ZMotorSports 2011 JKUR Build Thread

I am new here but thought I would throw up some pictures of my latest Jeep build. It is not real time as I have owned it now for almost two years.

I bought the Jeep with only 3208 miles on the odometer and commenced building my "Dream Jeep". This is my daily driver and weekend wheeler.

On lift just before sitting it down with the 4" BDS Suspension Lift and 35" KM2 tires/ATX Crawl wheels.

Backed outside the shop after just barely sitting her on the ground with new lift and tires/wheels.

More to come as I dig through the pictures. Also pictured here is the Warn Rockcrawler bumper/Powerplant combination that I purchased used just to get me by until I could fabricated my own bumpers.

Mike.

 

[Hickey]

I expected the ice cream maker would replace the HVAC system in the Jeep!

 

[zmotorsports]

I took the day off from working in the shop to go play Saturday. It was our local Jeep club’s monthly run and the weather was supposed to be nice. I haven done much with the local club this year so I decided to go and meet some of the new members that I haven’t had the opportunity to meet yet as we had a lot of new members join over the past 6-months.

Lined up at the meeting location. I volunteered to tail gun.

Airing down at the trail head. We had a total of 17 vehicles on the run.

I didn’t get any pictures throughout the day as I was mostly recording using the video camera. Of course no one got me doing any of the obstacles.

About 7 of us broke off after the run was winding down and also ran Sidewinder. This was the first time for me as I have never run that particular trail before.

Mike

 

[zmotorsports]

Last week I wrapped up on the coach so this weekend consisted of a major service on the Jeep and a minor repair.

In December I had the Chrysler click going on under the dash. I replaced the recirculation door actuator and then ended up replacing it with an OEM Mopar part as the aftermarket one wouldn’t calibrate. Then several weeks later my HVAC module started having memory issues where it would lose the positioning of the actuator motors and have to recalibrate with each ignition cycle. The HVAC module was on national backorder but it finally arrived a couple of weeks ago.

Friday night I made time to replace the HVAC module as well as installed my Bestop Sunrider for the season.

Next pulled the driver’s side and center upper dash apart.

Pulled the lower center dash panel out.

Unplugged the connectors.

Prepared to swap out the HVAC module by removing the old one.

New module installed in panel and set aside.

I noticed a couple of places where the outer dash panel and inner dash panel had become disbonded so I thought I’d address those while I had everything apart.

Clamps placed to hold the panels together.

Re-melted the areas back together.

The trick is to melt the back side but not get it so hot to melt or deform the face of the dash.

Back together.

Vector Off Road dash bar reinstalled.

I then installed the Sunrider softop before closing up for the night.


Saturday morning I started by measuring tread depth on my tires before taking them and having them rebalanced.

These Nitto Ridge Grapplers seem to be wearing quite well. I have 33k driven miles on them and another approx. 8k miles of being flat towed and they still have quite a bit of tread left, especially for being 37” tires and somewhat of an aggressive tread design on a 6k pound vehicle.

Tread depth varied between 19/64” and 21/64” across all five.

More to follow:

 

[zmotorsports]

Continuing on:


Fluids and filters at the ready for the remainder of the major service. Engine oil & filter, transmission filter & fluid, transfer case fluid and axle gear oils all ready to be replaced in preparation for the season’s RV’ing and Jeeping.

I commenced by moving on to draining the differentials and checking wear patterns and backlash.

Beautiful looking wear patterns in both. This is the front differential.

Cover ready for reinstallation.

Surface prepped and ready for cover.

While differential fluids were draining I went through the suspension and checked fasteners as well as all of my welds. With oversized tires and the rigors of off-road travel keeping an eye out on suspension components is critical.

One area I’ve seen a lot of failures lately has been in the OEM track bar mounts. I’ve fixed about four just in the past six months alone for people. Where my track bar mount is also where my hydraulic assist steering ram mounts I pay particular attention. I replaced the Dynatrac heavy duty bracket with even a more stout bracket a couple of years ago to avoid such failures but I still check it regularly.

Next item was transmission service. I started by removing the transmission crossmember.

That made transmission pan removal much easier.

Filter removed and replaced.

Pan and bolts cleaned and reassembled.

Overall the differential fluids as well as the transmission fluid looked really good and I’m pleased with the way the GM powertrain is performing.

