BigTuna117

You retain some of the rigidity that they had stock. After I made the initial cut, the front fenders were jiggly and very loose. As you go through. folding the relief cuts, it begins to get less jiggly, and once it's all folded over, and the sealant has cured, it's almost as rigid as it would be stock. Mostly I was afraid my fat butt would bend up the fenders by leaning on them.

Thanks friends! Today I finished off the front and started/finished the rear. The rear was much more difficult to cut, obviously because you are cutting the inner, outer and the weld which holds them together. I pounded them 1/2 way, applied the sealant, and then pounded them the rest of the way in. It was messy. I used a can of Rustoleum Underbody coating to cover the bare spots on the outside. came out alright. A little rough in spots, but not too shabby. ...oh, and on another note, I originally bought 2 cans of the underbody spray. One of the cans actually ruptured while I was shaking it!

The upgrades keep on rollin' in! Recently I completely chopped off the original steering stabilizer mount because it had been dented sideways, sat (too far) crooked on the axle and the welded-on nut had been stripped out. On Wedensday, the IRO stabilizer kit arriver, and got strapped in. Interesting that it sits so differently than the KOR one. Meanwhile, today I began trimming and folding ops. Got the front done, Just have to finish the back tomorrow, and then paint the bare metal. I made most of the relief cuts fairly small. I took my time, and folded each bit in slowly and as precisely as the tools would allow. Here's how she sits for the night. Tomorrow I'll make another short run to Ace to get a couple more metal cutting wheels for the grinder, and some paint. It's a pretty huge difference between the untrimmed rear and the trimmed front.

Is this the Spectre canister filter?

So, an update to my canister filter idea... Spectre makes a canister filter which is 3" at both the inlet and outlet, which would be correct, But I'm still trying to figure out how to route it. Also, what to use as "plumbing." Spectre makes modular pieces that can be linked together to form a track, but they are expensive as S#!% and I'm not really sure if they are a 100% seal. Even though our super-digital engines aren't waterproof, I'd like it to be fairly dustproof. PVC is rather cheap, but looks pretty ghetto. The upside of course is that I can seal this better, and the plastic is somewhat more insulative than the cheap chromed aluminum the Spectre parts are made of. My eventual hope is to route this into a snorkel, to get the air intake point up and out of the high-density dust. Pretty much whenever I go anywhere and wheel, I have to replace my air filter and clean out the bottom of the air box. For the time being, the canister would be routed into the stock air shroud in the grille, but not having the air box would give me room for a washer fluid bottle. Any thoughts?

That actually sounds... even less convenient than having it in the engine bay! Thanks! I try to make it as clean as possible. A lot of the other rigs that see the dirt in Ft. Mohave look junky and sort of... clobbered together (think MAD MAX). People take the easy way as far as modification, and don't really give a damn how it looks. I believe that everything has a place, and that both form and function should be respected when building a vehicle. Some of the most memorable vehicles I have seen are the ones which are thought out and built piece by piece, with reason. You know, like the rigs on here!

Well, I finally got all of the parts together to finally strap one of my christmas presents onto the Jeep. For Christmas, I got a Fabcore tire carrier. It mounts into the hitch receiver, and can drop down to give you access to your hatch. The problem with this design is that it blocks your license plate. Fortunately I found this JKS license plate relocation kit on Morris 4x4 for $45. This is a really great deal since it comes with all of its installation hardware and a light for the license plate. Most of the other relocation kits run $60 for the bracket or $99ish for the bracket with the light. I locked it into the receiver, but I also bought a 4-Flat trailer harness and wired the light into the brown and white wires. This way, If I ever need to remove the carrier, I just unplug it instead of having to un-splice it. My next project is figuring out how to relocate the washer fluid bottle. Since pre-2001 WJs have the... is it a vacuum canister? Up next to the brake booster and ABS module, that location doesn't work. I think I might try and re-work the air intake and go to a canister & cone type filter. Spectre and K&N both make a couple which may work. This way, I can mount a small washer fluid bottle in the space opened up on side of the engine bay next to the canister filter. It's an idea. We'll see.

