Gjeep

Not mine, but wouldn't take much to make it right. Goooooood price. https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1007848919002237/?ref=browse_tab&referral_code=marketplace_general&referral_story_type=general_listing&tracking={"qid"%3A"-5951731756578499147"%2C"mf_story_key"%3A"2622993641531117808"%2C"top_level_post_id"%3A"2622993641531117808"%2C"commerce_rank_obj"%3A"{\"target_id\"%3A2622993641531117808%2C\"target_type\"%3A6%2C\"primary_position\"%3A0%2C\"ranking_signature\"%3A483702397322163149%2C\"ranking_region\"%3A\"prn\"%2C\"ranking_request_id\"%3A8099069526039728062%2C\"commerce_channel\"%3A501%2C\"value\"%3A0.00067267797809715%2C\"upsell_type\"%3A129%2C\"candidate_retrieval_source_map\"%3A{\"39331649263145555\"%3A701%2C\"29213398494921448\"%3A3009%2C\"28605625919118317\"%3A686%2C\"24437240369228549\"%3A3565%2C\"28344696615212587\"%3A8025%2C\"31831559963155146\"%3A686}%2C\"candidate_write_path_source_map\"%3A[]%2C\"candidate_seller_rerank_version_id_map\"%3A{\"29213398494921448\"%3A0%2C\"28605625919118317\"%3A0%2C\"24437240369228549\"%3A0%2C\"28344696615212587\"%3A432%2C\"31831559963155146\"%3A0}%2C\"delivery_flow_path\"%3Anull%2C\"grouping_info\"%3Anull%2C\"is_prefetch\"%3Afalse%2C\"request_fetch_reason\"%3Anull}"}

Circling back on my oil pan gasket post from last week… Placing the two gaskets on the oil pan itself told a different story. The Mopar (held in place with plastic license plate fasteners) will need to stretch to get to the pans flange. The Fel-Pro blue just fits. And as mentioned I’ve never had a leak using this gasket on any of the other Jeeps. But it is blue. And that nagged at me, so I did more digging and found a company called AJ USA that makes a black composite oil pan gasket. It arrived this afternoon and I threw it on the new pan. Fits like the Fel-Pro. Only difference I see between both the Fel-Pro and Mopar gasket is that the AJ USA gasket does not have the notch at the front/ center of it. AJ USA for the win. High hopes it will be as leak-free as the Fel-Pro. Lastly, I decided to go with stainless steel hardware to add some bling. The small bag of fasteners is for the fail-over Hesco CPS bracket setup that signals from the harmonic balancer versus flywheel.

Took a little over an hour and a half this morning to get this mesh grille into place centered as it should be. Didn’t matter how slowly and carefully I screwed it into place, it kept shifting ever so slightly because of the screw/ mesh interference at the fastening point. The solution was sniping the mesh entirely at the screw grommets. That total clearance made the difference, but it still took all sorts of patience fastening it into place without any shift in position. If you look closely, the thinnest factory inserts were removed from this grille. (Page 22 of this build thread goes into more detail on that.) Still need to decide between and the aluminum mesh grille where the factory grille slats were opened up entirely. I’m thinking the aluminum may be too bright for this build with all the black trim. Will see.

Beautiful work.

Looks good/ quality on your FJ but the design doesn’t work for my vision on the MJ. Tower hinge setup is distracting. I know. I’m crazy…

Oregon doesn’t mess around with their front license plate requirement. I had ordered every available aftermarket winch flip-up option available and all of it turned out to be crappy made in China rusting under the paint stuff. Then looked into factory options across manufacturers new/ used that I could modify, flip up or down and unfortunately nothing was right. Circled back to Jeeps XJ factory plate holder, measured out the distance I’d need between the on-center from the bumper attaching holes to putting the plate just in front of my winch hook — 2” eye to eye. Decided that a black textured 1/4” plastic sheet cut-down would match bumper end caps perfectly. Below is what I ended up with. Nice and simple. (Nothing is painted: hardware or the plate itself yet. All will be satin black for consistency.) Nutserts will be in the factory underside bumper holes for ease of install/ removal of retaining bolts.

Good looking MJ!

Long live the she-shed! A little over two years ago when we moved to Oregon I commandeered the shed on the property. Nice 300 sq ft structure with loft area and additional side overhang we can park a car under. My wife rightly felt wronged that she didn’t have an enclosed area for things and said she wanted a she-shed. 100% identical structure. My first question was – what are you going to put in there? Things. Done. It’s been vacant for 2 years except for 2 bicycles and 6 small Rubbermaid totes I tucked away. I’ve been inching my way in there with irrigation pipes, fittings, yard tools, etc. Time for the take-over. It’s going to serve as my parts paint booth and overall tinkering workshop (house related things mostly), but a solid dry area to paint Jeep stuff in. Come January when she heads to Florida to visit family for a week the Ditch Witch and I will run power to it. This morning the she-shed was where I painted several cut-to-size 6mm honeycomb mesh grilles for the MJ. After searching high and low, ordering far too many ‘wrong’ grille inserts I finally found a mesh design that fits evenly across all the openings of the modified factory grille. Fun part was that this mesh insert came rolled up. So, my wife’s heavy duty rolling pin was cleaned off and put to use. Worked great. Since they arrived gloss black, after I cut these proper, I sanded/ prepped them for paint. Now they’re satin black front and backside like the grille itself. Typically, with custom-ish projects I make at least one spare (this time three) as it makes a future need simple.