I prefer to debadge my vehicles and am quite selective on the stickers I do place on my vehicles, which are few. On my truck I only have a small Harley Davidson bar & shield on the rear window and on the Jeep I have my LS badge on either side of the cowl along with our local and national Jeep club stickers. On the rear glass I have a bar & shield along with a Moab and Ouray sticker.

One sticker I’ve liked to have on my Jeeps were of the coaches we owned. We had a Beaver decal in our last two Jeeps and a Monaco decal in our last Jeep when we purchased this coach. However, I’ve been unable to buy new OEM decals as they have no longer been available from Monaco. A friend of mine sent me a link to a decal company that has them so I ended up purchasing a couple for my rear quarter glasses.

They’re not the thick chrome emblem style that Monaco used to sell but they seem to be a decent quality sticker and the brushed finish looks good on the dark glass.

Thanks for looking.

Mike

 

[Bart]

Nice work as always.

 

[zmotorsports]

Nice work as always.

Thank you.

 

[zmotorsports]

The wife and I took off last week on a shake down run after all of the work I’ve done on the coach this spring. The Jeep was also itching to get off road after her major service was performed.

We’ve never wheeled in the San Rafael Swell area so we spent about 5 days exploring the area.

Overall a GREAT trip. The wife and I had a blast, met some new friends in the campground and everything ran exceptional. The coach ran perfect with no issues, no air leaks nor fuel issues after having several systems opened up over the past 4-5 weeks.

The Jeep just lumbered along the trails and does everything with grace and style. The weather was perfect and as we dropped down into many of the canyons we flipped the top back and just enjoyed the scenery of the large canyon walls and narrow washes that we drove down. Not sure if I would have dropped down into a few of those if the weather was threatening rain as they were quite narrow and nowhere to go in the event of a flash flood. Black Dragon Canyon was barely wide enough for the Jeep in several places and the walls were at least a couple of hundred feet straight up. We saw about 5 different areas that had very vibrant and detailed pictograph panels throughout our several days exploring the area and we made a lot of tracks on our Gaia mapping system for future reference.

Here are some pictures of our trip.

More pictures to follow:

 

[zmotorsports]

Continued.

Thanks for looking.

Mike

 

[zmotorsports]

The wife and I took off last week for a quick trip down to Capitol Reef NP. We stayed at a nice little RV park in Torrey, UT.

We met a few people in the campground and talked RV’s and Jeeps around the fire a couple of nights and a lot of off-road exploring during the days.

Just before heading down the switchbacks on the Burr Trail.

Looking down the switchbacks into the valley below as the road heads towards Notom.

At the top of the canyon wall on the Cathedral Valley Drive.

As we were heading home yesterday the sky just kept getting darker and darker. I was hoping to be able to get the coach washed before parking it but I thought if we could just get home and get everything parked I can pull it out of the shop and wash it during the week.

Just as we pulled up in front of our home I was unhooking the Jeep when it started to sprinkle a bury. By the time we backed the coach into the shop it turned to hail and then a torrential downpour. The wife and I stood and watched it rain for a while.

Thanks for looking.

Mike

 

[Bart]

Looks like a fun camping trip. Love the Torrey area.

 

[zmotorsports]

Thanks. Yes, it is one of ours as well. Plus the off-road scenery is great, although nothing technical.

It is "usually" not as crowded as other National Parks which is another reason we like it. Although this year was an exception as it was chaotic inside the park.

Mike

 

[RockChucker]

Thanks. Yes, it is one of ours as well. Plus the off-road scenery is great, although nothing technical.

It is "usually" not as crowded as other National Parks which is another reason we like it. Although this year was an exception as it was chaotic inside the park.

Mike

Seems everywhere outside is chaotic since the pandemic hit.

 

[Hickey]

Seems everywhere outside is chaotic since the pandemic hit.

It's certainly made my recreation property more sacred.

 

[zmotorsports]

Wednesday afternoon after arriving home from work I decided to pull the coach out of the shop and give it a bath as it was a torrential downpour when the wife and I arrived home from vacation on Sunday.

Last night I figured I would mount my new GMRS radio in the Jeep. Our national Jeep club has changed the bylaws and adopted GMRS radios as the new means for communicating at club runs, rallies and gatherings. Most of our friends have just removed their CB's and installed their new GMRS radios in their place. I have opted not to do that however, as I am keeping the CB in the Jeep and adding the GMRS. Our local Jeep club still uses CB's and I have run into a lot of situations where we meet someone in the campground or at the trailhead that has asked to join us and most have CB's rather than GMRS radios so I will have both.

