My Novice Build.

Ok guys, I didn't really do this with my chopper, so I figured I wuld go ahead and document my Rock N Roll (my two daughters named it) Charokee, AKA the "Camping Truck".

A little background:

My Wife, three Daughters, and I have been stationed in Germany for the last three years, and recently made it to Clarksville, TN where I will be stationed for the next couple of years. You can ship only one family car there and back, otherwise you pay on your dime for anything else. Good thing motorcycles re counted as part of my household goods!!

Anyway, the girls are getting to the age where they can appreciate the value of spending time in the outdoors, so I started looking for a vehicle as I got closer to returning to the US. I wanted something to fit us all, and the dog for a weekend camping trip, plus have the ability to take me and some buddies into the farther reaches of America.

It needed to be relatively good on fuel too. The wife's car is a 2004 Jeep Liberty (2WD Renegade- go figure), but with a larger family now, we are looking at a Commander.

As luck would have it, I found a 1995 Country with the High Output I6 for the asking price of $2500. The truck was about 15 miles from my Father-In-Law, who is about 3 hours away from me in Clarksville. He went to check it out, said everything looked ok and ran great, so I bought it for $2400.

Here is how she looked when I bought her:





Where she is now:







As soon as I got it, I wanted to do some stuff to it. The first thing I did was spend the day peeling and degunking all the nasty tint the PO had on it. I left the strip over the top of the windshield there for the sun,and left the tint on the cargo area side windows as well. Not hard to take the tint down, the PITA was the residue left over.....

I drove it 163 miles up to Clarksville without a problem, and we have been staying i a motel until we close on our house. Since I didn't have any tools yet, and no place to really work on it, and it needed to be good to go NOW (it has been the "family car" for the last 2-3 weeks), I took it to Firestone for the following:

-Inspection
-Rear Diff drain/refill
-T-case drain/refill
-Brake System Flush
-Front brake pads and rotors
-Clean and adjust rear drums
-Oil Change
-Radiator flush
-New AC compressor (even though I know it was only the clutch)
-New Serp belt

I have since bought a few necessary tools and have done a few things to it myself:

-Removed OEM Roof Rack (I used clea RTV and the OEM mounting bolts to seal the holes in the roof)
-Removed Bumper Caps
-Removed OEM "Air Dam"
-Velcroed a Walkie Talkie next to the shift lever (cheapo CB for me and the wife on the drive up here!)
-"Installed" two cupholders from Wal-Mart

Here's a couple of pics of the inside:

Driver's cupholder from a bike water bottle holder (got the idea from a member!) Also the Walkie Velcroed down. This can be used for other things as well, like iPod or what not.



Passenger cupholder.......lol



Ok, so now here are the current issues I am working out and prepping for:

-Power Locks, Radio, and dome lights stopped working. Relays are good, so gonna hunt this down later. It doesn't keep me from driving it, so not a priority ATM.
-Drain and fill Front diff (didn't need to put in 4wd with the fam yet, so I wasn't gonna let Firestone charge me for it.)
-Tranny needs to be flushed BAD. Gonna do a Poor Man's Flush. Here's my tranny fluid as of right now:



Also, here is a pic of my Trany Return line- Is this connection the "factory quick disco", which requires the spcial tool?



Or can I just undo the fitting and be ok??

And here is what I pan for the near future (money dependant!):

-Fender Trim- LOTS!
-OEM Bumpers trimmed and shaped (until I can afford a full winch bumper)
-Front recovery points
-Rear Sway bar removed
-Homemade front SB disco's (upgraded later)
-3 to 4.5 inches of lift.
-Steelies and Tires
-Roof Rack (all the fam's camping gear will go on top, dog in cargo area)
-Sliders and skids
-Winch Bumper
-Winch
-Rear Bumper w/ spare carrier, and fuel can carrier (may have to buy in stages)
-I also have an XJ D44 I bought from a member here on that I want to build up pretty stout.

There are a lot of other mods I have found here to play with, so I will post as I go. One thing I thought about was hood vents, but since winter is coming, it may wait a while for other stuff.

