Cornbread's 2000 Wrangler Sport Build

Cornbread

TJ Enthusiast
Supporting Member
Joined
Jan 14, 2019
Messages
504
Location
Southern Indiana
Hey everyone, new to the forums although I have spent plenty of time reading many good threads from this site. I bought my 2000 wrangler sport with 110k miles in 2015. It has the 4.0L with auto trans and was bone stock. 3.07 gears with Dana 35/30. This was previously my grandpas Jeep and was somewhat neglected the last few years he owned it. This purchase was an impulse buy as I had no previous experience with Jeeps. I paid $5k for it but it had a slipping transmission in 1st gear and was in need of some TLC. It did have the factory hardtop, ac, and mostly rust free frame. This is not my DD so it was a project I was either going to fix up/ clean up and either keep or sell.... well I really began to love this thing so the selling part went out the door quickly.
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About a month after first purchase.

I kept it mostly stock until spring 2017 and rebuilt the tranny. After doing some light wheeling a couple years with it I was impressed what it would do stock, but after high centering on the trails several times I was tired of getting stuck. I like projects and turning wrenches so everything (other than tranny rebuild) I’ve done myself. I am building this Jeep slow and steady and to be decent on moderate trails.

Current mods:
Zone 4.25” combo lift (3” suspension, hydro shocks, 1.25” body, quick discos, MML)
2012 18” JK wheels with 35” Cooper St Maxx
Cut fender flares and bed-lined
Reinforced factory rear bumper with recovery points
Front bumper recovery points
Installed all interior blue LED’s
Quadratec floor mats
All interior LED’s
Kenwood BT headunit with 4 6.5” JL audio marine speakers powered by kenwood marine amp, custom trunk box
Windshield mount quadratec 3” led cubes
Probably more that I’m not thinking of.

Yet to come:
Regear/super35 kit/ some sort of lockers
Currie ultimate steering
Rock sliders
Tire carrier with matching spare tire
Warn winch
Upgrade front brakes

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Looks awesome so far! I'll be following the build, so keep up the good work!
 
While winter has set in, I spent the last few weeks doing a major interior overhaul. My carpeting was very dirty, after vacuuming I could still pat dust out of it. So I decided to pull my carpeting and hose and scrub it with detergent. After pulling the carpeting I found my driver and passenger floor boards had serious surface rust. If I didn’t do something now this would cause future problems.
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I went ahead and pulled my seats. I sanded the floorboards down with an electric sander, and used a rotary wire wheel on a die grinder in the pitted areas, especially around the drain plugs. I then washed the entire tub with detergent, let it dry for a day with a fan, and primed the footwells/seat mounts with rust oleum self etching primer. I did the same with the bottom of the seats. I then painted them with rustoleum white gloss. It wasn’t no perfect match but is covered by carpeting 100% of the time. I considered bedline but I figured paint would clean up much better being smooth and looked way more factory.
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While everything was out, I decided to tidy up my speaker/amplifier wiring that runs to my custom trunk box I made a couple years back. The wires were loosely ran under the carpeting. I now routed the driver side wires alongside the factory hardtop wiring trim. For wires on the passenger side I tack welded some steel brackets up under the ledge of the tub, I left plenty of space for future wiring in the brackets.
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I bought 1 sq yard of grey sub box carpeting off eBay and used stainless steel staples and dressed up my box to give a more factory look.
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I also replaced my hardtop windshield shocks with new ones. So much nicer than holding the glass up with my head!
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I replaced all interior lights with blue leds, they pull much less amps, don’t get hot, and are much brighter!
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My cigarette bezel was broken, I replaced it with a new oem. I had one center dash vent broke, so I replaced both with daystar swtch vents. I bought 3” quadratec led windshield pillar cubes I wired to one switch, wired dual usb charging ports, and have two blank switches for future use:cool:. The windshield cubes are super bright btw, they are small and not noticeable which I wanted but make for great flood lights. For $150 they came with a really nice wiring harness that taps into the factory cigarette lighter power, and came with one of the daystar vent switches with the USB ports. While I was at it I bought the daystar dash tray to gain a little more storage, really like this for $20!
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I then used tuff stuff to get all the stains out of my carpeting, then reinstalled the carpet. This product also worked great to clean my mud stained roll bar pads! I bought quadratec floor mats to keep the water off my freshly painted floorboards, I’m almost positive not having floor mats was the culprit behind the rust. Last but not least I used a small propane torch to give new life to some faded trim. Pictured below in the trim that goes around the steering column.
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