Westtown Willy's 2004 Jeep Wrangler X

Westtown Willy

TJ dummy
Supporting Member
Joined
May 10, 2018
Messages
2,440
Location
Clown World
I bought my first Jeep ever in December of 2016. I wasn't looking for a wheeler, just a summertime convertible to take out of the garage on sunny days & warm summer nights so my search was pretty much appearance as opposed to performance based. My short list included a 4.0 liter 5 speed manual that was one solid color on all black with a 3 inch lift & 33x12.5 tires; to my eye that is the quintessential Jeep.

My search encompassed southeastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey & Delaware. Being in the rust belt I figured many would be ruled out due to frame rot issues so I took my time & crawled under quite a few & ultimately found one in New Jersey that had every single thing on my list, a perfect frame, plus a couple extras that I really liked including the front bumper, rock sliders & a Banks Power exhaust which gives it a beautiful purr. It also had a winch but as I was bargaining with the owner we were around $500 apart so to sweeten the deal I told him he could take his winch off if that’d make him feel better about my offer, he did & the deal was done.

$1,150 & one Warn Zeon S later the winch is back but that’s another story :pesas:

The ‘convertible only street machine’ idea lasted only a few months before I made the mistake of wheeling it once, got bit, knew immediately I'd be wheeling the crap out of it which has held true; at that point the performance modifications began in earnest* :borra2:

* My build is fairly modest among the hardcore crowd and I've kicked around the idea of going bigger but a couple factors have stopped me each time. Where I wheel there are plenty of trails and obstacles that are out of my reach based upon the limitations of my rig, my less than advanced skill level, or a combination of both. However as I've gone forward I've chipped away around the edges of those areas & the list is slowly shrinking. If I showed up next week with 40s on tons those trails wouldn't be nearly as challenging if at all, in fact most of the trails I do would become boring essentially shrinking the size of the park to a precious few challenges. Point being it's all relative, I guess I'm happier being a smaller fish in a big pond, for now anyway. Second factor is more practical, I'm fortunate enough that rust isn't an issue with my TJ & I plan to keep it indefinitely so it does not leave the garage in any kind of inclement weather, the only time it gets wet is when I wheel it and at the end of each outing it gets 3 or 4 cycles at the self-clean car wash including a complete flushing of the frame rails. As it stands I have less than one inch of clearance to get it into the garage so any more increase in lift or tire size would doom it to a life outdoors & that just ain't gonna happen.

Anyway enough of that nonsense, here's how she looked the day I brought her home:

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at 5 foot 7 I quickly realized it was a bit of an ass-ache getting in & out so within a week or two I made my first purchase, a set of Bartact paracord grab handles

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Also realized there's no good place to lock anything up so next thing to go in was the Tuffy:

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As spring of 2017 hit so did the need to ride cooler, so another box arrived

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and out came the Spiderwebshade, denim half doors & quick release mirrors

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With stock 3.07 gearing & 33 inch tires I obviously had to re-gear so you know what happened, in went proper 4.56s along with air lockers & 30 spline shafts:

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Needed a new battery, went with an AGM due to the jiggle factor:

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Prior owner had a tc drop to address the lift related vibrations, but I tweaked it up properly with the SYE/CV and Savvy double adjustable upper rear control arms:

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Next I slapped in an Anti-Rock because, well

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Armored it up a bit with ARB diff covers (no, they don't hit the track bar, suspension was cycled to be sure), plus a UCF aluminum engine/tranny skid, steering box, control arm & radiator guard:

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by the way that's all Rausch Creek clay & mud under there, not rust

Following a case of angry sparrows I traced to the shot front shaft, in went an Adams heavy duty:

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And, one of my favorite add-ons, the Warn Zeon 8S, this is a thing of beauty, one of the smoothest operating machines I've ever owned:

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There are a few other odds & ends but that's essentially the build, most of which was done in the spring of 2017. Since then it's been all about maintenance & replacing whatever I break. Here's how she sits today, not much different looking than the day I brought her home:

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Nice Jeep. Should consider a ZJ tie rod conversion or something else before you taco the factory straw. In some of the pics it looks a bit bowed already.
 

Much appreciated!

Nice Jeep. Should consider a ZJ tie rod conversion or something else before you taco the factory straw. In some of the pics it looks a bit bowed already.

thanks for pointing that out, it's on the list now.

Damn list :mad:

Forgot to mention, I briefly ran a set of 6 inch Rugged Ridge Bushwacker knockoffs (due to tire coverage issues in PA), they lasted maybe 9 or 10 outings before I understood why people call them Bushcrackers. They weren't bad looking though I do like the stock flares better, glad I kept the stock to slap back on. This is what it looked like briefly:

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Much better below, getting ready to dirty her up a couple weeks ago:

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The stock steering has served me well but at 14 years old, 126,000 miles, shot boots that didn’t hold grease anymore & a bend in the tie rod (thanks @Rob5589 for pointing that out to me) it had to go before it started causing problems.

Currie Currectlync is in & toe-in will be adjusted tomorrow, thanks to @Chris, @Jerry Bransford, and @mike d & his Longacre Toe-In Plates – I don’t know if this level of upgrade was necessary but I’m glad it’s in there. Right out of the box with no adjustment it drives really nice, will do a full off road test in two weeks.

Maybe the best part was doing it myself, something I wasn't sure about until reading the threads here. All in for the Currie parts, toe-In plates, pickle fork & a tube of anti-seize I came in just under $500. Man when you do this stuff yourself it really takes a lot of the sting out of modifications. The tally:

Currie steering: $413.46
Longacre toe-in plates/tape measures: $63.16
Pickle Fork: $12.71
Anti-seize: $5.00
Total: $494.33

Here's some before & after pictures & side by side shots of the parts, I cannot believe how much bigger this thing is:

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took me a week but I managed to get a set of Rancho 5000X shocks on the pile, huge pain in the ass getting those welded on nuts off but I did it. Took it out for a couple test drives, they feel good so far though I am getting an intermittent clicking sound & I'm not sure where it's coming from but I'm assuming it has something to do with the shocks, most likely installer error :rolleyes:.

