iimafa
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Everything posted by iimafa
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Took the rig out to hollerwood for the weekend and finally got my half doors installed. Rig did great, and we sure had a good time. On the second day I took the hood off because of an overheating issue that seems to be getting worse, with the engine exposed I noticed a lot of movement in reverse so checked it out and Found out the motor mount was pretty well destroyed. Some chicken wire held it together for the weekend and when I go home I found it was broken on both sides of the rubber mount. in the middle of the night I took the rig off of a pretty large drop and managed to catch the leaf spring. I can’t decide if I’m going to try to replace them or keep running it. Chicken wire for now.
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I finally got around to making front fenders for the old girl, had some help with it also, the boys decided to help by drinking beers and rolling around in the garage chairs. Its been awhile since I’ve used the bender, but front a distance it doesn’t look half bad. It should help keep me from bending the fenders every ride. Beating the fenders straight has been a consistent job I have to do everytime I would get home from the woods.
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I set out to fix some electrical issues that have been bugging me when out on the trails. I had a 100 amp manual reset circuit breaker between the alternator and the battery. On hot days or when using the front large winch though this would trip and cause issues. So I came up with this after seeing how the badlands 12k winch uses auto resetting circuit breakers. So this isolates the battery in the middle, the engine and alternator behind 200amps and has the front winch behind 150amps. The idea is half cocked, but I built it so I tossed it one anyways. The 150amp breakers should kick out a few seconds after when they go over 150 amps in an attempt to keep me honest and not destroy the winch/alternator/battery when using the front winch. Then after they cool down I’ll get another pull, the multiple conductors are supposed to act as a heat sink to help the whole unit stay cool. In the future I want to get a bigger alternator which is why I put 200amps on that side of it. If it works how I want only time will tell, but either way it was a fun project to build. resin 3d printed stand off, pla 3d printed mount. Conductors cut on the plasma table. it had a little bit of everything in this project.
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So I drilled out the orifice in a stock power steering pump, put a small #4 washer under the spring and tossed a new wheel on it. BUT what I thought was a bad power steering pump turned out to be a bad steering box. I’ve never seen this before but I managed to push the front cap out of the box. I’m assuming this was caused by not having the ring seated in it fully when I took it apart to add the hydros assist ports. To fix this I took the cap and snap ring from a Cherokee I had sitting in the yard, then tack welded the ring onto the casting to give me some piece of mind.
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Took the rig out and headed south to red river gorge. The steering was getting pretty tough and forwards the end of the night I rolls into a mud hole pretty quick popping the tire off the bead and killing the pump. It was hard work driving it through the woods without power steering. I ordered another stock pump with the intention of modifying it, drilling out the orifice and increasing the pressure slightly. Also I started hearing a bad noise from the timing cover so with some reading I’m thinking it’s the chain tensioner. So I went ahead and ordered a tensioner and a new harmonic balancer, so in the next week or two I’ll pull it apart and try to get her back in shape. I also went ahead and ordered a thermostat controller oil cooler adaptor with the hopes to toss an oil cooler on the front. It get shot after wheeling all day and I’m hoping this will help slightly.
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Got the bags setup and took it out for a weekend in Kentucky. It went great, bump stops worked how they should and the bags kept the tires off the frame.
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After adding the turbo blanket the temps under the hood have gone down a lot it seems. I’m excited to see how it feels in the summer, but it did great ripping through the snow we got the other day. I pulled it into the shop to redo the rear shocks and add some larger air bags, the air shocks from an Escalade weren’t cutting it and with enough weight the tires were forced into the wheel wells. So I started on these, should be about 2500lbs per bag at 80 psi, along with solid bumps set to keep the wheel out of the tub in the worst case.
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Beautiful attention to detail, looks great!
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Not much action of the tow truck recently, I’ve been using it around the yard to move things, pulled some fence posts with it and drive it occasionally. It gets very hot under the hood and the coolant temps have been going above 210 the last few times I’ve run it hard so I may be tossing a new waterpump on it soon and flushing the cooling system. I got a turbo blanket in an attempt to keep some of the heat out of the engine bay, I haven’t run it yet but hopefully it helps some. It was a cheap one from Amazon, grabbed it fro $20 and it fit pretty good considering the strange turbo.
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35s and 9 inch front and rear is very very cool, fine looking unit. Also love the hidden winch
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Got it all back together, spent most of the time touching up some of the paint pounded out some dents, changed the oil and slapped on a diff cover I made a few years back. She’s ready for some action, just need to get a trip planned!
