ZMotorSports 2011 JKUR Build Thread

I am new here but thought I would throw up some pictures of my latest Jeep build. It is not real time as I have owned it now for almost two years.

I bought the Jeep with only 3208 miles on the odometer and commenced building my "Dream Jeep". This is my daily driver and weekend wheeler.

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On lift just before sitting it down with the 4" BDS Suspension Lift and 35" KM2 tires/ATX Crawl wheels.
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Backed outside the shop after just barely sitting her on the ground with new lift and tires/wheels.
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More to come as I dig through the pictures. Also pictured here is the Warn Rockcrawler bumper/Powerplant combination that I purchased used just to get me by until I could fabricated my own bumpers.

Mike.
 
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zmotorsports

Hardcore Gearhead
Vendor
Location
West Haven, UT
A few of days ago I got the SRS (Supplemental Restraint System) or airbag light on the dash. It would occasionally go out then come back on as I turned the steering wheel so I knew it was the clock spring in the steering column. I’ve been busy the last couple of evenings and didn’t get any shop time but yesterday on my lunch hour I stopped by my local dealership and picked up a new clock spring.

Upon arriving home last night I disconnected the battery and allowed the system to discharge for about fifteen minutes while I grabbed the mail and changed clothes before heading out into the shop.

I started by removing these two 6mm bolts (10mm head) on either side of the steering wheel which hold the airbag to the steering wheel.
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Gently tip the airbag out of its pocket being careful not to tug on the wires.
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There’s a small hole in this connector for the horn in which to insert a pick and gently separate the connector.
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Next squeeze the tabs together on each of these black and yellow connectors on the back of the airbag and disconnect.
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Remove the airbag/horn assembly.
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Next remove the 10mm (13mm head) bolt holding the steering wheel to the splined shaft and install a two arm puller the apply pressure. You may find it necessary to smack the end of the puller with a hammer to get the splined hub to release from the shaft.
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Steering wheel removed.
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Next remove the column shroud by removing these two T-20 Torx screws.
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You’ll need a long thin bladed T-20 to reach up into these two holes as they are quite deeply recessed.
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And this T-20 under the bottom of the lower shroud.
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Then pop the two shroud halves apart and set aside. The aluminum standoff is for my Aeroforce gauge along with the small black wire seen here just under the gauge cluster.
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Then you’ll need about a 2"-3” T-20 and preferably a flex head ratchet to remove the next two fasteners.
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One here behind the turn signal lever.
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One here behind the wiper switch.
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And the last one here on the front just ahead of the ignition tumbler.
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Lift the assembly off and turn upside down to reveal four connectors that must be disconnected. These are simple squeeze the tab and pull.
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More in next post.
 

zmotorsports

Hardcore Gearhead
Vendor
Location
West Haven, UT
Clock spring replacement continued....


Assembly out and on the bench.
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Next to the turn signal switch there is a Phillips head screw to remove.
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And behind the wiper switch a Phillips head screw to remove.
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Then the turn signal and wiper assemblies slide apart from the clock spring assembly. No need to unplug the connectors merely leave them connected.
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There’s the nugget you’re after, the clock spring assembly.
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New left, old right.
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Chrysler part number of the new clock spring.
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Reassembly is the reverse of disassembly. Clock spring/turn signal/wiper assembly reinstalled. Do not remove this keeper until after the steering wheel is installed as this is what prevents the clockspring from rotating and you can damage the new one before it is completely installed.
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Upper and lower column shrouds installed.
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Steering wheel, airbag and Aeroforce gauge installed. Project complete.
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Thanks for looking.

Mike
 
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zmotorsports

Hardcore Gearhead
Vendor
Location
West Haven, UT
Nice, detailed instructions on the clock spring replacement. Thanks for sharing. Nice summer top upgrade.

Thank you. I think I will like this option better than my old soft top. Not much of a fan of soft tops but do miss the ability to flip the front section back quickly. Now the best of both worlds.

Mike
 

zmotorsports

Hardcore Gearhead
Vendor
Location
West Haven, UT
I fabricated a mount for my new Cobra Model 29 CB last night. There’s not much room in these Jeeps for a full size CB and I have been having issues with my Model 75 lately.

