Justin's TJ

Tuff Jeeper said:

Thanks! I'm happy with it. What rig do you wheel?

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I was in the yellow scrambler on the other side of the freak show in the crawl off. 😉

Jinx said:

I was in the yellow scrambler on the other side of the freak show in the crawl off. 😉

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I thought I may had a chance at the race with my small tires and 4.3 t-case gearing, until you showed up with your 4 speed, then the 'Yota's with 25" tires. At that point it was too late to turn back. But hey, I didn't come in last (first) at least.

such a clean jeep. love it.

Tuff Jeeper said:

I thought I may had a chance at the race with my small tires and 4.3 t-case gearing, until you showed up with your 4 speed, then the 'Yota's with 25" tires. At that point it was too late to turn back. But hey, I didn't come in last (first) at least.

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That Yota was pretty funny.

If we could have drug our brakes we would have done better, I am pretty sure our jeeps could lug down a lot better than those little 4 bangers...

KSL has been a good friend lately, getting me some good deals on new tires/wheels and corner armor.

I had always been a fan of Walker Evans Beadlocks and a month or two ago a set came up on some Cooper STT Pro's. I ended up purchasing those, and selling my old 35's to my brother who bought back the actual Mazda B4000 he drove in high school and is now building it for crawling. Love the looks now.

Before:


After:


For the armor, I came across a pair of Genright aluminum corners on KSL. The orginal owner had them painted black but I like the raw look so I sanded them down to get them back to raw aluminum color and used some scotch brite pads to give the corners a brushed look. On top of that, with my 37's, I needed to cut larger holes for the tires. The process of cutting took the majority of the time it took for install. I think overall it turned out good especially considering i used a 4.5" angle grinder to cut the wheel well holes.





Now that I have corners, the Teraflex Aluminum sliders did not match where the corners stopped, I sold the Teraflex sliders and purchased Barnes 4wd sliders to go in their place. To finish it off, I bought Savvy Offroad low profile tail lights. I'll be installing the sliders and tail lights this week.

Looks GREAT!

Those wheels 😎

Just the wheel change instantly made your Jeep look 10 years newer...

The tail lights arrived, although 2 days late. FedEx dropped the ball twice in back-to-back days in delivering them. I contacted the sales rep I used to work with when I was shipping manager, and he helped get things straightened out. At any rate, these things are a work of art, attention to detail is top-notch. I debated between the black anodized and the raw aluminum housings. Savvy claims that the "Mil-Spec" anodizing doesn't fade. While that was a concern, it came down to availability. The black housings were on backorder, so raw it was. I actually like the look with the aluminum corners. I feel that they compliment each other well.



The sliders came in right on time last Monday. That evening I test fit them and marked where the holes would need to be drilled in the body and then took them to be sandblasted at IPA sand blasting in Provo. He is quick and does the blasting for a decent price. I've had him do axle housings, control arms, bumpers, etc. He is usually same day if you can get it to him early enough in the morning. While there when he was doing my axles, he explained that the guys from Bitchin' Rides have brought stuff to him to be blasted. Kinda cool.

After I got them home I hung them in my paint area for 4ish coats of Steel-It.



Installing the lights went straightforward. I wired them while watching Dennis @ Teraflex flop Slimer on Hanging Tree one night after work. When it came time for install, it was just a matter of plugging them in and checking that they were working properly. I did have to get an LED compatible flasher relay. Superbright LED's said that the 01-06 TJ flasher would work with a 2000 TJ, THEY WERE WRONG. The 01+ flasher is a 5 pin unit, and the older TJ's are 4. I did some research online and found the correct one needed. Fortunately O'Reilly's had one in stock so I grabbed it and installed it.

The sliders initially installed easily. Barnes 4wd explained that there was no modification to body mounts for the sliders to be installed, but when I went to install the 4 rearward body mounts the gaps were so large that I couldn't even start the bolts. I ended up cutting my body mount spacers where the sliders installed .5" shorter to account for the additional height provided by the sliders. Ideally I would have used a band saw, but all I had immediately available was a c-clamp to hold the puck and a 4.5" angle grinder with a cutoff wheel. Not ideal, but I made it work. Once the body mounts were cut, and cleaned up with a flap disc, install went quickly.



Saturday I made it down to Price to run Pinnacle 1. I already made good use of the new sliders. Everything seems to be working well. Photo cred @LJTim



FWIW-Brian Allred has a crazy outfit. It was entertaining to watch him attempt and just about succeed climbing over this boulder in the middle of the wash on Pinnacle 1.

Well, it bugged me that I had rear aluminum corners and stock front fenders, so I talked my wife into letting me get front tube fenders. Wanting to stay consistent with the aluminum theme, it narrowed my options quite a bit. Just a few years ago, several companies were in the market of TJ aluminum armor. Some included JCR, Metalcloak, GenRight, Poison Spyder, and Artec. Fast forward to today, I was only able to find 4 that still make aluminum armor. I settled on GenRight aluminum fenders.

I initially was drawn toward the zero flare fenders, until I came across the Boulder Fenders. I immediately loved the look of them. Ultimately I went with the standard height due to the complexity and additional cost of getting all the underhood goodies to be relocated, and working properly.





