Trailhawkmj

It did improve some as the bushings in my lower control arms were pretty shot and it felt like they were always in a bit of a bind. I was running drop brackets with the short arms so the ride change probably wasn't as drastic as going from stock geometry and the same lift to the 3link. With the swaybar unhooked it is way better than the drop brackets bombing down forest roads and trails. Overall the whole setup does drive down the road better than my 2dr JK.

Been a hot minute since I've updated the build thread. I went back through and fixed all of the pics hopefully. I still have the truck and I still drive it around on occasion. It's due for a bit of a refresh and will probably be put back into daily driver status. This is pretty much how it sits now, minus the rocksliders. I'll keep it to the cliff note version of the last few years. I have about 45,000 miles on it since my last post. Swapped out the engine several years ago for another 4.0 due to cracked pistons. Now the engine I swapped in also has cracked piston skirts. Pretty much on daily driver status for about 6 years with a few trips into the woods here and there. I had my YJ7 for my more serious offroading. Five years ago I got brave and regeared to 4.10s myself. Probably should have gone to 4.56s but the 4.10s have been doing ok. A few years later my commute got longer so I picked up a 2015 JK and stopped daily driving the comanche. My Yj was rusting out pretty bad in the frame and body mounts so I was pretty much forced to retire it. I decided I would make the MJ my wheeler and began pulling parts from the YJ and putting them on the MJ. Started with the 35s and a set of flat flares. I also tossed on some rocksliders and built a hidden winch mount. To round it out I installed the IRO 3 link kit up front and ditched the drop brackets and short arms. The truck was in this configuration for 3 years. I never really wheeled it hard since I didn't want to mess up a fairly straight truck. I also didn't have to commute as far any more and missed driving it so I moved the winch, sliders, and 35's over to another recently acquired project and put the street tires back on the MJ. My other project is pretty much 99% complete and I'll be able to put more attention on the MJ. My other jeep truck project for those that are curious:

Hope they are watertight! It's been raining the last few days and forecast to rain til Monday. Getting the glass in was the last major thing to cross off of the big list. Still have some small things to take care of here and there but the conversion chapter of this is pretty much wrapped up.

It was cracked and slowly growing into the driver's vision area was the main reason. It also had several scratches and was foggy in the corners. 97+ has the rubber trim which I liked better than the chrome trim.

Really digging your setup

That would be perfect but I don't have the budget for it for a bit In truck news, I've been slowly knocking things off of my list to get this wrapped up. I drove it to work for the first time since the conversion. I finally washed all of the body work dust off of the underside and cleaned up the rest of it. Spent some quality time on Valentines day installing the zj steering, coil spacers, and amber leds in the front. I hate using coil spring compressors. Springs are too long and droopy otherwise. I got my .75 inch spacers on and my new bumpstop cups in. Got the wrong size bumpstop as I had no idea they made 2 and 1.5 inch varieties. Drilled and tapped the perch for some pucks then measured for shocks and pucks at droop and stuff. The spacers made the stance perfect. It sits a little under 1.5 inches higher in the rear which is right where I wanted it. New headlights are in, led turn signal bulbs in, headlight relay harness in Was getting a driveline vibe under acceleration. Started inspecting things in the rear and found my ujoint strap bolts were backing out on the one cap, even though they were snug and I used loctite. It didn't make much sense until i started taking the straps off. It wasn't that the bolts were coming out. There was way too much scale and rust along with gobs of chassis saver in the cradle of the yoke where the ujoint sits and it was enough to space the straps out away from the yoke and I didn't catch it on install. Driving it squished or flaked the paint off some and created a gap allowing play. When I tried removing the bolts, 2 of them snapped off immediately. Fun times. I decided to drill them out then drill the yoke out for ubolts instead of straps. It was working out until the last little bit left to drill and the whole side of the yoke split off. Wasted all that time drilling and struggling just to have to replace the yoke anyways. Found that my tie rod just barely touches the disconnect end while turning right. I moved the link to the other side of the swaybar mount for now and will raise the mounts up in the next week or 2. Glass guys came to do the windshield and put in my rear slider. Took a little bit to find a company willing to put a 97xj windshield in an 88mj when the book told them it was different but these guys were willing to give it a try. Got the slider in with minimal gaps. Well worth the couple bucks to have them install it instead of myself. Front windshield was a bit of a different story. Whoever put the last one in didn't prep it or use any primer at all and it was surface rusted all of the way around. They didn't want to put the new windshield in until I cleaned it up. Took a few hours with various sanders and wire wheels with lots of metal and cardboard shielding to protect the paint in the area but I got it all clean and down to bare metal. Now I'm just waiting on them to find the time to come back and finish it up. This afternoon I'll be installing some hockey pucks on my spring perches and swapping out my yoke.