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Had an issue that when it was in reverse it sounded like someone was hitting the transmission with a hammer, so yanked out the ax4 and tossed in a used ax5 from a wrangler in the old girl, went ahead and slapped some paint on what I could while I had it apart and doesn’t look half bad. I tossed a new throwout bearing in it while I was at it. Also I found out the 2.5 86-89 external slave bell housing is indeed different than the newer 99-2000s wrangler bell housings as seen below in the pictures. I wasn’t aware of this difference when I picked up the trans, either can work but the parts cannot be mismatched between them, the bolt pattern for engine and the trans is the same but different for the slave cylinder.
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Few small updates with the rig,I’ve been using it around the house more than anything and took it out in the snow a few times, while out in the snow I managed to break reverse, so found a used trans from a wrangler and going to be throwing that in in the next few weeks. Also i managed to score some 5:38s for the front and started making the front diff cover, it’ll be awhile before i get them in but slowly getting the parts i need. update in the shop, I finally got a 2 post lift so it should make life a little easier I started off by swapping on some new to me 42s pittbulls on some steel wheels, they’re not nearly as cool as the methods, but it’s what I got so it’ll work fine. slow progress recently as I’ve been spending most of my time working on the barn itself, so once I get that straightened out I should have some more time to finish it up.
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It’s got a 5 psi waste gate, so nothing crazy but definitely makes it feel less sluggish. I blew a boot one day one the road and it was night and day difference, reminded me how slow it was before. I wired the wasted gate shut one day and was hitting 15psi and that was a party, actually felt close to how my 4.0 cherokee felt on 35s, I felt like it wouldn’t last long like that though so quickly put the spring back on.
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Only time will tell
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A few small updates since the last time, I ground down all the cracks from the truss to the casting and rewelded them. It seems to be holding but only time will tell if it’s fine. I attempted to fix the front traction bar by putting a solid bar inside then plug welding some spots, I then added a section of the same solid bar ontop, hopefully it lasts a few trips. I noticed the rear traction bar bending also so I think it’s telling me I need to remake them a lot heavier. After that I wrapped the exhaust in some cheap fiberglass wrap I got from Amazon and it seems to help a lot so far. I haven’t put the hood back on yet but it seems like my heat shield might not be needed anymore. I’m thinking I might still try to space the hood to help get some heat out, but with the vent above the turbo and the exhaust wrapped up it might be good enough as it is. I also finally fixed the my front winch, the smittybilt solenoid went bad so replaced it and went ahead and added an interior control switch as well. I’m thinking if the switch is easy to get to I might end up using it more often which might prevent breaking unnecessary parts.
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Last time out had a few issues, one the turbo made under the hood HOT, cut a hole in the hood but didn’t help all that much so had to take it off. Because of that I’m going to heat wrap the exhaust and started making a heat shield for it, hoping to make it vent out the top so hopefully it helps. the hot exhaust also melted one of the wires for my front rock light, took some time to track down but I found it, should have it back together in no time. I had all of the lights soldered together and it was a slight pain to unsolder all of them to find the culprit, so I was thinking about doing it different when it goes back together. At work we wire all of our motors with ring terminals then use a small bolt to tie the ones you want together, I’m thinking I’ll do that so if I’m the future this happens again I can unbolt them and track down the problem child. Similar to the picture below(found on google) seems like a better idea because I normally don’t carry a soldering iron in the woods.
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Anytime big dawg, need to toss a bigger winch on it, make a tow bar and toss some bigger air bags on it.
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Haven’t really worked on it at all, but bought some parts for it, one of them being an oil cooler for it. On the master trip I touched on if the oil lines and boy was it warm, so I figured with the turbo being oil cooled and the stock oil system not sized for cooling a turbo it would be a good idea to add some more cooling. It came with a block that appears to have a thermostats type device it in, and I’m curious if I should add one(I originally didn’t think about it). I’ve driven it in snow in the past and plan to in the future and don’t think it would be the best idea to not have one I also picked up an old millrite vertical mill, and the rig sure made it easy to get into the shop. I'm planning on getting some cheap 3k airbags off of amazon for the rear so i can keep the tires off the bums when i have some weight on the boom, the current shocks don’t have enough lift so i will replace them with some stiffer shocked in an attempt to improve the ride a little bit.
