High travel, high clearance & high octane, a streetable adventure LJ story

I took a total of 2 test drives, during the first I discovered a few things and I verified them on a ride in the morning. About 5 minutes for the first and 10 for the second.

To recap a little bit and to put pictures into words, my Jeep is currently sitting on approximately the equivalent of no lift. The front is riding on the 2" air bumps and the rear has about 1" to the air bumps. It needs to go up by about 3-5" for an equivalent lift height of 4" when compared to a typical lift. My steering box also needs a couple of changes. I knew all of this going into the test drive so I wasn't expecting much.

Here's my observations:

1) The Jeep rides surprising comfortable over my bumpy driveway. If it's already feeling this good I can't imagine how well the ride quality will be once I get the coilovers dialed in. I was not expecting that at all.

2) The brakes are beyond through the floor bad. I need to bleed them again and break in the pads/rotors. The road I drove on is covered in ice so I didn't have a chance to bed the pads.

3) After my drive I noticed that I have a few leaks on my steering lines. Gotta tighten them and replace one fitting.

4) There's a lot of smells. Between sitting the last few years, new parts burning in, and the exhaust coming in I can't do much diagnosis on the smells. However there wasn't much smell when I had started the engine in the garage.

5) There's a lot of smoke or steam when the Jeep stops after the engine gets up to temp. It's mostly sentless so I think it's steam coming from the radiator. The engine had burped and spilled coolant all over so I think that might be the cause combined with being cold outside. When I bring the engine up to temp in the garage I don't see any of this. I previously had a slight radiator weep when it'd change temperatures outside but the coolant would never run low that I remember. I'm going to be keeping an eye on it.

6) Aside from the steering fluid, there's no drips or leaks on the garage floor after the test drive. Including the radiator.

7) The Jeep is surprisingly quiet for not having a muffler. After a muffler or two is added I think the sound system is going to be really enjoyable.

8) Maybe it's my familiarity with this Jeep or my excitement, but it handles amazingly and really gets up and goes.

9) There is a bad squealing noise when I start to get on the throttle. It sounds like a clutch squeal (I have an automatic). I diagnosed this during my second drive to be coming from the supercharger. I suspect charged air is escaping between the SC and the manifold as soon as it goes into boost but I need to take a closer look.

So, a few more items are added to my to do list but overall the drive was successful!
 
Wow good update! It seems that there is always going to be just a few more things that need done, I guess that's true for all of us jeep owners though. You have done an amazing job, and I cant wait to see how it looks after you get all the little issue out of it. Keep up the good work!
 
Because my Jeep will be sitting for weeks at a time (even when I'll be using it as my daily driver, I only leave maybe once a week since I work from home) I want to make sure that I'm taking care of my battery and implement the use of a battery maintainer.

I wired in an SAE quick disconnect that is fairly standard on battery maintainers and ran it all the way up to the front. It's fused to 7.5a on the SafetyHub fuse block.

20191115_hard-wired-charger.jpg


I've previously used battery maintainers that I received as promotions or gifts but I did some research on how to best take care of my new battery and I found that CTEK 8 step charger/maintainers are highly recommended and do a better job than what I've been using. They have several models with different features, I went with their model (CTEK 7002) with the most features and highest capacity so I can use it for all of my battery charging needs going forward.

To adapt their "comfort connector" to my SAE connector I needed the part number CTEK 56-564.

20191115_ctek-charger.jpg
 
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Good work, man! It's been an interesting e-journey following your saga. Looking forward to more discoveries and stories.
 
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Genright battery tray is garbage. I would've done what you did if I thought of it (and I even already had metal cloak trays!). I ended up pulling the loom tight and ran under battery.

I really like how you snuck the ARB in behind the pass fender. I ended up putting my coolant bottle where you put your ARb and I put the ARB on top of intake with More bracket.

I also was eyeballing the Windstar box. Did you consider punching through the cowl? For now I am just running a bagged filter. I was thinking sames as you about putting a shield behind the CO. What material where you thinking to use?

Man your work ethic is applaudable. I am doing only 1/2 (or less) what you're doing and it's exhausting!

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What is reloom? You spliced into every wire to extend it?

