Hello WranglerTJForum,
I'm new here and wanted to share my LJ build. This thread is going to end up as a long term log of the LJ's lifetime as a daily driver/weekend warrior but in the meantime I'll share a little about how I ended up here. As with most people on JeepForum I've been around the block a few times with Jeep projects and have personally experienced the good, bad, and ugly that comes with them. I've had great times and wheeled the Rubicon, Moab, and Hammers along with easier exploration stuff in between over the years. I've also seen a lot of hard work and dollars go down the drain when parts and builds didn't work out as planned. Over a nearly 4 year period I worked as a designer and responsible engineer in the Jeep aftermarket having created axle assemblies, pumpkin castings, diff covers, end forgings, brackets and ball joints. It was a dream job for a period of time and I got to meet a lot of people in the industry while attending events like SEMA and EJS. One of the people I was lucky enough to meet is MrBlaine who is a stand up guy and regular here at JeepForum.
I learned a lot working in the industry. Once you are on the inside of any industry it is a little easier to see how much of it is marketing and which products actually make the rubber meet the road. The same is true of the aerospace industry where I currently work, everything has a hype cycle and it is ultimately up to the customer to figure out which products and partners actually have legs to stand on. While I was working in the industry I built up my 2000 TJ with 60s, Atlas, a long arm kit, 37s, and some King coilovers. It got me around in the rocks and it drove well enough on the street for what I imagined a Jeep could do.
After I left the jeep industry about 7 years ago I also started to fall behind on the maintenance of the TJ. It's hard to keep up living here in SoCal when you don't have access to a fully stocked axle production shop and you are living in a small apartment. In the following years the TJ's health started going downhill. The long arm kit was really taking a beating, it ended up being a weak link... suspensions are a hard thing to get right. I know the person who designed the kit and he is a talented and well respected engineer having created other products in the market which have legendary status. As I mentioned suspensions are a hard thing to get right, small factors upset a difficult balance of arm placement and interlinked relationships. It isn't obvious and you wouldn't "guess" it right on your first custom long arm build. Believe me, I've created one myself from scratch having done everything from CAD design to welding and cutting under the jeep to get in on. I wouldn't do it again to be honest.
The final death knell for the TJ was a trip to Ocotillo Wells in the Anza Borrego desert here in SoCal. It took me a while to get it but I can say for a fact I love the desert. It is a beautiful and punishing place all in one go. There is an offroad park at Ocotillo Wells with a bunch of competition style man made challenges. I managed to break the rear driveshaft, bend a couple control arms, and destroyed the driver hard door when I laid it on its side in a notch. I drove it out there so I ended up putting the Atlas in front wheel drive and drove it out a ways. I found a comfortable spot away from the off road park off of the highway and called AAA for a tow. I've got the double throwdown AAA membership and they will tow you for a very long distance! Good thing as it took most of a day to get home waiting for a flat bed from El Centro to show up. When I got it home I fixed it up just enough to take it out on a couple easy hunting trips at the Tajon Ranch here in SoCal, even shot a pig and used the jeep to drag it out. After that the Jeep needed more maintenance than I could handle and I was distracted with other sports. I ended up letting her sit for long enough to get a little rotten.
At some point while I was living in a hotel room in Chicago for work I decided the TJ needed to be restored and operational again. Who knows, the snow makes people crazy. Anyway, I started emailing around and doing some research to see what interesting products had emerged in the last number of years. Despite being limited by my own human state of existence and a preoccupation with shiny metal parts I've managed to learn a few things. I knew I was going to do it different this time and focus on off the shelf solutions which could create a strong combination. I'll invent a new term here and call it the "total performance envelope". The goal of any builder who values efficient use of time and money should be to maximize the total performance envelope, TPE, while minimizing dollars and frustration spent getting to your goal. Another interesting twist is you get to define the purpose of the Jeep and thus how to measure the TPE. If you want to build a 1/4 mile drag race jeep you probably don't need a Dana 60 front axle and 40" tires because your TPE is very narrow and specific. However, for most of us the TPE is much larger, we want excellent street handling, a long service life, and the ability to hit the rocks and trails. When you take a broad measure of TPE you've got to start being picky about the build plan and parts combination. I want to chase a sports sedan down mountain roads and run the Rubicon when I get to the end of the pavement... then drive home.
