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My XJ build thread

yea we dont really have things called mountains, or hills for that matter in this part of texas. Mostly mud and some slight mounds to drive over. Anywhere outside of 50 miles from my house im just going to load it on a trailer and pull it with my Tahoe anyway. 1992 luxury is fun and all, but 2005 is a bit nicer and i bet the fuel economy towing will be similar to driving the jeep plus i have something that will for sure get home.

granted i know the 3.73 wont be the IDEAL gear but itll do fine for a bit while i learn to set them up and figure out if i want 4.10s or 4.56's. Wasnt planning on 4.88's but who knows where i will find myself after my first couple trips with it rock crawling. have to drive nearly 3 hours out to the austin area to get any kind of hills and rocks to play on
 
It's more of an FYI for your friend. It's about a wash since the housing you're getting is LP but he's going to need a new carrier to put the 4.88's he's hoping for on the HP. Once he's done, he will have a much better axle, though.
 
after deep considerations of the stuff posted in here as well as some lingering ideas i had myself, im not going to swap the 8.8 just yet.

going to get the jeep up in the air with the tires on it and see how it does with the 3.55. its close enough to the 3.73 to see if it would be beneficial at all or if i should just go up to the 4.10 or 4.56.

thanks for the reality check. my brain got stuck on "DO IT CHEAP AND FAST!" and was excited. after thinking about it it makes more sense to take it slow and make the right decisions. and i still have a spare axle at the house to practice/learn how to setup a ring and pinion with the 8.8 i picked up.

hoping to order the lift today.
 
A low pinion TJ Dana 30 is a step backwards from your current high pinion dana 30. Also the 8.8 can be regeared, if you're going to 33" tires, then you will want to do 4.56 gears. There's enough history on here to see that is the way to go. There's also enough history on here to see that people who waited to gear from 3.55 to 4.56's were amazed at the change in power once they did it.
 
Why do folks stop at 4.56 and not go 4.88? I run 80mph on the interstate taching 3000rpm and my engine is very happy on 4.88's.

It seems like with 4.88s over 4.56s it reallly helps with everything around it is upgraded as you saw in my Midwest Chapter thread on this same question. One guy mentioned the pinion size and here's a quote from another

"out of the 4.88 gear failures ive seen, more of them are stripped ring gears than busted pinions. and when I seen stripped ring gears... its usually associated with a stock carrier and spiders or a lunchbox locker. I think the bigger killer of 4.88s is ring gear deflection, not specifically the smaller pinion. a truss, full case locker, and/or stout diff cover all do a lot for reducing ring gear deflection."

With that statement alone it makes me want to lean towards 4.56s just because I'm stock aside from having lunchbox lockers.
 
+1 to what BTaylor said. Ive been doing lots of reading on the subject and while there are some that run 4.88 without issue, there are also a lot of others to do see issues with it. be it the small pinion gear or the ring gear deflection as mentioned above, it just seems like the d30 isnt as well suited to deep gears as other axles are.
 
X2 4.88 I read and researched all I could. Some say 4.56 is nice and it's the stock ratio back again (on 35s anyway I see you got 33s but) but turns sluggish with hills. For me I was trying to avoid that, and since your doing it doing it right the first time sounds fantastic!
And if/when you go up in tire size you'll be set

Plus what these other guys said for 4.88s
 
sitting here waiting on parts like

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Parts showed up friday!

took the tahoe up to my friends shop and loaded it down.
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everything laid out.
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cant get over how beefy these control arms are.
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going to start the install next weekend. got some friends coming to help. should be able to knock most of it out over the weekend.

so one last hoorah with it stock, plus teaching my wife how to pilot it and operate everything offroad. Wife got so annoyed with the street tires and low belly. said towards the end of us being out there "im so glad we have all the parts in the garage to get this thing more capable. it tries but the tires and low ground clearance just kill it!" was great fun watching her drive over obstacles and get over her reluctance due to the thought of possible rollover. on to the pics of it.
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welp ran into a small snag with the jeep and a huge one for myself.

after pulling off the bumper i found some accident evidence behind the bumper where it mounts to the unibody frame end. obviously been hit in the front and instead of pulling the frame out they just mangled the bracket, welded a bolt between the fender and the bumper and called it good. Since i wanna make sure its not tweaked too bad, taking it to a frame shop this weekend to get checked out and have the front end straightened. then i can start again.

on myside ive been battling an eye condition which flared up on me and caused me to lose some vision. after a scary ordeal at my specialists office, im recovering but probably have a few weeks/months before im back fully operational. thankfully my friends said they would help me get everything sorted out.

headed up northeast for work this weekend and hope to get back into it next weekend and get it setup. we are planning a trip on the 20th of feb so i need to hustle if im going to get everything done next weekend and get it lined out.
 
didnt make it the 20th of feb due to the eye issues.

but ive been making good progress. got the crossmember and frame brackets sorted out and started tearing down the front suspension.

got everything removed except the lower trackbar bolt is stuck in the sleeve. i tried soaking it in WD40 rust release for 3 days and then knocking it loose but no go. Gunna have to cut it out.

