Motorcharge

That looks a lot less terrible than I was expecting. Though the only time I've ever seen that done has been on diesel ricers who run giant 4"+ pipes out the side. That actually doesn't look half bad.

I wouldn't touch anything new MOPAR. Nothing newer than the WJ, TJ, 3rd gen Ram, ect. Challenger is about the only exception to that for me. I despise having to work on MOPAR stuff at work now. The engineering is flat out retarded, everything is made of plastic, the interiors are all bulky plastic that look and feel terrible. I'll admit the new Ram trucks ride nicer than mine, but they look terrible and the interior on them is god awful. Even worse than the interior on the later 3rd gen Rams. Chrysler has always been terrible but now they're just flat out ruining the Jeep and Ram brands. Especially the Ram trucks. Biggest thing going for them for years was being the only brand with a factory Cummins and they passed on the new one to put in a pos VM Motori diesel no one is going to want and now Nissan is getting the new Cummins and they don't even offer a 3/4 or 1 ton pickup. Jeep has been dead to me since they killed off the TJ and started producing crap like the new "Cherokee". I hadn't heard about issues with the diesels but it doesn't surprise me. The VM Motori motors have always been absolute garbage.

Swapped the steering wheels around between the XJ and MJ on Friday and installed a new head unit and some speakers I had laying around. I'm gonna replace the steering wheel with an aftermarket one soon but I wanted something that didn't suck in there for now. The one that was in there was literally held together by one of those stupid aftermarket covers. Hard to get a decent picture in the cab with the phone that close to all the lights. They're not as obnoxiously bright as they seem in this picture.

Comparing a modern Hemi to a say a 5.3 gm, the Hemi is a physically big engine! Anybody every seen a modern Hemi in a XJ/MJ? I highly doubt you could get one in there without lifting the hell out of the XJ/MJ if they even fit side to side. They're tall motors and we don't have the biggest engine bays. I've seen them stuffed into JKs and their engine bays are significantly larger than our are. Even if you could get one in you're still going to have space issues with the trans and transfer case and even if you could get them in you'd likely run into major driveline issues trying to get driveshafts to the axles.

http://www.novak-adapt.com/knowledge/xj_swap.htm Lots of good info on V8 swaps in there. 4.7 stroker is another good option with almost no extra work needing to be done. Mercedes 5 cyl turbo diesels are another good option. They're as reliable as a 4.0 and have loads of low end torque. You'll pay out the @$$ just to pick one up though.

Unless you have proper housings to aim them correctly they're as bad as HIDs. And the guy that runs Olympus off road is an absolute moron on par with the idiot that runs Wayalife.

Fwiw you can weld on 1" OD tube and it will work just fine. That's what I had to do on my chopped XJ for the MJ tailgate I put on it.

You can get H4 housings and 80/110w H4 bulbs for like $50 and they'll plug up the same way the stock lights do. The upgraded harness is a big improvement, but the H4 housings and bulbs are night and day over stock. The bulbs are only like $10.

You need to use the buttons above the area where you type. You can't right click to copy/paste/ect on here due to the forum code. You can however use keyboard short cuts. Ctrl+c copies, Ctrl+v pastes, ect.

99 for the fact that you'll also get an HP D30 instead of the low pinion older model and more than likely a 29 spline 8.25 rear out of it. NP231 is the the later sealed unit which will make it easier for you to drive with just a front driveshaft if need be (for example if a ujoint blows going down the road and you don't have a spare or can't repair it on the side of the road you can simply pull the rear ds, put it 4wd, and drive on). Though personally I'd swap the entire drivetrain and as much else as possible. HO motor beats the hell out of Renix, it's easier to work on with more horsepower and the most torque out of every XJ year, and easier diagnostics with the ODBII, the later cooling systems are significantly better, ect and I'm generally not a big fan of 97+ XJs. However if I'm going to take the time to swap that much stuff over I figure I might as well get the best parts I can even if it's a bit of extra work.

In general JK wheels have about 6.25" of backspacing where most XJ/MJ wheels have 5.25". So you're only looking at about .25" difference per side with the spacers. Barely even noticeable.

The tow points tie directly into the mounting plates. The bumper itself started off as a piece of 6" channel while everything else is 3/8" thick. I usually double up my tow points making them 3/4" but you could already have no problem hanging the entire Jeep from just one of them. I was more thinking of them bending than ripping off or having a d ring shear them. There's no latteral support if they get pulled on from anything but a straight angle. Just a thought.

He definitely needs to cut and fold the lower quarters now lol. I'm curious to see how you mounted it if you have pictures. Shackle tabs need to be beefed up but other than that it looks great.

Before you start criticizing too much it might have been more prudent to read his original intentions and goals and wait awhile to see what happens. I did, and the sole reason I nitpicked was the bed seats. I like the looks of it, but there's people at risk and that's a lot more at risk than looks. Nevermind the fact that he asked for constructive criticizism.

http://www.heatware.com/ Just pick a forum and list your username. I know a lot of forums use this and it works well. It's especially nice because you can see when someone is using different names on different forums which makes googling someone a lot easier.

