The Silver Fox LJ Build

[JMT]

This is a build thread I don’t really want to do. It’s easier to do the build than the build thread.

I’ll try to be thorough about what’s happened, but like @tworley says, not wordy!

I had been looking for an LJ for six months and thinking about it for two years. I tried to buy one from a forum member but it never precipitated. It was/is really a perfect LJ. Most of you know him as @Irun. Then, a buddy from the west side of WA, who has frequented this forum in the past and occasionally in the present, let it slip to me that he had put his up for sale a few days before. After trying to understand why he would sell, which details will not be shared here, but are a big factor, I told him I’d buy it.

It’s a very nicely outfitted rig that my girls immediately nicknamed “The Silver Fox.”

If the PO hadn’t followed the same build philosophy as me I never would have bought it, but it was too good a deal to pass up, and the PO needed to get out of it. What are good friends for? He has first buy back rights if I ever decide to sell this unicorn. Really, ‘04-06 LJ. Yes, please!

• Savvy Midarm
• RockJock 4” suspension
• Currie steering
• Rubicon Dana 44 axles
• ARB Lockers
• 5.89 Revolution Gears (the anomaly)
• Revolution axle shafts
• Barnett welded diff covers
• Rubicon 4:1 tcase
• Tom Woods Driveshafts
• Savvy MUA
• PSC Big Bore Steering Box
• Fluxor front bumper
• GenRight Mini Boatside’s
• Swayloc
• BulletPoint 8 Gang Aux
• Midland MXT275
• Warn 9.5xp
• Trektop NX
• Odyssey Battery
• Et.al.

I flew into Seattle and the PO picked me up in the LJ. This was June 8, 2025. Many of you have followed my Red TJ Build and it’s going into retirement for now. The LJ will be a toy. It only had the rear driveshaft in because he’d just sent the shafts to TW for re-balancing and didn’t have time to put the front in. With 5.89’s you’re going to want them balanced as perfect as possible. We went to his family’s shop and grabbed extras like new cats, ARB accessories, wheel spacers, and the spare and threw them in the back. Did I say it came with 5 Mickey Thompson Baja Boss 37’s with sub-2,000 miles on them? We went and got a burger and fries at his friendly expense and I set off for home. It was not a vibe free drive (need I say that?), but I had already looked at the pinion and it looked high, so I had hope. The day I picked it up.

Home.

I’m excited to see what happens. I have a plan.

 

[JMT]

The first thing I did when I got home was get under it to look at everything. Things started popping up. All fixable. Jeep’s are like girls; you’re attracted to the outside, but there’s always a lot going on underneath. I’m aesthetically driven so I immediately got to work on that and let my mind think about the underneath.

Lots of scratches. I know, they’ll happen again. I don’t care. I fix my stuff.

Lots of goo. Got it removed. PITA.

More scratches

Swayloc wrong.

Galling

Fixed

 

[JMT]

I want to move through documenting all the little fixes that took a long time to get to the interesting stuff, so I’m bypassing a lot of stuff. Most people just want to know what it’s like driving with 589 gears. I was driving 70mph today and I asked my wife if she could feel the vibes. She was like, not really.

But that was after I fixed several parts that were contacting the body. Savvy MUA crossmember had a bolt hard into the 241 TCase that was working a hole into it. Savvy Engine Skid was rubbing hard on the oil pan. Transmission lines were in the tub. There may be something else. Hard to remember. I’m still searching for any culprits. But mostly fixed.

Interior was dirty and needed a lot of love and some bolts were stripped and I cleaned it all up and fixed it all. Got BedRug. If you hate it I don’t care. I re-used the LJ’s sound deadening material from the factory carpet by stripping it off. I also made some floor mats out of 1/4” black butyl rubber I got for free. I don’t want to spend much on incidentals, but the BedRug was required by my wife. It does look much better.

I re-did a lot of wiring and made it all organized and right. Moved the ghost antenna inside the rig so it doesn’t get knocked off by a limb. Attached it to the grab bar.

The control arm mini skids were welded to each side but not to the axle, so I welded them in and now they’re boxed and strong.

The Savvy TCase shifter at the TCase was not oriented correctly and when I removed it with some helpful tips from @mrblaine the nut had stripped the special ball stud bolt. I called Gerald at Savvy and he shipped me one out FOC. Got it fixed and adjusted and it shifts like butter now.

Finally put the front driveshaft on and went for an off-road trip for about 2 minutes till I articulated the first time and the front driver tire was hard into the rear of the fender. 37’s are a no-go with this setup for more reasons than one.

 

[JMT]

Little things continued…

Seat belt latch what is backwards. It kept driving me crazy so, I turned around and fix it.

Didn’t have a battery tiedown. So, I got one. Kinda important for avoiding fires.

Speedo healer was no longer sticking to its Velcro so I got new Velcro and fixed all that and put it in a better location. I may move it in the cab later.

Didn’t have a hood prop so I got one. It works great now.

Removed everything in the interior. It was completely nasty. Rear console bolts didn’t work so I had to drill those out putting new nutserts in. Works right now.

Moved my Raceline beadlocks with 35’s onto the rig so I could at least take it to wheel.

Exhaust drops after the resonator or muffler and so it’s pretty annoying. I plan to fix that in the end when I get my ride height set.

This midarm bracket was bent hard into the JJ. Do not ask me how long it took to fix this.

Getting closer to getting to more interesting stuff.

 

[JMT]

Mini skids welded and boxed in.

Removed each mid arm one at a time, which was a real pain because the jamb nuts were so close to the brackets I couldn’t get a wrench on them. Actually had to order a wrench that I could get on them. Read a lot of post on here to find something. The arms were lengthened and now so the jamb nuts are not hard into the bracketry and pinion angle is set right. Vibes are reduced.

