Build (and un-build) thread—Gump

[freedom_in_4low]

MCE fenders are on!

I have to say, this is the most cutting I've done on a vehicle's body and I had to make myself just get over it.

Front's are on, I'll probably tackle the rears tonight if it's not too late after I get all the new turn signals installed. My local Lowe's doesn't carry a 3 1/8 hole saw for the JK turn signal housings so I had to order it, and luckily enough it's a 1-day item from Amazon so I'll have it today.

Oh, and I got a new bumper. It's a Warn Rock crawler stubby. I didn't put it on a scale but it feels a good 30 pounds lighter than the Body Armor bumper that I took off and sold on craigslist. I like the minimalist bumpers without all the tubes and hoops, and I like the increased frontal exposure of the tires, the lower winch mounting position, and the only accessory I had to add was a skidplate for the power steering box. I will need to remember that if I ever get an Anti-rock, I'll need to swap out one of the PS skid bolts with a shorter one, because it goes into the tube crossmember that the AR uses and I'm pretty sure it's long enough to make contact.

I'm starting to tire of my lighting setup. With the new fenders and bumper, I'm moving toward a cleaner aesthetic that just doesn't really work with the windshield mounted light bar and the JW speaker ripoff headlights. I'm fine with the performance of the headlights, and the light bar works great in perfectly dry, but not dusty conditions. If there's anything floating in the air though, it glares off the dust or water over the hood and hurts visibility more than it helps. For the light bar I'm thinking of something around 12" mounted on a fairlead mount. But not sure what to do with the headlights. I wish heated trucklites weren't so dang expensive. I want the performance of LED but the heat of a halogen is nice in snow and ice.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

Also thought I'd share this...the flange in the front fender that the flare mounts to had some tire damage from before I extended my bump stops. It didn't show at all with the flare installed, but I heard it whenever I'd get to full stuff.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

PSA for anyone doing the MCE fenders and looking for a 3-wire 3/4" LED side marker/turn signal.

If you get one of the cheap ones on Amazon, like I did, you can wire it up and it will works as a turn signal and a side marker, but not at the same time. You'll hit your turn signal, and it will flash. And you'll turn on your parking or headlights, and it will light up. But if you hit your turns while your parking lights are on, it just sits there lit up solid.

I'm leaving this one in, and not installing the passenger side, until a set arrives from MCE that are supposed to work.

https://www.mcefenders.com/product/...function-marker-and-turn-signal-34-inch-amber

 

[freedom_in_4low]

per suggestion from @jjvw in my shock thread, I let my suspension go full droop to check for binding with my new driveshaft. I rotated my driveshaft to allow the least droop, since the u-joints will allow more when they're parallel and perependicular to the ground. Looks like with the JB super short SYE I've still got plenty left in the driveshaft with my shortarms and shouldn't need a center limit strap. I actually rotated the pinion a little more up after this photo so I've got even more than what this shows.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

still haven't done a highway speed test drive, but I took it a half a mile down the road to O'Reillys to pick up a turn signal bulb to replace one I broke during all this. I promptly returned home and installed the hard top.

I was worried the extra clearance from the fenders would make the tires look small, but I actually feel like they look a little bigger since their frontal area is more out in the open.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

I think I'm feeling some driveline slack that I hadn't noticed before. That started the paranoia since I'm 1,000 miles into a regear, so I pulled the rear diff cover to check things out. I also realized I'd never even taken a photo inside the rear axle when I did the regear and locker, so I snapped one.

Gear lash is still good, ring gear bolts are tight, and I couldn't find anything that seemed abnormally loose at all. U joints are all good, (hell, I don't have a u-joint on this thing that has more than 1k miles on it) I'm thinking that maybe I'm feeling completely normal driveline lash but it's become more noticeable going from having 6 factory style rubber bushings and 2 Rough Country JJ ripoffs to now having only 2 remaining factory style bushings, 2 RC joints and 4 JJ's.

