Comanche County

Jefferson Davis is my grandfather's name. He's long gone though, as much as I'd like to pass the name on in the family, I'm afraid it would be a burden to a child. Anyway, yes I voted today. But I tried to write in my Jeep as a presidential candidate but the computer wouldn't accept it. I tried "Big Red my Jeep", "my awesome truck", " my super jeep", and many other combinations but none of them would take. So I just voted Romney and left.

I live about a mile from salt water so I don't have that thick red Georgia clay like much of the rest of the state. Here the top soil is nice and loose until about 2-3 foot down and then its grey gumbo. If the roots are that deep, there's no budging it.

Nice work Ben, motivates me to build one, but I don't have the room.

I've been working on getting the front of the house in a presentable state. Been yanking out old overgrown shrubbery and I shanghaied four high school kids into cutting down a massive pampas grass plant. This thing was huge. It was between the neighbors driveway, overgrown onto both and neither of us could see while pulling out of our driveways. We chainsawed the saw grass down to the roots. I manually dug one of these out before and wasn't about to dig this one out by hand. My neighbor's brother across the street does tree work and has a stump grinder. He pulls it with a 4 cyl YJ. What a cool machine, I officially want a stump grinder now in a bad way. It simply devours everything in its path. I'm a little short on the $20K to buy one though. Also trimmed a lot of branches in the back yard that were growing over the house. Next will be dropping a 150' pine tree in the back yard. Its got a huge weak spot about a third of the way up where it was damaged long ago. Gotta get it down before the next big wind puts it on the house, or the neighbor's house. These are good kids, every weekend they're out in the neighborhood looking for yard work. But they had no idea what they were getting into. Ah, youthful enthusiasm. At least a ton of material left over. I'm glad our town has a weekly pick up for yard clippings, branches, whatever. They compost it for a year, then the city piles it up in a vacant lot. We can get compost/chips for free. The grinder. Also took care of a couple of stumps for the neighbor. The house before shrub removal...and the MJ earning its keep. Almost ripped the bumper off pulling these out. Had to cut the large corner bushes, Big Red just didn't have the cajones to pull em out.

Decided to redo my front yard. The old shrubbery was just too tangled up with weeds, vines, and all sorts of mangled up nastiness. I started this operation by yanking all the bushes out with the MJ. Some of the larger corner bushes would not come out and had to be chainsawed. The smaller ones were pretty tough to get out too, I almost yanked my bumper off, its a little out of alignment now. But I can see the front of my house now! Next step will be painting over the blue trim. Before:

Don't fret the seal. There's nothing on a Comanche that can't be repaired with basic tools, patience, and quality guidance from your friendly CC brethren.

Now he's just showing off. :D

Nice truck, you'll have to keep us up to date on it after you get it delivered. It would be nice to see pics of an MJ at iconic European landmarks.

Same thing on my drag link. I tried to replace the ends but they're rust welded. I took it to a machine shop and they put in in a pipe threader which put a couple thousand lbs of pressure and it still wouldn't budge. Just spun and gouged the drag link. I'll get a pic in the morning.

I wonder if it's got a flathead four in it. Would really love to see the power plant. Hopefully it gets restored and not chopped up for some stupid hot rod.

:banana: The light switch is a bit difficult to get out, might as well replace the whole dash, I did, still couldn't figure how to get it out even with the dash removed.

What kind of locker do you have? Mvusse is right. But if I understand you correctly, you're having a problem steering on pavement. I had a similar issue that was solved with a replacement steering gearbox. I'd go with a ZJ box, its worth a try, if it doesn't work at least you get a faster steering ratio.

Welcome back from the dark side. Nice truck!

Both are good for short range hunting, but best just for plinking at the range.

The uphill side wasn't as steep, you can see the side view in the video.

Brandon, How's the truck going? It sure has come a long way. Give us an update and tell us how you're doing. Jay

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/30/smugglers-hit-snag-when-jeep-gets-caught-on-border-fence/?test=latestnews

Yeah I agree, its probably too stiff for stock or near stock rides and a V8 ZJ bar would probably suffice. But I'd bet the same bar could be made to fit the rear axle also. Or even better would be a sway bar that doesn't have the bend in the center. That way you could just adjust the mounts to the width of the frame rails and attach the end links to the axle with some 1/2 bolt shock mounts or some bar pins like the XJ rear sway. I'm going to crawl under the truck tomorrow and see if I can figure something out that would be easy to do with JY parts. In my case, it probably wouldn't matter cause I have double main leafs and the truck is pretty stiff back there. But considering how nose heavy it is, this new fatter bar sure seems to even out the front to rear weight difference and practically eliminate front end dive when braking into corners. From a 99' v8 WJ Limited. I went to two yards and a lot of them were very rusty. I found one with a really clean set of calipers and rotors and very thick pads. Turns out the calipers had a "reman" stamp on them. Looks like it got a complete brake job and was junked soon after. I used everything off of it, pads and all, and I only ran a palm sander on the rotors, some flash rust but they weren't too bad, plus I'm kinda broke right now. I'll get new rotors later on when I've got some dough. Overall this was a super easy swap, just need the WJ stuff, a 1/4" spacer and the newer unit bearings, Jeep p/n 5016458 or Timken HA597449. Extra pics. The new rotor on the right. Next time I see an 00'-01' XJ in the yard, I'll grab the unit bearings for trail spares.

Prayers to all ya'll up north. If it would have hit GA, my house would be underwater. I'm right at sea level and there's canal right behind the house that would've let it all in.

Got the new bearings, note how its "shorter" which allows the WJ calipers to align with the knuckle. Then put the brakes on and took the MJ for a little ride. It still doesn't lock up the 35s but stopping distance was much better. The WJ MC booster, brakes and sway bar is probably the best things I've done to the truck. Its much more stable and much safer to drive.

My Lincoln 125 stinks, it will not lay a weld like that. The welds fills up with flux resulting in porous welds. What wire and settings do you use? Also, hope you and the MJ survived the storm.

Got the brakes finished and drove the MJ around for a bit today. What a fantastic change, the jeep is much more stable with the larger sway bar. No more rocking like a boat and I'm a lot more comfortable now if I have to make a dynamic maneuver to avoid a collision. Should have done this a long time ago.

Nah, just razzing you, that truck is a monster, I love it! :bowdown:

:thumbsup:

Exactly, an export RWD WJ knuckle. It allows a higher, high steer, but you're limited to an inverted T if you use both upper arms.