My Bananas TJ

r3d

New Member
Joined
Apr 17, 2018
Messages
22
Location
Bosnia and Herzegovina
I think its time for me to make a thread after having my TJ for more than a year now :)

Here are some pictures from the day my dad and I picked it up after finding it in the ads and going for a look just to see how a well cared of 18-years old TJ should look, not even planning to spend that kind of money for a weekend toy. Fortunately when we saw it we decided we had to have it. As soon as we left the Jeeps previous owners yard, we exchanged the looks, decided to buy it, turned the car around and went back to negotiate the deal.
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It is a '00 yellow TJ, 2.5L manual, that had only 42k kilometers on the odo (i think its around 25-30k miles or so) and we bought it from the first owner that had all the papers including the original receipt, service history, alarm installation receipt and manuals, original owners manual, keys etc. The poor guy had a heart attack (he is around 70yo now) and 4 convertibles - TJ, Smart, PT Cruiser and Golf Mark I, all in mint condition and decided to sell the Jeep, Chrysler and Golf as he wasn't able to drive them often and his sons weren't that interested in cars.
A week later I picked up the Jeep and drove it for 200 kilometers back home.
Everything on the jeep was stock, we got the soft and the hard top too, both in great condition.
The Jeep had a few paint scratches, roll bars and rims needed refreshment. The frame is sound with corrosion barely existent.
Also his son broke the front left flare indicator and they put something odd there just for it not to look real bad while they waited for the replacement to arrive from ebay, but in the meantime we bought it so I fixed it later.
Most of the damage was done by him trying to fix the roll bars and fender flares scratches using the spray paint (a lot of paint overspray on the vibrant yellow paint).
Even the tires were original and they were the first things to be replaced along with roll bar links that had a lot of play and rattled.


First thing I did was find an active sub that would fit in the trunk. It seemed like a must-have as I was 26yo and audio maniac. I also changed the sound bar speakers for high quality Hertz ones which didn't satisfy and will probably go out soon.
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The sub did its work anyway.
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A few months later we put on a new set of 30'' BF Goodriches on and that fixed the terrible tire squeel on tight turns and improved the looks considerably. It took a lot of hammering to take off the rims that haven't been off since the factory.

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I also sanded and painted the rims matte black using plastidip which wasn't perfect but after a year its still going strong although I will redo it soon.

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After that I installed the 2'' coil spacers set which introduced vibration that I fixed only a week ago by lowering the transfer case 1''.
Unfortunately I dont have pictures of installation but its not that relevant as it can be found anywhere.

Here are some pics of the TJ doing its thing (before the coil spacers)
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Some time later I did a 1000km trip to Montenegro and Croatia by the sea and TJ found an old friend.

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And the vehicle in front should also be a Jeep, but it doesn't look like one :) Disclaimer: The girl next to the Cherokee is not the reason I took the picture.. or is she?
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After this trip last I didn't really drive it much or do any work so I don't have any pictures.
During the winter I drove it only 2-3 times on sunny and dry days to avoid getting road salt in my frame and kept in in a heated underground garage.
For this summer I did a regular service and also changed the original 18-years-old oils in the Danas, transfer case and the gearbox.
I also changed front right U-joint and lowered the transfer case 1''. Had the roll bars sanded, repaired and repainted but I will have to redo that because I am not satisfied with the painting quality.
My next problem is the distributor tick - the shaft has some play in axial plane (not rotational, its left-right-front-back play). I will change the whole distributor for a new one as it seems the shaft bearing is bad. It can only be heard when idling and there is no visible trace charring or carbon depositing inside the cap but its annoying af.
I am also thinking of regearing the axles because the fifth gear is unusable this way (maybe above 55mph which I never do, did today in an emergency and almost entered a death wobble for the first time - felt like I had a loose wheel) and all the gears are way too long for my taste.

Time for sleep now, its 02:30 here and I am getting up for work in 4 hours.
P.S. today I met an identical TJ in silver metallic in a village near my town, in mint stock condition. Couldn't believe my eyes as they are so rare here, more often you can see a GTR, GT3 RS, Huracan and stuff than TJ's!

Jeep wave for everybody!

Edit: still not sleeping.
Yesterday I cleaned and detailed my yellow baby and had a look at the paint condition. Its due for heavy-cut polishing and I hope I will have it done next week along with my new red baby - 290hp Seat Leon Cupra.
I will also have Sonax Ceramic Coating put on to try and keep the paintjob safe from minor scratches. You will probably laugh at that and think why does he care about he looks and paint so much but I guess I’m that kind of guy. I think I will never do hard offroading with this Jeep because I would feel sorry for it. However I might buy a ‘98 or so Grand Cherokee V8 to enjoy myself and not care about damaging it.

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Gotta love a Yellow TJ!
Looks great with those new tires on there too! Why didn't you go with 31's though?
 
