neohic Posted April 3 Author Posted April 3 20 hours ago, fiatslug87 said: Sounds like a great trip, glad you and the CJ got home in one piece. Who was in the white MJ? Are they on here? Had an awesome trip! I’d describe it as the most terrible yet greatest road-trip in the CJ. White Comanche is xjrev10. Austin hasn’t been on here in a while. He even asked me, “Is Comanche Club even a thing anymore?”
89 MJ Posted April 4 Posted April 4 47 minutes ago, neohic said: He even asked me, “Is Comanche Club even a thing anymore?” I hope you told him to log on and find out
eaglescout526 Posted April 4 Posted April 4 54 minutes ago, neohic said: Is Comanche Club even a thing anymore? The audacity!
neohic Posted April 4 Author Posted April 4 1 hour ago, 89 MJ said: I hope you told him to log on and find out 1 hour ago, eaglescout526 said: The audacity! 1 hour ago, fiatslug87 said: I hope you told him to pull his head out of his fASSbook.
neohic Posted April 4 Author Posted April 4 Partial clean up day. I brought it to the car wash, took a cleanup cut and respooled the winch cable, put the rear driveshaft back in, and I fixed the bikini top. A couple of the hook and loop straps pulled through the canvas from hanging in there from highway speeds. It was only the middle two but I reinforced all four rear straps with marine vinyl. I need to make a plan for making a new rain cover soon.
Pete M Posted April 6 Posted April 6 woo-hoo!! what an adventure! let's see if he gets an email: @xjrev10
neohic Posted May 3 Author Posted May 3 With springtime trying really hard to come around, I wanted to address the old rain cover. About this time last year we got some gnarly hail and it trashed the old cover. It was kept around because it was better than nothing. The new top is made of a thinner material, but it is waterproof. I made it inside out so the seams would be easier to work with. Reinforcement patches where the straps would go were added along with some marine vinyl where there could be a wear spot. After final sewing it fit great! In the future, I’ll try and keep an eye on any heavier weather and park it under my carport if need be. We’ll see how it lasts. Hopefully the thinner material holds up.
watchamakalit Posted May 3 Posted May 3 I have a "rain gear" cover for my 7. Love it. Nice durable material.
neohic Posted May 3 Author Posted May 3 32 minutes ago, watchamakalit said: I have a "rain gear" cover for my 7. Love it. Nice durable material. Thats what I started with for the original cover. It was a Rain Gear brand but it was for a YJ. The for was never great around the windshield, but it was good material to work with when I trimmed it down to fit. They make a great product!… but they don’t make one for an early CJ.
watchamakalit Posted May 3 Posted May 3 23 minutes ago, neohic said: Thats what I started with for the original cover. It was a Rain Gear brand but it was for a YJ. The for was never great around the windshield, but it was good material to work with when I trimmed it down to fit. They make a great product!… but they don’t make one for an early CJ. Come to think of it mine is a YJ cover. However I also have a YJ "family rollbar". I could see where that would cause fit issues on yours.
neohic Posted May 4 Author Posted May 4 The CJ finally got un-Moabed today. I pumped out the remainder of the fuel in the long range auxiliary tank and removed it. There was a bunch of last minute wiring that needed to get cleaned up and I never added an override switch for the fan… that I later did in a parking lot. This means that a new hole got drilled in the dash! The turkey pan heat shield got retired today also. I got a couple rolls of heat shield tin foil kind of stuff and went to town on nearly all of the exhaust under the tub. Hopefully that put a pin in the overheating fuel pump. Fingers crossed for no rattles! We’re getting into our heavy snow season also. I’m not interested in seeing how the new top holds up to wet, heavy snow that we’re supposed to get this week so it’s hiding out under the carport. Planning ahead for the next big project, YJ springs have been ordered. I decided to go with Zone Offroad 2” lift springs because they’re under the Fox/BDS umbrella. They offer a kit that doesn’t include shocks that’s very affordable! I’m hoping they don’t suck. For shocks, I’ve got two new Bilstein 5100s for a 3” lift rear TJ application already but they’re the same shock as a 3” YJ only with a bar pin in the upper bushing that’ll get taken out. The front will be matching 5100s for a 3” YJ. I’m not in a huge hurry to tear apart the whole suspension right now so I’m just collecting parts. Stay tuned for that!
watchamakalit Posted May 5 Posted May 5 What about relocating the pump? Both my cjs have electric pumps and both are on the frame rail just ahead of the tank. I believe the 85 is on the passenger rail and the 77 is on the drivers rail. can't speak for the 77 as it hasnt run since I brought it home, however the 85 has never had heat issues.
