Jessica My Little B...tch

[JoeLAW]

24 minutes ago, 89 MJ said:

I do! One of these years I’ll need to head up to EJS with my MJ

Thanks much! And yes man, you definitively have to go! Yes it is expensive, yes it is hectic, yes it's quite the adventure just getting there, but it is sooo worth it. Heck, maybe next year, it will be the 60th anniversary  And who knows what might be in store for then. If you consider yourself a Jeeper I think it's one of those you absolutely gotta do at least once in your lifetime. 10 out of 10 recommend! 

[JoeLAW]

Well, this brings us to my last day of the 50th EJS back in 2016, "Big Saturday!" Which consists of all the trail groups getting together in between the main streets of Moab, and everyone leaving at the same time, making a big ol ruckus/parade through main street. It was a chilly morning, the buddy I took was feeling a bit tired and did not want to join me on this trail. So I was solo for this one, we had to meet next to the Tire Pros on Main St pretty early, and I think I was the 3rd one there. Here come the pics and captions to most of them.

 

 

This was our group line up, which was a nice assortment of mildly built rigs, 33" seemed to be the standard tire size, some looked smaller, a couple were a bit bigger but nothing to be nervous about like on the 1st trail I did.

 

 

While waiting there, I finally had a little time to check out this little crawler that was For Sale. Pretty weird build IMO, specially for how narrow those axles were. It almost seemed like they were copying a side x side chassis and putting solid axles on it. The axles were almost as narrow as a CJ-5 stock axle, sitting on 37" tires and the wheelbase of about a TJ I would guess. Neat that it had an Atlas T-Case and Cummins Diesel engine, not sure which one but it had the emblems and the engine had an injection pump. 

 

 

The trail I had signed up for was "Copper Ridge" we took off North on HWY 191 for about 10-15 maybe 20ish miles and got into the desert turning East getting on a couple of Dirt Roads, and eventually getting on the trail. It was a pretty big group, I want to say over 30 vehicles, so the leader was rushing a bit to keep the group rolling along and not waste a whole lot of time by stopping often. Once we got on a pretty large piece of slickrock we pretty much just snaked through it to make sure we regrouped. 

 

 

After that quick regroup we finally stopped for the 1st time, to stretch legs, the one's that didn't air down before it was their chance of airing down. At this point the trail was pretty fun OK views, hardly any obstacles but still entertaining. 

 

 

From there we were just navigating through mainly unmantained dirtroads. I was riding behind a YJ that was like a time capsule from the 90s 4" lift on 33s no lockers, nothing really special. It almost looked like they had taken it out from storage and took it out there. Full family inside of it, it really reminded me of my childhood since one of my uncles got a YJ on some sort of deal it was black, 4" lift, 33x10.5 R15 Super Swamper TSL SXs Rear lunchbox locker, 5sp, 4cyl. That little Jeep went through a whole lot of places it had no business being at. Anyways it was very fun following that little Jeep since the flex is very limited with leaf springs and having open diffs made the simplest climbs and little dried up creek crossings interesting for him. 

 

 

After the dirt roads we ventured into tighter more interesting trails. Ending at a place where there were dyno tracks! Which was pretty cool here are those pics.

 

 

After checking out the dyno tracks that was pretty much the end of the trail. We were quite a ways north on HWY 191 about 5 or 7 miles from I-70. So it was a nice drive back to town from there. This marks the end of my 50th EJS Experience. Hope you guys enjoy, now on to more tech and upgrade related posts.

 

 

 

 

[Pete M]

looks like a blast!  but then that landscape is always a blast.   (unless you roll over, which is bad)

 

I was bummed I couldn't do the trail with the tracks on it while I was out there.  

[JoeLAW]

Man time flies and life happens! We're now at October and I'm varely gonna do another update post to start and try getting this thread up to date.. Anyways as promised more tech related posts on here until I'm fully up to date!

Alrighty, after coming back from Moab for the 50th EJS, I drove Jessica around for about a month or so and decided it was time to change the Transmission filter, solenoids and kickdown cable. So I parked her and started getting some hands dirty on the process.

