4-cylinder cross country crawler build

I personally wouldn’t mess with the short arm geometry stuff. If you’re getting bad behavior from the rear then I would fix it the right way with a midarm.

Darn. One day when I don’t live in an apartment, only have a flux welder, and have 3k to spend I’ll be more than happy to go mid arm but I think I’m stuck on the short arms for now even if it hops a bit.
 
I got to check it out. My biggest fear with building is working around the 4cyl or eventually 4.0 or ls swapping and having the support for either. So it’ll be nice to see another 4 cyl thought process.

If you are going to swap don't do a 4.0 as it isn't worth the time or effort.

I ran 35's with 4.88 gears because that was the lowest you could get at the time. With 5.13 gears now available if I was doing a gear swap for 35" tires it'd be 5.13 for sure.
Now as for engine swaps go it depends on how much you're planning on spending and what your ultimate goal is. The cheaper way to go is a Dodge magnum V-8. Then next is either a Hemi or LS but they are more spendy. I've known guys to do the magnum swaps for under $1K after selling off the donor rig.

I ran the 4cyl for 4 years before I swapped in a magnum 5.2 and drove it for 6 years before I had engine issues. Now I've got a magnum 5.9 with a stroker kit making it a 6.7 that is going into mine.

Great job on the rig so far.
 
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If you are going to swap don't do a 4.0 as it isn't worth the time or effort.

I ran 35's with 4.88 gears because that was the lowest you could get at the time. With 5.13 gears now available if I was doing a gear swap for 35" tires it'd be 5.13 for sure.
Now as for engine swaps go it depends on how much you're planning on spending and what your ultimate goal is. The cheaper way to go is a Dodge magnum V-8. Then next is either a Hemi or LS but they are more spendy. I've known guys to do the magnum swaps for under $1K after selling off the donor rig.

I ran the 4cyl for 4 years before I swapped in a magnum 5.2 and drove it for 6 years before I had engine issues. Now I've got a magnum 5.9 with a stroker kit making it a 6.7 that is going into mine.

Great job on the rig so far.

Thanks, I like the idea of keeping the 4cyl as it’s super simple, reliable and I get 20mpg as it sits. The appeal to a 4.0 was to keep all the stock ish parts and maybe cheaper if I could find the whole jeep and swap everything I need but I’ve always said with the 4cyl it would be easier to ls swap. If I did ls I wouldn’t want to push power just reliability and make things as simple as I can. Who knows when it how much I’d have as that’s a way down the road thing.
 
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Thanks, I like the idea of keeping the 4cyl as it’s super simple, reliable and I get 20mpg as it sits. The appeal to a 4.0 was to keep all the stock ish parts and maybe cheaper if I could find the whole jeep and swap everything I need but I’ve always said with the 4cyl it would be easier to ls swap. If I did ls I wouldn’t want to push power just reliability and make things as simple as I can. Who knows when it how much I’d have as that’s a way down the road thing.

While the 4 cyl isn't a power house as you've learned it can get you there and back. I use to commute over Snoqualmie pass weekly in mine. As others will tell you gearing is the #1 thing to running a 4 cyl. The only reason I'd swapped to the V-8 was I'd originally planned on towing a trailer and wanted the power. My rig sort of morphed after that.

If you ever get to the point of deciding to do a swap and want to keep it simple then look into the Dodge magnum V-8. Yes they aren't newer tech like the LS but what's nice is blending the two wiring harnesses together is easy and the V-8 PCM will talk to your stock dash. When done right they can look like they came from the factory that way. I've a got a 97 Ram pickup with a 5.2 in it with 238,000 miles on it.
 
Finally got time to finish up some jeep stuff. First being my rear bump stops and shocks. After a long day of having the wrong bolts and biking to my hardware store I was able to get them in. The upper bumps were fine but they were a different thread pattern since I did the spring relocation, thus the bike to ace for new bolts. For the lower bumps I had to weld on a nut to the top side of the pad. The lower pad was also cut out and had a new pad welded on when I did the relocations on top, the only problem was the pads on the bottom had a giant hole in the middle where I was suppose to drill and tap for the bolts. Just big enough to not be able to tap threads in but not big enough to recess a 1/2in thread nut into. Thank fully the added height of a .25in nut balanced out my bumps perfectly for the height loss of putting new lower pads on that were not stock. As they sit, I have 4in of space to the tip of bump to bump with 4.5in of shock shaft in the rear. After more measuring my front end sits .5in higher than my back so they have exactly the same amount of bump with the back sitting a half inch lower than the front. Super happy with the travel number as both are set very close to 50/50 travel split. Rear: 4.5in of up travel and 4.5in of down for an exact 50/50 on the 9in travel shock. Front: 5in of up travel and 5.75 of down travel which is very good with the limits of not out boarding the shocks and keeping the front and back very level. Second being my transmission output shaft seal. I did it once this past Tuesday and immediately it started to leak again so I think the outer part of the seal that is pressed into the housing was leaking so I took the time again today to pull it back out and put a small bead of rtv on it. It’s currently curing as I type this before I test it out. Some small things: ordered new horns since mine didn’t work. Come to learn that my rusted old horns were fine and isn’t the source of my problems so maybe my clock spring or something. I also ordered a new mopar iac sensor as my idle has been very high and inconsistent but rock auto sent me the wrong part that was also already opened and had swapped the new screws with rusted ones. Not excited about returning that but I’m not letting a 115 dollar sensor be not used by charged ti my account. Really hoping this seal is fixed so I can get out and wheel before the snow starts.

