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John's 98 Build Thread

Tell nick guy hello... we all need to hit the trails again here soon
 
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I hate thiefs.
 
Glad you got it back, but ask the yard to roll up the windows. Doesn't look that bad. I would pull the valve cover off before i started it if they pull the seals off the cover. Don't know what they may have put in there.
Again i am glad you got her back.

Good luck
 
holy cow, ya kill switch in mine is always armed, the naxja chapter down in AZ had a "kill switch" party and it was like 15 bucks in supplies and helped hook it up to the fuel pump relay under hood, there was 12 or so Jeeps that showed up. I am debating some kind of alarm for the jeep but I dont want to be that guy in my neighborhood with a car alarm blarring when I am not home.

I am always nervous if someone wanted the winch/rope or bumper if they had long enough they could take it all. hope your insurance gets you back in action, if you need anything I am in seattle and can always help.

Did they thrash it offroad or just tweaker steal things?
 
Thanks guys! MTB jak, I might get ahold of you after I settle, I'm gonna do my best to NOT total it. I went by the yard today, and I'm made a list of all the crap they jacked. It seems like I was targeted. They broke into the apartment maintenance vehicle to steal the remotes for the parking garage. I'm not happy. Anyway - strangest part of what they took, plug wires. El cheapos with like 60,000 miles on them. I want to put a skim on but someone said its a 99+ thing, so I might make my own chip-key based skim like deal with GPS tracking. I'm pretty handy with an arduino and a protoboard.
 
I got the Jeep home! Its got oil POURING out of the rear main seal, but it has good oil pressure and no knock, I'm guessing I'll be redoing my RMS. I had a hunch that it was ate up anyway, I have had a persistent drip from back there for a couple months. It runs nice and smooth! I'm guessing I will have it back on the road sometime in December at this point though... Its nice to not be as stressed as I was initially.
 
I've been keeping busy cleaning away one Saturday at a time on my Jeep. It looks like my insurance has finally figured out that equipment adds to the resale value, so hopefully they will cut me a check soon so I can get back on the road.

As for the status: I confirmed the RMS is blow, and figured out the steering wheel lock is destroyed. The underhood electrical has been massively worked on so its no longer random cut wires!

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I've vacuumed up most of the glass. I didn't expect that the three windows that were broken to consume so much volume in my shop vac!

I'm planning on some major upgrades once this is all over, and I'll probably be replacing with better stuff. Starting with the wench. I have been eyeballing the warn 9.5xp, is it worth the extra cash?
 
It’s been a while since I updated, but I have McSquizzie back on the road! On the list of damage was:

1) The radio, amp, and pod had been taken
2) Three windows had been broken out
3) The spare had been stolen
4) Plug wires, Spectre intake, Optima, ARB compressor, and the winch had all also been relieved of my ownership
5) The rear main seal was badly leaking

I bought it back because it still had four wheels and tires, ran good, it shifted, my complete OME/JKS lift, the bumper, and most of the interior was still there.

I met the insurance adjuster at the body shop where it was with a battery, plug wires, some battery harness terminal repair pieces, and drove it home with a badly leaking rear main seal. It was pretty sad...

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I started by thoroughly cleaning, as the thief had scattered trash all around the interior and it was littered with broken glass. I made a grocery list and went to the u pull n pay and relieved many Cherokees of their parts.

I built a new overhead console over a couple days using parts from a minivan and grand Cherokee again, but this time I epoxied my Contura switch bezels in. I decided since I would be replacing the gauge trim bezel, I would use the OHC to house the compressor and locker switches.

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Over thanksgiving break I installed all of the glass and did the rear main seal, ARB compressor, and mounted an ebay special CB with an antenna tuner. I also relocated the antenna to the front bumper and use a new short fire stick. I was tired of it hitting the roof in parking garages. I do have to say that "super fast drying" urethane window adhesive drys super slow when its cold. It snowed and then dropped below freezing for a while, and the adhesive was still tacky three days later. According to the 3M data sheet I pulled up, it was going to take 240 hours to cure to 50% at 40 degrees, so I just left it alone for a while.

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I get a nice long 9 day break from my company for the Christmas break, so I got busy and installed an alarm, installed the new radio, a new shiny 9.5XP (I had to trim the ARB bumper), and wired in a kill switch.

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I dont suggest such a large winch, after drastic trimming, it barely fit.

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I also had to cut into the grill to fit the solenoid, which was no big issue, because whoever stole the winch broke my grill while removing the winch so I didn't have much to loose.

