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. 

[JoeLAW]

Well, after rocking that upgrade for a while there was a whole lot of little issues that started popping up and needing repair. First of which was one of the tranny cooler lines.. One of the original rubber lines to the original cooler started bubbling up, so I decided to replace both of them to avoid future issues down the road. Once I took them off they started disintegrating, and I was definitively glad that I decided to swap them out then.

 

 

 

After replacing that line, my header panel which was not on the greatest shape to begin with, decided to finally break in half.. I though it was funny and snapped a pic.

 

 

I patched it up a bit just enough for it to work, and put everything back together. Well, one Monday after a weekend of dirtbiking and playing out and about in the desert, I couldn't help but notice that my steering was feeling very sloppy, sloppier than usual. So after work I decided to check things out a bit closer, and upon further inspection I found a lot of carnage to the front steering components. A LOT!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the time I was rocking the Off-Road-Only / ORO U-Turn Steering system, which in all honesty works very well. However, Jeeps are not "Pre-Runners".  Well that weekend me and a couple of buddies were doing a little bit of everything, bombing through the desert, washes, whoops, and a little bit of crawling in between. I'm sure it was on a whooped out rocky section where most if not all of this damage happened. I ended up bending both tie-in plates that attach the knuckle to the 2 frontmost bolts of the unit bearing to attach the new tie rod to. I'm also pretty sure I bent both Inner "Cs" of the 2nd D30 I had installed on there (from a 86 XJ). Well while the tie-in plates gave and bent, the driver side knuckle did not give one bit and broke the tip off.. Not only that but when taking everything apart both upper ball-joints were completely shot. And the scariest part of it all, I completely and super cleanly snapped the front driver side brake line, and in the action somehow it crimped itself sealing/cancelling it completely. Scary stuff.... specially since I drove it like that back home.. There's a saying in spanish that says "Te puedes salvar de el rayo, pero no de la raya!" which basically means that you can save yourself from getting struck by lighting, but not from your time being here. Not trying to bring religion at all into this thread, but basically we all have a timeline and god decides when its time to go. Anyways here's a video showing one of the balljoints that was shot

 

 

 

Since it was still my daily driver at this point, I remembered I had saved a bunch of parts from the original axle including the knuckles and stock steering linkage, so I bought a regular rubber brake line installed the old knuckle back on threw the OEM brake line on bled the brakes and rocked it like that for a while till I saved money ordered new parts and got another front axle for it

 

 

 

 

[JoeLAW]

Well the time came for teardown and re-build. I want to say it took me about 3 or 4 months to get all the parts in and sorted.  My shot was to try and knock out a front axle swap along with welding an artec truss and "inner-C" gussets, plus installing a set of Alloy USA balljoints on a weekend (Or so I thought!  ) . The donor axle was a new to me D30 of a 94-95 XJ with the one piece pass-side axleshaft along with new seals (because I was tired of my leaky front diff.... For prep work I had already installed seals and bearings for the carrier, along with new unit bearings, well enough typing time for some pics!

 

 

Hover Mode engaged!

 

 

I had installed a Spartan lunchbox locker up front thinking it was going to help me out (Which it did) however I did not regear and kept my stock 3.55s on the 33s which were too high for rock crawling and slow wheeling, and this thing made auful popping noises, to the point where I was constantly checking my axle shafts thinking the u-joint might be broken or missing caps but it wasn't the case, it was just the locker.. So I debated throwing it back in the new to me axle, but decided not to the popping noises and uneven pulling specially at parking lots made me not like it... I still decided to take the whole axle apart and keep old parts because you never know! After taking the locker apart I took it to the bike shop I worked at and completely cleaned it with our parts washer. Afterwards I layed it on the table and saw the damage it had, minimal but still damage and on some weird sections of the locker if you ask me. I was glad I decided to run the new diff without it. I think I still have that locker laying around, just wating for someone to need it for parts or something. Here are the pics of that

 

 

 

 

 

The whole locker has some more tear than wear, however this part is the one that did not let me sleep good for a couple of nights, and to this day I still can't understand how that might've happened. And as you can see on the next pic, this only happened on one side of the locker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see it's a bit to chewed up for my liking, but I bet it still works. Well on to more exciting parts of this post, time for the truss and inner "Cs" to strengthen the D30. Here I am putting my buddy to work once again! 

 

 

 

 

 

Pics of during and after the welding was done, my buddy told me it had a lifetime warranty on the materials, but the welds had a 12" driving distance warranty.  At the time we also welded some homemade skid plates for the LCA mounts at the axle out of some 3/16" plate he had laying around. And once he was done welding it was my job to clean up and prep for paint. I used the epoxy black paint you can get at Oreilys (it's a purple can) which requires minimal prep work and no primer, and I had liked the way it worked with the rocksliders we had previously built. 

 

 

And there it is sitting after paint, that day my friend with the black LJ came out to lend me a hand with installing the balljoints and some other shtuff that needed to happen

 

 

And there it is sitting still and pretty after a whole lot of work!