The whole pump assembly from a 96xj in the stock mj tank. I had to reach in the tank and modify the slosh pan so the pick up would fit though. The gauge worked for like a day and hasn't since and I haven't pulled it back out to figure out why.

This time on Roadkill: we bedline and mount up some jcr bumpers! Best day at work ever! Nice work

That looks awesome. I kinda regret not going with that one now.

So today I got brave and went for a longer shakedown run. I threw a bunch of tools and fluids in the bed and met my friend with his tj. I really need to get a toolbox in the bed for all of my stuff but preferably one that sits completely below the bedsides. Stopped to fill up the tank then drove at highway speeds til we hit the forest roads. I decided to undo my swaybar and try to get on a for real rock... only to realize that I forgot to mount my swaybar disconnect post things to the inner fender and I also didn't have any zipties. I just popped the one link off and let it dangle a bit. This rock is still pretty weak but I didn't want to get super twisted up on some of the bigger ones without setting up the bumpstops. Plus there was lots of broken glass and charred wood with nails around the bigger rocks. Driving an automatic onto a rock was WEIRD Our little drive was around 25 miles and 3 hours long. I also went up to 65mph for a little while. Everything worked well and I"m really pleased with how it rides and drives. A few issues did pop up though but nothing major. I blew up the one front shock and it was puking fluid. At speeds over 60 cold air blows out the foot vents. Castor and alignment could use some tweaking. Last but not least, it's really dirty and the paint didn't sparkle. One major thing that I'll be looking into in the near future is gearing. My yj on 32's with 3.07s was worse but this setup isn't a whole lot better. Overall though I'm very happy and feel this huge relief that everything came together and pretty much worked. Pretty huge win. We also got home before the salt trucks came out for the snow tonight.

Oh nice, I may hit you up in a few months when the time comes. I might be leaning towards picking up another parts cherokee. My yj-7 would really like the fuel injection and transmission from it while the truck would benefit from the block and a few other parts. Just kind of depends on what I can find.

Thanks! I tried to work on it a little bit each morning before work (I work 2-10) since mid April. Eventually the little bits add up into major things checked off of the list. Thanks for all of the kind words. It means a lot coming from a crew that knows these trucks so well. One of my goals that I decided early on was to try and keep it semi-mild and to make it like a Trailhawk version of an MJ if they were still making them in 01. I think I ended up pretty close to a slightly upgraded version of that idea

Yeah I'm pretty sure I had the infamous crack between 3 and 4. I tossed the head over the weekend and replaced it with a clearwater casting. The '01 style manifolds were such a pain to take on and off with the cats in the way. I eventually got everything back together and took it for a drive the next morning. No more coolant where it isn't supposed to be. I spent a few days debating what I should do with my engine. i thought about just throwing some new bearings and lifters in it but that didn't sit right with me. I was getting a case of the "may as wells". If I do lifters, I may as well do a new cam. New cam may as well do new timing set. Factor in the rod bearings and maybe crank machining and pretty soon the full rebuild option was looking pretty good. I've been wanting to rebuild an engine for a little while now as it's something that I haven't ever done yet and this will be a good opportunity to learn and do so. My plan is to come up with another 4.0 and acquire parts while the shop does their machining. Then I'll build it on a stand in the garage when I have time. When it's all buttoned up then I"ll take a weekend and swap them out. Hopefully the current engine behaves itself for a few thousand miles. It's running really well right now and the noises it was making are pretty much gone, which doesn't mean all that much as they might be back in full force the very next time I start it up. Since I'm going to be doing some engine work, I have begun doing some reading on stroker motors. I'm still not sure if that's a direction I want to go or not but I'm still in the early research of it. In other news I hope to have my windshield and rearwindow installed either tomorrow or early next week depending on weather.

