Blake's SE - The boiling frog syndrome

Blake Stamper

TJ Enthusiast
Supporting Member
Joined
Jan 29, 2021
Messages
417
Location
Boise, Idaho
A couple of months ago, I was in a thread and I was talking about how poorly my jeep drove and Blaine told me to google the boiling frog syndrome and that one interaction has completely changed how I make decisions on what i'm doing to my jeep and how I look at the modifications I do to it from now on. For those unfamiliar to this saying much as I was, the basic idea is a couple of frogs are in a pot, the pot is slowly getting hotter, slow enough that they don't realize that they are gradually being cooked alive. How does this apply to my Jeep? I have added every part that was shiny without thinking about how that one change would affect the jeep in whole instead of how it affects just one aspect. Anyways, Im going to post my jeep from the day I got it to present day.

To start this thread, I would like to preface that i have a lot to learn and this is the current progression of my jeep.

I bought My jeep 3 years ago, November 22 2019. I bought it for 2500 with a minor issue, there was a hole in the block.




With the help of my Dad and My grandpa, We swapped in a new long block, my grandpa is definitely someone I look up to, regardless of his age or health he is always willing to get his hands dirty.

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The PO didn't take care of this jeep at all, one of the first things we changed on this jeep was the fenders, the PO thought it would be a bright idea to drive. over a freshly painted white line covering the. fenders in white line paint.

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Fun fact, this is my very first off-roading trip, both in this jeep and driving myself.
 
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Fun fact, Jeeps are really good for yard work, we decided we were going to move our fence line back and to make removing the old poles easier we hooked up my winch and pulled it right out of the ground concrete and all. We've done the same thing with a stubborn tree as-well ;)
 
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Ive always been a big fan of the old cjs and scramblers, in a nod to them, I ran a truck top and a guy in a local jeep group had a swag off-road drop down tailgate kit that he didn't want anymore so he gave it to me, my brother and I spend the day making my jeep into a truck.
 
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I have to say, I have a love hate relationship with mud, its mostly a hate relationship especially with the cleanup process afterwards.

Also, if you look closely, you can see the Mek Magnet magnetic armor in the rear, Monica at Mek magnet had me test out a half door version of her armor. We have a lot of sage and things that are a nightmare when it comes to pin-striping and these definitely made a difference
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My old neighbor happened to be a car detailer so with his help we did some paint correction and this is probably the cleanest this thing will ever be.

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After keeping it mostly the same for a year, I decided to tear it down and highline it using Poison Spyder Defender XC Fenders. These are by far one of my. favorite looking fenders but each fender is about twice as heavy as factory fenders.

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The entire installation actually went pretty good other than some terrible QC from P
oison Spyder, the driver side radius bend for the grill was not even close to the radius of the grill. It wasn't a big deal, we threw it in a vice and straightened it out close enough.

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The end goal was to put the Jeep on 35s, my brother kindly let me try on his 35s (which were the 35s the jeep had when I bought it). I gotta say I still kind of miss the chrome rims he has, might end up with something similar if I ever need to replace mine.

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I decided that while I have everything apart I was going to strip the cheap marketplace sliders and color match them to the fenders.

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I unfortunately don't have any photos of me cutting the hood but heres the fitment.

I used some cheap hood pins I got from Oreilly's to hold the hood down, its nothing fancy but it gets the job done

If you look closely you can see the Hella horns mounted in the grill. They are nice and loud and a good solution for mounting horns with the highline.

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I found a Genright Swing down tire carrier for a really good price and used a barnes 4wd rear bumper to weld the brackets to. This is another example of something I did because I thought it looked cool. This thing is incredibly difficult to use and present day it is sitting in our storage because it's just not practical.

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So I guess I never took any photos of the painting process, basically I painted everything with Steel it. I don’t know if I did a bad job with prep or paint but everything is starting to rust.

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I got a Sony Apple CarPlay radio for Christmas, I only have one gripe with it, the usb is always have connectivity issues regardless of what cable I use other than that I love it.

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