Looking good so far!

Nice to see a TJ in Bosnia. That is definitely a first for this forum!
 
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Gotta love a Yellow TJ!
Looks great with those new tires on there too! Why didn't you go with 31's though?
Its really underpowered (or its better to say undergeared) even with this 30s and I was afraid of the rubbing issues so I decided to stick with 30s.
If I regear which is a likely scenario I will probably put some 32-3s on.
It really doesn’t like hills and at 50mph cruising speed its at only 2k rpm in 4th gear!


Super Dobro. When you get it muddy you can call it Smoto.

Thank you, I see you have some bosnian friends :)
 
Thats great to hear. Usually people that lived or visited here think differently about Bosnia, for others the first association is war, destruction and similar. Actually its a really safe country with beautiful landscapes and very friendly people!
 
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Its really underpowered (or its better to say undergeared) even with this 30s and I was afraid of the rubbing issues so I decided to stick with 30s.
If I regear which is a likely scenario I will probably put some 32-3s on.
It really doesn’t like hills and at 50mph cruising speed its at only 2k rpm in 4th gear!
Oh yes, that does make sense. I didn't see that you had a 2.5L, well it looks great! Looking forward to see the progress, and more of your beautiful scenery!
 
Thanks, I don't know why I did it, it just felt right :D

Yesterday I bought a used amp 4x56W RMS and started the sound system installation. Its nothing special but should get me through the summer and become more pussy magnetic.
But its a hell of a job. I am using the original head unit because I want to keep it looking stock and reversible.
I am using the speaker output to feed the amp right off the stock speaker connectors and then run back the amplified signal to the same place, which means two cables for each speaker. Reason is me not wanting to cut off stock connectors or touch the original wiring in any way.

Here are some pictures of work in progress:

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I am hoping to finish today and then drive the Jeep to a car detailer to have it polished, ceramic coating put on and interior deep cleaned.
 
Of course I did not finish the next day. It took 6 more hours of work. I managed to make speaker adapters in like 15 minutes from forex material - its used for signs in printing industry, PVC material that is flexible, self extinguishing but hard enough to hold speakers in place but can be cut by scalpel. I took the original speaker and the new one and overlapped them and then made a layout on forex and cut it out, as simple as that. Screwed it in place and then unscrewed it again because I realized I couldn't put in self tapping screws because of the lack of space but had to mount them on the speakers first and then screw in on the original mount points. It looks like this:
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After solving the mounting problem I went back to wiring. For each speaker I had to route 2 wires to the new amp - one for the signal to the amp and one from the amp back to the speaker. I used the original speaker connectors as I didn't want to cut anything original on my jeep. It took a couple of hours to route all the wires. I removed the soundbar and ran the wiring through, also stuffed it with pillow material (more to stop the cables inside rattling than for the sound quality). You will see the large brown cable in the images going through the soundbar, thats a trick for wiring the smaller flexible cables, put the larger cable through, tape the smaller cables to it and then pull it back routing the smaller cables through. Then I mounted the speakers back and put it back on the jeep. As soon as I finished mounting the soundbar I took my instrument to measure the electrical resistance so I could find which cables are speaker cables and which ones are the signal cables.
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And to my great disappointment none of them shown 3-4 ohms - the speaker resistance. After that I found out that the cables I bought had a ROTTEN red wire, that was broken every inch or two. Imagine the annoyance and disappointment. It took an hour more to replace the cables and wire them back through, but now I decided to run them through a flexible pvc hose to protect them and make the setup a bit neater.
That took half an hour.
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Then I connected the amp, made the hi-input connectors from an old ATX power supply - PC motherboard connector, connected the power supply - 12V and ground wires and tested the system. Everything worked, except for that I have alternator, ventilation and brake switch interfering with the sound. Its not that loud but its annoying, something I will have to fix soon. It whines, crackles and pops while I drive, but its a lot below music in sound level. I should probably ground something. I hid the cables under the carpet and rear seat will come over all of this so it will look completely stock.

Then I drove a bit through town listening to my new setup that will be changed again next year because I now want better sound quality, I think I will double the power next time. Now the jeep is being deep cleaned, polished and ceramic coated (Sonax CC36 coating). Detailer is my friend and he called me just to say that the paint on the jeep is rock hard and its a nightmare to polish. They probably made it that way so it can take on a lot of scratching and rock impacts.
Now I have to fix the ticking distributor problem, hopefully with help of you guys here. Its a loud tick in idle, shaft has some circular play and I think the rotor arm is hitting the cap contacts inside. There is no charring or arcing inside but it has scraped around 2mm from contacts. When engine is warm the ticking is a lot quieter and it can't be heard while driving. I need to order a new distributor, but I can only find chinese ones online with shipping to Europe :(

P.S. sorry if I wrote something in a confusing way I am hungover af. Will fix later!

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