i have really been slacking with keeping up on the updates in here A few weekends ago I finalized my seat mounts. I ended up cutting off the rear legs of the seat bracket completely and replaced them with some angle. I was able to place the new mounting bolt location over the floor brace under the cab so that the seatbelt anchor side had a solid place to mount to. I also spent some time trying to get my fuel gauge working again but no luck. Not sure if it's a gauge, sender, or wiring issue but it has only worked on the day I first got it running. I'll eventually come back to that. I rewired the factory foglights harness with new connectors and installed some cheapo cubes for now to fill the bumper holes. I'd like to go with a quality light at some point later on but I'm also not sure how much I'll even use these. When I last left off I had determined that my engine was eating coolant. I picked up a few new tools and a book and I started digging into it on Friday. I started with a compression test before taking everything apart. I had some issues with getting a good seal with the gauge on the wet test for #1 after spilling oil everywhere After compression testing I drained the oil and dropped the pan. This oil has less than an hour run time on it and was already showing signs of coolant in it. I fully expected to find metal deposits if not not chunks of a piston skirt in the pan. This was not the case as there were no chunks to be found, just some sludge. Pics from here on out get sparse as anyone who has done this knows what kind of mess it makes. At this point I wanted to do some more investigating and my book provided me with some pretty nice instructions on almost everything related to deconstructing a 4.0. Not knowing if the PO ran this thing with coolant in the oil or not, I wanted to get a look at the bearings. I started by removing the girdle thing and then pulled the connecting rod caps one by one. Most of the bearings looked pretty decent and If I understood the book and my gauge correctly they mostly measured at the edge of the desirable range. I did manage to clean myself off and snap a picture of the worst looking bearing. I also carefully moved the swung the connecting rods around to feel for any resistance. They all swung smoothly and continued to swing after letting them go. I lubed the snot out of everything and reinstalled. I pulled the main bearings and they all looked almost new. Once again I lubed everything and reinstalled. Also changed out the rear main seal while I was there. While i was swapping out the rear main seal, I noticed that I could get a really good look at the flexplate with the inspection cover off. I double checked that the plate had no cracks and I was able to get a good torque on all of the converter bolts. Before I put the pan back on I had someone rotate the crank from the front and watched each piston as it moved up and down in the cylinder while watching for any side movement or play. I temporarily put the pan back on with a few bolts. My replacement head from clearwater arrived and I plan on swapping the head and all of the upper gaskets out sometime this week. I figure after I swap the head and get the top buttoned back up I can drop the pan again and clean out any coolant or debris I may have spilled into the engine. I'll also be inspecting lifters, pushrods, cam lift and cylinder walls while I have the head off. Hopefully I'll be making another test drive this coming weekend. Anyways if that bearing looks like garbage to you and you wouldn't run it, please let me know. I've never been into an engine like this before and following along with this book and various writeups online have given me some confidence to mess with these things but I still don't know what I don't know. This is also sparking an interest in me acquiring another 4.0 to build up with some fun parts over the summer and swap in with this one.

Looking real good. I'm pretty jelly of those seats

That was the same stuff I used I think. Got it from amazon a while back before the price on it went up. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G6ILI24/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It matched ok for me but you can tell it's not the same in various lighting. It's also coming off very easy in a few places if you even so much as look at it funny. I might redo everything if it ever warms up again.

I'll snap some pics of it once I finalize the brackets and they don't look so ghetto. I basically just cut off the rear 2 mounting legs then welded some square tube in their place. I tried just cutting sections out of the legs and welding them back together but I still couldn't get them short enough. I think my issues stem from mounting the seat farther rearward than usual so the rear legs are landing on the section of the cab floor that starts slanting upwards whereas the floor on the xj stayed flat. I'll have the seats out and carpet up this weekend to work on the parking brake cable and some wiring so I'll try to remember to get some detailed pics.

