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Meet the new mall crawler!

Georgia Mike

NAXJA Forum User
Bought this '99 from a friend of mine at work. He'd had it almost 4 years and had driven it less than 6,000 miles in that time. It's pretty clean and had some good stuff on it already so I snatched it up when he started talking about selling it last winter. Had to make him (what I considered) a strong offer on it, but I feel like it's worth it.

Add-ons are:
Rough Country winch bumper
Rugged Ridge 8,500 lb winch
Rough Country control arm drop brackets
Small mutt of a lift kit
Aussie Locker in the 8.25" rear axle
V8 ZJ tie rod
JCR Offroad CB antenna mount
Rusty's sway bar disconnects
Rusty's tranny x-member, t-case & gas tank skids
Off brand mud tires (which I'll be glad when they're worn out and are replaced with some A/T's!)

Not the most high quality components list, but for my intended use, they'll be fine.

But there are always issues, so I've taken care of a few already....

The day I drove it home


I'd given him a set of wheels a long time ago but he never put them on, so I made him throw them in with the deal and I had them put on immediately to get rid of the nasty stock steel wheels.


The suspension, while tolerable at first.....well it had to go. Just too firm for my old bones, so I scavenged the nice coils and shocks from my trail beater and a friend gave me a brand new pair of Rough Country adjustable lower control arms. I put those in last weekend and the ride quality is like night and day.

Out with the old


In with the new (and used lol)


At the Crawl last year I won a set of HD Offroad Engineering's bolt on shackle relocation brackets so I installed those to bring the rear up level with the newly higher front end. These parts are really nice quality and went in super easily.


Now I'm dealing with worse driveshaft vibes than I had before, and since I saved all the money from using parts I already had on hand instead of buying everything new, I went ahead and ordered a new SYE kit w/new driveshaft. But with a little more lift it's riding much better than before.
 
Nice!

I love the '98-99's the best.

We just saw a gorgeous 98 chili pepper 4x4 bone stock
 
looks good!

what do you have planned next, after the SYE and shaft?

He's going to crawl curbs at the mall.... He needs to get the white one some attention so we can wheel together again....:looser:
 
He's going to crawl curbs at the mall.... He needs to get the white one some attention so we can wheel together again....:looser:

You hush your mouth. Some of those curbs are hardcore, buddyrow. :dunce:

Yes I'm sure I'll be kicked into high gear with wanting to rebuild old whitey after the Crawl. But with so many other obstacles in the way at the moment it's just not gonna happen before then.

As for this blue one, I'm sure I'll do little things here and there but for the most part it's my DD so not much more needs to be done for me to be happy with it.
 
Mr FedEx man dropped off my goodies today!

New driveshaft compared to a stock XJ front shaft. Picture doesn't show it very well, but the new one is quite a bit beefier


And the Teraflex SYE kit turned out to be the HD 32 spline kit. I must have overlooked that in the eBay ad, but that was a pleasant surprise. Way overkill for this XJ, but I'm not complaining. The price was great too; $429 shipped for both the SYE kit & driveshaft :thumbup:
 
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