Cardboard template.
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Transferring to steel.
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Cut and bent in the press brake along with marking the mounting holes.
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Mocked up for test fit.
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Plate welded to mount the bracket to.
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Beadblasted and painted.
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Installed, plastic windshield surround reinstalled and mounting bracket secured.
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Mounting complete.
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I actually had a design change right in the middle of building this bracket. My original thoughts were that I would build a mounting bracket for the windshield header as well as one similar at the sound bar over the driver's shoulder and connect the two with a couple of round tubes to kind of match the Vector off-road dash bar and then mount the CB to the tubes. However, once I got the front bracket mocked into position and saw just how rigid this setup was I opted to forego the rear mount and tubing and just use a front mount to keep it as clean and small a package as possible. My wife was worried about the tubing obstructing the view when the top was flipped back so this design works much, much better. With the CB in place all you see is the CB and cannot really see the mounting bracket that is peaking out from behind the windshield trim panel. I like to keep things simple and invisible in plain sight so this will work perfectly.

Next I just have to wire in up and it’s completed and ready for the trail.

Thanks for looking.

Mike
 

zmotorsports

Hardcore Gearhead
Vendor
Location
West Haven, UT
I noticed the other day when I was pressure washing the undercarriage of my Jeep that the lower core support was showing a bit of ugliness.

This was visible through the grille and bugged me.
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After removing the grille I sanded the metal support down and masked the area.
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That looks much better.
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Thanks for looking.

Mike
 

zmotorsports

Hardcore Gearhead
Vendor
Location
West Haven, UT
My son bought his first home as he is preparing to get married and last week we moved his toolbox out and it really opened up my shop.

This is where it has been located for the past two years now, just inside the man door of the shop.
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The top box and a few bottom drawers were loaded into his truck and the bottom box wheeled up onto my utility trailer.
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Off to its new home.
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That really opened up some space in the shop.
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Thanks for looking.

Mike
 

zmotorsports

Hardcore Gearhead
Vendor
Location
West Haven, UT
Since my last Moab trip in April when I wanted to test out the new tires and especially the drivetrain I have been tweaking the suspension just a bit as I had a very slight interference issue in the rear and a more major interference issue in the front.

If you remember from a previous post, the front was contacting the front bumper upon full stuff and turned full lock in either direction. I cut the front bumper a few weeks back to gain some clearance and then played with my bumpstops on the front to get me as much compression as I could without contacting anything. I think I'm there. I ended up trimming the front bumpstops down 1/2" to a total of 3" tall bumpstops in the front after trimming the front bumper as I had plenty of clearance.

In the rear I also had a little more clearance upon full stuff so I opted to remove about 1/2" of bump stop from the rear as well to get those 37's up a little closer to the fender as well as the rear bumper. The areas at the front of the rear wheelwells where I heated and recontoured the inner fender are providing ample clearance now.

From my experience for running dunes/desert or high speeds the 50/50 droop/uptravel ratio is a good target. For trails and rocks I like to shoot for closer to 60/40 droop/uptravel but have a few guys that prefer to be closer to 70/30 droop/uptravel. Although a slightly lower COG seems to be what everyone seeks these day, many times a low COG just isn't practical and still be able to clear obstacles without dragging over them. So unfortunately a low COG does negatively affect breakover angle so it becomes a balancing act of less belly clearance vs. the tippy-ness of more lift, so I try to get around that 60/40 droop/uptravel ratio measured from ride-height and then balance that low COG and lift height. I should also mention that my Jeep is not strictly a rock-crawler but a do-all Jeep so I want it to have great pavement manners from winding two-lane country roads to interstates to mountain passes yet still flex decent and wheel great off-road. Obviously if I were building a more specific car for rock-crawling or high speed desert racing those ratios would be different and I would want a lot more overall travel and possibly even go with coilovers to get that increased travel. Also worth noting that I wanted a "sleeper" if you will, meaning something that when the average person looks at my Jeep they simply say "oh that's like every other 4-door Jeep on 37's", yet to the experienced eye one will spend hours looking at all of the small details and the fact that I didn't sway from the OEM lines.

This is why I have kept the OEM fenders and didn't hack and cut up my body. I'm not a huge fan of flat fenders nor cutting and hacking up the wheelwells for a daily driver as I want this to look just as nice in 10-15 years as it does now. I also didn't want to add wheel adapters and space them out an additional 1.5", but it did cost me a little bit of travel by keeping my wheel backspacing at 4.5". Again, if I were building a more focused or specific car for desert racing or rock crawling I obviously would have done things differently.