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Little late but was able to get out and test the new shocks and bump and man are they good. Gas charged ride much better than what ever non gas Ranchos I had on before. Flexed out amazing with about .25in of shock shaft showing left once on the bumps. The fronts stuff decently in the fenders with prob another inch of down travel that isn’t being used bc of the stock control arms. The rears have more room for when I finally get some currie springs and do an outboard to get a little bit more travel in both directions. Thankfully the metalcloak coils in the rear don’t bind at full bump with these shocks and bumps but they will be replaced with currie coils at some point non the less. As far as capability goes the flex is enough to keep all the tires on the ground for all the obstacles so I only had one instance of wheel spin in the rear climbing a pretty steep undercut. Sadly I found out my front drive shaft has a decent amount of play at the double cardan joint. Pretty tempted to get a toms woods after reading about the 33s vs 35s build thread where it should be a good time to replace it while it’s bad. So a drive shaft is on the priority with control arms and swayloc being behind it.

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Progress this week. First thing was I found a used rd105 arb air locker for a super 35. The spider gears need replaced and the shafts it came with are the alloy brand which arnt the same chromoly as the revolution so the spot where the bearing rides is pretty worn down on one side so I will prob keep those as just a back up. Still for the price it was cheaper to get this than buying a new one. When money allows I’ll be buying a front arb and compressor when they go on sale together and re gearing to 5.13 as I am stock 4.10 now. Super exited to be locked and regear but it’s a lot of money I don’t have since my wife and I are trying to save to buy her a car. Secondly after installing my transmission rear main seal and taking the driveshafts out I noticed the front shaft had a ton of play. It’s my fault too bc my stock front one I rebuilt with spicer joints were greasable and had the grease fittings on the end caps but that wouldn’t fit with the snap rings so highschool me just ended up taking the fittings off so I just had holes right into the caps. It is what it is so I figured this was a great time to get a Tom woods, especially after reading the 33vs35s thread a few weeks back lol. I also thought this would be a good time to swap back to a genuine mopar transmission mount as this past summer I tried a ucf low pro mount in hopes to go to a 1in deep skid before a body mount lift but it was just too much for a daily so I swapped back to stock ( $15 anchor brand mount ) and it still wasn’t as great as I remembered but lived with it till now where temps are much colder and that anchor rubber it rock hard. So new front drive shaft and the mopar mount, it’s a world of a difference better and working great for 4wd now that snow has been coming down almost every day here in eastern idaho.
Things to work on next are my cheap Amazon halo headlights have been giving me problems so it’s time to swap them with truck light Amazon knock offs and get away from the halo ring as well as the clock spring since my airbag light is on and my horn doesn’t work. Also forgot my cheap door handles have given me problems where the lever for the handle it’s self has inverted over the pin to open the door from the outside and I ended up just smashing the lever further down to prevent that as well as the door latch actuator assembly that all the rods connect to broke for the outside latch so I has to use tie wire to tie the rod to the lever on the assembly. It’s opens now but I’ll be replacing the door handles with some that have a better design lever soon just to make sure it doesn’t happen. Wife and I also got out and chopped our Christmas tree this past weekend with no front drive shaft in.
Another side note that doesn’t involve the jeep but my personal skills is my friends fzj80 didn’t have 3rd row seats when he bought it but really wanted some. So after buying some seating that didn’t have brackets and we’re never to be seen to purchase oem brackets or even get photos, we decided to just build a super easy bracket. We designed, built, and installed it in 1.5 days which I thought was pretty good as well as the cost was 55 bucks. I basically designed the whole thing so it’s ok to critique it but I didn’t weld it together. It was a lot of since it got us the confidence to maybe build me a tire carrier soon.

