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Back in an XJ: Building a mild 1998 Sport

Once fed we decided to take all 3 XJ's to Moab Rim trail. We were originally planning on doing that one after Pritchett and with the luck I seemed to be having on the trip I decided to just skip straight to it.

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Pics are out of order because Imgur sucks like that
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More from Moab Rim
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And one of favorites from the entire trip
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Moab Rim was an awesome trail. Just enough challenge to keep it fun yet still easy enough to ease the frustration of the trip thus far. The view overlooking the town was great. It made for a very nice afternoon and made the bad luck from the night before and that morning worthwhile. I definitely recommend this trail. Of course Moab Rim went so well, and we had plenty of daylight left, that we decided we should go back to Pritchett. Right before getting back to the ledge that I'd broken the yoke straps on Jordan suddenly lost steering. The nut on his drag link TRE at the pitman arm had decided it didn't like having threads anymore. It was a lucky spot for it to make that decision as being on the road would've made for a very bad situation. Not having a spare GM 1 ton TRE with him I took his credit card and ran back into town to buy him one. Once we got the new one installed we decided to call it and headed into town for dinner.
 
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Saturday morning we just relaxed and took it slow getting ready. My buddy was coming in from Montrose and I was just waiting around for him more or less. We were talking about running Pritchett before he got there and then going to do Top of The World with him in the afternoon. After the previous day's fiascos on Pritchett and knowing that both TOTW and Pritchett were going to be long trails I opted to take my buddy out to TOTW with his Tracker. Jordan and Trent decided to go run Pritchett in their XJ's as TOTW was too scenic for them and they felt they had to conquer the canyon.

After brunch at the Moab Diner we split off for our respective trails.

Pics of TOTW in Imgur's reshuffled order

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TOTW Continued
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And the family portrait
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TOTW was a trail that consisted mainly of 9 miles of bumpy dirt road, intermittent obstacles that were easy but fun, and 1 of the best pay offs in terms of views ever. I could do with out the endless miles of bumps or at least more challenging obstacles to fill the time, but I will gladly do that trail over and over for that view at the end. Its a must do IMHO, even if only once so you can see it for yourself.
 
We got back into town kind of late after running TOTW and stopped for dinner at the Moab Brewery. After that we went back to the cabins to start a fire and share some stories and whiskey. Surprisingly when we got back we noticed that the others were still gone. I tried calling/texting them with no luck. Thinking maybe they were grabbing a late dinner too we got the fire going and started chatting it up. About an hour later though with no word from the guys who went to run Pritchett I decided to get in the XJ and see what was up. The plan was to drop in and make it to the bottom of Which Way and see if we could get them on the radios. Well at some point in the river bed I hit a rock really hard with my passenger front tire. Hard enough to stop the Jeep dead in its tracks and as I would discover a short distance later, bend the wheel bad enough it no longer held air. I hammered and pried it back as much as I could and it took air, but after a short distance went flat again. So we started to swap the spare on and as we were doing that a lone RZR came upon us. We asked him if he'd seen anybody else on the trail and he said he hadn't. So once we got the spare on we followed him back out.


Coming back into town (about 10:45 now) I received a text from Trent time stamped 10:30. I called him and it turned out that they got out of Pritchett around 5:30 or so and then proceeded to get lost on the long road out. While driving around they came across a pair of stranded dirt bikers, one of whom had lost his clutch and neither of which at headlights. They towed/guided them out of the area and were finally making their way back to town. They got to camp about 15 minutes or so after me.


So after a very late night and bit too much whiskey I woke up and got to work straightening out my mangled bead lock. I used my hi-lift, a hammer, and a few choice words to get coerce it into holding air again.
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With the rim "good as new" I ws mostly ready for another day on the trails. Trent had to leave for home as he had work on Monday and Jordan (whom had been in Moab with his g/f a full week now) was ready to take a day off. So that left us and the Tracker for a day on the trail. We decided on Fins and Things.

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Fins continued:
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Fins was really cool. Its a really neat landscape and its amazing at how easily you can just drive up near vertical faces. Its definitely a unique experience to the area and nothing we can do here in Colorado. It was a good way to finish out the trip.

After running Fins Brian and his g/f went out and about sight seeing. We went back to the cabin to get the Jeep loaded up and cabin cleaned a bit before it got much colder or darker outside. We then all went to Susie's Branding Iron Restaurant for some amazing steaks before spending one last night around the fire sharing some whiskey and stories.

Overall it was a great trip and well worth the hassles we faced. I ended up ordering some new RE 4.5" leaf springs because my 3.5" ones were just sagging down too much. I was barely an inch off of my bump stops and dragging my fuel tank skid everywhere.
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I also ordered new u-bolt style yokes for both axles and a new rim to replace the one I'd mangled. All in all though the old XJ did really well and its only issues were more from driver error than anything else. I'll address those this weekend once the parts get here and keep making little improvements as needed. I do have some rear frame stiffeners to install yet, as well as some material to tie the rockers in better.
 
Damn dude that's quite the blow out. Saw so e of the Moab pics. Looked like fun. Did you guys do much wheeling this summer?

Not really. I put over 10K miles on my bike and spent a week in Canada. Didn't have much time for wheeling.
 
LOL, I’m making sure I keep this one until after the CJ6 is done. I might not get out to wheel much anymore (too many hobbies and a kid in hockey) but I have to have something to take up when the opportunity arises.
 
I finally had some time today to do a little work on the XJ. I replaced the front D30 yoke with a u-bolt style one. I also replaced my Rusty's shocks with RE ones that measure out to give me another inch of down travel. With as little up travel as I have ( bump stopped a lot to keep from rubbing) I figured it would be good to add a little more down travel.

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I still need to swap out the rear leaf packs, rear shocks, and rear yoke. I just haven't had a lot of time. I'm hoping the weather is nice enough on Monday to get that stuff done.
 
Got the new 4.5” leaf springs, RE shocks, and u-bolt style rear yoke all swapped in today. Obviously these springs haven’t settled any, I haven’t even driven it yet, but I’m at 4” additional lift in the rear. Hopefully they’ll settle down about an 1.5”. Currently my rocker guards are 21.5” and 23” off the ground front/back respectively. If it settles down 1.5” in the rear it’ll be perfect.

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The Dana 30 one is a Spicer unit I got off of Amazon. For the 8.25 I ordered one from Iron Rock Offroad. It’s supposed to be an all new casting and not just a drilled out factory one.
 
Flanges are nice, but the u-bolt yokes will work just fine for my needs. Still better than worrying about popping another set of straps. The buggy will probably run drive flanges. This under built wannabe baby crawler will just have to do with the slight upgrade. Besides, if I don’t leave some predesignated weak points in the driveline there is a good chance that the entire chassis will just fold like a taco next time I bind up the axles.
 
Nope. I tossed that idea around but I'm mostly set on buying a JHF chassis kit. The CJ6 tub will most likely be used to stretch my CJ5 and build a stockish retro wheeler with. Although the guy who is storing my CJ5 for me has a 50's Willy's pickup and really wants to trade. So that might change too.
 
Yeah, I like it a lot. I’m also considering that Rock Lizard chassis, they’re supposed to be doing a 4 seat version soon. It’d be a bit cheaper but at the same time the JHF chassis has competition proven geometry and design. Probably worth the premium.
 
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