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Went to hollerwood off-road park for Memorial Day weekend and had a blast, few issues, it was a hot weekend and the coolant temps kept creeping so I tried cutting a hole above the turbo(helped slightly) but still got pretty hot so went ahead and yanked the hood completely and really helped. I had an alternator die on me almost the first night so got that replaced. Then later on broke my traction bar, no real problem with getting out but didn’t want to wheel with it broke, so welded it back and plated it on the sides with 3/16th plate but it broke shortly after…. So back to the drawing board to add some beef to it. Wheeled all night after it broke the second time without issue, but got home to find some cracks so definitely need it to be functional going forward. on the second night my brother managed to find a ditch while heading back to camp and cracked his Dana 44 knuckle so the boom finally came to the rescue and yanked him back to camp over 6 miles! And boy was it a heavy load for the 2.5, ran about 230 degree coolant temps the way back to camp at about 4K rpms and 20mph. overall a great trip with some great people!
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Been awhile since the last update so I’ll break it up into two posts, but it’s been going well. I’ve had it out for a few small trips and mostly all good, small issues here and there. I had an issue with the wastegate bolts backing out then losing all boost so I wired it shut for a few weeks and MAN did it add some PEPPER, i touched 15psi for short times but the AFR would run away from me so I decided to toss it back on incase I got a little wild and careless at night. It seems more useful to me so I can drive it hard without any real issue of running lean. Here’s a picture of me pulling the boat out with it biggest update is I got the hydro assist finished up on it. PSC 1.5”x8” ram, drilled and tapped the stock box and had to clear out tractor supply’s hydraulic fittings. Works much much better, it was almost undrivable before with the welded front diff but now it’s just fine, it has a power steering cooler and a larger reservoir that I installed a few years back prepping for this. overall pretty happy with how it turned out
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No real update on the rig except that I’ve been using it a lot around the house and shop, still waiting on funds/deals for new tires and wheel, gear and ARBs, and hydro assist.
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Had a pretty heavy snow day here in Indiana so went ahead and drove the rig to work. Cruises down the road very very nice. Before the turbo it struggled to maintain 50-60 mph on 33s, but I was rolling that with no real issue on the 41.5s!! Very impressed. I wired the wastegate shut the other day because the bolts keep backing themselves out. This caused some massive boost spikes, a few times it touched 13-15 PSI…. Which is not what I want but geez the 2.5 felt like it had some power. It very easily runs away with the AFR now so the stock injectors need to be swapped out for some larger ones. Either 4.0 injectors or mustangs, I’ll get to that soon. i also found a steering box brace for $100 on Amazon so grabbed that and went to install but found it didn’t fit at all with the 2.5 radiator. So chopped it up and made it work. Turned out pretty good though. this is how it looked out of the box chopped and welded before grinding the welds smooth after paint this shows how the radiator hangs between the frame rails. This is the main reason it doesn’t fit, the 4.0 radiator is squeezed between the core support and doesn’t come this low. this is wit it installed this shows how it fit around the pitman arm. Does a very nice job of holding the box. I went ahead and mounted another fire extinguisher on the rig. I see way too many videos of rigs burning down and don’t want that to happen to mine or any of my buddies. Very very simple mount, it uses zip ties. The idea was to have it out in the open where anyone could get it if needed. The mount will most likely break if it’s ripped off but that’s just fine. It’s a single use system anyways. this is my hornet finally making its way in the garage, honestly I think everyone needs a vehicle with a boom. This rig has helped out so many times.
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That’s exactly what I was thinking, considering the amount of tail lights I’ve gone through on my Cherokee, I would be a much poorer man if I tried to do that with genuine Comanche lights.
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Took the rig out a few more times and have only done a few small things to it like clear coating most of the body, fixed an oil leak, and fixed the CB. The trip out was super muddy but she ran great, A/F hold perfect under boost and it sounds cool and not super loud. Only thing is the lack of power requires a lot of rpm in the mud so that lead to some higher temps which required me to stop a few times to let her cool off. No problem though, cooked off in minutes and back to moving. one thing I’m finding which kind of sucks is the rear boom control is kind of a pain to get to and has to be put away to move again. It’s not terrible but it’s not very convenient. i was looking at these controls on Amazon. Thinking I could tie the front winch in with it and eventually have the rear boom cylinder on it also. (They have them with more buttons for almost the same cost) Still just a thought because I plan to wheel it how it is for awhile. the biggest thing I’ve done to it since the last update was adding tail lights. These are the dodge dakota lights which don’t fit perfect but they will work, $25 a light is much better than actual lights made for a Comanche which run about $125 a piece. It should hurt much less when I break these on a tree. When flipped over, they are very very close to the same size I have a 45” brake light bar coming also that I will mount under the tail gate, so hopefully it’ll turn out pretty good and I’ll have some good reverse lights directly behind the tailgate. The light bar up top works well, but leaves a huge dark zone about 10 foot from the rear bumper which is not ideal.