Even with maintaining the standard height flare I anticipate to still get an additional 2-3" of uptravel because of how low the stock fender flares hung, and the fact that these fenders are significantly narrower than stock.

Looks nice! Are you holding on to your stock fender flares? I’m looking for a set.

UNSTUCK said:

Looks nice! Are you holding on to your stock fender flares? I’m looking for a set.

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Nope. I have them pulled off just haven't made time to list the parts on KSL. I have a full set that are in excellent condition. No chalking. (I don't have the small extensions that bolt to the body behind the front fender flares though)

If they are the wider 4”ish wide ones I’d be very interested. Typically found on rubicons and sierras. The more normal ones were like 3” wide.

UNSTUCK said:

If they are the wider 4”ish wide ones I’d be very interested. Typically found on rubicons and sierras. The more normal ones were like 3” wide.

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Mine are the non-Rubicon/Sahara variant.

Last Friday I did not have to go into work, so plans were to spend a good chunk of the day prepping the Jeep for Trail Hero in Sand Hollow, UT. Just before going, my boy asked me if I would take him to school in the Jeep. It took some arm twisting but agreed.

On the return trip, I turned the corner return home, and the front end jerked, and made a loud bang. With it having a Detroit in the front, it isn't uncommon to have situations where the locker does make a little bit of noise, but nothing of this level and something that would actually shake the steering wheel. Figuring I would check before heading out on our trip this week, I pulled the diff cover off just to be sure all was well.... which it wasn't. I opened the front diff cover and immediately saw a cracked ring gear tooth.

Not anticipating any further damage, I ran in the house and threw together a Hail Mary, ordering parts and working with friends who have installed R&P in the past, and a bunch of people including @mbryson offering to help me get the Jeep on the road. After getting it all ordered, I began to further tear down the differential to find out that one of the bolts that holds the Detroit Locker together had snapped, and is what ultimately led to the failure. I found the head of the bolt sheared in half in the bottom of the differential housing. At that point I accepted defeat, knowing that it would be more money that it was worth to rebuild it, anticipating down the road it likely would grenade itself again with me recently

After having a discussion with my wife on the issue, I placed an order for a G2 Core 44 axle with 4.88's and a Detroit. I will pull the HP30 out and sell it for whatever the housing and shafts might be worth in the next few months when I swap the new axle in. Hopefully there is a little value in the trussed axle for someone wanting to stay 35's and or smaller.

Finally an update. Got confirmation from 4WP that the new crate axle shipped on Tuesday. G2 had multiple delays, initially being out of stock of axle shafts, then bearings, then it was blamed on COVID restrictions in CA. Bottom line, the axle shipped. I should see it next week, albeit a month late. I had hoped that I would be able to attend the Winter 4x4 Jamboree. The original ETA would have given me ~6 weeks to modify the new axle for my front 3 link, but now getting it at best 2 weeks before the event, I am waving the white flag. Sure I could probably rush and get it done, but don't want to cut corners just to get it drivable. In the middle of waiting for the new axle to come, I took advantage of the disassembled dana 30 to help me mock up my WJ knuckle/caliper swap. I'm ultra excited for the new steering. Everything looks great. For anyone wanting to know, I am using the Barnes 4wd 1-ton kit with offset TRE's. I ended up buying a pre-tapered 1-ton StinkyFab pitman arm for the steering box side.





Current plan is to have it moving again by mid February so I can go to Sand Hollow with my brother who should have his build completed by then. His story is pretty cool. While looking on the local classifieds he found the exact Mazda B4000 he drove in high school. Back in the day he had it lifted a number of inches and on 33's with White Steelies. He bought it back with it majorly unchanged except for the tires/wheels and someone had removed his Flowmaster 40 series muffler. At any rate, he is wrapping up a 9" / HP44 swap.

EJS 2005.... maybe? (Brother is in Red hat, me light blue t-shirt) FWIW I do NOT have that much hair anymore.





While waiting for the axle to come, I began looking at hydro assist kits. Bad idea. Initially I looked at RNR, then home-brew kits using PSC rams, then ended up at the PSC kits. I was surprised to see a kit they offer that is in IMO identical to the RNR kit, but ~$100 cheaper. It arrived a couple weeks ago and will be setting that up at the same time as the axle swap.

Here's a link to the kit I purchased:

PSC Steering Kit (97-02 TJ's)

That's a cool Mazda build.

The Covid delays from California facilities are legit. The state has a ton of crazy rules for all of our operations down there. Most of them are operating at about 60% capacity because they have so many people out on quarantine. They aren't in quarantine because they actually have the virus, but because they came within 8' of any person who had it in the last 10 days, even briefly.

Hickey said:

That's a cool Mazda build.

The Covid delays from California facilities are legit. The state has a ton of crazy rules for all of our operations down there. Most of them are operating at about 60% capacity because they have so many people out on quarantine. They aren't in quarantine because they actually have the virus, but because they came within 8' of any person who had it in the last 10 days, even briefly.

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No doubt. What operations do you run in CA?

TJustin said:

No doubt. What operations do you run in CA?

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Walmart. They have thousands of operations buildings in that state, not including the stores.

My son works maintenance at a Walmart distribution center in Corona. As long as he isn't on quarantine, he can basically get all the hours he cares to work.