Also, I took the advice of many & painted them to prevent rust. I had dark grey primer & black paint already, so, I went with dark grey primer & black :D

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and of course the gratuitous front end shot:

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The Ranchos look a lot better black. I should have done that to mine before I installed them.
 
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Got my first new set of tires, went from Falken ATs to BFG KM3s, these tires are far more substantial. So far I've only driven them home from the install but I'll be heading out to give them a proper test drive on Saturday up in the mountains. Plug for a buddy Greg who operates United Tire & Service, I met him wheeling a few months back & kept his information, they're all great guys & have over 10 locations in southeastern Pennsylvania. They took good care of me & let me in the shop to stare over their shoulders the whole time :D

Here she is coming off the lift plus a couple other shots:

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Replaced my stock control arms with new Moog OEM, did all the lowers & the front uppers as the rear uppers are adjustable. The old bushings were hammered. Also developed a front passenger side droop & it turns out the spring on that side was nearly an inch & a half shorter than the driver's side, so I popped in a new set of Teraflex 3 inch lift coils, she sits level & beautiful again:

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Last winter while I had the tc skid off to install a new front driveshaft I took the opportunity to paint the underside of the rails with Por-15 given that area’s high probability of rusting, figured I’d do the rest of the frame another time. The opportunity came about last week when I was putting in the new front springs, noticed a shiny spot on the frame where the spring rubbed (2nd photo). I ordered a 6-pack of the 4oz cans so I could open one at a time as needed. Over the course of a few days I cleaned, de-greased, grinded a few spots then soaked with Por-Metal Prep & rinsed, then painted on a couple coats.

Here are the before pictures during the cleaning process, not too bad for a Rust-Belt frame ehh?

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Here are the after pictures, not really much different to look at but I’m glad it’s on there.

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Side note, during the spring job I removed the jounce cups to give them a wire brushing/painting too & discovered the bump stops were packed with dirt so tight I could barely chip it out with a screw driver, ended up breaking it up & pushing it out by connecting the shopvac to the bottom & turning it on in reverse. Pro-Tip, wear goggles when you turn this on if you’re gonna stick your big fat stupid head up in the wheel well to ‘see what happens’ :rolleyes:. Having shot myself directly in the eyeball with Eastwood frame paint before I’ll say this wasn’t as bad, but it still sucked. Finally figured it would be smart to add a smaller vacuum cleaner hose up top to suck up all the crap the shopvac was pushing out, see illustrative photo below.

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Oh, & if anyone doubts the strength of Por-15, I had a little bit left in this cup & when I was done for the night I rested the brush on top, not sure why I didn’t toss it in the trash. Came out the next morning & it had tipped over. I cannot move the cup or the brush, it’s like it’s welded on there, gonna have to get the chisel out :pesas:


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it's been almost a year since I've done anything to the TJ but the time was right and the modification was very much needed to finish off the simple clean look I've always admired. The front bumper that came with the TJ was the one thing that fought against that, it was too big & chaotic looking and it's time to go had arrived.

I went with a Motobilt stubby with no bar, the cleanest most straight forward bumper I could find. Really it's nothing more than a shelf to sit that big fat Warn on and that's exactly what I was looking for. This thing is beautiful.

The install was pretty typical, seemed really simple and straight forward but I ran into my share of problems. While the bumper fit on perfectly right out of the box (the notches cup right around the Anti-Rock bushings like a glove), one of the lower frame holes didn't line up exactly right so I had to drill it out a bit, no big deal. That was it problem-wise for the bumper itself, it truly lived up to the standards of those that commented on it here on the forum.

The other issues were self-inflicted, chief of which was when I had the whole thing assembled only to realize I couldn't get the fairlead bolts through the holes because the winch was in the way so I had to disassemble it all just to get those in, it particularly sucked because I had already hosed everything down with fluid film so handling the winch after that was like trying to catch a greased pig.

Here's some pictures. The old:

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Part of the interior of the frame I hadn't seen before, was in very good condition.

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Two of the bumper bolts were inaccessible due to the cross member so the entire thing had to come off in one piece, that sucked

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The Motobilt out of the box

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A dry fit

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Sanded it with 400, wiped it down with Acetone, and put down three coats of Rustoleum self-etching primer

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Rustoleum black satin on

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Took the opportunity to POR15 the frame ends and the cross member

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Fluid filmed the inside of the bumper as this won't be seeing the light of day any time soon, that came back to bite me in the ass

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All done

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Couldn't be happier, this was a looooong time coming
 
Definitely one of the better looking and most functional stubbys I have seen.
 
this bumper project like so many with the TJ begets another, often a compatibility issue & other times aesthetic, this time it was both. The old bumper's d-ring tabs were spread out far enough from the fairlead that it all allowed for sufficient tightening of the winch line with no interference between the metal thimble & the aluminum fairlead. The new bumper being so much smaller resulted in an interference so it was the Safety Thimble to the rescue. That solved the compatibility issue, but something still looked off at least to me.

You be the judge. Before:

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After losing the silver fairlead & d-ring in favor of a black thimble & fairlead:

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I'm inching ever closer to pure two tone on this pig:

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I know I'm missing a couple bumper bolts in there, this is just temporary, I'm painting the washers black before they go on

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my laboratory for the afternoon's operation

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and now it's...

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