Backdraft

Also got the front skin on. The wheels finally came in so I ran the tires to the tire shop to have them mounted. Ordered black lugnuts as well just to find out they're 45 days out from the factory. Maybe I should have looked for those elsewhere. Got them back and thrown on. I havent pulled all the plastic trim and two sided tape off the cherokee panels yet. I need to run to the paint and body supply and pick up a rubber wheel to get all of the tape and residue off. The front seems an inch or two lower than the rear to me. What do you guys think? I have a couple 1.75 inch spacers to throw in to try and level it out. Waiting on more to come in first. Bilstein 5100 shocks and TnT long arm upgrade should be here in a week or so. Everything seems to be working pretty well so far. I still have to make some small adjustments on the fenders and the hood is about a quarter inch to far to the drivers side. I have no idea how to adjust that. I loosened every bolt I could find to try and slide it over some and had no luck. The brake pedal was hard as a rock and it wouldnt stop for nothing. I figured with rear discs, the XJ booster/master cylinder/prop valve as well as bleeding everything properly, I'd have a better pedal. Turns out, I had a mud dauber find its way into the vacuum hose from it sitting dormant for so long. Cleared the hose and blew the dirt out and what do ya know, it works great now. Also its throwing a check engine light and an airbag light. I can't wait to get it completely road worthy so I can throw the Jeep techs for a loop when i have them check that. Just minor little things to resolve before I'm happy with it. Mike

Got the rest of the interior in today... Mike

Looks great!

Between those two, I'd go with the blue. Mike

I don't know why I didn't get any pictures of the carpet once I got it installed. I swear I took some, but I couldn't find them on my phone. Oh well, at least I got some of the interior as it was going in. The dash, kick panel trim, and A pillar trim are out of the XJ. The A pillars needed new holes cut in them for the little metal clips to snap into. The rocker trim, B pillar panels, carpeted back panel, and the trim piece that goes under the rear window are obviously all MJ specific and are the pieces that were painted. The rocker piece and B pillar piece are the same color. I guess it was the camera that rendered it a shade off. The headliner/headboard from Steve at SMSheadliners on ebay. The fit is pretty good, but it needed some convincing to go into place. Definately not OEM, but it works decent enough. I also had to trima nd notch it in a few places to work with the XJ A pillar trim. And got it cut to fit the overhead console in and wired up. Also wired up the euramtec lights in the B pillars. Well, thats all for today. It was getting too dark to get photos of all the interior installed, so I will snap a few tomorrow and post them up. Mike

Also laid the jute materiel back into place and glued it to the floors. Its a real pain to get this stuff in there and laid flat. I ended up more or less cutting pieces to fit and hoped to get the bulk of the floor covered. The fibers in this stull really like to find their way into your nose and mouth. A decent shot of the amps "almost" completely installed. Mike

Started working on the seat belts once I got the strikers in and the doors lined up. I used the XJ belts to match the colors up with the rest of the interior. The mounting plates are a bit too long, so I cut them down and redrilled the holes, then they fit in nicely. Mike

Ha, thanks Pat. Get back to work on yours! Well guys and gals, I drilled out the backing plates for the old style strikers and welded these up for the new ones. And installed. Yeah, I know I installed the drivers side up-side-down. If you don't tell, i won't...lol Mike

The wire for the 3rd brake light was isolated from the lead for the 01XJ 3rd brake light in the drivers side of the harness. I believe its a white with orange tracer. I just extended it and reran it up the back of the cab along with the rear window defroster lead to power the cargo lights. Brett, I believe it came out of a @ 2000 Ford Ranger. The Mazda pickup uses the same light assembly as well. Mike

The latest delivery from the brown truck. Raybuck tank without the slosh pan and the copperhead adapter ring. Once the interior installation is finished (maybe another day), the work on the fuel tank will start. Mike

Thanks for all the compliments guys. Means a lot to me. Just for kicks, I thought I'd pop in a cd and check out the new head unit. Mike

