Big Tuna's "Building the Dub!"

[BigTuna117 33]

Well, I finally got the IRO A-Arm I bought LAST FREAKIN' YEAR installed. I managed to also install the flex joint upgrade on it, so the A-Arm is completely rebuildable, and rubber bushing free! On a side note, trying to remove the old A-Arm ball joint with a box end wrench and brute strength, I managed to pop my back (which has been out for the last week). Sometimes you fix the Jeep, sometimes the Jeep fixes you. 🤣

 

The old A-Arm bushings and ball joint were completely trashed. The bushings were wallowed out to the point that it had actually developed slop when braking or accelerating. The entire axle would not only shift, but also cause the entire rear end to slightly walk all over the road. I stopped driving the Jeep for a while, I waited for the weather to cool down enough to work on. I took on the task of adding a cooling fan to my Joying android headunit. Being an older model, it is based on the Rockchip PX5 CPU, which is notorious for overheating issues. A simple mod that can be done mostly in the shade of the garage! The saving grace is Joying's custom main board design, which has a decent cooling solution built in, just needs some air on it, especially in our summer. 

 

Overall, the Jeep is driving much better with the new A-Arm in place. Now that the entire suspension has been effectively replaced, all clunks and noise has been eliminated. First time in a long time. 

Now I can focus on what is wrong with the A/C again...

[theksmith 4,041]

no clunks is a beautiful thing! good luck with the A/C

[dzJeepChic 2,517]

Solid work, I'm sure it's MUCH NICER TO DRIVE now! Sorry about your back though - OUCH! Great to hear from you...

[BigTuna117 33]

Well, my final days in the Arizona sun are upon me. In a number of weeks, I'll be moving to the cooler climates of Oregon, and that means I need to get off of my butt and get a few small issues fixed with the Jeep. Overall, she is running very healthy and should make the trip just fine.

-(Biggest Issue) Re-seal my Spyder headlight assemblies. Though these have served me well, the Arizona sun has definitely pounded the plastic pretty well. I do plan to replace these sooner or later, but for now I need to re- seal two of the ball connectors onto the assemblies on both sides. 

-Rebuild the joints on my trackbar- I purchased the flex joint upgrade kit from IRO, and the larger bolt upgrade for the lower joint from Kevin's Offroad. The upper joint is just being a booger to remove, and I have to completely drop the bumpstop on that side to complete the extraction.

-Fine tune fan Kick-On temp- increase temperature about 10-15 degrees.

-Retire front lightbar- the position is not ideal if I get the opportunity to install a winch bumper eventually. Bar will be re-sealed and used elsewhere. I may eventually install a roof mounted lightbar, and re-use the circuit.

-Tighten clamps on all coolant hoses. Trust me, if you go to silicon hoses, such as HPS, don't use a screwdriver or bit driver to tighten your hose clamps. Ratchet those suckers down as far as they'll go without the clamp breaking!

 

I'm also working on bringing my old hitch mounted tire carrier back into service. I was never terribly happy with my wiring harness on it, so I'm working on a more professional looking (clean) solution. I also discovered that Trimax makes a style of hitch clamp I may incorporate into it to get rid of much of the noise that plagues the design. 

 

Another project I'm pulling out of storage to finish (because it would be too awkward to properly pack) is a Grille I had freshly bought, de-chromed, and had Cerakoted in the Charcoal Grey color I prefer. Alot of people go for mesh inserts to freshen the look, but I have another idea...

[theksmith 4,041]

did you get a job in Oregon, or just wanting to try something different?

 

can't wait to see what you're planning for the grille project!

[BigTuna117 33]

My family is originally from Oregon. Moving to be closer to family, and to find something more of a long term career.

 

As far as the grille goes, I decided I really like the geometric plastic mesh alot of newer vehicles are incorporating. I wanted to make it subtle, yet stand out, much like the "Plan B" (the wire mesh mod, which always looks pretty sharp I think) I managed to cut out the sections straightly, and attach them using JB Weld Plastic epoxy. The epoxy was diffcult to get from going everywhere, however I found that letting it set for a minute or two makes it less prone to gravity than before. All in all it seems it came out sturdy... so far. 

Not quite done with it yet, but this is how it looks so far.

 

The mock up- letting the epoxy bond

 

How it looks.... Gosh, I never realized how bad the bumper looks! lol

 

Yet, it's not quite ready to install... there's more modification to come!

[dzJeepChic 2,517]

On 1/5/2022 at 10:24 PM, BigTuna117 said:

Well, my final days in the Arizona sun are upon me. In a number of weeks, I'll be moving to the cooler climates of Oregon

Wow!!! That's huge news, sorry I missed it until now. Wishing you all the best in your new climate!! 

 

Hey, you can trade in your sombrero for one of these!!

 

[BigTuna117 33]

I didn't quite take any pictures of the completion, but here's the completed look:

I did add the marker lights, as commonly seen on alot of modern "utility" vehicles. I quite like the clean look, aside from having to spend several hours plastic welding and resealing the back of the passenger headlight. all of the amber markers along with the new ones have the same color tone, so it looks pretty good. I was able to center the markers and got them seated on pretty straight, too. Just a fun little project in the middle of packing and all of the other shenanigans going on. 

 

Soooooo, aside from how oxidized my headlights are, and the tired plasti-bumper, looks pretty good, I think. 

 

I also re-tuned the fan system to power on at 200F, rather than 180. This way the fan only really kicks on once the rig hits temperature. At highway speeds, enough air gets through the radiator that the fan isn't really necessary, Only really need it currently for slow, stop-and-go street driving. 

 

I also installed some upgrades to my JKS trackbar, Including the IRO flex joint kit, and the Kevins Offroad large hardware kit for the lower. I was running the Hard KOR bushings before, however the bushings are so extremely firm that I managed to actually wallow out the bushings! The upper is now a flex joint, and the lower is an IRO bushing (I've head really good luck with those) but with the oversized inner sleeve to match the significantly larger bolt.

 

... And with that, I did a torque check on the whole suspension, given all of the modifications I've done recently. All in all, the Jeep is pretty much ready to be loaded and moved when the time comes.

[BigTuna117 33]

Well, after a pretty solid year of shenanigans, I can confidently say rig building can resume. 

 

So, the move went mostly pretty smoothly, both the Jeep and the motorhome were the last assets moved being the "project" vehicles. It was determined that the Jeep was a fair match in range to the motorhome and with a full compliment of tools the Jeep was also a good match incase of a breakdown. Both ran splendidly, until the motorhome suffered an ignition system failure just a few hundred feet short of the Avelar exit on I-5. The Jeep not only ran support ferrying parts from Carquest in Avelar, but also shuttled us back to the motorhome the next day after it was towed to a shop in Avelar. The failure shot about a 10' flame out of both sides of the exhaust, The ol' 440 was unfazed by this, so after replacing parts of the ignition system, we were back in business. The normally 16ish hour trip spread across two days ended up being spread across three due to the overall stress and exhaustion trying to keep the motorhome rolling. A ignition system rebuild is in its future. Or the swap to fuel injection. I'd prefer the latter, after the fact the trip ended up consuming 6 coils, 2 ignition modules, and 3 resistors (1 of which was a duralast coil which was more or less DOA- don't buy 440 parts from autozone).
The jeep on the other hand, performed exceptionally for the whole trip, averaging a staggering 17.7 MPG, a great result that happened to fall within the 10 year anniversary of owning this rig!

 

Some band-aids and repairs have been done since, too. This old rig really shows it has been a desert rig for a very long time. A few sort weeks after migrating it, the rains flooded out one of the headlight assemblies. Attempting to remove the affected housing lead to the complete disintegration of the assembly in short order. The assemblies were replaced by the same model, but fitted with the CCFL halos rather than the LED halo model. same look, but with a brighter, cleaner, more DRL-y halo. 

 

Another thing that failed, surprisingly, was one of the Core 4x4 rear lower control arms. At some point shortly after the move, the outer section of the arm became slightly wallowed and allowed the thread half of the arm to rattle and strip itself out. I ended contacting Core about the failure, despite the fact that that these arms predated all of their products pretty extremely. Core's current work offers a "if you manage to break it somehow, we'll replace it" warranty, and they also stood behind these arms despite the age and the fact that they predate said warranty. I ended up taking a credit for the equivalent "tier 1" arms and applying it to the tier 3 arms, which use flex joints. this puts them in line with the IRO arms on the jeep. Their quality has been refined significantly. 

 

The garage is still a mess, but there are a few things in the works!

[dzJeepChic 2,517]

Hey @BigTuna117! What a story getting that RV up there! I can't say I really understand all that lingo about ignition systems, but it sounds not fun. Good thing you had the Jeep for sure, and glad everything and everyone made the move unscathed for the most part. Thanks for keeping up on the story! I was thinking about you a couple weeks ago wondering how it all went down.