I purchased a Midland MXT115 micromobile radio, a 6db NMO antenna with antenna cable as well as a set of handhelds. I think the handhelds will come in useful for spotting and we got a club discount so I purchased all at once.

I really didn't want to add another item to the interior of the Jeep but luckily the GMRS radio I purchased is quite small and compact so it doesn't take up much room at all. When the wife and I were wheeling in San Rafael Swell a few weeks ago I made a cardboard box the size of the radio I was looking to purchase and moved it around to find a location that would allow easy access yet not be in the way for either one of us. I found that on the right side of the tunnel between the dash and front of the passenger's seat my wife's left leg never encroached into the area so this is as good of spot as any.

I planned on tucking the wiring up underneath the center console but didn’t want to see the red and black wiring in that couple of inches. I removed the pins from the connector and out some abrasion coating and heat shrink over the wires.

That looks much better.

Radio installed along with a mic mount that slides under the passenger grab bar. Makes for a clean installation.

With my navigation tablet attached to my dash bar the mic will be easily reached just to the side and slightly behind the tablet.

Handheld units with padded protective case and charger.

All that is remaining is to fabricate an antenna mount on my spare tire carrier and run the cable under the carpeting forward to the radio.

Thanks for looking.

 

[zmotorsports]

Saturday morning I decided to dig out my polishing supplies and polish out my pinstriping from last fall’s South Dakota and Moab trip.




Before beginning.






Masked off fenders and trim to keep polish from embedding into the pores of the plastic.





Mid-way through the process and starting to see results.







More pics to come.

 

[zmotorsports]

All three steps completed, unmasked and wiped down. Also plastic treated with Aerospace 303 and windows cleaned.

















Not quite as good as new but pretty close, especially for being 10 years old with nearly 130k miles on the clock.

Thanks for looking.

Mike

 

[zmotorsports]

I apologize, I have a very large picture dump that will take the next several posts as I have had a long weekend of work on the Jeep. I had some routine maintenance items to do as well as a small upgrade that ended up creating a LOT of extra work that I wasn't planning on.

Jeep racked and ready to pull tires/wheels on Saturday morning.





These 37" Nitto's are wearing quite well. I now have 36,500 driven miles on them and another approx. 13k flat-towed miles behind our coach and they still have between 8/32" and 9/32" with the spare that is being rotated in having slightly more.












Here is where the modifications started as a result of what I had going on in my head. I have been running 13" limiting straps at each rear corner for the past 4 or 5 years now ever since I installed my Fox 2.0 Performance Series shocks. These shocks have about a 10.6" travel and my shocks had approx. 1.5" more travel than I have been currently running with the 13" limiting straps. I moved things about with bumpstops when I went to the 37" tires after the LS swap so now I wanted to take full advantage of the entire shock and seeing as how I had to remove the shocks to rebuild them as part of my routine maintenance, I figured now is a good a time as any to get a bit more travel out of the rear axle. I ordered some 15" KarTek limiting straps which I figured would give me what I needed after they stretch a bit.

In anticipation of this extra travel I wanted to relocate my rear brake lines that run outside of the frame rails on Jeep JK's. I have seen people catch these brake lines with their rear sway bars and tear up the brake lines on the trail so I knowing I would have a bit more travel now I wanted to address this in the shop before I had an issue on the trail. This was part of the planned maintenance I knew I would be addressing at this time so no surprise here.

You can see how the OEM chose to run the rigid brake lines along the outside of the frame rail to a mounting bracket where the flexible brake line attaches. This 1" bracket and bulkhead fitting cause the brake lines to stand proud of the frame about 1/2" creating a perfect opportunity for it to get snagged on something. I haven't had any issues and upon inspecting during full stuff and droop with the rear axle I measured clearing by about 3/8" at the tightest location.





More pics to follow.

 

[zmotorsports]

Continuing on....

Upon removing the rear shocks here is where I wanted to relocate the brake bulkhead fitting to. This will be inboard of the frame rail and be fully protected from anything that could potentially catch on the brake lines. This hole needed to be enlarged to 5/8" for the bulkhead fitting.


A Unibit was the best option for enlarging this oblong shaped hole.


Hole enlarged and ready to be deburred in preparation for some paint.


A view of the enlarged hole from the top, between the body and frame. This is also after applying some Eastwood epoxy chassis paint.


