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Gonzo the XJ Wagoneer build thread

jabbathewhats

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Sacramento, CA
Meet Gonzo, the 1988 Cherokee Wagoneer. Gonzo started his transformation about 10 years ago with my buddy. I picked up Gonzo in February. My buddy built him over the years but eventually lost interest and passed him along to me. Before I got him he already had quite a bit of work done:
Rubicon Express 6.5 Long arm kit and added puck spacers. 4.88 gears, 33" BFG MT, slip yoke eliminator, drive shafts, Trac lok rear, lock rite front, etc.
After going on the Rubicon and seeing how it did, I stayed making my own mods.
First thing was a HD rustys tie rod to replace the bent stock one.
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New seats were put in to replace the badly ripped originals. I hated not having any cup holders so I put in a center console from a newer XJ.
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Next was to get rid of the slop in the steering wheel. Adjusting the gear box, installing a new HD spacer, and gear box brace, and torquing the bolts helped greatly. Almost no slop and it feels much safer. At one point I had my gear box shear it's bolts and leave me with no steering. This happened 2 days after a Rubicon run in a parkingood lot. Thank god it didn't happen on Ice House Rd. I found later that the tire rod was hitting my sway bar mounts and creating a ton of force on the box when I was cranking the wheel to one side. 1/4" of metal removal on the mount solved that problem.


After a long camping trip, I decided to put in my own onboard hot water shower. Sourcing a heat exchanger and an RV water pump from eBay, I had that in in no time. I've yet to use it, but next camping trip will be nice.

Next came my craigslist find: à dana 44 from an XJ. I picked it up for free but it needed a rebuild and had no brakes. I had West Coast Dif put new 4.88 gears, replace the seals and bearings, and rebuild the Trac lok. A locker wasn't in my budget unfortunately, but the old Trac lok in the D35 did fine on the Rubicon for me.
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Out with the old, in with the new. The D35 was a non c-clip version, and surprisingly had never broken anything. I guess I'm pretty easy on it. The old able came out very quick, the longest part was getting the brakes from the D35 onto the D44. All that was required was to open up the center hole of the backing plate to allow the axle bearings to slide through. Everything else was cake.

Although not my only vehicle, I use Gonzo as a daily driver. It runs great, and drives nice.

I just ordered some steel rear corner guards from DBmetalworx and should have those on this weekend

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Looking good joe!
Pics of that shower? I am super jealous man. I still want to build one into both of my rigs.
 
Here are a few pics of the shower. I took my heater hose and basically took one line and put the heat exchanger in line. I still need to build a mounting bracket to hold it. It's held on by some zip ties right now until I get time. The pump has a garden hose quick connect fitting on it for the inlet. The outlet of pump has a brass 1/4" air quick connect. I'm using an RV shower head with an 8ft hose to plug into that. I have an adjustable thermostatic diverter valve I'm going to plumb into the system too so I have water that won't scald me and should keep at a pretty constant temp. The flow is pretty good at around 1gal/min. One problem with the small pump I bought is that the water source can only be a few feet lower than the hood, or it won't have enough pressure to sick it up. It works fine for a jerry can or bucket, but if I want to pull from longer distances, I need a stronger pump. Overall a pretty cheap mod:
$35 Heat exchamger
$20 pump
$15 shower head and hose
$20 quick connect fittings
$25 heater hose and four 1/2'npt barb
I plan on building a little access panel to have the quick connects in one spot without opening the hood. I'm also going to attach a RV shower head holder to the roof rack so I can clip it on there while showering.

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very cool !
 
Did you get a high pressure diaphragm pump from ebay?

The one I was looking at was 16$ and capable of producing 150psi, forgot the gpm flow though. Also high pressure shower head would help
 
The water pump I bought is a 4.3l/min, rated at 35psi or ao. I opted for low pressure simply for the fact I wasn't sure how well the shower hose would hold 90psig+. At the time of design I wasn't sure what kind of outlet hose coming from heat exchanger to shower head disconnect I'd use either. I read a couple threads about nylon reinforced PET cracking and bursting after the engine bay heat had degraded it. I ended up just using heater hose, since this isn't drinking water or anything, so it didn't matter. When I buy my next pump, it'll be higher pressure (60+)psig, but this one works ok. I think you're on the right track with the high pressure (but low flow) shower head. I'll have to see what kind of pump is in my motorhome, I wouldn't think it has much more than 50psi, but who knows. I'll get some more pics in the light.
 
Lol. They were on sale at DBmetalworx for labor day.
Got them primed and sanded:
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Then started painting. It had been sprinkling on/off so I had to keep dragging it back in the garage. Need to sand the paint again and do a couple more coats tomorrow. Should I Rhino Line it, or leave it black, or plastidip it brown to match the jeep? I'm thinking plastidip the same color as jeep. Too bad I've got to cover up the faux wood paneling.

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Corner guards are on. Cut the fenders a little. I liked the look of the stock flares, but my tire would get stuffed into that flare a lot when wheeling.
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Also painted my dif cover and made a work light out of an LED floodlight. I just put an sae plug on the end with a long flexible cord. I can plug the sae plug in to the other one on my battery. I've got a magnetic base for it that I'm going to try.
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Love the build so far. I've been wanting to swap center consoles as well.. Did you reuse your stock hand brake or did you swap to the newer style?
 
Thanks! Center console made the jeep much more convenient for me. I used the stock handle and just kinda tweaked it to the left a little. It still works perfectly and didn't need much of a bend to go in.
 
Tore the Transfer case apart this weekend and replaced the chain. Was making a crazy popping sound that I thought was everything else until I finally narrowed it down. The chain was stretched badly. The bad... I put the shift fork in the wrong position when I reassembled it. It pretends to be in 4wd, but only the rear are spinning. 4lo is really 2lo. Also found my rear brakes aren't engaging. Front wheels were locked up while the rear was pushing me all over the place when in 4lo(2lo).
Good thing I can tear it down in 45 minutes now withat my latest purchase. After a solid 17 years wrenching I finally bought an air ratchet. I don't know how I did without one for this long. I've got every other air tool, but never an air ratchet. The hours I've wasted...
Took Gonzo out to our not so secret spot and saw the blood moon eclipse yesterday.
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damn good looking jeep.
 
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