Baby Blue

[Duredel]

I did not grow up in a mechanically inclined family. My father, though incredibly intelligent and hardworking, has never been a "handyman." After getting a '99 XJ 2-door in college as my first vehicle, I quickly learned that I would have to figure out how to fix it myself if I wanted to avoid eating nothing but ramen, beans, and rice. I am rather obsessive by nature- when I get into something, I am all in- every forum thread, wiki article, and subreddit. I have spent hours reading various build, how to, and troubleshooting threads. During my time in college, thanks to all of you, I became quite proficient at solving jeep problems, to where by the end of college, I was comfortable doing most anything short of an engine swap. I feel an enormous debt of gratitude- you all have literally saved me thousands of dollars.

By the end of college, I had also become obsessed with offroading. Though my XJ was completely stock, other than an Aussie Locker I put in the rear end when replacing a carrier bearing, I took it all over Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado trails during spring break and thanksgiving break, doing things solo that I really shouldn't have been doing. When I moved back to Alaska after college, I tried to do some things with the XJ, but quickly found that Alaska wheeling is not like Utah wheeling. You simply can't get by with stock size AT tires and no winch. Alaska wheeling is nearly exclusively mud bogs and hill climbs- far from the delicate dance that rock crawling on slickrock is.

I was considering putting a bunch of time and money into the XJ- IRO long arms, 33s, skids, etc, when Facebook Marketplace showed me a 2000 TJ, listed for $3200. I was sure there was something horribly wrong with it- even before COVID, TJs were going for 6-10k or even more. As this was March 2020, I had a feeling I might be stuck at home for a little bit, and had the time for a project. I contacted the guy and went to look it over. It was definitely in rough shape- the gentleman was a placer miner, and used it to pull a trailer back to his mine. It had been left in his backyard all winter and had 2 feet of snow sitting on it. It had some trouble starting in the cold, but once it started it ran strong. I helped him dig it out of his backyard, and took it for a short ride around the block- I was strongly advised not to drive it any faster than 30mph. The steering and suspension were completely worn out, but as long as it ran and drove, anything else seemed fixable. He offered to sell it to me for $3000 for helping him dig it out of his backyard, and I accepted.

I drove it home at 25mph- any faster and violent death wobble would quickly ensue. The steering had enormous amounts of slop in it, and the nearly-bald and frozen 33in mud tires skidded all over the icy roads. I made it home, and got to work.

This is the story of Baby Blue.

Here she is the day I got her home.

As I have never done a build thread before, I'll be starting from the very beginning. As you will learn, I took Baby Blue from being barely driveable to fully operational, and back again to barely driveable, after a minivan blew a stop sign in front of me. The impetus of this build thread is the rebuild post-accident. I hope you all enjoy following along. I look forward to contributing to the TJ knowledge bank that has helped me so much and continues to help me.

 

[Wildman]

Welcome to the forum and TJ lifestyle. It's a very addictive passion to be involved with.
Bummer that your rig got wrecked but great that you are rebuilding it.

I lived in Barrow as a kid in the early 70's and was stationed at Ft Richardson in the early 80's. There are a few members on here from Alaska. @Blackjack is one of those members. I'm pretty sure that there are a few more.
Look forward to reading your build thread.

 

[L J]

great backstory. welcome

 

[Mike_H]

This sounds fun! I'm watching.

 

[Duredel]

Welcome to the forum and TJ lifestyle. It's a very addictive passion to be involved with.
Bummer that your rig got wrecked but great that you are rebuilding it.

I lived in Barrow as a kid in the early 70's and was stationed at Ft Richardson in the early 80's. There are a few members on here from Alaska. @Blackjack is one of those members. I'm pretty sure that there are a few more.
Look forward to reading your build thread.

Small world! I was in Barrow last week for work. I don't think much has changed since the 70s.

 

[Wildman]

Small world! I was in Barrow last week for work. I don't think much has changed since the 70s.

Yes it is way different than it was in the 70's.
My folks went back up in the 90's and it was very different.

Good luck with your build. Will be watching.

 

[SoCalGlide]

great backstory. welcome

It's got me hooked.

 

[Duredel]

Looking over what I had just brought home, it was clear it had been owned by a placer miner. It has been said that placer mining is the art of getting old junk to run, and that is what had been done here. It isn't easy to get parts into the Alaskan backcountry, so it was evident that he had fixed things with what he had lying around. Both sides of all four lower control arm mounts were wallowed out, and he had welded washers to oblong holes to get them round again. Apparently the bushings on some of them had gone too, as 5/16" steel had been welded to either side of the two rear axle-side control arms, and a hole drilled through, to make it so a bolt could attach it to the axle. The seller also mentioned in passing that about 10 years ago, he had ripped off the front axle at the frame side mounts and tipped the jeep over on the driver side. He welded the frame mounts back on and claimed to be able to drive at 80mph with no vibes afterwards, and said that the no-driving-over-30mph rule was a recent development. There is a bit of body damage on the driver side, ostensibly from that incident. The driver side view mirror was missing, replaced by a square mirror that looks to have come off some piece of heavy equipment, and the passenger side view mirror was cracked.

