jeep did the same thing to the guy who sold it to him. Worse yet, the guy who sold it to that guy also rolled it, and the passenger was ejected and killed.
Needless to say, my buddy E-Rock and I were shaken by this, and decided to check over our rigs. We went through the upper and lower control arms, transmission crossmember, transmission mounts, Track bar, steering box, pitman arm nut, and steering ball joints. All of them were out of torque spec except the steering ball joints, but those were all missing the cotter pins. Tightening all of this sure quieted down a lot of grunts and groans coming from the Jeep.
After that we were looking at the trackbar bracket and noticed it was a cold weld. So I ground down all of the welds and noticed a couple that were completely broken. Then my buddy went through and re-welded the piece correctly. He also wrapped the welds around the top and bottom, which the previous welds were missing.
The next day I went through and replaced all of my vacuum lines with yellow silicone hoses. When we were working on the header, we cracked a bunch of the old brittle plastic lines. I had ordered the replacement kit a while back, and just now got around to using it.
While we were in there, we looked at the AC and noticed my AC clutch wasn’t engaging. We check the relays, and the AC clutch relay was in the wrong spot, and there was some odd relay hooked up in its place, so we eliminated the unused relay and hooked up the AC clutch relay, but still no luck. We checked the clutch and it wasn’t seized up, so we checked the pressure and there was none. We call up my budd T’ and he came over to give a look. T’ brought a gauge and some refrigerant. Two cans later and the clutch starts to kick in and the Jeep now has AC! That’s a luxury for a Jeep!
Finally, since I had all of the stuff anyway, I decided to give the Jeep a tuneup. I put in new spark plugs, spark plug wires, distributor cap, and rotor. The stuff that came out of there may well have been the original plugs. Finally, I took out my front driveshaft to take it down and get balanced. Now this bad boy is running terrific!
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Holy crap! At least your buddy is ok. It’s amazing some of the hoaky crap people do. I do alot if alignment front end checks on insurance rebuilds, its amazing what some rebuilders try to sneak through and what the inspector sneaks through
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wow nice work Mr.X I am a hesitant mechanic.
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My daughter told me the other day, “that Jeep has changed you. You never used to work on cars.” Its been a pretty fun hobby, but I’m pretty sure its 90% wrenching and 10% wheeling.
I still have front shocks and bump stops to put on, and I just dropped $330 on a full set of unibody stiffeners. Next on my list is a $900 roll cage. Not to mention a few smaller things I need to do like my steering box, rear main seal, etc…
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Just
Empty
Every
Pocket
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This is awesome, good job on the rebuild.
I have a 2004 Sierra diesel that is sitting in my driveway waiting for motivation to hit and be turned into an offroad camping machine. Have the rooftop tent too, and racks, and all the parts pretty much. Needs lots (oil rig lease return) but the duramax/allison are in excellent shape, and I got it for a song.
You are an inspiration. I think I’ll start soon 
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Smart move Reiko! Safety first!
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Took the Jeep out camping this weekend. I needed a new battery, so got a nice Optima yellow top battery for it. It did very well despite overheating on the way home.
It was very wet out there, saw many mushrooms. Like most of the things here in the desert many of them are poisonous.
Some of the next things I plan on doing:
[ul]
*Radiator flush
*Front shocks & bump stops
*Fix exhaust and leaf spring bushing
*Throttle body kit
*Frame stiffeners
[/ul]
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Is that a 4.0 liter inline 6? Believe it is. One of the best “work horse” engines out there. They keep going, and going, and going… 
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It sure is, with the 4.56 gears in back it has the torque for crawling up hills nice and steady.
I’ve been checking out this company EV-West lately who sells electric motor conversions. With the way the torque curve is on the electric motors, it would be perfect for rock crawling, but it would have to be a “trailer queen”.
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Ya,… What would be the initial investment?
Their kit for a VW beetle starts at $16K…
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So would a disgusting monster turbodiesel caterpillar puking out soot! 
A nice all-aluminum setup with about 1500 ft lb… do wheelies to the grocery store. 