I am pretty proud of how it all turned out!

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My wife got me some Mamabas for Christmas, I got those mounted up today. It looks pretty dang sharp!

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While at the yard looking for plastic and glass, I found a Liberty and proceeded to relieve it of its disc brakes, so look forward to that. I need just a couple more pieces and I should be able to install those for less then $200.

I have to say it has been a TON of work getting it back on the road but because I did all my own work it was inexpensive, and I really learned a lot about installing glass.

Up next is lockers and a swing bumper!
 
It has been quite a while since my last update; work has been getting in the way of me relaxing.
I had 3.73 Nitro Gears and front/rear ARB lockers installed by JT in Cashmere in January. They are a M-F 8-5 shop, and I work the same sort of hours, so I dropped the Jeep off on a Saturday and went back the next weekend to pick it up. I didn’t know it but we chose to pick the Jeep up during the Bavarian Ice Festival, when Leavenworth has “no room in the Inns” because the tourists take over but we found somewhere anyway. It was a fun weekend!

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Testing out the lockers, definitely overkill but hey!

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The hose was installed with a loop of slack at the air manifold. Probably a good call.

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Line routing to the front axle.

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And the rear.

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They were out of D30 covers when the gears were installed, so at the end of the gear break-in period I installed a better cover.

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Sometime along the way my battery cables finished falling apart, and somehow in that process my 90A alternator fried (extra resistance??). I decided that because I was only upgrading things and doing it the right way on this Jeep, I would be going to the 136A unit. The parts store took my warranted alternator as credit towards a rebuilt 136A. I did this whole thing by the hip, and I forgot how much grinding was involved. Four hours later I had an installed 136A alternator.

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Yeah, its a tight fit...

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I marked the material that had to go - pretty straight forward, right?

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Look MA! It bolts together!

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Bracket is all ground up!

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Mocking it up for the ten thousandth time.

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I had to 'touch up' the ears on the block. I don't remember seeing other people who did this having to get this aggressive...

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Some corrosion control. I used enamel black after the primer, but forgot to take a picture.

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I like how it turned out.
 
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I got a set of cables from 5-90, but to get me back on the road while I waited, I raided the cable section at the parts store. The hardest to find part was the military style terminals, which I got on Amazon, Pico 0810PT.

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Here's what O'Reilly wires look like. I don't fancy the marine terminals.

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You can see my ANL fuse there, I used a battery terminal bolt (the ones with a square head) and ground down the head till it fit.

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Here is a nice picture of the military terminals. Much better. I did have to widen the opening in the lug from the winch's cables. They were 3/8" and the bolt in the terminal is bigger. I also cleaned up the amp wiring, by using some of that spiffy waterproof heatshrink to seal the fuse terminals to the cable. I really don't need that pulling apart cruising down the road!
 
The u-pick-n-pull had a 2005 Liberty back in November with rear discs. $80 and a couple hours later I walked out with one mangled backing plate, one good backing plate, two calipers, to rotors, two caliper to hardline hoses off a ZJ, and an e-brake cable off a ZJ. I jumped on rock auto and got new e-brake shoes and hardware, pads, and a Dorman C660004 (F67Z2A635AA) e-brake cable. If you wanted to just grab that cable off something in the yard, look for a 1995 – 2002 Ford Explorer or a 1997- 2001 Mercury Mountaineer. I then bought 10 lug nuts for the front hubs on a 2000-2001 Jeep Cherokee (they are longer than the stock rears which become too short in this swap.

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The passenger backing plate was all bent to hell from the junkyard, so I straightened it and re-riveted it to the cast section. I used black ceramic enamel on there to keep it nice and rust free.

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I painted the calipers to match the backing plates

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All the needed hardware, just chillin.

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I decided to do this one afternoon after work. I started at around 4 PM and finished around 10 PM.

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Press some longer studs in.

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Axle comes out, backing plates simply unbolt.

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I reused the Cherokee studs. I may go back if I ever need to do the bearings, but I found the part number for the studs and don't think they are still in production. Does anyone know if just plain old high grade bolts are acceptable?

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This setup is so simple.

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All done!

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There's where drums belong, not on my Jeep!

All in I believe I’m under $250 but it’s hard to tell sometimes on these swaps. I found myself at the parts store probably three times.
 
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5-90’s cables came in last week, and I installed those. They are so much prettier than the parts store junk ones; I’ll be saving those for spares just in case.

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These cables look so good and are very high quality. I highly recommend 5-90's work.