Thanks! Yesterday we took both rigs down Christmas Tree Pass and back down the Mohave road from the highway to the colorado river. The 30.6" tires fit well on the 2" budget boost, although he needs spacers to allow for any sort of articulation. Pegasus did just fine, happily bouncing the new tires back and forth over bumps and ruts. The Kanati Trail Hogs are similar to Goodyear Wrangler Duratracs, but not quite the same. The Trail Hogs have a more aggressive tread, and the outer lugs are spread out a bit more. It doesn't seem to affect it on road, as they are very quiet and very gentle at 35 PSI. These bad boys have a very beefy sidewall, too. They don't wobble back and forth like the Rugged Terrains do, and they hold their lane pretty well; not much "walking" back and fourth, which is a pleasant surprise for something of this size and aggressiveness. They do rub on the back plastic "fender." I will probably trim and fold soon, though. The 30.6" Rugged Terrains squeezed nicely into the wheel wells, but the Trail hogs are a bit of a squeeze being so much larger and more aggressive.

Well, I know I haven't posted in a while, but I've been a Busy Bee! I began replacing Tie Rod Ends in late November, and finished all 4 up a couple of days ago. I used Moog Problem Solver Tie Rod Ends because I like being able to fill up joints with grease, and replacing contaminated grease after severe water or dust gets in them. Also recently, I assisted Brady(a long time friend & brother) put his WJ on a 2" budget boost. Its amazing the difference those first 2 inches makes in ground clearance. I have a feeling his dub will get plenty of hand-me-downs from mine as I continue upgrading stuff. Meanwhile, on Pegasus, a few cool upgrades happened today. Firstly, I sold Brady my BFGs since his tires were bald, noisy, and overall pretty sketchy. They fit on his WJ very nicely. As for my jeep, We just swapped rims so he has the BFGs, and I had my new tires mounted up today. (It's always fun to watch the techs work, especially when they stop what they are doing to admire your aftermarket parts.) They are Kanati Trail Hogs. Kanati is owned by Greenball Tires, who are a reputable ATV & Dirtbike tire manufacturer. They started Kanati a few years ago as their "Extreme use division" The Trail Hog has a very strikingly similar-but-not-quite-the-same look to Goodyear's Wrangler Duratrac. The Kanati Mud Hog also has a similar tread design to the Wrangler MT/R. So far I'm really impressed with the quality of these tires. Obviously they haven't been above 50 mph yet, but they don't howl at hwy speeds or below, so I'm impressed. the carcass is very very beefy. Very thick tire. I also jumped a size to 265/75/16, so we gained about an inch of tire/diff clearance. Impressive so far! Another thing I went out and bought was a set of Splined lugs, since I felt having a key to remove the lugs would be smart, as it makes it more difficult to steal the tires. They will look pretty nice once I paint the rims black sometime in the future.

Merry Christmas!

Well, I said my next upgrade would be some sort of LED solution, but it kind of went in a direction I wasn't expecting. One of my halogen low beams started acting up, and I was forced to do a premature upgrade. Having just paid bills, I couldn't afford to do a full HID upgrade as I originally planned. I went looking for a cheap halogen on Amazon and somehow it led me to these. For $49, I really couldn't turn down the opportunity to try these out. They claim to be 3600 Lumens per bulb, so if they work as advertised, that's around 3-5 times brighter than the halogens I was running previously. a few short days later, the UPS guy delivered these. A couple of years ago, LED headlight bulbs were a joke. regardless of if you bought cheap or expensive, they were flimsy, poorly made, and fit together like someone had forced un-matching parts to join in some unnatural way. These however, even being on the cheap end of the spectrum, are very surprisingly well built. sporting a plastic "bulb" side, which has two diodes on it. because of this, light only comes out of the two sides of the bulb. on the end is a very large heatsink to keep the diodes' microcontroller cool, which the manufacturer claims is aircraft grade aluminum. The manufacturer also claims that they are IP65 Waterproof, and are rated for 30,000 Hours. The "bulb" end also happens to be significantly larger than a conventional halogen. Not sure if these would fit in the OEM reflectors, but the Spyder projector accepted it with room to spare. I found them to be very very bright, as they claim to be. They do have an... interesting... effect in the projectors, though. Let's look at them side-by-side. The Halogen bulbs: ...Aaand the LEDs: as you can see, the LEDs somehow evade the projector cutoffs. I was afraid that this would be a problem, but no one seems to have a problem with it. On the road, light is dispersed well across the road. An interesting note is that the camera doesn't seem to pick up the full extent of the beam You see that tiny spec of the porch light in the middle of the picture? I had visibility all the way out there. Even better, no one has flicked their lights at me. The beam is angled down enough that even the smallest vehicles don't seem to get blinded, I can still see for a great distance. An interesting quirk is that about 20ish feet into the beam, a shadow forms in front of each headlight. Interestingly so, that shadow is perfectly filled in by the beginning of the high beam when they are on. All in all, I'd say it was a 50 bucks well spent. We'll see how they hold up when summer comes back around. Also: Unboxing video!