The wire loom (a loom is the bundle of wires) comes from the transmission and up the firewall so there is plenty of length to relocate without splicing. I drew the line at splicing that many wires. The wires for the engine and AC sensors needed to be separated from the TCM wires.

From there I wrapped the wire bundles loosely in electrical tape and placed them each in appropriately sized split loom for protection. At the intersections of each branch I wrapped the split loom in electrical tape to reduce strain on the individual wires.
 
I also was eyeballing the Windstar box. Did you consider punching through the cowl?

I did consider that. 1) The repositioned intake of the supercharger makes it difficult to route into the cowl and place a air filter box. 2) I had some concerns about sucking sounds being transferred into the interior especially with the supercharger.

What material where you thinking to use?

I have a sheet of 1/4" nitrile that I used to make the rear fender liners (in a post last November or December probably). I have no clue if that's the correct material for the job or not. I'm thinking I'd cut a rectangle out and attach the long edges in place on the innerfender with 6 or 8 small bolts on each edge.

Man your work ethic is applaudable. I am doing only 1/2 (or less) what you're doing and it's exhausting!

I've exhausted too hence the reason for not posting updates. I'm taking this weekend slow before finishing up.
 
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Now that the air intake is in place I was able to connect up my front PCV* breather. It needs to connect to atmosphere pressure with a small air filter mounted to it or to the air intake is fine. The rear PCV breather has a smaller hole in it and is designed to be a metered air leak into the throttle body. For that reason the front PCV breather can not also be connected to the throttle body — it would flow too much air and cause a high idle.

*On our Jeeps this is technically a CCV.

So:
Front to air filter.
Rear to throttle body.

I drilled a 1/2" hole into my silicone intake and pushed a barbed to straight cut threads fitting (Summit SUM-220189B) through with a -6 AN bulkhead jam nut (Aeroquip FBM5100) to secure it in place. Because I absolutely do not want that nut to get sucked down the intake I used Loctite to hold it in place.

20191116_PCV-breather-parts.jpg


20191116_inside-intake.jpg


20191116_pcv-breather-assembled.jpg
 
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Now that the air intake is in place I was able to connect up my front PCV* breather. It needs to connect to atmosphere pressure with a small air filter mounted to it or to the air intake is fine. The rear PCV breather has a smaller hole in it and is designed to be a metered air leak into the throttle body. For that reason the front PCV breather can not also be connected to the throttle body — it would flow too much air and cause a high idle.

*On our Jeeps this is technically a CCV.

So:
Front to air filter.
Rear to throttle body.

I drilled a 1/2" hole into my silicone intake and pushed a barbed to straight cut threads fitting (Summit SUM-220189B) through with a -6 AN bulkhead jam nut (Aeroquip FBM5100) to secure it in place. Because I absolutely do not want that nut to get sucked down the intake I used Loctite to hold it in place.

View attachment 125339

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Can you make that C.A.R.B legal so I can import this jeep to CA once you are through with it. :p

You've done an impressive amount of work the past few days. Congratulations on being able to drive it again.
 
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Can you make that carb legal so I can import this jeep to CA once you are through with it. :p

You've done an impressive amount of work the past few days. Congratulations on being able to drive it again.

Ha! Do they physically inspect the engine (and know what they are looking for)? Or just a sniff test? I wonder if you could open the BOV for testing so it wouldn't go into boost or else you'd have to remove the SC before testing.
 
I replaced the lead military terminals with a pair made from die cast zinc from Prime4x4. There are a number of benefits to the zinc terminals but in my case I mainly chose them for their corrosion resistance. It turns out that they look a lot nicer than what I had too.

While I had the terminals off I also put corrosion protecting washers on the posts. I don't know if all brands are created equal but I had these ones on the shelf so we'll see how they do.

20191116_zinc-terminals.jpg


Just in case someone else who's unfamiliar is ever working on my battery, I placed edge trim on the fender so that a wrench won't short out when removing/installing the positive terminal without having the negative terminal disconnected.