As per usual, first things first drain the tranny fluid, take of the oil pan, and check out stuff




There he was, there was very fine shavings on the magnets and the oil did look sparkly but nothing major at least not to my keen eye. The oil did look a bit more on the burn side though

 

Took off the old filter and solenoids, nothing looked out of the ordinary there except for just a messy job, it was now time to take off the old kickdown cable in order to install the newer HO longer cable on there. and for that I decided to drop the transmision a little lower. So I took out all the crossmember bolts and placed a jack under the transfer case to support all the weight and being able to control the height of the transmission.

 

 

After lowering the transmission it was time to remove the kickdown cable from its place in the tranny and since I had to install the new one and was not ready to drop the whole transmission to route it correctly I decided to attach a piece of 3/8" clear hose to the lower end of the cable and pull it through to the engine bay. So for when it was time to route the newer cable I'd have a bit of an easier time. And it worked!

 

 

Here's a pic of the difference in length from a Renix era cable compared to a HO era one, it's about a 1.5" difference, not much, but makes the difference.

 

This is when I routed the newer cable down to the tranny from the engine bay, my idea worked!

 

 

And this was the old tranny fluid when I took it to Oreillys to get recycled. Pretty burnt as I told you before. The filter and solenoid install was pretty straightforward so I decided to not document it, I just gave most of the exposed valve body a quick clean with brake cleaner and installed the new components along with new gaskets for the oil pan and filter. As for fluid I decided to go with the Valvoline High Milleage Dex Merc ATF, and a BG Products ATC Plus additive. After putting everything back together and checking levels I took it out for a quick spin and everything seemed to be working fine, once eberything was up to temperature I went up my local mountain pass to test out the new cable and everything improved, shift points were better on the powerband and the kickdown worked flawlessly.

[JoeLAW]

Well, it had been a while since I wanted to flip the u-bolts on my rear axle and eliminate the original lower plates where the shock originally attached to. Since it hanged so low and often got hit by rocks. As you can clearly see on this pic from when we were fabbing my sliders. 

 

The PO had welded some pins right at the middle of the axle tube, kind of the same style as the XJ, however the shock uptravel was very limited. So I remember seeing this picture on a magazine and decided to source the parts myself and get to it.

 

 

Of course I had to do a couple of custom shock mounts a bit higher up from the original lower plate but lower than what the PO had slapped on there. All the materials used on this project were old stuff my buddy had laying around and got repurposed, all but the actual "U-Bolts". 

 

 

 

As far as materials, we ended up using some leftover 3/16" plate and after measuring I did a couple of CAD (Cardboard Aided Design) templates and trimmed them to fit and then traced them on the plate and my buddy cut them off free hand with his Oxy-Acetylene torch, only to do minimal buffing around the edges to clean it up a bit. On the upper plate for the U-Bolts we used some leftover 5/16" thick "C-Channel" and drilled the holes on the wall of it for the U-Bolts to go through, and again free hand cut the semi-circles on the smaller walls for the axletube profile. And for the lower plate for the U-Bolts to rest on he had some leftover 3/8" thick plate which we cut to the leafspring width and then ground off a couple of groves for the U-Bolts to rest on and not slip in case of anything. Mu buddy welded the lower shock mounts on the axle with his old trusty gas powered stick welder along with a "5P Low hydrogen" stick to do minimal cleaning/buffing and prep since there was a lot of crud on the axle tube.

 

 

After getting the work done, I went straight to my local RTI ramp  to check for clearances and shock travel, and everything looked pretty good for just having it pretty much eyed out. Of course I took measurements but most of the idea was all in my head. And as makeshift as most of the items are, I pretty much used and abused that setup since May 2016 till October 2023 and only had one issue and that was that the lower shock bolt pictured got lost after an Overlanding trip I did around Southwest New Mexico. And on the pictures you can clearly see why, I used a regular nut and pressure washer, which I remembered saying I'll replace it with a nylon nut and better bolt, and completely forgot to do until I lost it lol. But I never had the U-Bolts slip or shift from their position, or the shock mounts detach or break from where we welded them in.