beater!

The Chinese Jeep 2500 tail-lights came in today





I'm not sure how I like them--the workmanship is not very good, and the fitment has some things better some things worse--but they are certainly different.

Did you decide what color to paint it?

I decided to keep it close to midnight blue. I tried some of the Rustoleum gloss navy blue but it was a little brighter than the swatch showed (you can see the test color in the pic above), so I bought 4 quarts of that and 1 quart of gloss black, and had one of the local paintshop monkeys mix them up for me. They are canned up in quart containers waiting for me now.

This is the navy blue swatch, which is close to the color that I ended up with after mixing

Got bored so I decided to assemble the replacement front grille and lighting



I've had those pieces for a while, but had been waiting for paint before putting them on. Since I'm now thinking about getting the Chinese 2500 front-end, I figured I'd better put these pieces on if I actually wanted to get some use from them.

The door leaning against the shed is a junkyard replacement--I was able to get dents out of the other three, but the driver's door has about six small dents that will be too much trouble to fix, so I'm just replacing the whole thing. I will do the doorless mod when I swap, and am just trying to get my hands on some easy-to-use electrical connectors. The door swap is the last thing I have to do before painting.

BTW, I took the old gal wheeling with the local club yesterday. The skid plate inserts for the front receivers helped me to skip out of a mud puddle. I didn't get stuck anywhere, and managed to climb a couple of steep hills. She did great!

I've been doing a lot of work on the doors as part of the swap and doorless mod. A lot of this stuff is trivial but it's not documented anywhere else so I'm going to write up here.

One of the first "fixes" I made to the Jeep when I got it was to replace the outside mirrors with parts from Omix. The original units did not work (mechanical malfunction on both of them), had broken the breakaway clips, and so forth. I ordered the Omix replacements thinking they would be OEM quality, but instead they were cheap plastic imitation chrome, they vibrated in the wind a lot, and the passenger side has the adjustment rods in the wrong place (left is up, right is left, it's all weird). The Omix sucked but they more or less worked, so I used them for a while with the intention of getting decent replacements eventually.

While I was picking up the donor driver's door at the junkyard, I noticed that the mirrors on the donor both had broken breakaway clips but were otherwise operational and clean, so I grabbed the passenger side while I was getting the drivers door. Today I swapped the clips from the Omix replacements onto the donor mirrors.

First, use a pair of needle-nose vice-grips to pull on the spring. It helps to leave some of the jaws exposed so you can prop the vice grips on the outside.



The clips are a one-piece deal that surrounds the armature, so if you want to get it off in one piece you have to unclip the spring and remove anything that is blocking the armature to take the clip off. I opted to snip the bottom part, where it was very thin, and where it would not be as likely to create a leak, and then just pulled it out over the armature.

Here are the original and Omix replacement clips side-by-side. You can see the little snips at the bottom of each.



Here is the OEM mirror with the new clips. Looks new and it works...



I would not advise going this route, since each mirror costs about $90. Crown also makes replacement mirrors for about the same price, which may or may not be better quality. OEM mirrors list at about $320 each, btw.

Looks good, are you thinking of putting on a lift or keeping her stock?

I'm going to get the OME 3" and some 31s next week or two

I have to lift it to rebuild the exhaust which is my biggest engine problem

ehall said:

I'm going to get the OME 3" and some 31s next week or two

I have to lift it to rebuild the exhaust which is my biggest engine problem

Click to expand...

That the excuse y0u're using :shhh:

I didn't notice until after I'd paid for it, but the donor door had a fixed vent window instead of a movable one. My beater has vents, and I like having them (especially in the summer), so I had to swap the vent from the old driver's door to the donor. There are a couple of other write-ups on this floating around--here's one that goes from movable to fixed, and here's one for the YJ that is pretty similar.

Here's what the fixed vs vent looks like



First step is to remove the door panels if they aren't off already. You will also need to lower the main window in order to get the vent window off. You may also find it helpful to remove the window seals from the door, although I did not have to.

The vent is shaped in a figure-4 with the little vent being the upper triangle, while the long vertical leg runs all the way down in the door and serves as a guide for the main window when it's moved up and down. The assembly is held in place by two screws and a bolt. The bolt is at the very bottom of the vertical guide bar, while the screws are on the top front of the door frame.