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The rear axles are most likely 4340 and with the type of bearings used on a Dana 35 you need 1541 instead or you get the results you see. If you do some searching there are some threads about this.
 
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The rear axles are most likely 4340 and with the type of bearings used on a Dana 35 you need 1541 instead or you get the results you see. If you do some searching there are some threads about this.

Yup they are. I was expecting that too but hoping I could run them for a bit since the photos he sent they didn’t seem bad but one is for sure pretty bad so some revolution 1541h shafts are on the list.
 
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It’s been awhile and things have moved along. Since the fall I bought a used arb super 35 with chromo shafts. The spider gears need replaced and shafts are the wrong heat treading so I’ll be keeping it for back up parts if in a pinch but will still buy a new arb super 35 and arb 27 spline Dana 30 come spring if I have the financing. Planning on going 5.13 as I hope to one day run 35s even tho I’ve gotten used to my 4.10 on 33s I’m a little worried about being over geared since I’ve never ridden in a properly regeared jeep. I’ll expect my 20 mpg will go down with deeper gears. I also have gotten an auxbeam 8 gang switch pannel and have it on my 67d phone mount system, with the goal of putting a few more things on this. Personally I really like it and think it’ll make wiring and organizing other stuff a little easier than a rats nest under the hood. I also had the ability to get the arb compressor and have it wired up to my switch panel. Have a single air line for my tires which is a huge step as I have never aired down for wheeling since I never had any means of airing back up. In this time i got a car for my wife (2008 Honda civic) for a great price where I live but that has taken all the money as now I need to save for summer tires because it has studded snow tires on it currently. Jeep needs some small keeping up such as my wiper motor now died, the high beam switch doesn’t work right, the passanger side seatbelt buckle will just un latch itself when ever it feels (idk why the front female buckles are over 100 bucks each), my outside door handles need replaced, and my head lights themselves have started to turn them selfs off with no command to do so. (Photo of the compressor has my vinegar bucket for heater core flush which helped a lot) This winter has been super salty and super hard on my jeep, a little more than usual. So spring time I have a lot of cleaning and painted to do for my jeep to have no rust again(mostly those new ranchos will have to be painted)

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Since the winter I pulled my transfer case to figure out why it was popping out of 4low. Turns out I put a 1.25in wide chain with the normal 1in sprockets so the chain would slide and hit the shifting fork and pop it out of 4low. Got a new chain and threw it back in (think I messed the rear out put shaft seal on my tcase from installing it or the case in) since then it seems to work great but adjusting the cable shifter still needs work.

Put new door handles on from Amazon that have a completely different design than the ones I had and have no worry about the lever flipping over the latch now.

I’ve also gone a different direction for gear and lockers even tho my plan was control arms and Swayloc as priorities. Since a follower of mine on my Instagram (@The4bangertj on insta too) messaged me about how he has some axles he’s going to sell if I’m interested since he knew I was trying to get a super 35 under my jeep. They’re Dana 30/44 from an 05 lj so I get disks and they have arbs front and rear with 4:56 gears. For 2,500 dollars that was the cheapest option I could think of as well as easier axle swapping than setting up gears in a parking lot where I live. Only problem was they were in Tucson Arizona and I’m located in rexburg Idaho.
Since I’ve driven the country 5 times in the jeep I didn’t think much of it and it drive great for about the first 7 hours. Once we hit cedar utah I had a slight misfire start. After stopping I found the distributor leaking oil and the bolt holding it in loose. Tightened it up and filled the motor oil back and thought that was my only worry. As time goes on the miss fire got more consistent as well as the next stop in Las Vegas I was still leaking oil. Because of the previous motor oil leak everything under the jee was covered and when I ran my finger in it I still saw the dark carbon from the motor oil in it and just assumed my distributor is still leaking so I checked the motor oil and kept on my way. About an hour away from phoenix (were we were stopping for the night) the miss fire was almost constant and then 5th became neutral. Then checked all gears were but 4th. After stopping now it was obvious the transmission was puking oil and I burnt up the trans. My theory is I messed the metal spring in the rear output seal on the trans as the rubber sealed worked while I was home but after all day driving the heat expanded it and didn’t have the metal spring to hold it in. The damage was done and I wasn’t attentive enough to see the difference of gear oil vs motor oil.
Long story short I was able to pick the axles up with a friends truck as I got a new trans and then had a shop throw it in that day. First time I’ve had a shop do anything on the jeep so it felt weird and hurt my wallet. They also found out my clutch had the wrong clutch face on towards the flywheel (I installed a new one the way I pulled it out, my clutch has always been mushy too which I thought I was just bad at driving when I felt like I was burning the clutch bc it wouldn’t grab without a lot of gas) so glad I had a shop do it anyways.