I had been saving money for the Green TJ for a little while before I got really serious about fixing it. With my current living situation I'm not able to take on a real big project, even doing a break job or oil change is a bit uncomfortable. Real estate in SoCal is spendy and I'm still a renter trying to save a few bucks. So when I did get serious there was really only one choice with respect to who I wanted to work on it. You see there are lots of shops and guys who are able to wrench on a Jeep but only a few people who really deal in engineering facts and extensive personal testing. Even fewer of those guys are persistent and driven enough to trust with your rig. Naturally I ended up making contact with MrBlaine and was lucky enough to learn about the evolution of his mid-arm geometry from KOH winning race LJ to a consumer kit from Savvy offroad which would be coming online for the mass market. Next thing I knew AAA was towing my TJ out to MrBlaine's.
Since my days in the industry I've shifted towards doing more back country exploration and I've become a veteran of many a crazy backpacking and bike-packing trips like the full John Muir Trail start to finish and several Stagecoach 400 mountain bike rides. 400 as in nearly 400 miles long and self supported living off your mountain bikecrossing mountains and desert. I really wanted the Green TJ to be a sweet driver I could use to explore remote parts of California where they don't publish guidebooks and route maps. I wanted to blast down freeways and dirt roads then push through the gnar to find remote mines, cabins, historical sites, and old Indian villages. You know the type of stuff you hear about being out there in the desert but nobody will really say they know where it is or have been there. Have a trip down to Google looking for the Beveridge Mine, it won't be easy to get your own two feet down to the stamp mill site, I promise you.
The problem was the TJ had already become one of those compromise machines you see running around on 37" tires. That tire size really demands a Dana 60 axle for reliability but it suffers from being the smallest size tire you would want to run with those 60s. The green TJ had also become a highline fender rig with no type of flare to block sand and mud from flying around. It is a fair weather California rock crawler and wouldn't handle some of the climate areas I've been planning to explore. There is a funny joke in the movie Tropic Thunder about going "full retard", you never go full retard. I decided forcing the green TJ to become a sweet expedition rig with 35s didn't make much sense while running Dana 60s and an Atlas 4-speed.
However, I did choose to have MrBlaine rebuild the suspension with his mid-arm kit. I will never forget the day I took it for a test ride with the new kit and some fresh Fox 2.0 coilovers. The smile was hard to wipe off, I can't really tell you how well it handles... you'll have to just trust me. The green TJ, with crap tires and bent up unbalanced steel wheels drove circles around any Jeep I had personally driven. I've spent a fair amount of time in a Mustang on road racing tracks like Willow Springs and I'll tell you the Green TJ F**KING RIPS. It has MrBlaine's brake kit up front and stops great too! Overall I was pretty amazed and the rig doesn't have enough power to out drive the chassisand brakes on the street. I was going into turns super hot and breaking last minute, pushing through the apex and right back on the gas. Seriously, my own money here and those are the best dollars I've ever spent on a rig since I started in about 2001. I even drove it back to back on hot laps comparing it against my Dad's brand new JK Rubicon. The TJ on 60s and 37s could hold it's own against the JK, if only the TJ had more power!
That leads into the LJ build which will be documented here. After realizing I was at a cross roads with the green TJ I elected to have it live with my Dad in NorCal. It is getting fixed up but won't be the daily driver and overland exploration rig of my dreams. Instead it will be a fun fair weather rock crawler and I can run Fordyce and the Rubicon with my Dad using it. He has a truck and trailer so it will be a good situation. That left me wondering what to do for a daily driver and exploration rig. Naturally I sold my F350dually and decided to double down on a daily driver LJ build with MrBlaine.