It's also possible that the RC flex joints have some looseness. I noticed when I was setting their lengths that with 15k miles on them, the joints have zero preload/resistance left. Might be time to get the RC adjustment wrench and tighten them up.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

So I've never liked the Smittybilt winch cover I got for $30 on Amazon. The material is very soft-top like, which I did like, but it's a very generic, boxy, oversized pattern that just looks massive.

No one seems to make a cover just for the rope, which is really the only thing I wanted covered since it's synthetic. Warn has some plastic covers but they're specifically for their winches.

So, after some searching and seeing this done by another member here at WTJF (unfortunately don't recall who), I ordered some kydex off amazon and got to work with the heat gun.

I have a little smoothing to do, particularly with those little dents at the top corners, but overall I'm pretty happy with it. I put a couple bends in the back so it wedges between the winch and the rear lip of the bumper, and the front curves up and hooks into the fairlead from behind. That seems to be enough to hold it in place pretty well.

Now I just feel like I need something on the front surface of it, but I don't really care to advertise for Smittybilt and it doesn't really make sense to slap a decal from another brand on there. Maybe a Jeep logo about the size of the one on the fender.

 

[Whitetrash]

I jus read through your thread, what kind of vibes are you experiencing? Maybe I can help since I recently did a SYE, adjustable rear upper control arms, etc.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

I jus read through your thread, what kind of vibes are you experiencing? Maybe I can help since I recently did a SYE, adjustable rear upper control arms, etc.

Thanks for reading. Now that the SYE, DC driveshaft are in and the rear suspension adjusted I have no vibes at all. It's beautiful.

All my vibe battles were strictly the result of my desire to find the exact minimum transfer case drop I could get away with. When they came back after my regear, I'm 90% sure it was slack in my front driveshaft centering ball that only made itself known with the increased shaft rpm.

 

[Whitetrash]

Thanks for reading. Now that the SYE, DC driveshaft are in and the rear suspension adjusted I have no vibes at all. It's beautiful.

All my vibe battles were strictly the result of my desire to find the exact minimum transfer case drop I could get away with. When they came back after my regear, I'm 90% sure it was slack in my front driveshaft centering ball that only made itself known with the increased shaft rpm.

That's great to hear!

 

[freedom_in_4low]

So with at least 2 more weeks left of quarantine I'm gonna try to get the next phase done; the first of the parts should be delivered today.

Savvy front UCAs (this will leave the axle end LCA and Currie front track bar bushings as the only remaining bonded rubber bushings in my suspension)
(2) Johnny joints to replace the worn out x-flex joints on two of my Rough Country LCA's
Rancho RS5000x shocks for 3.5" lift
bump stop extensions for the new shock compressed length (2-3/4" required in the rear, and 2.3" required in the front)
Daystar 3/4" coil spring spacers to get my uptravel back
YJ front brake hoses to handle the 2.5" extra droop allowed by the shocks
front brake pads and zinc coated calipers from Black Magic Brakes
Centric front brake rotors

I'll install the hoses and calipers same time as the shocks, but the pads and rotors are going to wait until I get some welding under my belt. I have a harbor freight fluxcore welder that I've never used, but will need to in order to repair my knuckle divots. It's a simple weld but I've never even struck an arc before so I'd like to not be learning on my knuckles.

Based on current measurements and some math, this should get me about 10.2" of travel in the front, and 9" in the rear, with right at 5" of uptravel in all four corners, which seems to be pretty close to the limits of a shortarm suspension with stock shock mounts. It's probably possible to squeeze out some fraction of an inch if there was a shorter compressed shock with the same extended length, but I haven't done a ton of research there because I want the RS5000x for what I've read of it's damping characteristics.

And with that I'll consider Gump officially ready to ditch these 32x11.5 KO2s for some 33x10.5 KM3s.

 

[Cross-Threaded-06TJ]

Nice build. Those MCE flares are nice, I didn't realize you cut the fender on those.