My buddy Casey in NAU 4x4 did some reasearch. The Crown King trip is annual for us so we may miss it this year. "So here's the latest I've found concerning crown king. The last part of the rout goes through long owned private property. The land owner recently decided they no longer wanted vehicles going through his property. I believe it's a mining company of some sort. Anyways, the property owner created a bypass around the property illegally. This didn't sit well with the forest service and they began pressuring him with fines or something like that. The road is a legal forest road, however, there is no legal easement through the property giving the owner every right to deny access through his property. He gave an initial access block of this Friday. The forest service has worked with the owner to keep the road open through Monday while they work to reroute the road or make an agreement with the owner to keep the current road open. The forest service is desperately trying to work things out one way or the other quickly because it's an important road for business owners in ck as it brings in a lot of revenue from off road enthusiasts as well as serves as an important fire road for the forest service. One way or the other this road will remain open. There may be a short time that it gets closed but it won't be very long if it even comes to that." I copied and pasted that from Facebook. We'll see. I hope his optimism is well calculated, or it could be a huge money loss for the people of Crown King.

So I was able to recover enough of day 2's video to put this together. As you can see it isn't complete, but it wasn't as spotty as the day 1 footage I had. I think the dashcam overheats and stops recording. Not quite sure. Just a simple x16 Time Lapse. Bring your own music!

Quick question: How many of those Gore Tex patches did you have to purchase to cover all of the breather holes?

Welcome to the party!

Nice rig, friend. Welcome!

Thanks! One of my next upgrades will be some sort of LEDs, whether it be a light bar or pods. I did this to adapt the jeep towards not having the fog lights underneath. I plan to trim them out until I can put together a bumper. I also need to get diff skids in place, and purchase rock sliders next year. So much armor!

Night shots: With rock lights on:

I couldn't get quite that far back, but yes, the beam is really clean. We parked my dad's work Pacifica next to it and compared the lines. I'll try to get a better shot when I go to work Wedensday morning. I ended up switching from the white bulbs over to amber. Not particularly necessary. Now I just need some aftermarket forward facing lights.

Well, today I opened the door to the mail lady bringing a big red box to the door. What could be inside it? Let's Look: Spyder LED projector assemblies! I actually took a risk on these, and got REALLY lucky. I accidentally ended up checking the used section on Amazon and found that they had a set that were new, but the box had been opened and they couldn't sell them for the retail price because of it. I figured that if there were any defects, I could just return them to amazon for my money back. Fortunately, they were pristine! The difference is really quite large. The stock reflector housing on the left is after a good cleaning and one of those "de-fogger" kits. Actually, I should be honest. I've tried them all. The worst of those kits was 3M, and the best was Meguiar's. Anyways, the installation was as simple as expected, plus the new amber marker/turn signal lights, and it really makes her look much younger, I think. I have yet to look into HID or LED kits, although I am curious about those and will look into those in the future. We'll see how she looks at night!

It's funny that you should post this today. Guess what I also installed today! Mine are also the LED halos, I did hook them up, at least for the heck of it. Since I had laredo type assemblies, I also had to buy amber marker lights too.

Well, the new rears are on. it was one of those things that looks easy on paper, but was a complete pain because the bolts were ceased up on one side. Took about 3 hours to get the passenger side replaced, and probably 20 minutes to get the drivers side. Afterwards I took it onto the dirt to make sure that there was no rattling.

Well, last weekend NAU 4x4 came down to my neck of the woods, and we ran Moss Wash outside of Kingman! The "rear wobble" from having bad bushings on the rear control arms finally got to the point where I decided to buy a pair of Core 4x4 Fab adjustable lowers. Eventually these'll be paired with an adjustable a-arm. I was very impressed with Core 4x4's quality on the front uppers, and I wasn't disappointed with these. Hoping to get them on tomorrow after work.

There are a couple of bumpers coming out the delete the crossmember and push the winch inwards a bit. One such bumper is this type, made by a member of one of the Jeep WJ groups on Facebook: The gentleman who makes them does it in sort of a modular sort of fashion, so it can be made as a "stubby" style bumper, or with the "Headlight rails" and with/without the lights and shackle mounts.

I agree! Once I get things in order, I need to do another trip soon. Too bad I cannot make it to the Cinders event this year.