I'm new here and wanted to share my LJ build. This thread is going to end up as a long term log of the LJ's lifetime as a daily driver/weekend warrior but in the meantime I'll share a little about how I ended up here. As with most people on JeepForum I've been around the block a few times with Jeep projects and have personally experienced the good, bad, and ugly that comes with them. I've had great times and wheeled the Rubicon, Moab, and Hammers along with easier exploration stuff in between over the years. I've also seen a lot of hard work and dollars go down the drain when parts and builds didn't work out as planned. Over a nearly 4 year period I worked as a designer and responsible engineer in the Jeep aftermarket having created axle assemblies, pumpkin castings, diff covers, end forgings, brackets and ball joints. It was a dream job for a period of time and I got to meet a lot of people in the industry while attending events like SEMA and EJS. One of the people I was lucky enough to meet is MrBlaine who is a stand up guy and regular here at JeepForum.
I learned a lot working in the industry. Once you are on the inside of any industry it is a little easier to see how much of it is marketing and which products actually make the rubber meet the road. The same is true of the aerospace industry where I currently work, everything has a hype cycle and it is ultimately up to the customer to figure out which products and partners actually have legs to stand on. While I was working in the industry I built up my 2000 TJ with 60s, Atlas, a long arm kit, 37s, and some King coilovers. It got me around in the rocks and it drove well enough on the street for what I imagined a Jeep could do.
After I left the jeep industry about 7 years ago I also started to fall behind on the maintenance of the TJ. It's hard to keep up living here in SoCal when you don't have access to a fully stocked axle production shop and you are living in a small apartment. In the following years the TJ's health started going downhill. The long arm kit was really taking a beating, it ended up being a weak link... suspensions are a hard thing to get right. I know the person who designed the kit and he is a talented and well respected engineer having created other products in the market which have legendary status. As I mentioned suspensions are a hard thing to get right, small factors upset a difficult balance of arm placement and interlinked relationships. It isn't obvious and you wouldn't "guess" it right on your first custom long arm build. Believe me, I've created one myself from scratch having done everything from CAD design to welding and cutting under the jeep to get in on. I wouldn't do it again to be honest.
The final death knell for the TJ was a trip to Ocotillo Wells in the Anza Borrego desert here in SoCal. It took me a while to get it but I can say for a fact I love the desert. It is a beautiful and punishing place all in one go. There is an offroad park at Ocotillo Wells with a bunch of competition style man made challenges. I managed to break the rear driveshaft, bend a couple control arms, and destroyed the driver hard door when I laid it on its side in a notch. I drove it out there so I ended up putting the Atlas in front wheel drive and drove it out a ways. I found a comfortable spot away from the off road park off of the highway and called AAA for a tow. I've got the double throwdown AAA membership and they will tow you for a very long distance! Good thing as it took most of a day to get home waiting for a flat bed from El Centro to show up. When I got it home I fixed it up just enough to take it out on a couple easy hunting trips at the Tajon Ranch here in SoCal, even shot a pig and used the jeep to drag it out. After that the Jeep needed more maintenance than I could handle and I was distracted with other sports. I ended up letting her sit for long enough to get a little rotten.
At some point while I was living in a hotel room in Chicago for work I decided the TJ needed to be restored and operational again. Who knows, the snow makes people crazy. Anyway, I started emailing around and doing some research to see what interesting products had emerged in the last number of years. Despite being limited by my own human state of existence and a preoccupation with shiny metal parts I've managed to learn a few things. I knew I was going to do it different this time and focus on off the shelf solutions which could create a strong combination. I'll invent a new term here and call it the "total performance envelope". The goal of any builder who values efficient use of time and money should be to maximize the total performance envelope, TPE, while minimizing dollars and frustration spent getting to your goal. Another interesting twist is you get to define the purpose of the Jeep and thus how to measure the TPE. If you want to build a 1/4 mile drag race jeep you probably don't need a Dana 60 front axle and 40" tires because your TPE is very narrow and specific. However, for most of us the TPE is much larger, we want excellent street handling, a long service life, and the ability to hit the rocks and trails. When you take a broad measure of TPE you've got to start being picky about the build plan and parts combination. I want to chase a sports sedan down mountain roads and run the Rubicon when I get to the end of the pavement... then drive home.
