2017 JKU Rubicon Rhino - All Purpose Build

BigBad408

Observer
After owning a behemoth Ford Excursion and enjoying the fact that I could fit half my house in it, but liking little else about it, last January I decided to purchase a Jeep. After deciding what I wanted, a JKU Rubicon Hard Rock, Auto (wife’s requirement) 4:10, fully loaded with leather, Alpine stereo, etc I set about hunting down one in the color combo I wanted. Rhino, standard black hardtop and flares. I found exactly what I wanted to a “T” at a dealership where I had test driven several jeeps a few months prior. Drove out to the dealership and started wandering the lot. Found a sales guy and told him what I was looking for. We went and found my Jeep on the lot.. except….it had just pulled out of their shop with added wheels w/35’s, a mopar 2” lift, teraflex tire carrier, rigid cube lights on the A-pillars and a few other odds and ends. Not only did I want to start from scratch, but all the add ons with dealer mark-up pushed this Jeep out of my price range. The sales guy and I went back and forth that day for a bit, the next day I reached out to him about just ordering the same exact jeep. He knocked some more off the Jeep, the add ons and upped the offer on the trade in. I hemmed and hawed some more and he eventually brought the price of all the add ons down to cheaper than what I could buy them retail. Even though it wasn’t starting from scratch, the wheels had grown on me, the mopar 2” lift is a decent starting point and I was having a hard time justifying not buying it(read: I wanted it now), when if I went and bought all the same things on the street I would be spending 1K more. We finally got to a deal after about four days and the below pictures are the Jeep as it came home almost a year ago. Then something really awful happened. The Jeep sat. In a year I have put less than 4,000 miles on it and the first 2,000 were in the first month I owned it. Only modification I made was to add a Maximus-3 grill guard and fab a bike mount for the cargo area. It was a travesty. Oh…and it hadn’t been off road. Once. Travesty #2.

Well after a year of doing nothing….I melted my credit card on black Friday and things have started. The intent for Rhino is an all around rig. Overlanding, camping, trails, some crawling and whatever else comes along. Our last kid will be off to college in Fall of 2018 and we want to start to get away when we can. In the past year I have gone through roughly 579.5 iterations of “builds” in my head and on excel spreadsheets. I won’t attempt to tell you what all is planned….because I likely don’t know, haven’t made up my mind or will change it. Follow along and I hope you enjoy as much as I have enjoyed some of the other build threads. More to come.

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BigBad408

Observer
So the first pieces of my black Friday credit card melting session have started to arrive. Since I bought my Jeep I have felt like it doesn't track quite as straight and easy as it should at highway speeds, on our lovely Texas highways. The culprit is likely the loss of caster due to the lift and no adjustable controls arms. Control arms are in the plans...but not yet. The breaking of the damn on black Friday was a Teraflex Monster Front Track Bar and a TeraFlex Nexus EF 2.2 adjustable steering stabilizer. Both items arrived well packed and love or hate Teraflex, they do great instructions. This is an area SO MANY people fail at and I don't understand why. The Nexus stabilizer is a beautiful piece of equipment and the monster track bar is easily twice the weight of the stock bar.

The stock track bar next to the monster bar. Night and day.
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Installation was beyond simple.

Up next was the Nexus EF. Instruction were again great. If I had to knock Teraflex, one step says "pry the stock clamp off the tie rod". Now I don't know if they have 12' pry bars in their shop or the Hulk is walking around, but there was no way I was prying that clamp off. It took me 20 minutes to find my brain and a cut off wheel. If you install, cut off the stock clamp.

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One upside to the patheticness of not having taken my Jeep off road since purchasing it, is there is not dirt falling in your eyes while you're working on it. I haven't had a chance to take it for a spin with the track bar and stabilizer installed, hope to get it out tomorrow and I will update with the difference on the road.
 

BigBad408

Observer
Took it out for its first spin with the new Monster Track bar and the Nexus EF. Set the Nexus EF to "Medium" and headed to REI (because...who doesn't need something from REI?). I could feel the steering was just a touch stiffer coming out of the neighborhood. Hopped on the interstate and what a difference! It was a transformed vehicle. It was no longer busy, nervous nor required correction from every little bump, expansion joint or wind buffet. I was very impressed.

On the way back from REI I tried the "firm" setting. Pulling out of the parking lot the steering was noticably very stiff. On the interstate it was even more resistant to road feedback, but it also required more steering wheel input for corrections, even at highway speed. I don't see me using this setting unless I'm going on a LONG highway trip. It might have more value when 37's or bigger are pushing the Jeep around.

I also tried the soft setting. The soft setting was still an improvement over what it was but it was noticably nervous and busy again. I think this setting will be better when wheeling, providing a little more feedback through the wheel to the driver.

All and all I'm very happy with the purchase and I think the adjustability of the stabilizer is a worthwhile feature. Oh, and this showed up...guess it's next.
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Blue Baby Sound

A guy with a Jeep
So the first pieces of my black Friday credit card melting session have started to arrive. Since I bought my Jeep I have felt like it doesn't track quite as straight and easy as it should at highway speeds, on our lovely Texas highways. The culprit is likely the loss of caster due to the lift and no adjustable controls arms. Control arms are in the plans...but not yet. The breaking of the damn on black Friday was a Teraflex Monster Front Track Bar and a TeraFlex Nexus EF 2.2 adjustable steering stabilizer. Both items arrived well packed and love or hate Teraflex, they do great instructions. This is an area SO MANY people fail at and I don't understand why. The Nexus stabilizer is a beautiful piece of equipment and the monster track bar is easily twice the weight of the stock bar.