After almost a week and being stressed of missing school and now having credit card debt for the first time I made the long trek back with 2 axles on a hf tray. Will be cleaning them up and painting them before I throw them under and ride my bike to class. So beyond stoked to have these axles but the journey was wild.

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Since the winter I pulled my transfer case to figure out why it was popping out of 4low. Turns out I put a 1.25in wide chain with the normal 1in sprockets so the chain would slide and hit the shifting fork and pop it out of 4low. Got a new chain and threw it back in (think I messed the rear out put shaft seal on my tcase from installing it or the case in) since then it seems to work great but adjusting the cable shifter still needs work.

Put new door handles on from Amazon that have a completely different design than the ones I had and have no worry about the lever flipping over the latch now.

I’ve also gone a different direction for gear and lockers even tho my plan was control arms and Swayloc as priorities. Since a follower of mine on my Instagram (@The4bangertj on insta too) messaged me about how he has some axles he’s going to sell if I’m interested since he knew I was trying to get a super 35 under my jeep. They’re Dana 30/44 from an 05 lj so I get disks and they have arbs front and rear with 4:56 gears. For 2,500 dollars that was the cheapest option I could think of as well as easier axle swapping than setting up gears in a parking lot where I live. Only problem was they were in Tucson Arizona and I’m located in rexburg Idaho.
Since I’ve driven the country 5 times in the jeep I didn’t think much of it and it drive great for about the first 7 hours. Once we hit cedar utah I had a slight misfire start. After stopping I found the distributor leaking oil and the bolt holding it in loose. Tightened it up and filled the motor oil back and thought that was my only worry. As time goes on the miss fire got more consistent as well as the next stop in Las Vegas I was still leaking oil. Because of the previous motor oil leak everything under the jee was covered and when I ran my finger in it I still saw the dark carbon from the motor oil in it and just assumed my distributor is still leaking so I checked the motor oil and kept on my way. About an hour away from phoenix (were we were stopping for the night) the miss fire was almost constant and then 5th became neutral. Then checked all gears were but 4th. After stopping now it was obvious the transmission was puking oil and I burnt up the trans. My theory is I messed the metal spring in the rear output seal on the trans as the rubber sealed worked while I was home but after all day driving the heat expanded it and didn’t have the metal spring to hold it in. The damage was done and I wasn’t attentive enough to see the difference of gear oil vs motor oil.
Long story short I was able to pick the axles up with a friends truck as I got a new trans and then had a shop throw it in that day. First time I’ve had a shop do anything on the jeep so it felt weird and hurt my wallet. They also found out my clutch had the wrong clutch face on towards the flywheel (I installed a new one the way I pulled it out, my clutch has always been mushy too which I thought I was just bad at driving when I felt like I was burning the clutch bc it wouldn’t grab without a lot of gas) so glad I had a shop do it anyways.

After almost a week and being stressed of missing school and now having credit card debt for the first time I made the long trek back with 2 axles on a hf tray. Will be cleaning them up and painting them before I throw them under and ride my bike to class. So beyond stoked to have these axles but the journey was wild.

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That was a heck of a story but road trips without challenges in my experience are rare.
Great score on the axles. That rack got a good workout.
 
That's a crazy story for sure. Nice find on those axles for sure. I'm selling my 2.5L/AX5 if you need them. I know I'm far away from you though. Keep up the great work!!
 
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That's a crazy story for sure. Nice find on those axles for sure. I'm selling my 2.5L/AX5 if you need them. I know I'm far away from you though. Keep up the great work!!

If I was in a home with a garage I would. In an apartment I just have the axles sitting on jack stands behind the jeep yet alone where to put a spare motor since it’s running now.
 
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If I was in a home with a garage I would. In an apartment I just have the axles sitting on jack stands behind the jeep yet alone where to put a spare motor since it’s running now.

I hear you on space. I have a garage, but with one tons and a turbo 400 space is a premium. I look forward to see you put those axles under there.
 
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I hear you on space. I have a garage, but with one tons and a turbo 400 space is a premium. I look forward to see you put those axles under there.

Ya the dude I got these from had his tons under the jeep and absolutely mind blowing how big they are even under an lj. Ya I’m catching up on a weeks worth of school then should be throwing them under here hopefully will take less than 2 weeks since I’m biking to class. Going to get some paint stuff today to prep it and start painting hopefully.
 
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