Door paddles had to be painted. They were rusted.

The rear bumper is really cool. It’s a next venture. I always liked these. This one needed a lot of love. I stripped pretty much all the pain off of it because it was just flaking off. The crossmember needed love too. And it’s slightly bent. The bend isn’t a big deal, but it did need paint.

Self-etch primed, painted satin black. It looks really good.

Now to the corner armor and tailgate beauty panel and there is no valance so I’ll be fabbing one up.

 

[JMT]

I wanted to remove the corner armor to make sure everything was OK underneath. I couldn’t get it off because several of the bolts were galled in the nutserts or spinning. It was a good sign there was probably rust underneath. Anti seize is very important even in the so-called rust free PNW. I ended up going to a buddies house. He owns a fab shop and has some pretty fancy tools. He drilled out several of them literally within about 10 or 15 seconds each.

Sure enough there was rust. I sanded, self-etching primed, and painted.

Finally found a good PH4 bit. It’s made by Genius. I think I broke 5-6 other bits before this one. It’s still G2G after 30-40 bolts.

The same buddy owns Valley Forge MetalCrafters. We’re working on a radiused rub rail. Thanks for help from @sunnysideup_lj

 

[JMT]

The corner armor needed love too. My buddy mentioned a Walter lineman surface conditioning tool. They cost about $1000, but I picked up a Chinesium version at Harbor freight for $99. I removed all the corrosion and rust that had transferred on the backside of the corner armor. Then got to work on making it all look right.

Top coated with SharkHide on both the backside and the outside.

 

[JMT]

The tailgate beauty panel was in bad shape and had a license plate that was just permanently adhesive to the tailgate and no license plate light. So, after finally getting the beauty panel off due to spinning nutserts I got a light wired up, which is grounded inside the tailgate and gets power through the factory system from the rear passenger side tail light. Also made the beauty panel beautiful again.

Oh, I forgot, that I also had to fix the tailgate hinges. I could’ve bought some really expensive ones that are super nice and you guys know which ones I’m talking about. But I really don’t wanna spend money on this and so I took the factory hinges,welded in the broken areas sending them all down, and repainted. They look great and they’re strong again.

Picked up a flex Zila hose and an open valve for airing up. Super important. And I didn’t have anything that would work with the ARB compressor. This thing works really great!

 

[JMT]

Now I needed to make a valance/stiffener. I picked up a 48 inch long by 3 1/2 inch wide by 3/8 inch deep piece of T 6061 aluminum. I plan to tie the valance into the corner armor on each side as many have done. This will be structural to connect both sides of the corner armor to the torque boxes and to one another. I don’t really have any great tools for this, so I plan to shave 3/16 inch off of each end of the beauty panel for the first and last 6 inches. Then I’ll drill out all my holes through the armor into the tub and crossmember. Add nutserts. Use a counter sink bit. It takes a lot of work. This was a lot more work than I expected. It turned out great.

 

[bbaldwin237]

Excited to be able to monitor your progress on this one. Based on your red one, I'm sure it will be impressive.

 

[Apparition]

I was wondering how it got to page two in 20 minutes. Looking forward to the rest of your build story.

 

[MattTJRubicon82]

I was wondering how it got to page two in 20 minutes. Looking forward to the rest of your build story.

37’s, Long arms, Coilover, wheel spacers !!!!

Lets do this Build thread!!!!!

 

[Wildman]

About DAMN Time.....

 

[JMT]

Time for trail doors to move from the Red Jeep to The Silver Fox .

I picked up these trail doors a couple years ago. They are besttop vinyl door inners that someone had welded some poison spider door skins too. I painted them red. @Nashville sewed me some amazing custom half door zippered bags that are perfect. The problem with the doors was that whoever welded that on there had the heat up too much and it warped the flat panel slightly in three or four spots per side.

I decided to fix this by picking up a sheet of 3‘ x 4‘ aluminum 3/16” thick and fabbing up some door skins. This way the door skin will match the armor, and I can just paint the edges of the door and the inside silver to match The Fox.

 

[JMT]

The red Jeep will get these OEM doors that I found in Idaho a couple months ago. Their prep for paint. Took a lot of work to get here because they were covered in bedliner. I thought I would be able to just sand a bit and get it flat enough to paint, but that’s not the case. All the bedliner had to come off. can’t decide if I want to paint them this year. I really want to, but I wanna work on The Silver Fox.

 

[JMT]

First outing was to Wenatchee National Forest with @bbaldwin237 @PG. @macleanflood and @Wildman.

This was the virgin run. The Silver Fox performed flawlessly. It’s a beast when in 4L locked. Loved driving it.

 

[PG.]

Time for trail doors to move from the Red Jeep to The Silver Fox .

I picked up these trail doors a couple years ago. They are besttop vinyl door inners that someone had welded some poison spider door skins too. I painted them red. @Nashville sewed me some amazing custom half door zippered bags that are perfect. The problem with the doors was that whoever welded that on there had the heat up too much and it warped the flat panel slightly in three or four spots per side.

I decided to fix this by picking up a sheet of 3‘ x 4‘ aluminum 3/16” thick and fabbing up some door skins. This way the door skin will match the armor, and I can just paint the edges of the door and the inside silver to match The Fox.

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I’m jealous. That’s a nice jeep.

 

[jjvw]

Silver foxes looking for romance in their chainsmoke Kansas flashdance ass-pants.

 

[JMT]

Silver foxes looking for romance in their chainsmoke Kansas flashdance ass-pants.

Pics! Actually, imagination is sufficient to gross me out.

 

[sab]

Silver foxes looking for romance in their chainsmoke Kansas flashdance ass-pants.

It takes a backwashed man to sing a backwashed song!

Great build thread, JMT!