The first thing you do with a new jeep is to take the top off, right?

On the bright side, he had done a very good job of making the jeep functional for its intended purpose, dragging a trailer through brush and mud to a mine. There was a giant grill/brush guard with an 8k warn winch for a front bumper, made out of what looks to be 3" tube. The rear bumper was a simple 2x6 beam with a trailer hitch welded in. The rear fender flares look to be bushwhacker knock-offs, and the front flares are ingeniously made with angle iron and 6" wide rubber strips.

She had all the factory options I wanted- 4.0L, NV3550 (which sucks compared to the AX-15 in my XJ), half doors, and a Dana 44 rear end with 3.73 gears and an LSD. The soft top is a rough country replacement, which is actually holding up quite nicely. It has 4" of spring lift and 2" of budget boost lift, and no sway bar. I noticed a 1" transfer case drop spacer. The Firestone Destination M/Ts that came on it were mismatched- 2 were in decent shape, and the other two were nearly bald.

Seems pretty janky, doesn't it? Just wait until you see what was waiting for me on the interior...

 

[Wildman]

Awesome. Love the moose in the picture too.

 

[Duredel]

The interior had been almost completely gutted. Other than the dash, the only interior pieces were the two front seats, the rear seat, and the drive side under-door trim piece. There was no carpet, no center console, no floor mats, no emergency brake handle, and barely a single trim piece. The rear seat was ok, but the driver seat was in horrible condition- the metal frame was visible through the torn fabric and foam. The worst part, however, was the heater core. It seems that the original blower fan had failed, and melted the plug going to it. This rendered his heat and AC inoperable. Rather than consult with you fine folks, where he would have learned that his blower fan likely needed replacement, he bypassed the ENTIRE HVAC system. He drilled holes in the floor for new heater core lines, and when those weren't were he liked them he drilled two more: (these next few pictures are relatively current)

He ran these new lines across the passenger footwell...

And into this MONSTROSITY of a heater:

To his credit, he wired it all up, with each of the two fans on the back of the heater having a high and low setting, plus a kill switch for them:

I will say, it works far better than the stock heater does. Even with a soft top at -30F outside, it will get the inside to 85F in no time.

I simply can't imagine what would have to be going through someone's head to put all of this work into replacing the entire heater system, when a few google searches, or even a quick trip to a mechanic would have solved all his problems. To this day, I haven't ripped it out yet, because it works, and because I don't use it much. It scares the crap out of me to imagine one of those lines in the passenger footwell bursting or cracking. It's one of the first things I'll do in my rebuild.

 

[Duredel]

Rather than get it drivable right away, I did the logical thing and repainted the interior. The bare metal was badly scratched and rusted from what I imagine were years of gravel, mud, and mining equipment bouncing around inside. I decided that if I was going to do this, I was going to do it right, so the cage had to be removed. First, I removed what little was left of the interior:

I don't know what possessed Chrysler to use large torx heads to hold the cage to the jeep. I think they were T55. Most of them came out with a little persuasion, but the two on the floor behind the driver seat were rusted in pretty good. I tried heat and pb blaster, but it didn't help. I put a 24" breaker bar on one of them and quickly rounded out the middle. I then hammered in a T60, and promptly rounded the hole again. The other rounded out as well. I went and picked up a set of Irwin Bolt Extractors and tried hammering them on several times, but they would always refuse to bite the perfectly round torx bolt head. I was about to give up and resort to drilling it out when my brother suggested sitting on my hand as I pressed down on the breaker bar. I hammered the bolt extractor on again, put my palm flat over the head of the breaker bar, and my brother sat on my hand. The extra weight worked, and it finally turned. The other one came out soon after.

Victory!

 

[Duredel]

There really aren't many pictures of TJ's without cages knocking about the internet, so I had no idea that they look DAMN GOOD cageless.

 

[Duredel]

After getting the cage off, I used a strip disc to get rid of surface rust. It worked really, really well. The tub wasn't in horrible condition, this is about as bad as it was:

After stripping the rust I cleaned the tub out with soap and water, and let it dry. I hit the spots that had had rust with Rustoleum primer, then painted the whole tub interior with 2 coats of auto body primer, 2 coats of matching paint out of a spray can, then clear coated it. I had never painted any area of a vehicle before and wasn't trying to make a show piece, just stop the rust. It didn't turn out half bad!