Got antsy pantsy over the weekend so I hooked up the fuel filler hoses and put fresh gas in the tank. Also spent some time setting up the license plate and lights on the bumper. I couldn't get the hitch mount I made to look right to me so I caved and just mounted it to the side on the bumper. Also trimmed my seat mount down almost another inch and I'm pretty close to having the seat where I am comfortable. Decided to hit the road for the first time with it since it was 2wd and a 4cyl back in april. The oil still looked clean and clear but I still decided to keep the test drive short and sweet and stayed in "leisurely stroll" mode. It went ok overall. I was super excited to drive it. It was a huge morale boost, which I needed. It was 5 degrees outside with a windchill in the negatives and the interior was nice and toasty. The engine ran strong and didn't have any hiccups and the trans shifted when it should both up and down. Only got up to 45mph but no vibes and it tracked decent down the road. Brakes are strong and seem to be biased correctly. I love the tires. I used my blazer to prerun my little route to see how sloppy the roads were and when I got the forest road the blazer was sliding around. Not so much in the truck. You can see in the one pic through the rear window how the driver's seat is a few inches lower than the pass. I finally have the seat set up just right for me and it was comfortable driving. Huge plus. Now for the debbie downer parts. I confirmed that the engine is burning coolant. I could't get the exhaust hot enough in the driveway but after driving down the road a few minutes I can smell coolant in the exhaust. It never stopped billowing white the whole drive. Knowing there may be underlying issues, I kept the drive to about 3 miles and under 15 minutes. The forest road is only a mile behind the house. These shocks also have to go. They are way too harsh. I stole them from my yj and I put them on the yj because they were super cheap and meant to just get me by a few weeks until I measured for nice ones. We all know how that goes so that was a few years ago. The 33's and 3.55's are not a very good combo. It wasn't super sluggish or anything but I'm putting some gearing changes on the list of things to start thinking about. I'm more than likely ordering an aftermarket head this week and a bunch of gaskets. I'm going to take the head and oil pan off during the coming weeks to see what I see. Going to check lifters, cam, cylinder walls, and pistons out real good. Also going to inspect the exhaust manifold for any cracks or leaks. The knocking/tap noise has settled down considerably so I'm not really sure what to make of it. Still deciding if I will pull these parts off while in the truck or if I'll be pulling the whole engine out and working on it in the garage. Depends what I find I guess. Anyways it was a fun little voyage.

Catching up a bit over the last few weeks. I finally had a driveshaft made and installed it. No longer pulling myself around in fwd. Still need to setup the final mounting and routing of the brakelines once I get my parking brake setup finalized. Re-installed the swaybar with a set of quick disconnects. Went through several maintenance things such as changing diff oil, tcase oil, trans, oil and did an engine oil change. All of the fluids were pretty gross. The engine oil was changed back when I first put the engine in a few months ago and only has maybe 2hours and 2 miles of running on it. Kinda bummed a bit with how it looked when it came out. Pretty sure it's the notorious cracked head or headgasket. I'll come back to that. Spent a little more time underneath and decided to pull the inspection cover from the trans to snug up the flex plate bolts to see if that helped my tapping noise at all. 2 were snug and 2 took half a turn. Pried on the flex plate a bit to look for any cracks but I didn't see any. It didn't make a difference.

Looks better than some of the other rings I have seen. Where is it from?

I think I'm going to whip together a mount like that, thanks! Also I totally missed the last part of your post there, sorry. The flasher I used was for a 97+ xj which doesn't look anything like the flasher I dug out of my orginal mj harness. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00W2B52SK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Did some small things yesterday. Replaced the old weird 2 prong plugs and coil rail. Some of them were over double what the gap should be. New belt and tensioner. Secured fan shrouds so the fan stopped trying to eat it. Then I got my broken dipstick out... but I broke the dipstick tube when putting things back together. Broke out the welder and patched it together where it cracked. Should be ok until I can source another. It really likes the new plugs and coils. It has never started so fast or run so smooth. Today I cleared my check engine light by replacing the chewed wire to a sensor on the trans and clearing the code with my bluetooth obd thinger. Biggest win for today was decals! Really happy with them. Sliced my hand pretty good on the packaging the swaybar discos came in so those are waiting to get installed probably next weekend. Not too much left to do at this point.

Backside: Painted up and installed: Still debating on where to put the license plate.

That is the best way I have heard these described. They look great as does the rest of your truck!

That's a lot of work. I'm not looking forward to doing almost the same thing to my other jeep once my truck is driving around.

Nice find, seems pretty straight and continue to clean up nice