Correcto. Also between the RMS halves gets Permatex#2. Here's reference pic for the RMS:

Since Hesco used a factory Mopar one-piece oil pan gasket on the stroker, I was thinking that would be the direction I’d go for the replacement. Especially since the blue Fel-Pro was, well, blue. I got curious as to the differences between the two and decided to do a side by side comparison. Mopar’s final gen was a one-piece unit is very similar to the Fel-Pro. In absolutely every other RMS/ oil pan gasket job done, I’ve always gone with the Fel-Pro. Never an issue. Fel-Pro is wider as you can see in pics but both sides of the Mopar ‘tracks’ are deeper than Fel-Pro all around. Mopar has slightly smaller bolt holes with gasket material ‘inside’ the hole – except the two holes as very front of the engine. (I put gasket maker on pan bolt threads always.) Which is the better gasket? Who knows. My purchased new XJ’s (1995 & 2001) each reached 150K before any leaks at the RMS, with the oil pan gasket showing no signs of leakage. Closest comparison using the Fel-Pro would be this very MJ pre-rebuild. Around 125K I replaced the RMS and used Fel-Pro blue on the oil pan…it got me to the vehicle refresh of 250K with no leaks either.

Should have listened to the little voice in my head (8 years ago)… Before I installed this motor. That voice of wisdom that echoed repeatedly in my head for a couple months – ‘just redo the oil pan gasket and rear main seal before you drop the motor in’. 3D me said, no no, it’ll be alright after all it’s a brand-new build. They know what they’re doing. In the stroker goes with all the leak-free confidence in the world. After a week of running it, a drip appears on the garage floor. Knew it. Just knew it. I remember Hornbrod’s advice, ‘Just run it. Fix it later’. Dear Don, ‘later’ has now arrived. I spy at least one possible reason the RMS was leaking. They secured gasket to the pan but there NEEDS to be anaerobic gasket maker on block where arrows are pointing. And my guess is, once I pull off the rear main bearing cap, there will be a lack of gasket maker between the two seal halves. Life will go on once I button up – sanity for the most part restored. Also took a moment to replace the plastic FPR vacuum line with a stainless steel version. Better.

https://regionoffroadparts.com/products/ax5-ax15-nv3550-bellhousing-inspection-cover-screws-bolts-for-jeep-wrangler-yj-tj-cherokee-xj-grand-cherokee-zj-1?variant=50505291366713&country=US&currency=USD&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23464041987&gbraid=0AAAAA-8WpajyHe56azIlyeb0XIpJcpC5c&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI4Pr_2YimlwMVxyutBh1p5jKcEAQYASABEgIelfD_BwE

This D44 project will be a slow build, probably ready Spring of ’27… Cleaned the surface crusties off and found a couple cuts spots on the passenger side thanks to the PO. Thankfully not quite a quarter of the way through the tube. Going to make it right, weld/ grind it smooth. It’ll be getting 4.10’s and an Eaton locker (currently 3.07’s). I removed all the original brake hardware and the parts that need to be reused will sit in a bath of Evapo-Rust until they’re like new. It will retain its drum brake setup. Since I’m still fairly new to the Southern Oregon area and learning my resources – I found a single driveline shop about 45mins from me with good reviews. That’ll be the place. I want to have them make sure first all is true with this axle before they get into it. The MJ this was a flat bed, possible truggy work in progress that thankfully kept the rear leafs with no mods to the D44 axle.

The NOS ZJ steering box I installed on this build had a slow leak front side that eventually revealed itself, so I replaced it with another. Installing a steering box in an MJ/XJ with the factory solid shaft is absolutely no fun. It's even more challenging in this truck as I have my hidden winch setup blocking about half of the access area. I began searching for a telescoping shaft. I had purchased the Borgeson unit years back, but decided to not go with it as it isn't a straight drop-in replacement. I forget what needed to be modified, but knew that wasn't the route I wanted to go. I learned both Dorman and A-Premium offered a telescoping shaft for the first gen XJ (GM column) and decided to order both for comparison. Both looked well made, but the A-Premium's telescoping shaft is what I decided to install. It's slightly beefier then the Dorman telescoping unit and the rubber seal on the shaft itself seals entirely. Dorman is just a boot having slight gaps. Onward...

This build -- Middle-ish of page 5