neohic Posted May 5 Author Posted May 5 3 hours ago, watchamakalit said: What about relocating the pump? Both my cjs have electric pumps and both are on the frame rail just ahead of the tank. I believe the 85 is on the passenger rail and the 77 is on the drivers rail. can't speak for the 77 as it hasnt run since I brought it home, however the 85 has never had heat issues. Thats on the list also. I do have another 6” I can move it over but it would also put the pump right where I need to add a reinforcement plate come the day I start on the YJ spring swap.
neohic Posted May 23 Author Posted May 23 Small update on the rain cover. I like when everything has a place when not being used so I made a small cinch bag for it. The bag is about 14” long when it has the top crammed in it. Fits under the seat next to the gear bags nicely also. The top itself got an additional strap on the rear corners after I noticed it riding up and collecting water after the rain we’ve been getting.
neohic Posted June 3 Author Posted June 3 My springs arrived! I went with a Zone Offroad 2” YJ kit without shocks. Reason being is that Zone is under the Fox/BDS umbrella and I’ve heard great things about the ride quality and flex. These are more on the basic side though being they don’t have military wrapped eyes, but let’s say that this kit was also “cost effective”. With the addition of the Bilstein shocks, I’m hoping for good suspension performance. In the spirit of “cost effectiveness”, i decided to make some of the components I’ll be needing too. Shackle bushings and spring plates are on order. I considered making the plates, but the disgustingly rusty plate I had in mind isn’t big enough to get four plates out of it. Next on the list is making the shackles. Maybe I’ll start the suspension swap soon?… still not in a huge hurry.
neohic Posted Thursday at 10:42 PM Author Posted Thursday at 10:42 PM Another day in the shop and I’ve got nearly everything I need to get started on the front suspension. I started with making the front shackles and then moved to getting real world measurements on the shocks. Shackles are 4.5” from eye to eye because that’s the length I could get out of the 3/8” material I had. The front shocks are 28.5” extended and 17.75” collapsed. Rears are 23” to 15”. They are both 3-4” lift YJ shocks for the ease of future replacements. Eyeballing it, I think the rears might just drop right in, but the fronts are obviously much different than what’s currently in there. To get real numbers on the springs I started with measuring the current setup. The spring moves a whopping 1” from ride height to droop and is 39” from eye to eye at ride height with a 2.5” shackle. This thing had a much longer shackle years ago but I put the tiny ones on it to try and get some caster in it. Moving to the new springs, I started with static measurements to see how much it’ll move. They’ll obviously move more with the weight of the Jeep and axles moving around, so it was more the measurements with weight on it that was important to me. Looks like they’re going to be nice and flat at ride height! With that I started figuring where the front shocks will live. The bottom mount will pretty much be where it currently is. That should keep the caliper playing nice around it. The upper mount will be more creative. I started with a piece of steel something-er-other that I nearly ran over on the road years ago and then decided to pick it up. Maybe from a tow truck?… it’s shock mounts now. My torch made short work of extracting what I needed. Then I made a quick template to get the angles right and cut out the rest. Paint and rust was removed with one of those “hamburger” stripping pads. Those things are awesome! They consume pretty quick, but still awesome! The current upper mounts need to get cut out and these will go in their place. Again, we’re just eyeballing things based on compressed spring measurements. This might change once I get the new springs in and flex it around to get hard numbers on the shocks. Fenders will need to get cut also. While I had tape measure things happening I took a look at where the spring and shackle mounts will go based on factory YJ numbers. My plan is to move the axle forward some and modifying the bumper is now in the cards. There is some factory boxing on the inside of the frame over where the new spring mount will go but I need to connect the dots a bit. Right now, it looks pretty straight forward to me. My tape measure tells me everything will work so it’ll be fine… probably.
neohic Posted Friday at 10:24 PM Author Posted Friday at 10:24 PM Crazy mad flex! I ran the CJ up my buddy’s ramp today to get some more baseline measurements. Unfortunately, I ran out of traction before lifting a tire so the winch got used to pull it up the rest of the way… very embarrassing. Let’s talk about the rear. With the rear tire bouncing off the ground, the shock was about topped out at 19” of travel. At the other side, the tire was just about into the wheel well and I wasn’t even close to the bump stop. As for the front… … I also have a mile or so before anything touches anything. The shock bottomed out before the tire was anywhere near full stuff. Pretty sure there’s some room for improvement here.
neohic Posted Saturday at 12:32 AM Author Posted Saturday at 12:32 AM 1 hour ago, 89 MJ said: More flex than my Wrangler though! Yes!… nailed it.
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