DirtyComanche

So many of these pictures are ugly/out of focus because I was lazy and used my cell phone for most of them, plus I didn't pick through them to find the best when multiple shots were taken and instead uploaded them based on the thumbnail view. I am sorry, it's really bad.

The other front outer fender was cut too, again this was the rough shape. Obviously I'm going forwards with the front axle, and I am also going back with the rear. There was some horrible stuff going on with the floor. This was the typical area above the exhaust were moisture gets trapped: A GM14 bolt or two was sourced, and some hacking was done: That left the casting paper thin, and I decided to do the shave in a somewhat unconventional way: Cover ring getting modified, basically I welded in the filler piece to be as close to the ring gear as possible: I did it this way so the two remaining lower bolt holes (the lowest is gone completely) wouldn't have to be reproduced in the joint of the original casting of the center section where it met the filler plate. I would NOT do it like this again in the future and would straight up shave the ring gear and go farther with the entire shave and just accept that the holes might have to be moved to allow them to be drilled in an ideal position. Shave and cover welded up: Disk brakes were put on the axle, typical K20 front junk. Perches were welded on at 42" and paint was applied with a hose.

Here is the before cutting picture, with just the flare off, I missed it earlier: Other side getting cut and sectioned: The fill neck complicates it a bit, but it was all massaged to fit. Edges welded up: More work was going to be needed on the front of the wheelwells, and a shock tower was going in the middle. But the rough opening was made. I then measured approximately for the shocks and the bumpstops at this point. I added 1.5" of bumpstop to the rear in the end, I believe, as that wound up being a good compromise which still allowed for reasonable uptravel. There was also a sweet access panel pop riveted (with 3 rivets) over where the fill hoses meet the tank. The hole was cut right into the uniframe rail. I patched it and made a nice rounded access hole with a rolled edge, and later put a cover over it.

Some basic trimming was going to be required to fit the tires I wanted, so off I went. Before: Roughly how big and where the opening needs to be: Rear before: Cutting the rear initially: The lines were traced out using stock fenders and some measuring to make both sides the same, I wanted to preserve the boxy nature of the wheelwell as it is what gives the XJ a lot of its character. I also got these black doors from a parts Jeep that the PO had: I made quick hinges for them more because I like to be able to take them on and off quickly to access areas for working on the sheetmetal and checking clearances. The cut edges were rolled back, and the inner fender was sectioned and the process of stretching it to the new shape started:

Photobucket ruined all versions of this build on the internet, and people have asked on other forums if I had the old pictures. I do, but it's a lot to sort though, so I've basically decided to post the build over from the beginning, just much more condensed than it was originally. I am going to upload everything to Imgur, so hopefully they don't pull a Photobucket at some point, but we could cross that bridge when the time comes. Since I was doing that anyways I figured I'd throw it in here, as it really takes no added effort and some of it is applicable to the MJ platform. The day I bought it: I had actually thought it was an SJ Cherokee based on the terrible ad and the owner's lack of helpfulness. Turns out it was an XJ, but for $100 I couldn't say no. It didn't run, but as it turned out it was just the ground cable off the battery. I should have sold it right there, pocketed the couple hundred in profit I could have made, and moved on. But nooooooooo. It honestly was terrible. Rust, disgusting interior, hack repairs... The piece of aluminum instead of a back window was a nice touch. Disgusting. Steering column was all torn up because of a NSS issue and really bad troubleshooting. Yeah.

They'll flog it at auction unless they decide it's worth fixing, dealers never lose. That's a great looking truck you picked up though.

Normally you're just hearing the exhaust shrinking back to shape. If it's loaded up, the joints are too tight or too loose, or whatever other random factors can exaggerate this. It could be something else too. Without hearing it I've got no idea. Noise diagnosis without being able to hear it is well, futile.

You're almost better off starting with a 2wd so you can pick and choose components and do a lot of the maintenance items while you're in there.

The GM IAT should work, you just need to make a pigtail to plug it in IIRC. It's just a GM sensor under another P/N to make life confusing, basically, many of the Renix sensors are.

Those are JK gears. They aren't the same. I don't know about using them, as I don't think they use the same bearings and some of the dimensions are not the same, but Jantz Engineering might offer a kit to do so?

I (almost) always carry a comealong, and a few straps and shackles all in one bag, just for that sort of situation. That said, Murphy's law would be that I'd get stuck the time I didn't have it.

Does it have any means to determine that the solenoid isn't there? Worst case it would seem you'd cycle a slightly lean condition at idle.

That Baldwin filter is the metric thread pattern? Or did you put a HO adapter on? I'm probably going to do the EGR delete on mine too, it seems like a useless feature and certainly it didn't hurt anything when I deleted it on my XJ. As always, your truck is looking good.

5.38s shouldn't be a problem, and they're commonly available.

Yeah, it's a regular D44. 5.89 is the lowest gearset you can commercially source, AFAIK. It should (it is listed to) take the regular D44 setup kit. I would personally go with 5.13 over 5.89 for strength reasons. Check what ratio the D44 comes with, I don't know what was typical of them but the earlier 12 Bolt axle most often came with 4.56 gears (and there was another low ratio that was a little oddball but rare). The 12 Bolt is a great axle too as long as you're okay with the lack of aftermarket support, it is stronger than a D44 and has great ground clearance and disk brakes.

Nice truck for sure. Bumper looks a little bent down though?

Thanks! I recorded the narration while at work, and it was between radio calls (and being walked on by the radio, I'd start to record something and I'd hear "Hellooooooo PANTEON! Thiz iz ENN-EHH-KAY!!!!" constantly from the Quebecois pilot ), so having a beer would have been frowned on.

You weren't carrying any recover gear?

I don't care at all if the channel is a 'success' (save getting a few views and hopefully not too many thumbs down) or I make money. I'm filming this while I'm working in the shop, which costs me some time but I actually enjoyed doing it. Almost all the editing is done while I'm at work on standby (can't go anywhere or really do anything, have a laptop but don't always have internet). I'm doing this because I like making stuff at the end of the day, and as much as I like the format of forums I've realized there is a massive amount of people that probably have good insight that do not use them, so I'm going to slightly diversify where I post my projects (I still refuse to put anything on Facebook). If I was going to try to chase the Youtube dream and try to monetize the channel I would do reviews on kids toys, make clickbait titles or thumbnails ("You wouldn't believe that you've been using this wrong!" with a picture of a winged waffle iron or something), or follow the advice of another channel "Do really stupid stuff really often, people will watch." Realistically I will never break even doing this, assuming I can even get to the point the channel is monetized (they will likely move the goalpost again), and I'm fine with that, and I'm not to try to appease Youtube's idea that you need to upload weekly or whatever to be held favourably in the search results or suggestions.

I have an accent that's a bit weird because I live and work in northern Canada but grew up in the southern BC interior. So it's mostly a western Canadian accent but I say some things... differently. I slowed my speech down a bit for it as I think there is people that would have trouble understanding me, but that's a bit of a fine balance and something I want to work on. Again, learning experience. And yes, the difference between my accent and an eastern Canadian accent is fairly apparent. Then we have the Quebecois and the Newfies, I'm half convinced that a Quebecois speaking French is closer to what we would call English, than a Newfie speaking 'English' (Newfanese) is. Throw in the natives (who I spend lots of time talking with) and it gets really weird. And in retrospect that welding scene dragged on... The actual time it took to weld that dragged on. I cut the others down more, and you're right, I probably could have dumped a fair amount of that.

Let us know what you find out. I thought they came either either the Chryco 8.25 or the D44HD (which is an odd duck of an axle, and not to be confused with the old D44HDs). A lot of AAM stuff is a bit of a pain because there is little aftermarket support, similar to the D44HD...