I have the compressor on the wrong side of the ANL fuse. Once I get some new terminal hoops Ill solder an extension onto that wire and hook it directly on the battery where it belongs. The compressor is protected by dual 40A maxi fuses.

Because I live in the city its rare I get up past 60 mph, and I recently figured out I had a driveshaft vibration at 70 MPH. Looks like when I did my rear shims I didn't get the pinion perfectly lined up, and the extra rotational speed of the driveshaft is now causing vibes. I am eyeballing a set of the JKS boomerang shackles to lift the rear pinion a couple degrees. If that doesn’t work, I suppose I will have to get the shaft balanced.

That being said, expect some shackles, possibly a new or re-balanced driveshaft, and some frame cladding in the next couple months. I also picked up a Odyssey PC1200 at the moonshiners swap meet for $25, so if I get around to picking up an isolator I may fab up a second battery tray for it.
 
KJ Disc Update: I have a new KJ disc issue that the dealership refers to 'moaning' that is caused by rust scale that builds up on the rotors overnight. There were several TSBs over it throughout the warranty period on virtually all years of KJ, all came down to replacing the rotors, pads, and sometimes the calipers. Also the calipers seem to have a tendency to sticking on. I love the braking power of the KJ disc setup so I’ll stop moaning, but if you do this swap keep that info in mind. Oh, and the parking brake is crap.

In other news: For Christmas I got a Boostwerks Shift Linkage from my mother-in-law and a new shifter position indicator switch from my sister. With drama at work, moving, and my wife trying to finish her bachelors degree I totally forgot I had these sitting around. The instructions are really good, and adjusting is 90% of the work. Install started something like this:

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After lots of drilling it looked like this when it was installed. Looks much better then factory! It reminds me a lot of the clutch linkage on my CJ5.

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The detent was off on the shift handle, but the shift range was within my liking so I just ground the nub down with a dremel cutoff wheel.

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Next on the list was vibes introduced by pinion angle issues that were exaggerated by regearing. I thought that maybe a set of lift shackles would rotate the pinion the degree or two I thought my pinion was off. All sorts of awesome things have been said about JKS’s OGS651 so I got a set from Amazon. Install was pretty straightforward, but I figured out I couldn’t grease the shackles with my grease gun once they were installed. I changed out the zerk fittings for some 45 degree zerks.

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The next issue I had was the shackle bottoms out on one of the bumper bolts, so I pulled those and cut them down.

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I got between ½” and ¾” of lift, so I adjusted my ACOS accordingly.

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I can honestly say that the ride has improved, but the pinion vibration isn't gone. I still need a couple more degrees, so I’ll be getting a set of 6 degree shims sometime this summer.
 
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I picked up an Odyssey PC1200 at a swap meet for $25, and it fits perfectly between the radiator and the ARB compressor. All I needed was a tray, some wiring, and an isolator setup of some sort. I had a factory tray from the other side, so I cut it in half and bolted it to the drives side. I made a strap up that fits well out of scrap stock. For tie down bolts I straightened out a set of factory spare tiedown bolts and even used the wingnut for one side.

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We all know that some sort of isolation is needed, and I looked at a few solutions. Most of what I had read stated that all of the cool kids these days are using an Automatic Charging Relay to isolate their batteries. This allows the ECU to still monitor the charge of the batteries and disconnects them when they aren’t charging so you don’t ruin them… at least that the theory. I started reading up on the Blue Sea SI-ACR and figured out that it only did up to 120A alternators (I just installed a 136A), so I was all in for a ML-ACR which will give me lots of room at a rating of 500A. The ML-ACR has a couple neat points, 1) its waterproof, 2) it’s got a manual override, 3) there’s a cool switch that allows you to operate it in the cab, and 4) its big enough that I can “jumpstart” myself if I’m dumb enough to leave my headlights on or something like that.

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First things first I needed to fab up a mounting bracket. I got some sheet metal and ½” angle at the hardware store, along with some machine screws to mount the ACR with. Ignore my crappy cutting, I ran out of cutoff wheels halfway through this.

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I painted the complete bracket in engine ceramic enamel to finish it up. I shifted part of the load (like the sub amp and the radios) to the second battery.

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The switch is neat-o but I do not like the big bright red LEDs that are on when the solenoid is engaged. I’ll probably look for some sort of less-intrusive indicator.

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Its getting a little cramped in the engine bay...

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Everything looks really good. But your shackles are installed backwards. Thats the point of boomerang shackles if they are clearanced for a little extra travel without hitting the back of the box.
 
hey john! what yard do you go to?

Thanks

Jack
 
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