 

[Mike_H]

So...I see quite a bit of snow in the background...Its the middle of September...Are you catching us up, or is it already snowing up there in Alaska

 

[Duredel]

So...I see quite a bit of snow in the background...Its the middle of September...Are you catching us up, or is it already snowing up there in Alaska

I'm catching you up to the present before I start the "real" build and build thread- these pictures are from April 2020.

There is snow up in the mountains already, I give it another few weeks before it's down into town!

 

[Duredel]

I don't have any pictures of the process, but after getting it painted, I got to making it driveable. I could see maybe a full millimeter of play in the tie rod ends, so I replaced the tie rod and drag link. I got the ZJ tie rod, which was the exact same price as the XJ/TJ one- it's amazing how much beefier it is. It drove MUCH better after this, I could get it all the way up to 45 mph- however, if I hit a bump going any faster than 30, I would get VIOLENT death wobble. It scared the crap out of me the first time. I had shook and shook the track bar, staring at both the frame and axle side mounts. I tightened the axle side bolt, and it was definitely not torqued to spec, but that didn't solve it. I was beginning to look at ball joints, a seized caliper, anything but the track bar.

I finally had my girlfriend turn the steering wheel back and forth while I looked at the frame side track bar mount with a magnifying glass. I saw the TINIEST movement. Had a new one shipped up, installed it, and BAM! 80mph on the highway. There were (and are) still vibrations from no SYE at 6" of lift, but it was a huge relief after finding the cause. I had even begun to suspect a bent axle. After reading through countless threads on it, I've come to the conclusion: if it isn't obvious, 98% of the time, it's the track bar. 1% of the time, it's the tie rod. The other 1% is everything else.

 

[Duredel]

I next set my sights on the worn out front seats. I considered just having someone reupholster them, but I was getting quotes in the ~1k range. I thought about Corbeau seats, but they seemed expensive for what they were, and shipping stuff that large up to Alaska gets expensive in a hurry. I finally came across several threads about swapping WJ seats over. I wasn't able to get a clear answer, but it seemed that just the tops of the seats could swap over to the TJ seat brackets. I went to the junkyard and found a pair of absolutely MINT black cloth seats out of an '04 WJ. The passenger one looked like it had never been sat in and the driver was barely worn. They were power seats, and I didn't have a battery to make them move to expose all the bolts holding the seat frame to the floor. It was a royal pain in the rear, but I was able to just take the tops of the seats off. I swapped the fold-forward hinge out of my old TJ seats into the new WJ seats, and put them on the TJ brackets. Voila! Brand new fold and tumble seats for just $150.

If someone wants, I would be happy to put together a write-up for it. It is so much cheaper and easier than getting aftermarket seats.

To summarize: 96+XJ, TJ, 96+ ZJ, and WJ seats all share the same "top" bolt holes. You can take any seat top (held down by 6 bolts) and swap it to any seat bracket. They also share the same hinge bolt pattern- a 2-door XJ fold-forward seat hinge can be swapped over to a 4-door XJ seat (I've done that too). A TJ fold-forward seat hinge can be swapped over to a WJ seat. The seat bracket, the piece that holds the seat to the floor, does not swap between models as far as I know.

The pull-to-tumble feature on my TJ seats did not work, and I didn't bother swapping it over, but I'm sure it could be done. I just use the lever underneath to tumble them forwards. I can't recommend the swap enough, the WJ seats are really comfortable. They are a bit wider than the TJ seats, and I may have problems when I remove the ghetto heater core between the seats and put in a console, but for now, I couldn't be happier.

Seats installed.

Fold forward...

And tumble!

I still need to put on the plastic side covers. They will need to be slightly notched in the back to clear the seat belt mount.

 

[Duredel]

Just a couple things left before wheeling time. I replaced the bald and mismatched Firestone Discoverer tires with 33x12.5r15 Nankang Mudstars. They were cheap, which at the time was all I cared about. They actually do really well in the mud up here, and were great in deep snow, but were horrible on icy roads. I replaced the stock transfer case z-linkage with a Steinjager cable shifter, which I couldn't be happier with. No more popping out of 4-low on a hill climb! I replaced the shot-to-bits lower control arms, two of which didn't even have rubber left- the previous owner had evidently worn them out, and decided that plate steel on each side of the stock control arm with a hole drilled through it was a good enough- I wish I had pictures! Finally, the brakes were horrible. I replaced the pads, calipers, drums, and master cylinder, but still no luck. Finally, I read that the proportioning valve can get stuck. It took time and a lot of break clean, but I was able to pry the valve out of the proportioning valve housing with a pair of picks and a good friend. All the sudden I could lock up the 33s no problem!

 

[Duredel]

Wheeling time!

 

[K_Dom]

Awesome read so far. Looks like beautiful scenery for wheeling!