'06 Impact Orange LJR Build

I'll start with some history. My first Jeep was an '85 XJ Laredo that I got when I was in AZ and in the USAF back in '95. I put a budget boost on it and squeezed 31x10.5s on . It had an NP229 that the viscous coupler eventually went bad in and i swapped in a 207 from a donor '86 2-door XJ I picked up with a blown motor for a few hundred then sold the shell. Wish i woulda kept it now. The 2.8L finally gave up the ghost and I got a nice clean red '92 Laredo with the 4.0 HO and a 3" Rancho lift in 2002. I had all kinds of plans including a coil sprung rear end but then life and the military got in the way and I had to sell when i moved to Germany in 2009. Then during another deployment to Afghanistan in 2013 I started looking at the used market and the newish LJs that i had coveted for so long which were finally getting "reasonable" in price so I knew it was time to get back into a Jeep. This time it would be my keeper for the long haul so i wanted to get exactly what i wanted. I searched high and low across most of the west coast (I'm from Oregon and that is where my wife was while I was deployed) I narrowed it down to an LJ Rubicon with reasonable mileage. I hoped for a 6spd and impact orange was a favorite color (OSU Beaver alumni). Well i finally came across this one in the SLC area at a dealer that was good to deal with and the price was good. Had 73k miles, a hard top, FR and RR bumpers, wilderness rear rack, PSC rockers, Edge TB and intake but otherwise stock. Only downer was the auto trans. Ended up jumping on it anyway as I couldn't find anythung better and had been looking for a few months. The wife flew down and drove it back to OR all while i was still deployed. I was supposed to PCS back to the states not long after that deployment but i just ended up getting moved again in Germany for over another year. So I had my great new Jeep but only got to drive it when i was home on leave. My kids were in college so my daughter ended up driving it mostly. Finally moved back to the US on the east coast so got to have my Jeep finally after a year and a half. I have been doing a ton of reading/research and trying my best to define where i want to take the Jeep. Now I finally have some of the $$ needed to get things started!

Here she was in the Columbia gorge when my wife was driving her back.
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At long last,welcome home! Killer start! Love the orange. Great group of knowledgeable Jeep folks here. What do you have planned for it?
 
Man oh man, I'll definitely be following this thread! Impact orange on an LJR may just be the one color combo I like better than red. That thing looks cherry!
 
First off, thank you for your service to our county kind sir. Look forward to seeing the progress. Awesome platform to start off with.
 
What
Man oh man, I'll definitely be following this thread! Impact orange on an LJR may just be the one color combo I like better than red. That thing looks cherry!
What, You said you liked red best! Ah man. I'm depleted. No, that orange is killer. Absolutely killer!
 
What

What, You said you liked red best! Ah man. I'm depleted. No, that orange is killer. Absolutely killer!

It's a toss up. That orange is so rare and looks so damn good! But I also love red too!
 
May I also put in a BIG thank you for your service to our great country.

That is a saweeeeet looking LJ Rubi. I, personally, am rather fond of orange...and the LJs, and hard tops, and, of course, Rubi's...OK, I'm officially jealous!:eek:svaisacagar:
 
I like the orange too. I passed on an 06 when I was looking, it wasn't a rubicon, just an X but it had the stickers. It was a Texas jeep, and clean. It has a shitty lift on it though, and bumpsteered so much I felt like I should be drunk to keep up with the extra motion. She said her mechanic just said it was because of the tires...SOO...warning bells were going off in my head. I tried to get it for considerably less money than she was asking, but she trusted her mechanic over me (who I had NO trust in) and I had to walk away.

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I see you have excellent taste in parts @cramil! Post some photos of that under armor once it's installed. Looks awesome!
 
Well got started Friday evening with a plan to get the body lift and MML installed. Well that didn't go exactly as planned. I also had great plans too take a lot of pictures. That didn't go as planned either lol. Here is a great starting shot tho
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The first issue i ran into was two of the three main body mounts along the sides were not budging. And this was with an impact gun hammering on them. Remember these are in nutserts in the frame rail. Tip one: try to get some penatrant into the frame rail through one of the nearby openings to each of the bolts using a flexible tube. I hadnt done this figuring it spent most of its life in Utah then Oregon for a bit and thought the last two winters here in NOVA wouldn't have been too bad. I eventually broke free the two that were giving me grief with repeated tightining then loosening using the impact gun. A 3ft cheater was getting no where.
 
The second issue was I was dealing with removing the Poison Spider Ricochet Rockers. These were on the Jeep when i bought it and initially I was thrilled about that. Well I had already had to do some touch up paint on them and noticed they hadn't been prepped well from the start. These were what had fared the worst during these 2 winters in NOVA.
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I planned to take them off and sand them down to prep and paint them properly. Not sure now if they will go back on. I may see if I can clean them up and sell them and get some of the SAVVY rockers. The main problem I had is how they mount. They are sandwiched between the three main body mounts and the tub along each side. This means they cover up all the area that you would use to lift the tub off the frame. Basically I used some stand jacks to lift under the rails slightly then pryed and slid and cursed the rockers out from between.
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I looked at lifting from somewhere else but nothing seemed reinforced enough to support the entire tub.
 
The last issue with the body lift was me being blinded by the first two issues I was having. I was next working on jacking up the tub to put the BL pucks in. This is the easy part right? The front drivers side went in easy enough and i moved to the center one and couldn't get enough gap to slip the puck in. I started checking everywhere for interference. Stretched wires, shifter linkage, I pulled the fuel filler from the body etc. Then I noticed the two body mounts on either side of the fuel tank DUH! I'm usually pretty thourough about things. So boys and girls, don't forget there are FIVE body mounts on each side and one in front LOL.
 
The last issue that night was I was running out of time at the shop before closing and hoped I could get away with doing just the BL that night. I was thinking that 1.25" shouldn't enough to impact the fan too bad. That's a big NOPE! The fan was solidly in the bottom of the shroud. Definitely need either the MML or some brackets to relocate the shroud or redrill it. No time left to mess with it more so I had to leave it overnight and finish the MML Saturday morning.
 
Man, feel bad for you guys in the rust prone states. Those two by the tank are hard to see and get to.
Yea i figured it being mostly a Utah Jeep I'd be good. I've only been in Northern Virginia/DC area a year and a half. The winters here aren't too bad and cars seem to hold up better than in most NE areas. Most of what you see in the picture under the rocker is dirt, but there is definitely much more surface rust under the Jeep than when I first came here.