If anyone has any suggestions as I go, please feel free to chime in! Sounds like the South East Chapter is full of a bunch of good folks, and I have some members close by here in Clarksville to help out as well. Looking forward to getting together and riding some of the beautiful country around here!!

vry nice!!! it all looks pretty good too me! the only other thing that i would consider is if you go to 4.5 inches you should really be getting some control arm drop brackets. If you dont the ride will be terrible unless you go with a longarm kit. also you may want to consider the RE track bar/brace combo! very nice though

Yeah those issues are definitely gonna get worked out if I go that high. I may go with 3 inches and 31 inch tires,but I have a feeling that all the armor and such might way me down, which might be the deciing factor to go to 4.5 inches.

Go ahead and do 6 inches of lift. You'll regret not going that high at first.

Yeah i dont regret going 4.5 inches initially, but it sucks needing to spend ton of money on getting all of the other stuff that isn't included in the kits.LoL Right now i need to get longer steel braided brake lines, RC control arm drop brackets, H.D shackle relocating brackets, adjustable track bar and brace from Rubi Express.LoL it will prolly end up costing more than my entire kit, i also need bigger tires.

We'll see how it pans out- the wife maybe setting asie about $1000 this month for me, so I may blow it all on lift and tires if I can pull it off right.

6 Inches might be a little much for me. My idea is to keep it as low as possible, while using trimming, backspacing, and some bumpstop magic to stuff some decent sized ties under it. But then again, smaller tires mean more flex, right??

Depends on the lift. if you have a longarm lift you might have so much flex that you need limiting straps. with a shortarm lift though you may want to run a smaller tire for superior on/off road performance. a 3 inch lift with proper trimming and you should be able to run some 32s, i wouldnt go any bigger though without gears. 33's on 3:55's= shitty.

Looks good. Hope your house comes through before winter! lol Military moving is hard on the family, especially the 'Army Brats' lol. Good on you for your service and as a neighbour to the North thanks to all who serve, be it state side, overseas, Afghanistan, Iraq etc.

As a first 'mod' get yourself a Factory Service Manual, it'll run you about a hundred or less.
Second the steering box needs addressing. C-Rok and some others make some plates that'll remedy this problem. Wait till you see the aluminum spacer behind the box, what a joke.
Tranny cooler with gauge is nice to have, let's you know when to give her a rest.
Just a thought on your excursions; When you go camping with the family, are you tenting or yanking a camper? If it's tenting you may want to pick up an off-road trailer with a pintle connection. You'll wanna keep as much 'heavy' gear off the roof, since you're taking the 'crew'. Plus you can still get way deep into the boonies.
Of course t-case skid or belly pan and the usual armour.
Have fun! -B :cheers:

Yeah XJ=Fun, I'm leaning more along those lines, but who knows I could go higher at some point later down the road. I know it's not the most cost effective way to go, but I'll have to just see how it goes........

That may be a good route to go with that trailer, Boom. Thanks for the input.

Drain+fill the trans a few times and it'll flush out a large majority of the fluid. Plus, it's simple and cheap to do.

Trans cooler is a good idea, esp. if you plan on towing or have a lot of weight inside the Jeep.

Flushing the fluid from the diffs is easy peasy, too. I got Lube Locker gaskets for mine. No RTV.

I went with the Rubicon Express 4.5" Super-flex with 33" BFGs (still trying to decide what to trim). It's been a few weeks since the install (continuing my work on the drivetrain) but it has been great so far.

Alright it's been a while since I've been able top get on here, but I did a little bit.......

Thursday night I reomved the fender flares:





Looks little tougher since the wheels actually seem to "fill out" the wheel wells.

Then Saturday I took a trip to Wal-Mart for some small tools and parts, then I went to TRACTOR SUPPLY....... That place is great. Picked up a receiver shackle, and one tow hook (that was all they had) for the front.

I also borrowed a buddy's angle grinder and trimmed the front quzrters and bumper:

Front quarter masked with painter's tape and marked:



Front bumper as well:



I pivoted my horns in-board so they wouldn't hang out after trimming.