I think my take on video length may differ from others because I primarily view Youtube as entertainment, I rarely go to it to answer how to do something. When I watch stuff on Youtube I will ride my stationary bicycle (it's like a town bicycle but less fun), and watch for a half hour to two hours. Hence some of the things I have suggested in the Youtube thread on here are typically staggeringly long episodes (Bad Obsession Motorsports, Isaac Arthur) or they're something where you can easily just watch 5 or 6 different videos from one videographer. I didn't really intend for this video to function as any sort of a how-to, it was more of a "this is what I did" and there's enough information that if you know the basics of fabricobbling you could do something similar (or better). I actually hate short videos and only make a few exceptions in what I normally watch (Vintage Space because Amy is hottt).

Thanks Hornbord. I spent a ton of time trying to cut it down so it was fast enough to not be boring. My worst fear was making some heavy breathing, white noise infested, long winded video with too much time spent on one thing or long awkward scenes of pretty much nothing. I've still got a ton to learn, so most of this was really just figuring out the best way to film things, and the editing software, audio, etc. I did it in Davinci Resolve. The titles were one of the first things I did since it was at the start of the video, and at the end I wasn't happy with them but decided to avoid redoing them for the time being. There's definitely better ways to do them in Davinci. It was filmed in 720P, I would have to buy a new camera to film in 1080 or 4K. I felt if this went over well enough and I was happy with what I was capable of making, investing some money in better gear would be on the table. To me there wasn't much point buying a nice camera and then going "Well, I sure hate doing that" and leaving it in a box until it was outdated and worthless. The other problem is that what I am doing is hard on the camera, grinding/welding/etc isn't the nicest thing; I need to look into what guys are doing to protect their lens, etc when filming this stuff. The other thing is you can clearly see the artifacting when welding, the camera simply isn't good enough to deal with the intense light output of the arc. So, anyways, in summary the hardware I have is limited, I'll do the next video with it (it's already mostly filmed and partly thrown together) and then I will decide if an upgrade is in order or if this was a part of my life that will be forgotten in 10 years. The audio also was not as good as I would have liked, due to two distinct hardware limitations. The camera I filmed with being one (it struggles with the sounds of the arc, and a few other things), and the other that I actually have a proper condenser microphone for recording narration, but I forgot a needed cable and couldn't source one in a timely manner, so I used a much cheaper microphone and spent more time and labour cleaning it up to be acceptable. I know what you're saying about the length, but I am totally unwilling to cut a video into two parts when it is focused entirely on one subject. However, this project spiraled a bit I intend to keep the next one at around 10 minutes max, which I think is a little more reasonable for most casual viewers. I'll also try to keep the projects organized and limited to a scope that allows this. I'm torn on spoilers, IMHO leaving the preview thumbnail as that is something of a spoiler and hopefully work without outright showing the finished product... I actually intend to upload as a proper thumbnail instead of a Youtube generated one at some point, and to do so in the future with any other videos I upload. It's something I will play with though. Thanks man. The cross border shipping would kill you though.

I've thought about that. I think for the floor you might better off coating it with some good quality epoxy paint or bedliner just to ensure it is sealed, then putting a rubber mat over it. I'd say doing the trans tunnel, firewall, cab walls, roof, etc with a Dynamat type product would probably be fine, you should be able to get it to adhere with almost no air gaps, and there shouldn't be a risk of pooling water (and salt, the other big thing) getting trapped behind it. A guy might be well off to seal up any unused holes in the firewall or whatever though, and this would be a good idea for fighting general sound intrusion anyways. Resonance on the floor shouldn't really be a huge problem, providing it's just the footwell area that you don't cover, and like I say you have a rubber mat over it (which could even be over your rubber flooring or carpet). Once you stop panels from resonating, and cut noise from leaking in through air gaps, it's mostly just adding mass that makes the difference. Hence a thick rubber floor should do a good job. Adding some foam type insulation can filter out some higher frequency sounds, but that's not normally the noise Jeep owners are annoyed by (we hear the lower frequency tire and engine noises mostly, because our tires and engines are loud). There's good info here: https://www.sounddeadenershowdown.com/ As you can see, they don't bother to cover every square inch of metal with a material like Dynamat, as it isn't actually necessary to control resonance. Getting the decoupled mass loaded vinyl over every square inch does much more.