Austin's 98 TJ

For the past month or so, I’ve been working on this project…

I rock climb a lot, go to the indoor climbing gym 4-5 times a week and climb outdoors any chance I get. I don’t do a ton of roped climbing, mostly bouldering where you climb max 20ish feet and have pads under you in case you fall. When you do this outside, you of course have to bring pads with you… nature doesn’t provide them.

As we all know, our tjs offer little space and I needed to find another way to cary them. This is the main reason I started this project, some others and some of my requirements are listed below:

- Be able to carry my climbing pads + friends pads too if needed
- Have a way to carry skis as well
- Doesn’t cover brake lights
- Collapsable and compact-able for super easy and tiny storage
- Not heavy
- Cheap
- Fits with my existing hitch receiver and hugs the spare tire for some extra support

I based my design around some Yakima ski clamps that I bought super cheap on eBay. I cut those ski clamps up a ton to make them work for this. And then focused on making it all as compact as possible.

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Painted it all with a bedliner

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Here it is with the ski clamps attached

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And with a couple skis and pads on there!

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Overall pretty happy with it. Definitely a couple small things I’d do differently if I were to do it again, but nothing major.
 
Put in my H&R 1 inch lift springs this afternoon! Was much easier and faster than I thought. After measuring, it gave me 1.25-1.5 inches of lift. Definitely a noticeable difference in looks as well as feel when I drove it for a minute up and down the street after.

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Before:

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After:

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I’m happy with it!
 
Put on the spring outfit for my tj yesterday

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Found a dirt road today

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And then it decided to throw some misfire codes. Discovered that a couple of the spark plug wires were pretty well corroded.

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I replaced those and have been advised to replace the distributer cap and rotor, so I’ll do that tomorrow. I replaced my spark plugs not too long ago, so I won’t be replacing them now.
 
Put on the spring outfit for my tj yesterday

Are you new here, don't you know we have "false-spring" every year? It's going to get fuckin' cold in a week or two, for a week or two, then it's spring. ;)

Discovered that a couple of the spark plug wires were pretty well corroded.

Are they old or do you frequent wet areas like creek crossings? Either way, a little dielectric grease will help seal the wires.
 
Are you new here, don't you know we have "false-spring" every year? It's going to get fuckin' cold in a week or two, for a week or two, then it's spring. ;)



Are they old or do you frequent wet areas like creek crossings? Either way, a little dielectric grease will help seal the wires.

Born here - about a mile from my house, so yeah I know how it works, but it somehow still tricks me every time 🤣🤣

I have reason to believe the wires are original… So yeah, pretty old!
 
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Are you new here, don't you know we have "false-spring" every year? It's going to get fuckin' cold in a week or two, for a week or two, then it's spring. ;)



Are they old or do you frequent wet areas like creek crossings? Either way, a little dielectric grease will help seal the wires.

boy, at least you only have ONE false spring...

Here in Michigan, we go from Winter, to sucker's spring, to second winter, to false spring, back to third winter, THEN we hit real spring, sometime in mid May. (same thing happens in the fall too)
 
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Moved my air compressor into the engine bay to try to gain some more storage space in the trunk (just drilled some holes and put zip ties through them and around the compressor).

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Got my new cap and rotor and put them in. I’m not really sure what they would look like if they were old or bad, but nothing on the old ones looked concerning to me. Replaced anyway for peace of mind

Old:

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New:

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And then added a clock. That’s where my seat warmer buttons were before, so I had to move those down slightly. This project took a little while…

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Got a lot done today!

I’m thinking about making something to store the stuff I always carry with me in the jeep (some tools, recovery stuff, first aid kit, etc) - I’d do it under the rear seat so that way the trunk is fully open for other things. Unfortunately the tuffy rear underseat storage drawer isn’t an option as I have a powered sub mounted to the tailgate and I also don’t want to raise the rear seats for the sake of headroom.