 

[IPerkWVU]

Like the build! Also running mces on a green TJ!

 

[freedom_in_4low]

I did actually manage a short wheeling trip on Saturday, just to go find a place in the mountains to let the kids burn off some energy. It's the first time it's been offroad since the SYE, and I noticed something in the suspension that I hadn't really noticed before - how much more the Jeep rocks side to side when hitting a bump, hole, or rut with a rear tire than hitting them with a front tire. I feel like there's two possibilities:

1. I have a sway bar in the rear and the front was disconnected, which means it's always been this way and I'm just noticing because I'm paying more attention.
2. having only 2.5" of downtravel with my current shocks is limiting the freedom of the rear axle to move without topping out and upsetting the entire chassis - and this would have gotten worse after my SYE because my shock mounts moved farther away when lining up the pinion.

The great thing is I'll know which is true next time I go wheeling.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

Nice build. Those MCE flares are nice, I didn't realize you cut the fender on those.

Like the build! Also running mces on a green TJ!

thanks! I do have a set for the rear, I just haven't got around to putting them on. No cutting for the rears, just drilling.

Whether they add any clearance is entirely dependent on the specific setup. With 32's and a stock track bar, the tires were making hard contact with the flange between the fender and the flare at full bump, which gets cut out for installing MCEs, so these would have added some clearance. However, with the 2" bump stops I added to keep the Currie track bar out of the diff cover, it wasn't touching anymore (or if it was, just barely). So now, about to add even more bump stop, they'll be 100% for looks. My great uncle used to take me out in his old flatfender when I was a kid and I've always been partial to that aesthetic.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

Took care of the rear on Saturday. I'd read that the RS5000x had pretty thin paint and were prone to rusting, so I shot them with some rattle can silver because it was either that, or black.

I spent most of Sunday cycling my front suspension to get the control arms set up. I made a total rookie mistake and forgot to reattach my track bar before starting to make adjustments and ended up all sorts of out of whack (the slight triangulation of the UCA's pushes the axle side to side when you're trying to make caster and wheelbase adjustments), so I had to jack it back up and pull the springs out again and start over. I sure do wish my LCA's were double adjustable like the UCAs.

I called it a night with the track bar to diff cover bolt clearance down to a bee's dick at full bump and centered longitudinally on the 2.5" bump stops. With the axle a quarter inch farther forward and the track bar 1/8" shorter, it was hitting the edge of the cover at that black mark about 3/4" above the bolt. I took a shortcut on the track bar adjustment because I'm changing my ride height and didn't want to make all these adjustments based on the wrong track bar length, so I pulled out some old trigonometry and figured the track bar needed to be 1/8" longer to be in the same lateral position as it was before I started.

Unfortunately, I just assumed that since the round sleeve and bar pin bushings get measured from the centerline, that the sandwich stud style bushing would be the same, so I selected 2.5" bump stops based on having 16" metal-to-metal between the upper and lower shock mounts. As I learned last night, my assumption was incorrect and the convention for the upper mount is just to the base of the stud and includes no bushing. So by my measurement method, the compressed shock length would effectively be 16.5", not 15.8", and I need a 3" bump stop.

Lastly, and this is just me complaining, but why the heck do Savvy's front UCA forks have to be so damn tight?! I had to grab each side with vice grips and spread them apart to get them over the JJ in the axle housing, and then use a big screwdriver and a rubber mallet to get the holes lined up.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

I was only getting 25" shock length at full droop on the driver side, and less on the passenger, which was leaving 2" of unused extension at the bottom and limiting downtravel to just over 3". I've lived with inadequate downtravel before, and was not going to have this much work in a suspension to still be living with it.

The problem was that the control arms were contacting the back edge of the lower shock bracket. I don't hear about this around here much, which seems odd, but I do have a HP 30 out of an 89 XJ so maybe the bracket is shaped slightly differently than the TJ.