The bump stops looked like dog chew toys as well so i ordered new daystar ones.

Going to cut that bolt out and then start installing new parts this weekend. Hpefully i can get the front done and maybe knock out the rear. Im ready to see this thing sitting on the new suspension and tires! barring anything crazy happening, im hoping i can make some solid progress this weekend.

How its sitting right now.
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made good progress on saturday.
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need to install the new HD tie rod, extended brake lines and rotate teh axle towards the front of the jeep to get the caster closer to where it needs to be before i install the track bar and start working on the back.

cant wait to get this thing off the jackstands and down some trails.
 
small victories i guess.

got the front end down and sitting on the tires. still have a few things to get done up front but i wanted to get the bulk of the work done and start working on the rear and figure out the details afterward.
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so we started working on the rear. busted loose the shocks, the ubolts, supported the diff on jack stands and started in on the leaf spring bolts. i knew they would be a bear just from the videos i had seen on the youtubes but damn. we removed the passenger side front bolt with relative ease. moved to the back one on the passenger side. got about 1/8 of an inch out and a wonderful popping noise. sigh. ok well lets see how far we can get before we start the process of figuring out how to deal with that. moved to the drivers side rear. got about 2 turns on that one, and pop. sigh. ok, moving to the drivers side front bolt, 1/8 inch or so and pop again. at this point i was a giant rage monster. so took a break for a half hour or so, started googling to see what world of hell we might be in to deal with this since the nuts are captured.

started cutting into the box of the front one and couldnt get a wrench to bite onto the nut. after fighting with it for about 11 hours total saturday i finally called it a night around 10pm.

didnt get to touch it sunday since me and the wife had a bunch of errands to run that didnt get done while we were on vacation the week before. so the jeep is sitting like this until i can get those bolts undone.
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after much fighting, the bolts were finally removed.

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6 tiny spotwelds on the corners of the bolt in an area prone to trap and keep moisture was a STUPID idea from jeep. especially without any access hole. at least a tabbed nut would make more sense. anyway, i digress. I am going to post some pictures of where i had to cut and create a separate thread so hopefully someone searching will find it and it will help them. I know i looked through countless threads without pictures or information clearly spelled out and there was a lot of quess work. Also part numbers for the nuts/bolts i used to replace it.

So anyway, after we got those out, the next discovery was that the replacement nuts i bought were 22mm, not a problem i have 22mm sockets. problem is the shallow socket was too shallow and the deep was too deep to fit into the frame rail at the back to get at the bolt that way. So i ended up cutting the bottom of the pocket same as the front one and the wrench slipped up in there without issue.

Once that was done we threw the leafs in with the alignment wedges to correct pinion angle and bolted it together.

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we ran out of daylight and i was beat so we cleaned up the tools. was going to work on it more sunday but was feeling under the weather. still snapped a pic
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the to do list.
center axle and install track bar
set castor and toe
brake lines (nuts are frozen into the soft lines in the front, rear is disconnected from the body but not the axle hardlines)
rear shocks
final torque pass on nuts/bolts

I still have some louvers for the hood (as well as a little custom touch im going to do), trans cooler, fix my frame rail end and mount bumper and then the rock sliders.

just feels nice to be mostly done with the lift.
 
well after a few weeks of being sick, being busy, and having some family issues i finally had a chance to work on the XJ again.

set my caster, set the track bar, put the rear shocks on, torqued all the bolts down and did a little flex test. ran into the fenders on just this much flex
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going to try and spend a little time on the brake lines tonight and hopefully ill be able to get the trans cooler installed this weekend and cut the fenders so i can test drive it.

also need to get a battery for it and pop the tail light back in and hope that the new flashers i bought fixed my no rear blinker issue and i can get it inspected.
 
Those tires, I have them in 33X12.5, run almost a true 33" tire. You'll need to trim a lot or do some trim and bumpstops. You'll still need bumpstops, I trimmed a bunch and still needed to use bumpstops.
 
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