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It’s been almost a year since I last worked on the Jeep. Between rebuilding my workshop, COVID-19, and my buddy doing an LS swap on his Jeep, not much has been done. I’ve only used the Jeep to go to the drive-in movies and driving in inclement weather. So a few months back I was driving the Jeep and it sounded like a rock popped up and hit my rear end, a couple weeks I heard it again. Now, I park my Jeep on rocks and it has mud terrain tires on it, so I just blew it off as a rock. A couple of weeks ago, I was backing into my driveway and the Jeep stuttered, but made it into the driveway.
Well, last week it snowed and I was going to take the Jeep to the store. I made it to the bottom of my street, and as I turned the corner the rear tires locked up on me. I could back up a couple of feet and it would lock up, then go forward and it would do the same thing. So I called my buddy from up the street and we disconnected the rear drive shaft. The Jeep was still jammed up, so we decided to bust it loose by towing it back. It stayed parked while we had a whole winter’s worth of snow in one week.
Saturday was a beautiful day, so we decided to crack open the rear differential and see what happened. There was gear oil in the differential, but it was dirty with lots of metal shavings in it. On closer inspection, we noticed two of the bolts holding on the ring gear had snapped off. So much for the rock theory. The head of the bolt was clearly what had broken off. We looked closely at the ring gear, and it seemed like my gears were in good shape. It looked like all we needed to do was extract the broken bolts and replace them. So we decided to pull a bolt so we knew what size to get, that’s when we noticed that every single one of the bolts connecting the ring gear were stripped. Looks like we are going to need to replace the ring and pinion. Fortunately the ARB locker is undamaged, that’s $1000 alone. These are what the bolt heads looked like.
We tightened up the bolts on the ring gear and reconnected the drive shaft. This was good enough to get the Jeep back into my driveway. We put it up on jack stands and pulled the rear end. Since we had the rear end off, my buddy talked me into getting some new leaf springs for the rear, something that needed replacement. The front of the Jeep has a 8.5" lift, but the rear only has a 2" lift. So, I ordered up a pair 4.5" Rubicon Express leaf springs and some shock relocation brackets. This weekend we are going to re-build the rear end of the Jeep. We may even get around to welding up the frame stiffeners. I’ll try and remember to take a picture or two.
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Hahaha brutal! I’m honestly surprised I’ve never blown my rear end up. I think my front diff is on its way out though.
I’ve heard you can swap an explorer diff into them, they’re supposed to be stronger and you get the huge bonus of rear disc brakes…incase you havnt figured out jeep brakes are garbage lol
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Thanks for stopping by… been way too long since we worked on the Jeep.
The Jeep already has the rear disc conversion. You can sort of make them out in the picture. Those sure are Explorer disc brakes on the rear end.
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Haha you’re right, I definetly didn’t look close enough! Thats one of the main thing I want to do on mine. But my mustang is taking priority this year. It needs paint before it dies
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Dude you lucked out BIGTIME with your locker not being damaged .
I have had 2 different Jeeps as my daily driver for 8 years now. First was a 2013 Sahara and the current one I traded the Sahara in for new in 2015. Both have the Penta star and both have been 6 speed manuals. ( I have never owned an auto ) The 2015 is a Willys edition so it has been much better offroad then the 3.21 geared grocery getter ( Sahara ) The Sahara had 120 000 km when I traded it in and the Willys just passed 160 000 km yesterday and I can say I do not have a single mechanical complaint . The drivetrain in both have been top notch. Only issues I really had was with some of the stupid electronic stuff on the sahara.
My Jeep is stock as tbh isn’t anywhere here I can’t go in it and I am not made of money. Lockers are about the only upgrade I can even think of have a need for. Just have the LSD in the rear diff atm.
Anyway I love my Jeep and can’t imagine owning any other vehicle. The new ones are crazy expensive and come with a ridiculous amount of useless bells and whistles.
Those XJs are beasts
Had to edit the post because I forgot my favorite thing about my jeep. With the 6 speed set up with the lower gearing I average 650-700 km to a tank. My buddy with the old engine in his 2010 is lucky to get 450 km . Oh and I have almost 100 more horses lol
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