proracedriver616's "jeeplife" story

[proracedriver616]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

:thumbup:

Wow! That looks great!

Sorry I don't mean to talk your ear off first about the leafs and now the 7100's I just thought I would share my research/experience.

No worries man, I appreciate it! I'm more than willing to listen when someone knows more then than me or has more experience with something.

 

[DutchVDub]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

The 5100's are roughly 18" compressed and 28" extended, not sure on the valving.

 

[proracedriver616]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

The 5100's are roughly 18" compressed and 28" extended, not sure on the valving.

I think ill lose a little too much uptravel with those, id rather drop a little extra money and get the exact length that i need. But i have another problem i need to address now, i need to turn my shackles around so they are facing the correct way and then make some shackle stops or buy anti-inversion shackles.

I was driving over to my friends house to trim the new fenders and re-install the front flares when i ran over a little pile of snow with the right wheels going about 25mph. I was just jackassing around enjoying how soft the rear is now, but as soon as i ran the snow over i knew something was wrong. I pulled over to see what happened and the right shackle went inverted, i had no highlift and my friends house was only a few blocks away so i finished driving over there and we jacked the bed up and the shackle went right back and the leaf spring looked to be undamaged, but heres a pic of when it was inverted

After I fixed the shackle i got the flares back on the front and heres a side pic of the ride height how it sits now

 

[YELLAHEEP]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

Dammit Seth quit posting sexy MJ pics.......... :looney:

Rather than anti-inversion shackles, what about welding a plate across the shackle bracket that "boxes" the front side? Depending on the swing of the shackle, you could then also weld on a triangulated bracket to the plate that boxed the bracket and put a rubber stop pad against that for the shackle to land against.

Does that make sense?

 

[proracedriver616]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

Dammit Seth quit posting sexy MJ pics.......... :looney:

Rather than anti-inversion shackles, what about welding a plate across the shackle bracket that "boxes" the front side? Depending on the swing of the shackle, you could then also weld on a triangulated bracket to the plate that boxed the bracket and put a rubber stop pad against that for the shackle to land against.

Does that make sense?

yeah ive been reading threads on how to stop shackle inversion and it seems like the easiest thing to do is weld a little wedge to either the frame in front of the shackle mount or to the shackle itself with a little pad of uhmv to soften the contact. So when i get time ill flip the shackles around so they are facing the right way and probably weld wedges on the frame rails so i dont have to worry about melting the shackle bushings

 

[DutchVDub]

where have all the good cherokees fs gone

I did that once on the YJ. I think I used Troy's spare as a base for the high lift so it would go up high enough to flip it back around.

 

[proracedriver616]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

I just ordered some shocks from SeriousOffroad...since im still on the fence about keeping the mj i decided to go with 5100s over some of the more expensive shocks. Since theres no weight in the bed of my truck i went with the 170/60 valving, there were only two valving options in the 10" travel 5100s and the other was 255/70 so hopefully they wont be too soft...we will see!

Im gonna bolt my new shocks on, flip my shackles around, and put probably 200-300 lbs of sand bags in the bed to help lower the back end down a little and get my shackles back to a less vertical angle. Hopefully ill also have time to modify my shackles so they cant invert again. Im aiming to get all this done in the next week and a half so i can go down to ram offroad park with some friends of mine that live in the springs and go wheeling the saturday after next.

Im gonna give the truck a few more chances out wheeling to see if i change my mind about liking wheeling an xj > mj. I need to figure out exactly what im doing with my trucks before EJS comes around so i can make my mind up on what ill be driving there!

 

[proracedriver616]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

Frank Z pulls through once again! Serious Offroad had cheaper prices on bilsteins then most of the big vendors, frank called me when there was a little hickup with paypal, and i had my shocks in 3 days! I flipped my shackles around and bolted the shocks on this morning then went to lowes to get some pieces of steel to make shackle stops out of and picked up 200 lbs of sand to throw in the bed to lower the back of the truck a little.