Here is the stock location:




And where they sit after:




I also rotated them so they face outboard now- may be in issue if they get waterlogged, but I honestly cannot remember the last time I actually honked at anyone.

First cut:



Then I removed the inboard mounting hardware for the fender brace (sorry forgot to take pic), and then took out this torx bolt going into the actual quarter panel here:



Then I rimmed the bracketry flush with the main cut.

Finished cut:



A little ugly, but I cleane it up with a flap disc and edged it with 100 mph tape, or duct tape for you civlian-minded folk. I am going to get some protekto tape soon to finish it properly.

on the bumper all I did was measure 4 inches in on the bottom, taped some 550 parachute cord to my mark and angled it toward the top outside edge of the bumper to act as a guide for my marker. Then I hacked away.

This is how she looks now:









I'm pretty happy with it. This will help a little with clearance of bigger tires, makes my front end look a little better too!

I will trim more if and when I need too. All depends on exactly how big I want to go for tires.

As for the tranny flush, I think I'm gonna do a slow flush like you were saying Big A- change fluid, drive for a while, change fluid, etc........ Then finish it off with a new filter.

Almost went to LBL on Saturday. A buddy went with his family and said it was awesome. Maybe next weekend.

Very nice!I can see that your slowly giving into the addiction.LoL

lol- I'm never one to leave somehing alone. I always wana put "my mark" on it!

Slowly so far, yes. My financially adept Wife makes sure of that!:loveu:

Well I went over and met a fellow SEC member- KGP416, and found I have a few more mechanical issues to work out, but nothing too major. Should be worked out with a couple of trips to the JY for some odds and ends.

So far since my last update I removed the rear sway bar, bought some wing nuts for DIY front sway bar discos, but I have decided against using them, since the stock nuts were torqued down pretty good, and even with lock washers I don't trust the wing nuts too much. I think I will go this route:

http://www.4x4xplor.com/homediscos.html

That write-up says you can take out the sway bar links with a torx bit, but another source I found wrote that it is pressed in, so I will press it back out with a pitman arm puller like it says here:

http://www.rocklizardfabrications.com/swaybar_endlinks.htm

I also picked up some expanded metal in a large sheet to do a quick mod to my grill. This is how I did it:

Stock grandad grill:



Expanded metal from Home Depot. The salesman said it was used for stucco:



I used an angle grinder (all I have for now) to cut out MOST of the inner slats of my grill, leaving the main vertical bars:



I didn't take a pic of me cutting the expanded metal, but all I did was lay my grill under the sheet and used metal snips and the grill itself as a guide to cut along the desired length and height.

Then I placed the expanded metal into the grill area, layed the grill in on top of it and used new screws to tighten everything down into place:







The cuts aren't the cleanest (I could have waited until my tools got in- or could have bought something to do it a little cleaner), but I plan on maybe filing down the rough spots, and possible painting the plastic portion of the grill to look better. We'll see. I've also got a couple of ideas to permanantly attach the expanded metal to the plastic grill with some small bolts and washers.

The expanded metal is pretty soft and easily damaged, but it also takes about 5 minutes to cut and I have plenty to do it a couple of times over. My only worry may be that a branch could easily puncture through it and damage the rad. I may find another material for this purpose. :confused1

Hey Dozer, you can find a lot of locals on itsajeep.org

Seems like there is always someone posting a ride at Turkey Bay (LBL) over on that board.

Looks like you have a very clean xj to start with....good find.

Turfzilla said:

Hey Dozer, you can find a lot of locals on itsajeep.org

Seems like there is always someone posting a ride at Turkey Bay (LBL) over on that board.

Looks like you have a very clean xj to start with....good find.

Click to expand...

When I was stationed at Campbell I went wheeling at LBL with some of the guys but I didn't have a truck. I wish I could go back there and wheel LBL in my Jeep.

I personally would not have cut up a perfectly good XJ grille, but nice work.

unless its aluminum - isnt that mesh gonna rust. maybe spray paint it