Bulkhead fitting in place with keeper. Brake fitting connected and line straightened to remain tucked inboard of the outside face of the frame but above the top of the frame.





This was the catalyst for the brake line modification. The longer limiting straps for the rear axle.


Here the passenger's side limiting strap is installed as well as the OEM brake line keeper drilled and installed into the top of the frame rail. This will prevent any vibrations of the brake line and thus eliminate the possibility of fatigue cracks at the fittings. If you looks to about the 10:00 position from the upper limiting strap bolt you can see the OEM brake line clip/keeper.




Driver's side completed in the same manner. This now gives me a full 10" of suspension travel in the rear of my Jeep.



More posts and pictures to follow.....

 

[zmotorsports]

Continuing on......

Here you can see the underside of the driver's side rear shock mount where the flexible brake line now connects to the rigid brake line.


Here is the passenger's side. Also notice there is still plenty of slack in the rear differential vent line.



Now THIS is where the project took a turn that I hadn't planned on but had to make a decision on how to move forward.

Upon now having more droop from the longer limiting straps, I test fit the shocks back into location and noticed the rear axle was now drooped out about a half inch more than I have shock travel.:tantrum2:

I thought I had planned for each contingency and measured more than enough times. However, I think the limiting straps stretched a bit more than the 1/2" I had planned on. Now what to do???????

I could either put the shorter limiting straps back on and go about my day and have the same travel I had prior, which was a decent about of travel, OR, I could take full advantage of a bit more travel and relocated my lower shock mounts further upwards. By moving the lower shock mounts upwards about an inch I could accomplish two things. First, I would be able to take full advantage of the longer limiting straps and end up having a full 10 inches of rear travel which is about the total travel limitations of the rear shocks. Secondly, by moving the shock mounts upwards would allow me to trim about an inch off of the bottom of the lower control arm mounting bracket giving me more clearance and less chance of getting it hung up on rocks. I have made contact with these lower control arm mounts on occasion but any additional clearance would definitely be beneficial.


Well, by looking at this pictures you can see what my decision was. Yep, cut the lower shock mounts off and move them up. However, even being as careful as possible to just cut the welds, this made the mount too shallow and the body of the shock eyelet now contacted the lower control arm mount and prevented the bolt to be installed properly. To correct this I would have to fabricate new shock mounts.


After mocking up some cardboard templates I began to cut some 3/16" steel plate for the mounts.


This should work to allow enough clearance to allow the shock eyelet to avoid contact with the mount as well as allow about an inch of bracket to be trimmed off.


Shock mounts welded in place.


Lower control arm trimmed and axle painted.









Still more to follow.......

 

[zmotorsports]

Final pictures of the weekend's work.

While the paint was drying on the axle I began to bleed the brakes and pull new brake fluid through my entire brake system as I do this every other year on my Jeep.


Another routing maintenance item on the list was to replace the rear brake pads. These have held up well and in 129k miles this is the second set I have replaced. I noticed they were getting a little thin during the last LOF service so I had a new set of pads sitting on the bench ready to be installed. I pay particular attention to my brakes before our annual SW Colorado Jeep gathering as the long steep grades that we must ascend to around 13k feet elevation, we also have to descend and with 1k foot plus drop-offs brakes is not something I want to worry about.


New anti-rattle clips installed with a little synthetic brake grease applied. I also pull the guide pins from the caliper brackets to clean and lube them as well. This ensures the caliper slides on the pins properly.


The synthetic brake grease I started using on my brake hardware recently. One note here, be careful how much lubricant that is applied to the brake guide pins as you don't want to apply so much that it gets into the bottom of the guide pin bore. What can happen is when the brakes get hot the extra lubricant can expand and therefore push the caliper pin outward applying pressure to one of the pads moreso than the other resulting in uneven wear as well as more heat as it is applying half the brake pads for that particular corner.


Brake caliper and pads installed and brake pedal depressed a few times to seat the pads against the rotor.


Lastly before putting tires back on I add a small bead of Torque Seal to the brake fasteners. This creates a visual indicator of the fasteners for quick checks.



Yesterday I spent about 6 hours rebuilding shocks, touching up some paint, going through the front brake components and putting everything back together as well as a detailed inspection of the chassis and powertrain in preparation for several RV/Jeep gatherings and rallies that we have coming up over the next several months.

Thanks for looking.

Mike