I had been saving money for the Green TJ for a little while before I got really serious about fixing it. With my current living situation I'm not able to take on a real big project, even doing a break job or oil change is a bit uncomfortable. Real estate in SoCal is spendy and I'm still a renter trying to save a few bucks. So when I did get serious there was really only one choice with respect to who I wanted to work on it. You see there are lots of shops and guys who are able to wrench on a Jeep but only a few people who really deal in engineering facts and extensive personal testing. Even fewer of those guys are persistent and driven enough to trust with your rig. Naturally I ended up making contact with MrBlaine and was lucky enough to learn about the evolution of his mid-arm geometry from KOH winning race LJ to a consumer kit from Savvy offroad which would be coming online for the mass market. Next thing I knew AAA was towing my TJ out to MrBlaine's.
Since my days in the industry I've shifted towards doing more back country exploration and I've become a veteran of many a crazy backpacking and bike-packing trips like the full John Muir Trail start to finish and several Stagecoach 400 mountain bike rides. 400 as in nearly 400 miles long and self supported living off your mountain bikecrossing mountains and desert. I really wanted the Green TJ to be a sweet driver I could use to explore remote parts of California where they don't publish guidebooks and route maps. I wanted to blast down freeways and dirt roads then push through the gnar to find remote mines, cabins, historical sites, and old Indian villages. You know the type of stuff you hear about being out there in the desert but nobody will really say they know where it is or have been there. Have a trip down to Google looking for the Beveridge Mine, it won't be easy to get your own two feet down to the stamp mill site, I promise you.
The problem was the TJ had already become one of those compromise machines you see running around on 37" tires. That tire size really demands a Dana 60 axle for reliability but it suffers from being the smallest size tire you would want to run with those 60s. The green TJ had also become a highline fender rig with no type of flare to block sand and mud from flying around. It is a fair weather California rock crawler and wouldn't handle some of the climate areas I've been planning to explore. There is a funny joke in the movie Tropic Thunder about going "full retard", you never go full retard. I decided forcing the green TJ to become a sweet expedition rig with 35s didn't make much sense while running Dana 60s and an Atlas 4-speed.
However, I did choose to have MrBlaine rebuild the suspension with his mid-arm kit. I will never forget the day I took it for a test ride with the new kit and some fresh Fox 2.0 coilovers. The smile was hard to wipe off, I can't really tell you how well it handles... you'll have to just trust me. The green TJ, with crap tires and bent up unbalanced steel wheels drove circles around any Jeep I had personally driven. I've spent a fair amount of time in a Mustang on road racing tracks like Willow Springs and I'll tell you the Green TJ F**KING RIPS. It has MrBlaine's brake kit up front and stops great too! Overall I was pretty amazed and the rig doesn't have enough power to out drive the chassisand brakes on the street. I was going into turns super hot and breaking last minute, pushing through the apex and right back on the gas. Seriously, my own money here and those are the best dollars I've ever spent on a rig since I started in about 2001. I even drove it back to back on hot laps comparing it against my Dad's brand new JK Rubicon. The TJ on 60s and 37s could hold it's own against the JK, if only the TJ had more power!
That leads into the LJ build which will be documented here. After realizing I was at a cross roads with the green TJ I elected to have it live with my Dad in NorCal. It is getting fixed up but won't be the daily driver and overland exploration rig of my dreams. Instead it will be a fun fair weather rock crawler and I can run Fordyce and the Rubicon with my Dad using it. He has a truck and trailer so it will be a good situation. That left me wondering what to do for a daily driver and exploration rig. Naturally I sold my F350dually and decided to double down on a daily driver LJ build with MrBlaine.