The day I never thought would be here has come. We sold Shirley. We bought another 1997 TJ for the next chapter in our wheeling lives. As silly as it sounds, this decision was not as easy as it seems. It ended up being a somewhat emotional which made the decision much harder than it should have been. “It’s a Jeep thing, you wouldn’t understand” comes to mind. Financially it made sense for the next step in our off road experience.
We bought a very well built TJ from an MJR original who maintained his vehicle well. It has seen Johnson Valley, Rubicon, and much, much more already in it’s life and will share a lot of trail time for us as well.
We will be going from a Fire Red 97 TJ with 108,000 miles that has a full replacement cage, some armor (oil pan, gas tank, rocker guards, steering skid), OBA, and a lift, but stock is most other ways to a Black 97 TJ which has much, much more. Most notably air conditioning, an AtlasII 5:1 transfer case, custom axles with ARB lockers, ready for coil-overs front and rear, rear outboard shock mounts, viair OBA, and a bunch of little things. A few of the small perks we get is wiring for the hard top wiper, a sound bar, tilt steering, 19 gallon tank, intermittent wipers.
Thank you Shirley for the great times on the trail!
Posted on April 23rd, 2009
I’ve been working on a ton of things with the Jeep during my jeeping season.
First was getting the OBA working again. I purchased a new York 210R and replaced the old one. I am working on a way to determine the oil fill level with a fill plug on the side so I don’t run this one dry. I will post pictures of the dead York as well as the final work of the fill plug.
Then I ordered some new steerig after bending my tie rod AGAIN. I couldn’t trust the stock noodle anymore. I picked up the currie steering and love it. It is much stronger than stock, but still bends. I have already smacked it and will try to straighten it soon. I am not too worried though because the bend is very slight.
Next, I gave up on my trade request for the tummy tuck transmission mount. Some time last year I bought a used Nth Degree tummy tuck from somebody with an automatic transmission. I have a manual and need a different mount. I could probably have something fabbed up, but I was hoping somebody had the opposite of what I had and would trade mount for mount. I had posts on a couple forums for about a year with no success. I decided to give All J a call in Big Bear because I know they do a lot of Nth stuff. They were able to order the mount separately since I can’t find it alone in the Nth website. I now have all the pieces I should need, I just need to check that I don’t need exhaust modifications and do the work!
Finally, I was given an opportunity to puck up a geared, locked front axle so I jumped on it. It is a low pinion (unfortunately) Dana 30 with 4.56 gears and an ARB locker. I need to scrap together some more money to fix up my Dana 44 housing in my garage so I can swap axles and not worry so much about breaking an axle onthe trail anymore, not to mention being locked!
Posted on March 5th, 2009
I knew my York would one day sieze. I was just hoping I could find another one from a junkyard for a good price before this day came. Needless to say, I’m spending even more jeep money. Steering, now the York. Looks like I need to wait on getting some street tires. Let’s hope this spending stops soon!
Posted on April 9th, 2008
I’ve finally finished the write-up on my GenRight Cage install into my TJ. I didn’t realize how much work it would be! I’ll probably only do this much work on an install again if I get the parts for free (hint, hint to all the Jeep aftermarket part fabricators/manufacturer out there!).
Here’s a couple pics:
Posted on February 27th, 2008
A while back I re-named some of my posts without adding any redirections or anything (I know… bad webmaster). I am posting to say I’m aware of all the 404s with links around the site. One of these days when my “todo list” gets short enough, I may fix them!
UPDATE: I have gone through and cleaned up all of my 404s and bad images. Everything should be working correctly now. If you spot anything fishy, please use the contact page to let me know! Thanks!