20191117_terminals-installed.jpg
 
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toximus said:
9) There is a bad squealing noise when I start to get on the throttle. It sounds like a clutch squeal (I have an automatic). I diagnosed this during my second drive to be coming from the supercharger. I suspect charged air is escaping between the SC and the manifold as soon as it goes into boost but I need to take a closer look.

I was unable to find any vacuum leaks by spraying around the engine with water in hopes that the water would get sucked into the engine and make it stutter. I found that the squeal happened mostly when the belt tension would change on deceleration. I sprayed water on the supercharger idler pulley which would quiet it down for a few seconds until it'd dry out again. I took a closer look at my pulleys and I found that the PSC power steering pump pulley was misaligned by about 1 belt rib.

20191117_psc-pulley-misalignment.jpg


The belt manufactures recommend a minimum of 1/2 a belt rib of misalignment per 6" so it was significantly over that. I had to make an additional spacer to place on the pulley installation tool to push the pulley back further on the shaft.

20191117_psc-pulley-alignment.jpg


I'm not sure if it's an indication or coincidence but my factory steering pulley was set back further on the shaft:

20191117_OEM-steering-pulley.jpg


Another test drive showed that the squealing issue is fixed and I checked it off my list!

toximus said:
4) There's a lot of smells. Between sitting the last few years, new parts burning in, and the exhaust coming in I can't do much diagnosis on the smells. However there wasn't much smell when I had started the engine in the garage.

5) There's a lot of smoke or steam when the Jeep stops after the engine gets up to temp. It's mostly sentless so I think it's steam coming from the radiator. The engine had burped and spilled coolant all over so I think that might be the cause combined with being cold outside. When I bring the engine up to temp in the garage I don't see any of this. I previously had a slight radiator weep when it'd change temperatures outside but the coolant would never run low that I remember. I'm going to be keeping an eye on it.


I poured several buckets of water over the radiator and engine to dilute the spilled coolant and wash out any dust that's accumulated.
 
Ha! Do they physically inspect the engine (and know what they are looking for)? Or just a sniff test? I wonder if you could open the BOV for testing so it wouldn't go into boost or else you'd have to remove the SC before testing.
They visually check things like stock headers and intakes along with checking for engine lights and gases being released from the tail pipe. Tom's failed smog on his LJR the first round because his aftermarket CARB legal intake was missing the CARB sticker on it. Of course some techs don't look as hard as others but when you bring a car from out of state you need to get it looked at by an approved dmv rep before even smogging it. Some counties in CA do not require smog other than for transfer of sale. Unfortunately I do not live in one of those counties.

Got to love CA (y)
 
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They visually check things like stock headers and intakes along with checking for engine lights and gases being released from the tail pipe. Tom's failed smog on his LJR the first round because his aftermarket CARB legal intake was missing the CARB sticker on it. Of course some techs don't look as hard as others but when you bring a car from out of state you need to get it looked at by an approved dmv rep before even smogging it. Some counties in CA do not require smog other than for transfer of sale. Unfortunately I do not live in one of those counties.

Got to love CA (y)

That's a bummer. Would the windstar intake be a problem or since the Ford Windstar is CARB legal the intake is too?
 
That's a bummer. Would the windstar intake be a problem or since the Ford Windstar is CARB legal the intake is too?
Not sure. If it had a carb legal EO number on it somewhere I would think you'd at least have a chance.
 
I replaced the lead military terminals with a pair made from die cast zinc from Prime4x4. There are a number of benefits to the zinc terminals but in my case I mainly chose them for their corrosion resistance. It turns out that they look a lot nicer than what I had too.

While I had the terminals off I also put corrosion protecting washers on the posts. I don't know if all brands are created equal but I had these ones on the shelf so we'll see how they do.

View attachment 125419

Just in case someone else who's unfamiliar is ever working on my battery, I placed edge trim on the fender so that a wrench won't short out when removing/installing the positive terminal without having the negative terminal disconnected.

View attachment 125420
Good call on the zinc fasteners, in my past days of electrical vehicle work I would replace them as well. Just make sure you don’t have a copper to zinc connection (doesn’t look like you do) as those corrode with each other. In your belt post did you intend to say the manufacturer recommends a maximum of 1/2 belt rib and not minimum?