RC is notorious for crappy joints and bushings and they're bad about covering them under warranty. Pretty well known among XJ forums, not so much on MJ forums it seems.

Need a 4wd trans, tcase, rear driveshaft, 4wd front axle, 4wd console and that's the bulk of it. You can pick up a wrecked or parts XJ for like $500 and use everything off it to covert. Aside from having to cut the trans tunnel for the 4wd shifter it's entirely bolt on. You can throw XJ shackles on the rear to lower it about an inch.

He'll likely get it eventually. It's damn near impossible to find even newer XJs with under 100k miles on them, let alone an MJ with that few miles. I've seen numerous XJs with that sort of mileage in that condition go for that on ebay and we still get $10k+ on 99+ XJs in half as good shape as that one is. Last one we sold was an 01 with 80k on the clock and it was in decent shape. We got $13k for it within an hour of it getting stocked in and it never even made it to the used car lot.

Might check ebay for the visor. I see them fairly often on there, but they're pretty pricey because so many people want them.

I try to buy as much old Crafstman stuff at yard sales as I can. Their old stuff is hard to beat and was properly made in the US. Just sucks if you break something and take it in now you get horrible quality replacements. Even their Made in the USA stuff they still have is even worse than Chinese built stuff now. I don't expect they'll be around in the next couple years anymore anyway though.

Modern Craftsman is absolute garbage. Even the stuff made in the US is still a lot worse than the Chinese crap HF sells. HF has a lot of stuff well worth the money. Solid lists of good and bad stuff from them: http://weldingweb.com/showthread.php?19051-HF-Tools-That-Suck http://weldingweb.com/showthread.php?3165-HF-tools-that-don-t-suck The HF Mig welders are actually pretty decent if you swap in better wire like Lincoln. I've had better sucess with HF stuff the less moving parts the tool has. Most of my jacks, stands, ect I have at home are all from there and have all been great. Didn't Cornwell recently go out of business? Their stuff has sucked the last couple years and I noticed the Cornwell truck stopped coming to my dealership about a year ago. Kobalt at Lowe's is still the best for consumer grade sockets, ratchets, and wrenches imo. They're manufacture by Matco right now and their socket sets carry a better warranty than Snap On does. I've been using their wrenches and sockets at home for about 5 years now and I've yet to break anything and they work as well as the Snap On stuff I have at work that I spent 10x as much money on. The socket sets you can register at the Kobalt site and they warranty them against breakage, theft, and even if you just lose something. I've lost a couple sockets out of sets and they've mailed me replacements without any questions.

Is it going to be used for recovery? If so you're going to want to do more tie in than those brackets and you'll use angle iron to use the stock mounting holes. The sheet metal the stock bumper mounts to really isn't strong enough to recover from. You see that hole access to inside the frame rail between the bolt holes? Cut that section out to give you better access to the inside of the frame rail. Run 2x4 tube inside the frame rails. You'll need to notch it to clear the shackle hanger bolts and the gas tank fill tube and the gas tank fill tube. You'll drill holes in the bottom of the 2x4 where the holes in the frame rails are and weld nuts to the 2x4 so you can just slide the bumper in and bolt it right to the frame rails. You can just weld angle iron to the sides of the 2x4 and drill holes in it to utilize the stock bolt holes as well. Mounts will look something like this: Pics aren't mine but mine are done the same way. Pics are from EricsXJ's website. They're really simple and instead of pulling the sheet metal on that rear crossmember you're pulling is distributed across the entire rear end of the uniframe. And you're bolted into 16 spots instead of 8. The holes in the frame rails are already there. All you have to do is slide the tube in and trace them with a sharpie and drill holes in the 2x4. Cutting the sheet metal out in the rear is super simple as well. It's recessed where you need to cut and a 3.5" grinder cutting disk fits perfectly in there. Takes all of about 30 seconds. The area in red is what you'll cut out. It's a lot easier to see in person because the whole area is slightly recessed.

Do the stock packs even sag much? I wouldn't think they would unless someone was using the truck bed to haul stuff much. There's not nearly as much weight on the leafs with an empty bed as you have on them on an XJ. And fwiw, no leaf springs are going to sit level right off the bat. They all take time to settle when they're new. You can speed that up by leaving some weight in the back for a few weeks.

Goofy as hell paint job, but I kinda like it and that's not normally my style at all. :laughin: Those seats look great. How tall are you and how's the head room in them? How comfortable are they? Any idea who makes that front bumper? Great looking Willys too. I don't think I could bring myself to sell one if I got one.

Looks amazing. I love the near stock look. One thing that would probably make a huge difference is some better OEM Jeep wheels. XJ icons or JK Moabs come to mind.