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Hi guys I just joined the club a couple of days ago, I've been to lazy to join in the past year, but no more excuses!
 
Time to let you guys see my work in progress Jessica... If anyone wants to know why I named her like that ask and Ill tell you guys the story lol.
 
I purchased her pretty much all "ready to go", but as soon as a started wheeling it, and like with any used car purchase, all the bugs started coming out, it was then when I realized she was a pavement queen...

 

 

All this mods were done by the PO.
 
One of the first things that happened to me was the infamous death wobble! And sure enough the PO had the original 1989 trackbar there! So I changed it and I was good to go again!

 
Then on another mild wheeling trip and bike riding, I lost all brake lights and turning signals!

 

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Sorry guys I don't have enough time now to put it up to date, but in the next two weeks or so I hope to accomplish it. 

More info: 

       I've had her for a little bit more than a year now, so Ill have to update all that in the next couple of days!

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OK anyways following up on the update...

 

After that turns out there was a short somewhere in the wires and ended up frying a bunch of fuses, replaced them and fixed the problem only for a little while, because one day I turn on my right turning signal and popped another fuse so I tried to find the short, and couldnt I finished looking for it after all the wires went in between the gas tank and the bed. So I just left it like that for almost a year and didnt get a single ticket! lol Anyways I still need to fix that and since I'm not a huge fan of any type of electrical fixings I am going to take it to a pro to fix all of the shorts that it might have, and get rid of all the cables I don't need so my engine bay can look a little cleaner.

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Well after I changed the trackbar for a new one, it was a matter of time for the death wobble to come back, and sure enough it did  :fs1: Damn you! So since I had the 17" JK Rubicon original wheels, and was running them with adapters I thought that might be the cause, so I tightened them and nope it was still there. So since my dad had 4 15" wheels with 31" BFG M/Ts with the correct bolt pattern I decided to run 'em and it was still there but this time I could go faster before it happenned, so I left them for a week wheeled with them.

 

PIcs:

 

After having them on for a week I didnt like the stance, ride, and look of it so I went back to the 17s

 

 

 

Way better! don't you think?

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This was actually the "wheeling biking" outing where I popped a bunch of fuses..

 

Nice View eh!

If you walk a couple of feet to the right of the truck there is a vertical drop off of more than 250ft 

 

And this one again..

 

Anyways it was on this downhill when I realized I needed new brakes they werent super urgent but having them would be nice. 

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Anyways going back to the infamous death wobble issue, I went to a friends local off road shop and turns out it was the ball joints!!! Just like with the trackbar they where the original ones! So I went ahead and bought new ones from O'reylis and let them install them at the shop. Oh and I almost forget the truck was riding really hard both front and back, So then I realized that the PO didnt install the lift correctly since he ordered the 4.5" with the add-a-leaf, the truck was a bit taller in the back when you put the add-a-leaf where its supposed to go but since he owns a body shop and he mostly cares about looks he misplaced it in order to make the truck look leveled. So I ordered a pair of 2" polyurethane spacers for the coils and fixed the leafs springs. And since I had the death wobble issue I also bought the upper control arm rubber bushings for the axles and installed all that while it was in the shop. 

 

Sorry no pics of this since it was about a year ago and wasnt thinking of actually writting a thread.. :dunno:

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Anyways it was while I was in the shop that my friend sees something incorrect in my engine bay. SO I asked him whats wrong and then he tells me well your engine looks crooked, so then I start looking and sure enough my motor mounts broke! Well not really the motor mounts but the thread holes in the motor, so my engine was basically resting on the distributor! So my dad got super scared and advised me not to use my truck at all till we fixed that. So I wanted to buy the brown dog motor mounts and plates, but in the end my dad convinced me of fabbing our own ones. Well thanks to having great friends we got to do it in a somewhat rapid time manner. I still used my truck with the engine resting on the distributor but only for commuting, and tried not to hammer it so we designed our own "motor side plates" is what I call em lol I'll post pictures later. But basically my dad got crazy and pretty much tried to get every available bolt on the right side of the engine and then make our own attachment. Well after doing the design several times on cardboard and finally getting the holes as straight as possible without taking the engine out, we gave the template to one of my buddies who has amazing welding and fabricating skills.

 

Here is his truck when I met him to give him the templates, he fabbed the front bumper and light mounts on his truck..

