nightmare XJ

I don't know if anybody else has this problem but I think I have a cursed XJ. It seems like everytime I work on my XJ it goes south in a hurry. I don't know if why but it does. Examples.... replacing a rusted in half shackle 6 hours. putting on extended brake lines, 400 dollars later I have new hard brake lines, rear brakes, etc. It just seems like when I work on the damn thing it snowballs on me and gets more and more expensive. So when I ordered my 1 ton set up I decided to take it to a kinda local off road shop. So I get it to the shop and he calls me later that day, the company didn't ship a bracket with the kit. So the company overnights the bracket. Another phone call. Since my XJ has the vaccum disco front end filled with a cast steel that is right where the bracket. My mechanic and I talk about welding to the cast but decided to not too since it's a DD. That leaves our options of replacing the axle. Now my mission is to find a non disco front end with 3.07's. Call all my local parts guys to see if anybody knows where I can get one. No luck all the ones I can find are D30's with 3.55's. That makes another call to my mech. Some more talking and decided that it would be cheaper for us to throw a used 8.25 with 3.55's under the rear and find a 3.55 geared D30 to throw in the front. So now I get to get up at the butt crack of dawn to go get my new used axle and drive it over an hour from the axle pick up point. Long story short I wonder if my XJ is cursed. The whole reason I didn't do the steering myself was so that it wouldn't snowball. So I've now spend about 700 bucks on the steering, 225 on a new front axle, 100 on the rear and roughly 500+ on the install. And just breaking those numbers down I really feel sick to my stomachuke:. Sorry for the long and boring post but I really had to vent. I couldn't vent to the wife since she is keeper of the wampum and she is already about to scalp me since my project budget just went through the roof. The upside is I've spent a ton of cash on axles so I can do the same thing in a year only with 44's and at least 4.88's and lockers. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH:badpc:


Parakeet

damn, you should have got ahold of me. I just let a D30 and 8.25 go for under $250! what is worse I could have brought them to ya in KC

makes ya wonder if ya should have came up here for the install huh? maybe next time your luck will turn around.

I really thought about coming up but I decided not too just because of the way things usually work with it. See previous examples. My next task should be a no brainer for the most part. I'm going to TJ flare mine up sometime after Christmas. But hopefully it will go smooth since I'm not replacing anything just adding. At some point though with as much that gets replaced everytime I do something substancial, it should be easy to upgrade and replace. Besides at somepoint everything will be fairly new.


Parakeet

don't know your problem. too many word to read.

seriously....




Parakeet

Happens to me all the time with every thing I do, don't think you are special.
I wanted to put a light switch in the wall next to the fire place last night, a 15 min job for me, 4 hours later, I gave up.
It is just life.

I'm glad I'm not the only one then. I was starting to think that it will be an ongoing thing. SOOoooo...... looks like I gotta start budgeting for that. Ummm I'm going to do OBA with stock compressor found all kinds of people doing it for 100 bucks but I'm going to have to budget 400+.:shhh: don't tell my wife.


Parakeet

Don't feel so bad. It's only time and money

My first XJ was a PITA. Everything I touched either broke off while I was loosening it, which resulted in me smacking my hand on something rusty and exclaiming "*BITCH*!" at the top of my lungs. It took me 4 days to do a simple spring lift.

So I affectionally called it 'Bitch-Jeep'.

By second one was also a PITA, and it got the name 'Bitch-Jeep-Too'.

Thankfully my first one is not too bad of a PITA! I want to get a pre-96 to play around with. I'm sure it'll be a PITA!

4wdParakeet said:

seriously....

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Seriously, I stopped reading about 1/4 through. I'm not trying to flame you or anything, but you should consider using paragraphs.

Hmm, cursed? Not any worse than changing EVERY damned Renix sensor and it still runs like crap, only to find a 3" chunk of fuel line in the tank rotted... Runs perfect now, at 200,000.

Or my ZJ that fights me on everything I try to do.

Same thing here...when i did the lift the weld broke on the nut welded inside the unibody rail that the leaf spring bolt goes into. I had to drill a 1/4 inch hole in the unibody rail and blindly stick my welding rod up there and try to tack the nut back in place without touching anything else metal with the rod. Im still amazed that i got that to work...

91Limited said:

Same thing here...when i did the lift the weld broke on the nut welded inside the unibody rail that the leaf spring bolt goes into. I had to drill a 1/4 inch hole in the unibody rail and blindly stick my welding rod up there and try to tack the nut back in place without touching anything else metal with the rod. Im still amazed that i got that to work...

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uke: I just got queasy thinking about that....I have to do rear springs in buster soon. glad to hear it worked out!

Every time i fix on thing on my pile of shit something else goes bad.

Bad thing is me and my family are pretty tight on money so i know how you feel...

I think i am ready to give up on this jeep......................

Don't worry, I've got the same problem... well sort of. Whenever I break stuff, I always look at it as an opportunity to upgrade. The part that pisses me off to no end though, is that simple projects like changing a serpentine belt (half hr max job) ends up taking me hrs and hrs. I am a really good backyard mechanic, but things never cooperate with me while I am working on it.

bdavid said:

Every time i fix on thing on my pile of shit something else goes bad.

Bad thing is me and my family are pretty tight on money so i know how you feel...

I think i am ready to give up on this jeep......................

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Never start a new project on a heep if you have empty pockets, before you know it, you will have a large lawn ornament.

robert2008 said:

Seriously, I stopped reading about 1/4 through. I'm not trying to flame you or anything, but you should consider using paragraphs.

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X2, you made it farther than I did.....



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