Blue XJ

7.5" for 33's? wow, thats really tall. you gonna go with some 35's or 36's now?

No real progress since the last post. I noticed the BFG's I picked up had some cracks between the tread, so I opted for a like new set of Trxus mud terrains in the 35" size. Got them mounted up yesterday, and shot the bed with a thin coat of black paint, just to make most of it the same color. :D

Well, just need to weld on the perches on the rear axle, finish welding the frame plates, splice the xjand mj harness to get brake lights working, install new windshield and shoot it with some paint once it warms up outside a little. :D Image Not Found Tire coverage looks to be about perfect with the 35's too. You can even see the poor old XJ in the garage in this one. Image Not Found

Here's a more recent pic of my MJ. Its almost ready to be driven on the road, just a few more things need to be finsihed up.

I put 2 door XJ buckets into my MJ. I just made a new "platform" on the MJ floor that lined up with the mounting holes on the XJ seats. I then welded bolts upside down on the new "platofrm" and dropped the XJ seat frame onto them and tightened them down.

I went through two or three of them in a year, you get pretty good at replacing them. I have it down to abotu 25 minutes now. Just use enough extensions so the ratchet is rearward of the trans crossmember.

x2 for here too. actually worked on the jeep in the backyard for a change. its nice to get out in the sun and out of the garage once in a while.

Its been a while since I have worked on it, been doing a lot of travelling for work. Finally got the rear end installed and fired it up for the first time today. Runs great. Next weekend I am gonna go through everything and tighten everything down and get it ready to hit hte road. I also traded my old rear leafs for a set of 50% tread 35" BFG's Gotta clean the garage up a little to get to the tire changer, but hopefully they will be on next weekend too. Have a total of 85 hours into it so far. Including disassembling the XJ to get all the parts. Not too bad.

Shouldn't have to, mine fit on just fine on the stock rail, there aren't really any cab mounts since its a unibody up front. Pull them away from the frame, put the bolts in, then put the lines back inside the mount, then install the upper arm. Thats how I have done both kits, never had a problem. I ran the bolts from the inside out though, so the bolt heads were on the inside of the frame

I put them on mine. I haven't finished building it yet to see if there is a difference. I used 3x3x.25 angle and went from the firewall to just passed the rear of the cab. I cut out all the stock weld nuts in the frame and welded 1/2" nuts to the top side of the plates and then welded the plates on. I integrated the long arm mounts into them kinda too, made them bolt on and weld on, should help a lot. There are now nuts for the crossmember, skid plate, traction bar mount and front control arm mounts. I bought the steel to do it to the XJ, but decided to build an MJ instead, so I had to use the metal for something.

Same here, HO head and actaully a HO block too with my stroker, running all Renix electronics, very simple and easy to hook up.

I made one out of a spare hood I had lying around 3 or 4 years ago. Its just about 3" if I remember correctly. Image Not Found

I'm running there track bar, I have 6.5" coils and the trackbar is as short as it goes and the axle is centered perfectly.

My R/C crawler. Just put new springs on it, climbs 500 times better than it did stock Image Not Found

I'm out of the country for the week, so I wouldn't be able to anyways. I'm gonna pick up a jack on my way home. :cheers: I have the vent covers, but I'll pm you later for the emblems. I might have someone buying the entire XJ shell, if I don't I'll definately let you know. All your looking for is the switches and the wiring then? Its a 2 door, so the liftgate wiring is a separate harness on mine. I'll see if I have a few on the computer when I get back to the hotel tonight. I'll send you a PM later tonight, they will be scrap, but they are completely shot. I'm 150lbs and if i stand on the rear bumper, they sag about 2". I'm in SE Michigan. Thats the method I usually use, but the steering box is not yet conencted, so it wouldn't work this time.

My floor jack broke, so next weekend when I have a new jack, I will be able to get the rear springs installed and the rear axle swapped ot of the XJ into the MJ. Should work out good and be pretty easy. The rear springs will end up putting the back about 1" higher than the front.

