89 MJ

IIRC, the Renix oil filter points up at roughly 45*. Sounds like you already have the HO one.

I concur with the other two said. There was a seam right there where the firewall overlapped the floor pans. More than likely, moisture got in there causing the rust you see. I would also bet that the rust is going to be much worse than you're seeing by the time that you pull the carpet up. When I got my truck, there was only a quarter sized hole visible from the bottom on the driver side. After pulling the vinyl floor covering, I needed the front half of the driver floor pan and a decently sized patch on the passenger side. That said, the trucks that had the vinyl floor covering instead of the carpet always seem to rust worse. I think your best bet is to pull the carpet and then we will be able to come up with a better plan how to proceed. It might just be a minor patch that needs to be made, it might end up needing a full floor plan replacement where you'll need the floor braces too. Thankfully, Key Parts makes both the floor patches and the full floor pans for each side and it seems that the fit is excellent. I think the biggest question is, how confident are you with your cutting and welding skills? Floors are a pretty important thing to have and they're not always the most comfortable thing to weld in. If you can weld them in and make them strong, its probably something that you can tackle. If you haven't welded sheetmetal before, I would probably find someone who has done it before.

I hope you told him to log on and find out

But on the bright side, his getting sorted out first means that it should be a lot quicker to get yours dialed in. This car should be a great reference.

New grilles installed. An appointment has been made to get new exhaust made. He also swapped a new accelerator pump in the car and played with the timing. The car is much more powerful now. It had 14 degrees in it, now it has 18 and it helped a lot.

That looks like it was an awesome trip!

I can imagine!

Lol, thankfully I'm only looking at 650 miles. Good call on organizing a caravan of MJs heading towards the trail. Not only would that be neat, but it would be good to have a crew to help if someone's truck needs something on the drive. The other thing we all should think about is maps. I know there's Gaia, OnX, and I'm sure others. We all should probably have some sort of maps. Question is, should we all standardize and use the same maps?

I voted for the same ones. I agree, I think that extra time will be needed to sort out a bunch of our trucks. After all, they are nearing 40 years old, which doesn't seem right.

Seems to be a common theme, which is probably a good thing. Is anyone opposed to a fall 2027 ride or spring 2028?

Thank you, added to the first post

I'm not sure if spring of 27 will work for me yet either. It might be possible, but fall of 27 or spring of 28 should definitely work for me. I'm in the same boat with sliders too

It really would've been. Though the CJ should do just fine too

After considerable thinking, I think the MJ is the better choice to go to Moab. The Eagle would've been awesome, but the MJ already has a limited slip rear, has more ground clearance, and the MJ doesn't have the oil consumption issue that the Eagle has. Add on top of that the fact that the MJ has overdrive and better seats, I think it makes more sense even though it is the more normal vehicle for a trip like this, which makes it a bit of a bummer.

This truck might have an adventure in its future. That has me thinking about what it needs before the adventure and resuming daily driving duties. Tires, the current ones are somewhere around 14 or 15 years old Rock sliders, I built the truck to wheel it, but I don't want to wreck it off road. Maybe I'll finally paint the sport bar at the same time. Air conditioning, I think I can live without this for now. Though it should just need a charge, so maybe I'll fix it Radio and speakers, maybe someday it'll get these, but until then my phone with the volume cranked or a bluetooth speaker will do New driver side seat foam, this might happen if I have time, but I'm not going to hold my breath. If I do this, I'll also dye the center console at the same time. Rebuild the LSD in the rear. I wanted to swap in a TrueTrac, but that is highly unlikely before this trip. I can settle for replacing the clutches in the stock Ford LSD with some performance clutches. Steering box brace, this is something I've wanted for a while. Playing on the rocks with 31s seems like a good enough excuse to finally do it. I suspect the issue I'll run into here is finding one that will work with the stock front skid plate. Upgraded steering components, heavy duty tie rods and such. This would all be nice to have, but I'm fine if it doesn't happen either. Hopefully I'll start ordering parts here in the next coming months. I'm really hoping to have the truck down here by the start of winter. Time will tell if that works out or not.

I added all of them to the first post. I figure we can narrow that down later once we know who is going and the capabilities of the rigs. Good call. I like the idea of CB, but FRS/GMRS does seem to be the standard anymore. I'm good with either.

It is just a Saginaw box, so a lot of vehicles had boxes that would bolt in. Are you just looking for a stock replacement box or are you wanting something more performance oriented?

Ok, I am going to keep the top post updated with trails we have explicitly mentioned wanting to do that way we can keep everything organized. Let's start suggesting trails.

I like the green

Good plan, you’ll likely reuse your stock pedals, but those 97+ pedals are fairly valuable.

Which floor console are you after? Micro, mini, or full?

The 97+ pedals are not the same as 84-96. Something to keep in mind.

You were even spotted on the road!

I’m so disappointed I had to miss out. Darn school projects. Next year!