In this pic you can see the vertical bar



This pic shows the screws on top



Remove the bolt and screws, and then gently rock the window vent back and forth until the seals break free, then pull it backwards, leading it to the outside of the door



When it's almost all the way out, you'll have to rock it forwards to clear the tab for the bottom bolt. This is why you had to come to the outside--you will not be able to pull it straight if you are also having to bend it along the inside door frame.



That's all it takes to get the vent window out, so it's time to put a window back in there. Clean the replacement window seals really well with simple green or rubbing alcohol or whatever, something that won't damage the rubber. You want to get the dust and dirt off the seals before you install it. I also smeared silicon (dielectric) grease on the parts of the seals that make contact with the body. This makes it MUCH easier to install the window, and also helps to cut down on leaks. If you look at the windows you've got, they probably have a lot of dirt and crud on the seals, and that crap had to get up in there somehow, so cleaning and lubricating the seals is generally good. In my case I just put a thin even coverage with no large pools anywhere, and I only dressed the parts of the seals that make direct contact with the door metal. This is also a good time to PB Blaster the hinge springs if they need it.



Then install the vent in the same way you took it out. Start by working the tab into the frame, and then sliding the vertical bar down the side of the window at an angle. Once you get far enough to clear the angle, rock the vent into position. If you get a lot of resistance, look for the problem and fix it--you've probably got the leg going through the door's wiring harness, so back out and clear the wiring. Once you get the vent into position, make sure the rubber is all in the right place, then roll up the window to create the proper vertical seal, and then reinstall the bolts and screws. The silicone grease makes this go real fast and easy. Then sit back and enjoy your new window



Since this all went so easy, I decided to fix the passenger side vent, which had a couple of alignment problems. As you can see, the vent was not centered and was binding at the top corner, and the rubber seals were not making even contact either.



For this one I only had to remove the bolt and screws, rock it backwards, clean and lubricate the seals, and then reposition it so that the rubber made good contact. There is also a small adjustment screw in the top of the vent glass--just release the pressure on it, use a flathead to prop the glass into it's proper location, and tighten the screw again. After about 10 minutes, the passenger vent was centered and did not bind anymore, and I had good solid seal around the door.



This is kind of an intimidating project the first time, but it's really pretty easy, and after the third or fourth time all of the mystery is gone and it's pretty much cake.

Last item on the to-do list for the driver's door swap was to swap the lock cylinders so that my old lock was on the new door. This is actually pretty difficult for a full-grown man--if you have a 12-year-old kid, this is a good time to make them work for their board.

The other thing, this pretty much has to be done with the door off the jeep and laying on its side. I suppose somebody somewhere is able to do this with the doors still installed, but gravity would be a big problem for me, and putting the door on its side makes gravity your friend instead of your enemy.

As for the lock cylinder itself, that is pretty simple. It is held on with a retainer clip like you used to see on the hoses that fed into an air breather, and pulling out the clip allows the lock cylinder to fall out of the door. However the cylinder is attached to a rod, which is in turn attached to the latch assembly, and you have to get one of these things loose before the cylinder will come out. Here's a picture of the cylinder and the rod clip inside the jeep:



The rusty clip is holding the cylinder in position, while the little white thing is the clip assembly that holds the rod to the cylinder. That clip is not removable while the cylnder and rod are inside the door. It *MAY* be removable when the cylinder is freed but I was not able to do it.

According to the FSM, the proper method of releasing the cylinder is to release the rod from the latch assembly, and remove the cylinder plus rod through the hole in the door. Unfortunately, the rod attachment point is behind the window guide, behind another rod (the one for the outside handle thumb button), and underneath the latch. In order to even get to the connector, you have to unbolt the latch and let it drop down a bit. In this pic, you can see where it connects (it's the yellowish clip--you can also see the rusty cylinder clip to the right):



Once you can get to the clip, releasing it is pretty simple. With the door off and laying sideways, you only need to put a screwdriver on the "top" of the clip and press down, and it will pretty much just fall off the rod. Once that's free, just pull the cylinder and rod out the hole in the door. Also, the '92 donor for the new door had some kind of Mopar wire attached to the cylinder, and I had to pop that off, but no idea what it is (my '91 with remote unlock does not have it). Here's the lock and rod:



Putting the replacement cylinder back is the opposite of removal, but is about 10x harder, since you have to fish the rod back into its little hole and put the clamp back on. This requires holding up the latch enough to get the rod under it, but not so high that the hole is blocked by the window guide or the other rod. After about an hour of this nonsense, I chose to disconnect all of the other rods going into the latch, reattaching the cylinder rod, and then reattaching the other rods in order of hardest to easiest. Then I bolted the latch back together, tested the lock (success!), and put the door back on.