Also notice the rigid industries Dually lights since they are hard to see

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Well it was a couple of weeks after I met him to give him the templates when we planned on going for a Freeride Fest in Las Cruces NM, mostly just buddies showed up, rode, drank beers, and camped, overall a good time! Anyways we met there and that's when I was convinced of getting a new bumper for Jessica and he convinced me of getting the rigid duallys since we compared them at night in the dark desert against those big @$$ Hellas behind his grill and it pretty much made them look like little pen flashlights again the dually LED lights which you can pretty much let them on all night and still have a $#!& load of battery left. Anyways it was then when he gave me my "motor side plate" (again pictures on this later) oh man I was so excited!! because I could finally use my truck as a regular truck again! 

 

PIcs of the fest..

Looking sexy with all those bikes on there!

Good times with good people!

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Well later on that week my dad did me the favor of putting the plate on for me since I had to go study for school.. Oh I also forgot to mention that I had already purchased the poly OEM motor mounts from energy suspension. Well after installing that and driving her around town I figured it was time for me to use my winch, plus what better excuse to destroy a bike frame that I had warrantied at the shop! So I went ahead and told my friend and of course he was down so we put the bike frame on his tow hook and started winching from the other side of the parking lot at the bike shop I work at lol 

 

Here are the pics:

Lucky me it already had this winch when I bought it! :banana:

We had already started abusing the frame the day before by shooting at it, and my friend jumping on it with his bike.. and believe it or not pulling it like that did not do anything to the frame but leave the cable marks around the headtube both trucks started dragging so we changed the position of the frame in order to destroy it.

That'll do it

hehehe :yes:

 

 

If y'all wanna see the after pictures of the frame just let me know and Ill upload them.

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i always loved your truck from the pics on your instagram. as for the death wobble, best thing you can do is get adjustable upper control arms and take your truck to an alignment shop and have them put 3 degress of POSITIVE caster in it. I did it to mine and have no death wobble and i'm running 33x12.50's and no stabilizer. usually the 4.5" lifts don't come with them and changes the caster even though they say it doesn't.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hey Guys so Ive been really busy lately but I'm forcing myself to not forget to post here.. So I finally took some pictures of the Custom Motor Mounts here for you guys to see this is the Passenger side mount.

 

Let me know what you guys think about it! haha 

PS: A lot of my friends think its overkill but I always say better safe then sorry! :thumbsup:

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Ok So back on the story again..Next day After playing with the winch I went to my friends house and turns out his dad had just purchased the new Grand Cherokee so I tooke the liberty of parking jessica right in front of it and snaped a pic, though it looked cool and here it is.

 

 

Then me n my buddy went wheeling with another buddy of mine who had just purchased his Tacoma, so what a better way to test it than to go out and wheel it!

 

 

Flexing Her out!

 

Whoops you can almost see her panties from that angle lol! 

 

 

 

He only got stuck a couple of times, lol

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One of those days I was bored, So I was checking out a new app for my phone and decided to do a collage of all the badass pictures I had taken of her, so far..

 

 

 

 

 

That top one is a huge crater in Santa Teresa NM it's called" Killbourne's Hole", it's pretty bitchin once you get there because you don't expect it to be that big.

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Well I never actually liked the way my bumper looked, and plus the approach angle was kind of funky, plus I never actually trusted the PO's work so I never pulled anyone but that frame I destroyed with that setup. So I ordered a new bumper for her, and a pair of lights while I'm at it...

 

 

Excited!!!

 

 

So of course I had to do the mock up! c'mon you know how we are when we get new parts lol

 

 

Dismantling phase 1

 

 

Old bull bar out! Turns out the PO had the bull bar and winch attached by only a couple of bolts on each side.. and had welded the bolts that attache the winch to the winch plate.. "So that way they can't steal it!" .. Not a huge fan

 

 

New Bumper mock up

 

 

And installed!  You don't see the lights nor the winch installed because we had to do a special plate to mount the winch.. You know just Jessica being a little b*@$£ haha

 

 

So here is a mock up of the lights, I personally like them on the bottom, How about you?

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So of course I had to go wheel it! hahaha even though it didnt really help that much lol

 

 

 

Found a bit of mud that day! 

 

 

 

Sunset on my drive back home

 

 

And the wash afterwards.. lol

 

 

And while I'm at it might as well put some stickers on it

 

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So my stereo was pretty sucky and with the help of a good friend I got a new one with speakers and everything! He was patient enough to wire it all, because if theres one thing I hate is messing with any sort of electrical $#!& and more than anything wiring harnesses!

 

 

Didnt get a picture of the speakers or wiring  :doh:  but the speakers are polk audio, and They're pretty awesome just enough bass to feel it, but not as much that it would be uncomfortable to live with. 

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