On the way back from lowes i decided to stop behind king soopers and flex out the jeep again now that i have everything sorted out on the truck...heres a couple poser shots with one side of the sway bar disconnected

It took forever fiddling with the sway bar disconnects to unpin and repin them so i ditched the sway bar altogether, traded it to Troy for some goodies. One of which is a gauge cluster with gauges instead of idiot lights...and a tach!! It was plug and play with the exception of the oil pressure and water temp senders, the o'reillys by my house didnt have either so they got them coming and ill put them in tomorrow. The junky stereo didnt always work in the truck either so i put a cheapy dual radio in the truck so i can have tunes all the time

 

[DutchVDub]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

I officially call dibs if you get all stupid and decide to get rid of that thing. There's a 2000 XJ with your name on it and I'll do all the work swapping axles around and what not.

 

[Serious Offroad]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

Glad to help Seth.
Let me know if you need more stuff.

 

[proracedriver616]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

I drove up to my friend aarons shop in breckenridge yesterday to fab up some shackle stops. We started by putting my truck on the lift and raising it until the rear end was at full droop. Next i tack welded plates on the front of my shackle hangers to box them in and built stops onto those...i ground the tack welds off the frame and removed the stops once they were all tacked together so i could fully weld them on the bench then grind them smooth.

Heres one of the wedges welded on the shackle hanger/frame sitting pretty much at ride height

And here is how the shackle sits against the stop at full droop

When i went to turn on my defrosters on the way home the blower motor wouldnt turn on...at some point yesterday either the switch or the motor took a crap. I dont think its the resistor, from what ive read you have high speed on the motor still and i got nothing. Ill have to do some tinkering tonight to see if i can figure out what went bad.

 

[proracedriver616]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

Fixed my defrosters, i knocked the connector off when i slid my radio into the dash! :doh:

On another note, ill be getting the front doors off the white '99 xj that my front end came off of in the next week or two. The only thing is they are power...I thought i had manual regulators and trim panels lined up but that looks like it fell through
so if anybody here has a pair of trim panels for 97+ front doors please let me know. Ill need regulators too, but i can always buy new ones, they arent that expensive, its the trim panels for crank windows that will be a little difficult to find.

 

[proracedriver616]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

First i get my license plate stolen from my xj...so i move it into my parking garage at my apartment. Well i go out yesterday to find that someone stole my front axle now too!

 

[Hypoid]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

BWAHAHAHAHA! They didn't cut the brake lines, or anything else, left the tools and P-Blaster laying around...NOT!

 

[proracedriver616]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

No for reals....then they came back for the comanche axle!!!

 

[YELLAHEEP]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

I ain't buying it. There would have been awhile lot more cussing in the post if this had happened....:laugh:


..... Ok well I guess technically I am "buying" it.....:shhh:

 

[proracedriver616]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

I ain't buying it. There would have been awhile lot more cussing in the post if this had happened....:laugh:

Your right there would have been...i guess i cant fool anybody! But this did happen:

Now theres a full width hp dana 44 with 5.13 gears, 35x12.5 mtrs, and one ton steering bolted under the front of my XJ:exclamati The dana 30 and km2s went under the mj. It was in the low to mid 30s all day saturday and snowed a little in the afternoon, but i worked all day on swapping the two axles in my apartment parking lot with only hand tools and jack stands...BY MYSELF:yelclap:. The only thing i had help with was my girlfriend pressing brake pedals for about 15 minutes to bleed both brake systems. It took me just over 8 hours to get both axles pulled, swapped, half-ass aligned, and both vehicles driveable again.

 

[in4aride]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

So ditching the mj huh?

 

[proracedriver616]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

So ditching the mj huh?

Yeah man, i tried really hard to like it. Being a 2 seater, a 5 speed, and a 113" wheelbase, theres just too much Id have to change to like it. If i still had a shop i would have ditched the bed, shortened the wheelbase in the back by 9-10", and done an aw4 swap.

Its easier only having one vehicle to modify, maintain, emission test, insure, and just keep going in general. And the Cherokee is the one i like almost everything about better, and now that its on its way to having a badass drivetrain im really gonna love it even more!!

 

[in4aride]

Re: where have all the good cherokees fs gone

Why in the world would you wanna shorten it?!
all good tho. at least the xj is getting nice parts.