 

 

Old vs new, we were all curious to see if I had just bend the inner C or if the whole axle was happy, but to everyones surprise, I had only bent the driver side inner C. BTW this was the 2nd weekend of working on this and having my truck on my welder buddy’s driveway which even though he was cool with it it always puts pressure on me because who would like for someone else's junk to be sitting in your driveway all taken apart and hovering lol.. Anyways I decided to stick to it and finishing it that night. I remember it was winter time, and even though we live in the desert it gets very cold at times, even with no wind or any sort of precipitation. So I just sucked it up and kept on pushing to finally take my junk of his driveway.

 

 

I remember taking this pic and it was like 11PM closer to 12AM and all I had left to do was putting the tires and ORO tie rod back on, sometimes you just gotta keep pushing through it in order to get it done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Afterwards I took it to get some fresh gas in her, and then took her on a little cruise through the desert to test it out and try and see how the new suspension upgrades felt and performed. I will post more about those little upgrades on the next post. And I sure hope these posts help someone out in the future. 

 

 

 

 

 

[JoeLAW]

Allrighty in order to keep bringing this thread up to date, I gotta keep posting! This next post is a bit less techy, and more little upgrades that I'm sure will help someone in the future.

 

So, the little suspension upgrades I ended up doing when I did that front axle swap, where a set of hand-me-down 6.5" lift coil springs for a TJ, and a set of Chevy drop shackles from autozone. And while both were very easy to install, the shackles did need some minor mods in order for them to fit properly on the frame and leaf spring. 

 

Let's start with the coil springs, these came out of my friends TJ, that ended upgrading his to the Metalcloak dual rate coils when they 1st came out. He gave these coils to my other buddy with a TJ, and then he upgraded to coilovers up front, so he handed them down to me and I put them to good use. These were a Rustys brand, and heavily used ones too, but surprinsingly plus comparedto the Rough country's that Jessica hada on there when I purchased her. They were just slightly taller than those coils (i'll put pics below) but it ended up lifting it about 1-1.5" more up front. With that being said I kep the 1-3/4" spacers I already had on there, and kept the shocks as well since it was only about a 1" difference and it ended up working out pretty well. I took lots of pics of measuring of the spacers and shocks extended and collapsed lengths for future reference, and it helped out a lot, this new gained height almost nearly made the rear match, and those shackles from autozone made the difference, and matched it to the T which was a pretty cool budget find to essentially lift Jessica about 4.75-5" more less. Here are the pics..

 

 

 

1" Difference on the coils springs

 

 

 

Shock extended length 

 

 

 

Collapsed length, varely noticing they were a 10" travel shock, which in all honesty performed very well throughout the years specially for how cheap they were.

 

 

 

 

Now on to the rear, unfirtunately I forgot to take side x side comparison pics with the Rough Country shackles, and the Chevy Drop shackles, but they were about 1.5-2" longer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I took pics of the box for future reference in case I ever broke one, or whatever might happen to one, specially since these were not made for off-road use, and were significantly thinner metal than the Rough Country ones. Surprisingly though, I put those shackles through a bunch of use and some might say abuse and they were still doing fine. after 8 plus years of running them. 

 

However I did have to basically trim the width of the bushing in order to make them fit into the frame, and also had to drill em out to a bigger diameter in order to fit the bolt through it as well. And I ended up doing a mix of drilling the hole on the bushing sleeve bigger, and also sanding down the bolts a bit with a grinder and flap wheel. (I know I know, not recommended at all, but I never had any issues what so ever.) I also had to drill out the holes on the lower part of the bushing in order to fit the bolt through. But that was it, for I think they were $40 at the time, you can't beat the lift and benefit out of them. Here is a little collage I did of before and after these little suspension upgrades.

 

 

 

[JoeLAW]

After those little upgrades, of course I had to take her to my local RTI ramp. However one day the opportunity to get a set of Truck-Lite headlights popped up, and I went for it! I honestly can't remember how much I ended up paying for them but it was something like $200 or so, from a kid that was parting out hiss XJ since he blew the engine or head on it.. He was actually building it up real nice, but since that happened he lost all the steam on his project and started selling a bunch of parts off of it, and I ended up snatching the headlights which are still on there right now, and in all honesty they are a damn good upgrade! Here are the pics of the lights when I 1st got em.

 

 

 

Here come the pics of the flex test, but I just remembered that while doing this whole axle swap suspension upgrade, I lengthened my adjustable short arms, stretching the front axle about 1.5-1.75" forward from stock. Which made it handle so much better, and perform even better when wheeling. Only small issues I had with it being that way was the Core 4x4 Trackbar bracket hitting the artec truss at full compression, which could've been fixed by extending the bumpstops a tad bit which I never did in order to try and get as much active suspension travel on it as possible. The other issue I had, was that the bumpstops from the coil tower were rubbing against the coil spring on the back part of it, so I thought of a quick fix for it by using the winch to pull it forward by looping the cable around the bump stop at the coil tower, and hooking it to the "D-ring" at the bumper. Did a couple of pulls on it and voila no more rubbing against the spring.

 

 

 

 

 

After getting that done, we had to go stretch its legs and test it out! And she performed flawless, we ended up doing a bit of mild fast desert cruising, dune riding, and rockcrawling. And no more rubbing with the coil spring, and only bottomed out up front and hitting the trackbar bracket with the truss.