The stock track bar next to the monster bar. Night and day.

Installation was beyond simple.

Up next was the Nexus EF. Instruction were again great. If I had to knock Teraflex, one step says "pry the stock clamp off the tie rod". Now I don't know if they have 12' pry bars in their shop or the Hulk is walking around, but there was no way I was prying that clamp off. It took me 20 minutes to find my brain and a cut off wheel. If you install, cut off the stock clamp.



One upside to the patheticness of not having taken my Jeep off road since purchasing it, is there is not dirt falling in your eyes while you're working on it. I haven't had a chance to take it for a spin with the track bar and stabilizer installed, hope to get it out tomorrow and I will update with the difference on the road.


Looking good!!
 

BigBad408

Observer
Next on the list was the GenRight JK rear bumper. I chose GenRight for the front and rear bumpers for weight savings, or maybe weight offsetting is the correct term. The GenRight rear bumper, all hardware, including tow points weighed in at 28lbs. The stock hardrock edition bumper, tow points and hardware weighs 68lbs. I'll take saving 40lbs about as far away from the axle as you can get any time. Unlike Teraflex, GenRight's installations instructions are pretty much useless. I would have figured it out eventually but thankfully YouTube exists. Again, I don't understand why decent instructions are so hard for companies.

Right now the bumper is raw aluminum (and dirty fingerprints), I hit the tow points with hammered black as they're likely to see some abuse. When the front arrives they'll both go to powder coat. I plan on doing a full write up on the install when I re-install after powder coat. If I can help the next guy who installs, I'll have done something.

The bumper comes prepped with two 1" diameter holes for aux reverse lights that GenRight sells. I wasn't crazy about the look of the GenRight lights and added Rigid Ignite Flush Mount lights (https://www.rigidindustries.com/led-lighting/20641) to my Christmas list. I planned on opening up the existing 1" diameter holes to accept the Rigid Lights. I may have peaked into my Christmas Boxes and dug out the lights only to find out the Rigid lights are 1 3/4" deep and there is only 1 3/8" clearance between the GenRight Bumper and the frame. I'm debating on fabricating a spacer to set the lights farther out or punting for a different setup. 3/8" is a pretty big ugly block hanging off the bumper.

My front bumper is supposed to ship this week, it will be up next.

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ratled

Adventurer
Moving right along. I'm looking forward to an Ignite update as these are the ones I want to add too. I have seen some guys force a D2 but that seems a bit excessive to me

ratled
 

BigBad408

Observer
Managed to knock out the front bumper this weekend. I have to say, GenRight must have some kind of inside joke going with their instructions. They are terrible. Took almost a full day to complete and involved cutting a lot more of the frame than I really wanted to, but I'm happy with the end product. I'll install a Warn Zeon when I pull the front and rear and send them for powdercoat. Had to punt on the Rigid Ignite lights. They just weren't going to work. Nemesis Industries Odyssey front, front inner fenders and Notorious Dovetail rear flares should ship this week. If I'm lucky I will have a busy Christmas weekend installing them.
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BigBad408

Observer
Nemesis Industries Odyssey Front, Front Inner and Notorious Dovetail rear flares arrived the Friday before Christmas. I banished myself to the garage Friday evening and Saturday for the install. I did A LOT (I mean A LOT) of research regarding flares before I made my decision. What drove me to Nemesis over others was that I couldn't find a single compliant about install/manufacturing. It seemed like every other flare I considered I found numerous threads out there where install was a nightmare, the flares didn't sit flat to the sheet metal, holes didn't line up, etc. I even saw a post where the manufacturer basically said "this is trail armor, it's not meant to be pretty". Which I agree...but it shouldn't be a poorly manufactured item with no regard to quality of fitment either. The Nemesis flares are works of art. They are smartly designed and the install is well thought out. I am the first guy in the garage complaining "this is dumb...these idiots...this could have been done so much smarter..blah blah"...I couldn't with these. They're smart from top to bottom. Drilling holes in my Jeep and installing the nutserts was a little unnerving (I had never installed nutserts before), but it was a piece of cake. The finished product is gorgeous, follows the sheet metal perfect and is exactly what I wanted. At some point I am going to get better and take "in progress" photos when I do an install...but I'm usually just trying to get stuff done. Santa brought some other goodies that will be up next.
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BigBad408

Observer
So.... you gonna get it dirty yet?

I did manage to get three small pieces of dirt on the right rear tire while taking the dog for a "jeep" - see below for evidence...baby steps. Updates coming shortly, Apollointech (SPOD Knockoff),WARN Zeon 10S, license plate relo, Hi-Lift mount+Hi-Lift, CB have been installed....and Teraflex Falcon 3.3's were ordered today from the guys at krawloff-road.com.
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Darren2001

New member
Cool build! I'll definitely follow your progress. I have a 2018 JKUS in Rhino. Certainly not as cool as your Rubi though.
 

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