I increased my suspension travel slightly from OEM specs of 8 inches of travel. I have slightly longer Fox 2.0 shocks installed but I also went one step further and installed limiting straps several years ago as I don't like the shocks to be either my bump stops OR my limiting straps as that is hard on shocks. I had also ripped off the upper control arm brackets from my rear axle a few years ago due to having so much flex so I opted to install some limiting straps and eliminate some of those stresses at the cost of overall travel.

I currently think I have it dialed in perfectly but won't know for certain until I am able to get it off road next month. In the front I have 10 inches of total travel, 5.75" of droop and 4.25" uptravel which nets me a 58/42 droop/uptravel ratio. I can now turn my front tires to full lock at full stuff and clear my front bumper by about 1/2" at the tightest point. In the rear I have 9" of total travel with 5..5" of droop and 3.5" of uptravel netting me a 61/39 droop/uptravel ratio.

I don't have any pictures of the front end stuffed when I tested it a few weeks ago but here are a few pictures of my rear at droop and full stuff including the tightest point. I took these this morning on the way to work and after I took 1/2" of rear bumpstop out as I had some clearance left. I think this is about perfect where I want to be.

Drooped out nearly to the max. as my limiting strap was not completely stretched yet.
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Full stuff up against the jounce stop. I think a hard stuff could maybe get it another 1/4” but that’s about it and I have clearance for that.
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The tightest point at full stuff and again, I “think” I have built in a little cushion for another 1/4” if needs be such as a hard stuff.
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Mike
 
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Hickey

Burn-barrel enthusiast
Supporting Member
I am also a fan of the stock flares. The only other flares I like are the Poison Spyder narrow tube flares, but the UHP would eat me alive if I ran those. I would like to find a way to strengthen the OEM outer flare so I can remove the inner flare for more clearance.
 

zmotorsports

Hardcore Gearhead
Vendor
Location
West Haven, UT
So yesterday morning on the way to work my Jeep rolled over the 100k mile mark.
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That's 7500 trouble free miles on the GM powertrain as well.

Also, I can't remember if I had mentioned this or not but a couple of months ago I took my Jeep down to the Utah Bureau of Air Quality to have it inspected for emissions. They put it on the rack and checked to make sure I had brought everything from the 2012 GMC Denali over, especially the EVAP system and then plugged into the ECM to check the VCN (Vehicle Calibration Numbers) then ran the readiness monitors to ensure they were all set and no issues with any of them and then lastly to ensure there were no trouble codes.

My Jeep emissions aren't due until November but I couldn't wait and needed to know for myself that everything is USEPA compliant so I took it in early for it's inspection. I also figured if there was something else I needed to do it would give me time vs. if I waited until the last minute. I'm happy to say it got a clean bill of health and the two people doing the inspection were pretty impressed with the engine transplant. They wanted to know what shop performed the work and almost didn't believe me when I told them I did it myself. One guy even said it looks OEM and like it belongs there. I took that as the highest compliment.

Mike
 
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zmotorsports

Hardcore Gearhead
Vendor
Location
West Haven, UT
Thanks. I just wasn't seeing anything commercially available that caught my eye. Most were either too flimsy or too large and obstructive. I was about to build one that went front to rear above the driver/passenger but the wife didn't want the view blocked out of the top when open and so I tried to come up with a nice clean and rigid mount so this is what I came up with.

I appreciate the comments.

Mike
 

zmotorsports

Hardcore Gearhead
Vendor
Location
West Haven, UT
Last night I racked the Jeep to give it a once over and noticed the cheapy exhaust hanger that I used has already started to fail so I decided to build a new mount in which to use an OEM style isolator.

Failing mount removed.
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Components I’m going to use to fabricate a new mount.
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I thought it would have a bit more support welding it to a base prior to welding to crossmember.
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Ready to weld in place.
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After all that I painted the area and installed the new isolator and forgot to get a completed picture but you get the idea. :cool:

Mike
 

zmotorsports

Hardcore Gearhead
Vendor
Location
West Haven, UT
After setting the Jeep back down I went ahead and applied some Aerospace 303 protectant to my fenders. I usually apply this protectant a few times a year and for an 8 year old/100k mile car they still look almost like new.
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Thanks for looking.

Mike
 
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