About the only thing near the east side that is legal is the Mounds. Its in Mount Morris, just south of Flint.

Got the passenger control arm mount and frame reinforcement plate welded on, still need to finish burning it in, but I wanted to make sure everything worked first. Got the upper mount in and the track bar mount in, then swapped over the axle. :D Made the control arm mounts to push the axle forward from where it used to be by about 2". Looks pretty good to me. When you working by yourself and need to move the body about 4" to line up the trackbar its amazing what you come up with. :dunno: just a couple more pics And a piece inside my floor jack cracked off, so I am currently without a way to raise up the jeep, so the stock cprings stay in it for another week. I measured the new ones to compare, the rear will sit about 6.5" higher than it currently does, so it shoul dhave a nice rake to it. and even picked up a tail gate in good shape. just have a bunch of little things to finish up and I should be all set :driving:

My XJ had some rotted out areas and had seen better days, so I started fresh. Final specs will be 88MJ 4.6l stroker, aw4, np231 w/sye d30, alloys, arb, warn hub conversion, OTK steering 8.25, 29 spline, disk brakes, powertrax no slip 6" rock krawler coils and long arms, 6" Alcan leaf springs left SUA d&c cage modified for an MJ 35" bfg muds For this year it will remain a long bed, but next winters project will be to bob the bed and shorten the wheelbase from 120 down to about 108 alon with a dove tailed bed. :o I began with these: Then the XJ interior was taken out: And installed in the MJ: With my goofy *** in it, it looks like this: Got the front end of the XJ off: And put onto the MJ: XJ4Life came by and we did a motor swap.... On the way out of the XJ Into the MJ Made some plates to reinforce the frame, got the interior finally finished, made adaptors to mount the seats, and picked up a new door and tail gate. Turns out I don't have the steel I need to make new LCA mounts in my scrap pile, and the local steel place was closed over the holiday break, so I didn't end up getting the front axle installed. Gonna try to get out at lunch and get the steel I need tomorrow. Plate to reinforce the frame and mount the front suspension and transmission crossmember to. It goes from the front of the frame back to the first support to the floor. After that I'll have another piece and weld them together Got the interior installed and completed. Gonna have to pull it back out to herculine the floor and install the cage. The "new" door and tail gate. These came the other day, 6" spring under Alcan springs:

Is this the one that was for sale in Algonac?

It makes more sense that there would be different crossmembers, having different frame mounting points for each combo seems a little strange. I did see the other set of holes, but they were too clogged up to even run a tap through them. I'll be using 3" angle to plate the rails, so in that area I will drill out the old mounts and weld some nuts to the top side of the angle, plus I need a few other mounts in that area for the belly skid. I'm tempted to make a spacer to go on top of the AW4 XJ crossmember to raise everything up a couple inches, that way everything is tucked up above the frame and I could do a flat bottom skid across the entire thing. Any thoughts on that? I can't imagine it would cause issues, since the driveshaft will be so long. I'll just have to see what it does to the tcase linkage.

So I made some progress on the MJ build, but it came to a halt when I went to put the trans crossmember on. Apparently the XJ and MJ trans crossmembers mount in a completely different location. Any ideas how come its like this? I used a 4.0/AW4/231 combo, and the trans crossmember is about 4" too far forward. Luckily I'll be plating the frame rails, so I can make new mounts for it, but I thought it was weird that it was in a different spot.

Is it really sold already?

If you want to look at it, you might want to hurry. I know 3 other people that are planning on looking at it this weekend. Thats a hell of a deal for a 92 though if you do get it. If I just didn't buy mine, I'd go buy this one right away. Algonac is about 1/2 way between Detroit and Port Huron if that helps.

OH...with these springs, I step on the rear bumper and it drops maybe an inch and I weigh 255 ;) . Thats what I am looking for, its going to be a 90% trail rig, but that other 10% will be putting stuff from Home Depot in the bed. I'd hate to buy a snow blower and have the bed scraping the ground on the ride home. :D