A sawzall and a grinding wheel took care of that, and now it's able to droop out to the fully extended shock length. My bump stops are set EXACTLY at full compression, so I'm fully utilizing all 10.98" of the RS55255's shock travel.

With my ride height at 15-7/8" (just about exactly 4" lift) I'd say this is the absolute minimum lift for the RS55255 part number. I have 4.9"/45% uptravel and 6" down. The RS55256 in the rear is at 5.1" up and 4" down, which should give a dramatic improvement over the 5 up and 2.5 down I had with the RS5241.

Definitely need to install the YJ brake lines. They'll take full droop with the wheels pointed straight but they start pulling about halfway to the steering stops.

You can see in this last photo that when fully drooped, the spring isn't seated at the top. I don't know what springs these are, but for 3-1/8" actual lift height they have a free length of 19-3/4". Add the 3/4" spacer and they still just don't fill up the gap for a 26.5" extended shock. I suspect at some point I'll go ahead and get some Currie 4" springs as their 22.3" free length would still have about a half inch of compression at full droop. I'm obviously not worried about the spring falling out, but my last 3/4"-1" of travel isn't useful if there's no weight on the tire.

They look so much better in silver than white. Which makes sense, because they now match the color scheme of the more expensive, adjustable RS9000. I was originally not fond of the red boot on silver and thought about getting black boots, but it's grown on me now that they're installed with the stickers on.

 

[bobthetj03]

Build is coming along nicely. Nice tip on the rear shocks. I need to investigate that with my setup.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

I got one of those eBay transfer case shifters that sticks upright for a traditional shift knob instead of the TJ's lever that lays flat. I have a herniated disc in my neck which tends to aggravate my median, ulnar and radial nerves in my left arm when I arch my neck backward, which happens when I reach down to shift the transfer case while keeping my eyes on the road.

Unfortunately the lever is going to require some modification to fit.

For one, the lower section is too long, so it won't go all the way forward before the bend hits the inside of the shifter housing and stops it.

It also has a flat area where it rides in the shifter gate but the flat area doesn't go high enough, so the fat round part binds in the gate around the same time that the bend hits the inside of the housing.

The result is that I can either get 4 low or 2 hi, but not both, so for now I've pulled it back out and put the stock lever back in.

My plan is to replace both the transfer case and transmission shift knobs with CJ/YJ style knobs. I have them, but need to work on drilling them out and re-tapping their 3/8-16 threads to the M10-1.5 to match the levers.

This is one I ordered for the transmission that Crown had mistakenly packaged with a 4 speed shift pattern.

 

[freedom_in_4low]

I don't use the term "overlanding" to describe what I do, nor do I have any desire to build a TJ in that manner because the weight would drive me crazy for the 95% of the time I drive it that I don't need all that stuff, and it's just not big enough to be the right vehicle for it (maybe a FJ80 at some point). However, I do have a wheeling trip planned for August where I and a group of friends will be camping for 3 nights as we wheel the San Juan mountain range of southwest Colorado by day.

Setting up and taking down a tent has always been my least favorite part of the camping experience, so I started looking into some ideas for how to sleep in my TJ. I'm not the tallest guy out there, but I am 6' so my hopes weren't high. I did some measurements as I considered building a platform to even out the rear seat footwell with the rear floor, which would not give enough length, but might if I built the platform to sit on top of the wheel wells - if I lay diagonally, with the rear seat reclined and slid all the way back and the driver seat tumbled fully forward, my feet at the glove compartment and my head at the fuel filler. Sounds like a lot of work and a bunch of plywood to stow while I'm driving.

But then...eureka! A hammock hung from diagonally opposite corners of the cage gives just enough length, and I can even leave the back seat in so my 5 year old has a place to lay down for father-son camps.

As you can see I had to wrap some excess hammock length around and anchor to the opposite side to get the hammock hanging high enough to keep the center console out of my thigh, but once I found the right length, it seems to work.

So, not exactly a "build" thing here, but I was pretty excited about it.