I have major newfound respect for installers who have to deal with this crap.

ehall said:

The Chinese Jeep 2500 tail-lights came in today

I'm not sure how I like them--the workmanship is not very good, and the fitment has some things better some things worse--but they are certainly different.

Click to expand...

They are Chinese. Of course the workmanship sucks!

prolly full of lead paint, too.

Yup! thats why cummins manufactures our injector nozzles here and then send them to China. So they don't F*** up our tolerances

The rear seat carpeting got on my nerves



So I had the carpet replaced with vinyl, welded some nuts and angle iron to the seat back, bought some sheet metal and Herculiner, then bolted that to the seat (more details in this write-up post)



Much better

The lower window trim around the doors was in really bad shape, with the blackout tape peeling off the aluminum, and the inner wipes cracking and breaking.



I ordered a set of replacement wipes from Team Cherokee, and needed to get the lower molding, so I went to the junkyard to fetch those and some other small items. While I was there I examined the molding on a 98 and saw that it was one piece rubber, so I grabbed the set of those.

Here's what the old-style and new-style lower molding looks like:





The old style is multiple pieces--first there is the piece of aluminum molding w/ blackout on the outside, the wipes on the inside, and clips holding everything together. Meanwhile the '98 is just one piece.

It took some snipping and hammering but the new pieces go in without much problem. They work fine on the rear and the front both.





This is much better, since it's just one piece and there is no gap for water to get through, and there are no clips to get lost or corroded. I will need to make a couple of other mods to get these perfect but I'll do that after paint.

Note that the other 97-up molding pieces around the window are pretty much the same as the pre-97, but they are a hair longer and WILL NOT FIT without some Dremel time.

wow...thats some crazy shit youre building. a very nice build up. great work man!

looks sharp, thanks for all the updates it's coming along nicely

I finished the doorless mods. Full write-up here.





I have two more pieces of body work that need doing. First, I found a rip in the bottom of the front left fender like I drove over a sharp rock (it didn't tear at the pinch seam, it ripped the fender), which I need to repair at some point. Second, I found a crack in my hatch, and also have some wiring problems back there, so I bought a black hatch from a '96 that I will be swapping in and adding a herculiner/netting setup like what I've got on the rear seat.

Your builds coming along nicely, looking forward to it's completion.

Thanks for the weatherstrip tip, mine could some.

I figured I'd better do the powertrain swap before painting the rig, since I would probably scratch and bang the front-end while swapping out the motor and tranny. Looking around I found a nearby reclamation house with a 'XJ 99 engine with 51k miles that had been sitting for a couple of years, and they let it go for $475 delivered.

Since the engine is from a '99 and my beater is a '91, I have to replace the sensors, senders, ignition coil, injectors and some other stuff so that the '91 computer and wiring harness will work. While the engine is on the stand I'm also replacing the gaskets and mounts and other parts that typically fail. I finished getting parts together for it and have been doing the cleaning and swapping over the past couple of afternoons. So far I have replaced the front and rear seals, the oil pan gasket, the oil filter adapter gasket, the ignition parts (from the coil through the plugs), and some other stuff.

Here are a couple of shots of the thing. This is the left side, as yet undisturbed.



Here the right side, after being cleaned, with new ignition and oil parts installed.



Since the '99 engine does not have a temperature sender for the gauge (it was subsumed into the OBD-II setup in '97), I had to find a way to hook up the sender. There is a block drain plug on the lower left with a 3/8 NPT fitting, so I got a 3/8 to 1/8th NPT adapter which seems to work just fine.



I have ordered a set of the Doug Thorley 6-3-1 ceramic-coated headers, and once that comes in I'll rebuild the intake and exhaust. I already have the yellow Ford four-nozzle injectors and a 63mm bored throttle body that will go on when the manifolds are reassembled.

I'll post a couple more pics as progress is made.