A little sneak peek of the interior was in the brake light photo earlier. But here is an idea of how I matched the coloring up. The original interior is the light gray. The interior from the XJ is agate/charcoal gray. I looked all over the place for trim/interior paint and everything I found was off. Most were a shade or three lighter. I called my local ChryCho dealer and they helped me hunt this down. It ended up being a dead on match. I had 5 pieces to paint and 4 cans. Worked out to be just enough for 3-4 coats on each piece. Once the B pillar trim was finished, it was a good time to install those snazzy Euramtec reproduction lights. Mike

I had a little extra time at work again. The radio has a usb jack on the back for ipod/iphone as well as flash drives. I found a 3 foot USB extension cable and decided to mount it somewhere to minimize the loose wires in the cab. So, yet again, out came the dremel and epoxy. And set. The cargo lights were wired to the switch for the rear window defroster in the same panel, so there was an indication by the little amber light that they were on. Mike

Since factory cargo lights are non existant around these parts and the fact that everyone in Texas seems to not know you're actually braking unless you have a 3rd brake light, I thought it would be cool to make a small upgrade. Walked around the jy until I found a light that seemed to "fit" with the style of the truck. Found this one on a Ranger and decided to give it a go on the MJ. It didn't quite fit flush, so out came the dremel tool again. Took a little off the top of the housing and bingo, it fits and seals up good. Mike

Figured it was time to put some life into the lonely, empty engine bay. 4.0, AW4, and NP231 out of the 2001 XJ. After about two hours of wiggling, resetting, rebalancing, beating, begging, and cussing, it finally went in. Mike

UPS visited and left a few things. I forgot to take pictures of the speakers, but they are Kicker KS series components in the doors, and KS series 4x6s in the rear. Mike

Had some down time at work, so I worked on shortening the overhead console. A dremel and some jb weld later and came up wth this. And then recovered Smuggled it away from work and test fit it in the truck. Seems to fit and have the correct length. I still need to find some lenses for the rear 2 lights, but not in a huge hurry on it.

Raybuck Mike

Any tips or tricks to adjusting new doors? I've been fighting this for a few hours now. I seem to be getting close, but not quite perfect. I added 97+ doors and once they are straight one way, they are misaligned on another axis. Feel like I am missing something because it seems like it shouldnt be this difficult. Mike

I just ordered a headliner/backboard from him. Its a quality piece. The fit is good, and he even included extra material so i could recover my shortened XJ overhead console and sun visors at no extra charge. It took about two weeks or so to show up at my door, but that was to be expected since he had to mold and shape it then cover it. Mike

Was it just me, or did anyone else misconstrue that as "Physicians Assistant/Medical Doctor"?

I don't know about your area. But here the off road fuel (high sulfer diesel) is dyed red. I am a chief operator at an oil refinery and am in charge of running the "Diesel Hydrotreater Unit". This is the process unit in a refinery that removes the sulfer from diesel fuel by injecting hydrogen gas into the diesel and passing it across a catylist bed. Federal law requires all on road diesel to be 15ppm sulfer or less as of 2007. We normally treat the diesel to a spec of 10ppm to give us some wiggle room, just in case the unit has an upset. We have an "off spec" tan we run our fuel into when we do have a problem. Usually the fuel in this tank is tasked for two things. Either it is dyed and sold as off road fuel, or it is pumped back to our feed tan and rerun to drop the sulfer under 15ppl. Also the feed for our unit normally consists of raw diesel, kerosene, and light cycle oil. Because its Texas, we don't make heating oil at our particular refinery. Our normal production rate is @20,000BPD in this unit. We usually have around 12,000BPD of raw diesel, 4,000BPD of kerosene, and 4,000 BPD of light cycle oil. The light cycle oil is more or less a useless feed stock and is added to the diesel. It is what gives the fuel a green color and helps a little with lubricity. Just my 2 cents on the subject. Mike

Mmmmmmmm..................Shiner.

Firewall foam/heatproofing/soundproofing/whatever its actual name is installed. I was a bit of a PITA, but went in anyway. Engine bay wire harness installed. Next up will be dropping the drivetrain in and getting the wiring finished. Been waiting on a few presents from the brown truck. Stay tuned!

Ryan, that is definately an option. Since I'm using the 01 seats it didnt occur to me to move the seat belts. Well, here are the new dash tabs welded in place. Like I said, my welds are ugly, but I'm not trying to win a beauty contest!! Figured it was time to start laying down the sound dampening.