Project Florida Crawler 2

[N20Jeep]

There is no other air shock out there that works the way ORIs do.

They have an upper and lower chamber you charge to tune the characteristics. You can tear them apart if you really wanted to mess with valving. But most people fine tune them enough with oil level adjustments and nitrogen pressures.

Cost varies on where you get them from , but somewhere around. 6-750 a shock

 

[Boss Cherokee]

Thanks for the replies! So did you order yours set up or did you set them up yourself? If you did yourself I take it you have the gauges ect... to do so!

 

[N20Jeep]

They ship with oil, but no nitrogen. Yea i have a nitrogen tank and gauges

 

[Boss Cherokee]

Lastly how do you know how much nitrogen to put in? Do they give you a ball park and you go up or down with pressure?

 

[N20Jeep]

Lastly how do you know how much nitrogen to put in? Do they give you a ball park and you go up or down with pressure?

theres a lot of info out there for initial charges, but its really a charge to your application kind of thing. so its good to have your own tank, or constant access to one to tune it to what you need.

 

[Boss Cherokee]

Thanks again for all the info. I have a clean tank (spare) I can use for the gas so I will be considering the ORI's seriously! Again Thanks!

 

[N20Jeep]

finished up my cage on the jeep.


also, parked next to a stock XJ to get an idea of size

 

[N20Jeep]

Things still to do:
-lots and lots of welding left. I've been welding the stiffeners and sliders off and on, so still need to finish it all along with the the slider supports
-build a mount of the dana 300
-hopefully a skid plate.
-build a rear cargo rack for the back hatch area to gain a little more storage.
-I ordered some 35spline yukon hubs and 4340 stubs that i need to swap in
-MAYBE a rear pinion guard
-set final ride height and fine tune alignment
-probably more also.

 

[N20Jeep]

so I've been driving this thing around a lot and put about 5 hours of driving on it last weekend along with a bunch of driving this weekend.

but last weekend i took it to a show n shine



also took it over a car crush while i was there, driving over the cars was easy except for the part of my fuel pump sending unit separating after i hopped the back end up.

i picked up the fuel cell and pump assembly already assembled and apparently it fell about 1" short of sitting on the bottom of the cell. so it popped out of the retaining tabs on the unit. we took a part of a wiper blade and rigged the unit together so it wouldn't separate again. worked great and i fixed it permanently earlier this week.

 

[N20Jeep]

got the jeep pretty much done. installed the 35spline stubs and yukon hubs, built a d300 mount, and finished up some other misc work.

well, went wheeling last week in TN. was just shy of a 1200 mile round trip with a week of wheeling in between.

we went to the cove in TN. and i have to say that place is amazing. pretty much endless rock crawling with all the bolder and rock filled creek beds and all the trails just littered with all sorts of stuff to wheel on. its not a hardcore place by any means but there are definetly things there to push almost any rig. the family was with me the entire ride and seemed reasonably comfortable the whole time.

Overall the jeep performed well. ended up averaging about 13.0-13.5 miles per gallon, even driving through the mountain. suspension is still a little bouncy due to me running pretty high pressures in the shocks. but now they feel broken in so i can start fine tuning them. only damage i had was a bent tie rod and crushed in my driverside fender and hood a little.


warning....pic heavy

 

[N20Jeep]

 

[N20Jeep]

 

[N20Jeep]

 

[N20Jeep]

 

[N20Jeep]

Starting to plan out the next stage of the build. Id like to move up to 40s at some point. Not only for the advantages off-road, but for the drop in rpms at highway speed.

But i would like to address a few things.

First, the mounts. I want to run the browndog brackets and mounts. Along wuth changing the rubber trans and tcase mounts into a single poly mount built off of the adapter plate.

Upgrade tge outputs on the d300, and upgrade the driveshafts to full 1350 shafts

14 bolt pinion skid

Beadlocks

Build new rear uppers from all solid joints. Even with the poly at only one end i can feel a shudder under load.

Find more power, undecided on how at the moment.

Also, i weighed the jeep. 5120# with me and 1/4 tank of fuel. So i want to make my doors removable to drop some weight on the less hardcore wheeling trips.

Build boots for the shocks and shifters to permanently seal off the interior.

Make an exterior filler tube for the fuel cell. High on the priority list.
,
Fine tune these shocks

 

[N20Jeep]

went wheeling this past weekend in a localish spot. was good to get it out on some familiar trails to kind of compare to the last XJ. still getting used to it. but being closer to home i was more willing to lay into the throttle, which was fun.

overall still pretty happy with everything, but I'm increasing the want for bigger tires. while not a huge deal, i find myself dragging the axles over everything.

 

[N20Jeep]

 

[831_xj]

This rig is fuggin nuts.. super rad build.
I'll be moving to Jacksonville for about 7-8months soon. But I won't have the xj.. I thought there was only mud out there haha

 

[N20Jeep]

Our rocks are mostly old giant quarrys. Nothing like a mountain range. But gives us plenty of rocky terrain to wheel on

 

[N20Jeep]

so the opportunity came up and i sold my 37's to a buddy.





and picked up a set of the tires I've been wanting for this build the whole time.

i tossed it up no the ramp to see how bad the rubbing would be since it is a pretty large 40. just need to trim a couple small parts and i should be good to flex it completely out. but in the pictures i had to stop since i didn't want to tear off a lug with sheetmetal.

the tires definitely fill the wheel well better and should help out with getting the boat anchor over the rocks easier. an added bonus is ill lower the highway speed RPMs a little which will help.