Son of Stink

[AnotherOldJeepGuy]

20 hours ago, Gjeep said:

They secured gasket to the pan but there NEEDS to be anaerobic gasket maker on block where arrows are pointing

Can you confirm I have correctly interpreted your advise in the pic below, yellow scribbles where you are suggesting gasket maker needs to be placed?

[Gjeep]

Correcto. Also between the RMS halves gets Permatex#2. Here's reference pic for the RMS:

 

[Gjeep]

Long live the she-shed! A little over two years ago when we moved to Oregon I commandeered the shed on the property. Nice 300 sq ft structure with loft area and additional side overhang we can park a car under. My wife rightly felt wronged that she didn’t have an enclosed area for things and said she wanted a she-shed. 100% identical structure. My first question was – what are you going to put in there? Things. Done. It’s been vacant for 2 years except for 2 bicycles and 6 small Rubbermaid totes I tucked away. I’ve been inching my way in there with irrigation pipes, fittings, yard tools, etc. Time for the take-over. It’s going to serve as my parts paint booth and overall tinkering workshop (house related things mostly), but a solid dry area to paint Jeep stuff in. Come January when she heads to Florida to visit family for a week the Ditch Witch and I will run power to it. 

 

This morning the she-shed was where I painted several cut-to-size 6mm honeycomb mesh grilles for the MJ. After searching high and low, ordering far too many ‘wrong’ grille inserts I finally found a mesh design that fits evenly across all the openings of the modified factory grille. Fun part was that this mesh insert came rolled up. So, my wife’s heavy duty rolling pin was cleaned off and put to use. Worked great. Since they arrived gloss black, after I cut these proper, I sanded/ prepped them for paint. Now they’re satin black front and backside like the grille itself. Typically, with custom-ish projects I make at least one spare (this time three) as it makes a future need simple.

 

 

 

[Gjeep]

Oregon doesn’t mess around with their front license plate requirement. I had ordered every available aftermarket winch flip-up option available and all of it turned out to be crappy made in China rusting under the paint stuff. Then looked into factory options across manufacturers new/ used that I could modify, flip up or down and unfortunately nothing was right. Circled back to Jeeps XJ factory plate holder, measured out the distance I’d need between the on-center from the bumper attaching holes to putting the plate just in front of my winch hook — 2” eye to eye. Decided that a black textured 1/4” plastic sheet cut-down would match bumper end caps perfectly. Below is what I ended up with. Nice and simple. (Nothing is painted: hardware or the plate itself yet. All will be satin black for consistency.) Nutserts will be in the factory underside bumper holes for ease of install/ removal of retaining bolts.  

 

 

[fiatslug87]

Did you look at the Cascadia 4x4 flipster, made in Canada. I have their version 2 I believe on the FJ.

 

 

[Gjeep]

Looks good/ quality on your FJ but the design doesn’t work for my vision on the MJ. Tower hinge setup is distracting. I know. I’m crazy…

[Gjeep]

Took a little over an hour and a half this morning to get this mesh grille into place centered as it should be. Didn’t matter how slowly and carefully I screwed it into place, it kept shifting ever so slightly because of the screw/ mesh interference at the fastening point. The solution was sniping the mesh entirely at the screw grommets. That total clearance made the difference, but it still took all sorts of patience fastening it into place without any shift in position. If you look closely, the thinnest factory inserts were removed from this grille. (Page 22 of this build thread goes into more detail on that.)

 

Still need to decide between and the aluminum mesh grille where the factory grille slats were opened up entirely. I’m thinking the aluminum may be too bright for this build with all the black trim. Will see.

 

 

[AnotherOldJeepGuy]

On 10/8/2026 at 12:37 PM, Gjeep said:

Correcto. Also between the RMS halves gets Permatex#2. Here's reference pic for the RMS

Awesome, thanks!

[Gjeep]

Circling back on my oil pan gasket post from last week… Placing the two gaskets on the oil pan itself told a different story. The Mopar (held in place with plastic license plate fasteners) will need to stretch to get to the pans flange. The Fel-Pro blue just fits. And as mentioned I’ve never had a leak using this gasket on any of the other Jeeps. But it is blue. And that nagged at me, so I did more digging and found a company called AJ USA that makes a black composite oil pan gasket.

 

 

 

It arrived this afternoon and I threw it on the new pan. Fits like the Fel-Pro. Only difference I see between both the Fel-Pro and Mopar gasket is that the AJ USA gasket does not have the notch at the front/ center of it. AJ USA for the win. High hopes it will be as leak-free as the Fel-Pro. 

 

 

 

Lastly, I decided to go with stainless steel hardware to add some bling. The small bag of fasteners is for the fail-over Hesco CPS bracket setup that signals from the harmonic balancer versus flywheel.

 

[Gjeep]

Finally got to doing the rear mail seal… Not a trace of anaerobic gasket maker to be found on the uninstall – hence the leak. The dark blue brand rms pulled out I wasn't familiar with, but a side by side comparison with the new Fel-Pro revealed it noticeably lacked a lip.

 

 

 

 

New oil pan and bling stainless steel hardware in place. Always a wait and see if that rear lip on the oil pan seated properly around the rear bearing cap. High hopes, but I’ve goofed once before when installing the oil pan with the axle in place. Today I will fill it/ fire it up...and watch for leaks.

 

 

[Gjeep]

Also completed the alternate grille this morning. Nothing like waking up at 1am. I’ll likely install the wider opening honeycomb style (option 1) over the thick slat style (option 2) as it ‘matches’ the stripes and vector wheel openings a bit better. But one never knows until the final install.

 

Option 1:

 

Option 2: