Capable daily driven JKU overland build

[sjstar]

Hey guys,

Well my wife got a new '16 JKU hard rock and we use it every day to carpool to and from work. Owned many jeeps since 16 but always dreamed about owning a wrangler. This build is not to make a purpose built overlanding trail rig but one that suite many needs in life. I hope some of my post will give other ideas as many of the other thread have given to me.

After a couple weeks of owning it. Took it on a weekend camping trip to a family friends ranch not far from home. We used it as a test bed for trips to come, which is always a good idea. Do a small sample run before you go out on a big adventure to see what works and what you may need to change. That challenge was fitting everything in the jeep with 2 people and 2 dogs. We had an old thule rack that we used and put the camping kitchen on. There are also many accessories to carry stuff on the back tire so maximize that. We bought a trasharoo and a bestop tire organizers that has 5 storage bags on it.

 

[sjstar]

we stopped for lunch at one of the small creak crossing and quickly realized I wanted a tailgate table. Also if you look behind my wife you will see what we are using to store all our camping stuff. Its just a plastic 3 drawer cabinet that I got at target. Barely fits in there but secures to the back of the roll cage. Worked great and easy to take in and out.


We got to camp and got all setup. We listened to the Warriors game on satellite radio but was nervous about running the battery down so on my list was to get some kind of battery gauge/alarm. We camped next to an old Spanish carrel with many old native American grinding stones around.



Successful trip and great fun but we did not down some items we wanted to change before our outing.

 

[sjstar]

In the following weeks I installed an AEV 2.5" lift and wanted to keep the stock wheels and tires for a few reasons 1) better mileage 2) would be enough for us) ease of getting the tire almost anywhere.
The lift went on great and like the handling, ground clearance and look it gave the jeep. Much more capable.


On to my next project was a flip down table. I know they make some great table but I had a bunch of sheet of 1/2" carbon fiber laying around I got from aerospace/missile company so I decided to make my own. It very rewarding to have something that no one else has and that you made it. To anyone deciding to make a drop down table through all my trials and testing I came up with using plastic wall dog that screwed into the vents on the bottom and then I screwed the piano hinge into that. Worked perfect and I didn't have to drill all those holes. Love how it came out with only two holes that I had to drill into the tailgate it could be easily taken off with no signs. Also mounted the very necessary bottle opener.


more to come.....

 

[Comanche Scott]

OK, what's wrong with this picture?
Cool Jeep, cool mods, cool dogs, and cool pictures...

Nothing at all! :beer:

Great to see you here.
Looking forward to following along with the build up.

I'm going to miss the meetup this month, but Mayne may be coming with his Rover. Should be something to see.
younglexx and I went up to The Lost Coast area. Was a pretty awesome trip. jAndyMendo has a pretty epic run coming up too. So something to think about.
I think he'll be at Starbucks this Sunday. It would be worth jumping in at some point of the run. He's a great person to hang with.
Hope to see you the third Sunday. I want to check out that killer table you built :beer:

 

[sjstar]

Wife, a friend and I spent Memorial day weekend in Grass Valley, CA so we decided to go try poker flats trail. I had a feeling we would hit some snow and there sure was still a lot of it. We hit our first patch at 5,000 feet and this trail goes up to 7,000 feet. We walked the first 50 yard section and no vehicle other than some atvs had crossed it. We decided to try going in with my buddies jeep as long as the 3 straps would let and test backing up along the way. So he got out on it and with airing down it made very little impact on the snow so we made it all the way across.


We took his jeep on to see how much worse it got. The next section was a 4' tall snow drift with a nice angle on it toward the edge of the trail. He kept going back and fort making tracks in the snow to give the mound a nice imprint for when he gunned it to go over. Success. We went across a couple other section and decided to go get my wife's rubicon. Aired down, locked both lockers, and across the snow we went.
We went a good 4 miles further and it started to go down hill with some big drifts. We decided without a winch if we could make it down this road further and had to turn around later we might not make it back up this incline so we decided to turn around. It was still a lot of fun blazing the trail in a jeep that still has the dealer plate on it. The way back that we came still managed to be a little challenge because we headed slightly up hill now. We both managed to get stuck in the same spot but good thing i brought the tracks and we had plenty of straps.


We made it back across the first snow crossing and decided to have lunch. One Xterra and one dual sport KTM come up but turned around it the sight of the snow.

 

[Mass_Mopar]

Nice, looks like you're off to a great start! Tailgate tables are definitely the way to go. That looks like a fun trail!

 

[EMrider]

Good stuff.

Mine is setup similarly.

After a couple camping trips with my two boys I can see an off road trailer in my future.

R

 

[sjstar]

- Next mods I made where to add the AEV control arm relocation brackets, Old Man Emu steering stabilizer and relocation bracket, add some lighting to the back area for camping.


- I added the relocation brackets because I wanted to give the jeep the best ride possible while being lifted and for $100 if I didn't like it I could always take it off and sell it. The install went very easy and like all AEV stuff the quality is great. All said and done I had it on in about an hour with no fighting of any kind. I cant tell too much of a difference but still happy with the product. Sorry no pics.


- Next was to move that steering stabilizer that looks very dangerously in the way and I would advise every one to move it. This product from ARB is by NO WAY a bolt on and your done product and really is a horrible product when you get it. They instructions are flat out horrible and you would be better off not looking at them for a couple reason 1. there is very little wording so you look at the pictures 2. the pictures don't even show the same product 3. the next photo they show you is a right hand drive jeep. I had to drill out the bolt hole on the axle of the jeep to fit the bolt they give you, and I had to drill out the hole on the plate they give you to fit the steering stabilizer bolt. In the end its all done and works fine but who in their right mind thought yep that all works now start selling them. If I was to do it again and this is what I would recommend is to use the stock stabilizer and all the stock hard wear. Weld a tab at a 90* angle to the axle and rebolt the stabilizer to that.



- Going camping with some buddies this weekend and need to add some lighting to the back of the jeep for when you are using the tailgate table and just general lighting. So I bought some led tape light and a led suction cup spot light off amazon
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LFPRR9Q/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HSF66JO/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1


- First I thought I would use the suction cup on the glass but the suction cup sucks and fell off after a couple minutes. So I fabricated a L bracket off the gas strut bolt and securely fastened the spot light to it. Now it is on there solid and still allow you to maneuver the light directly where you want it. The unit is usb powered so it works off 5volts so I decided to get a usb car charger device that would plug into the back cigarette lighter. The nice thing about the device is that it will sound an alarm when the car battery gets below 12 volts.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZA1E3IE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1


- I tape the adhesive tape light directly to the rear glass right next to the plastic bottom edge that way it is still out of the way but gives the best light throw. I ran the wire along the edge of the glass with adhesive wire holders. I installed a switch near the rear cigarette lighter and t tapped into that power.



- Overall I am really happy with the products and how it all turned out. My favorite mod from the is post is the lighting in the back. It is plenty of light and really should work well for camping. I will post more pics if anyone want of the lighting setup during the day so you can see the installation.

 

[JKU87]

Looks great! Your build is very similar to mine.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Jeeper4life]

Looks good so far man!

 

[sjstar]

Next to come:
-rear cargo deck with ice chest drawer slides (maybe the deck out of carbon fiber) =)
-ham radio install

 

[KillerSloth]

Looks great so far. Love the fold down table, I may have to build something similar for my LJ.

The Poker Flat trail is definitely fun. We did it a year ago (this week actually) but obviously no snow due to the drought. We stayed overnight at the campground by the creek, and continued through to La Porte the next day. The old mining towns/buildings are really cool to check out.

Here are a couple photos I got of the buildings:



The fire lookout is also amazing. They typically have someone up there manning it. When we were there, the person was super nice and let us in to show us around and explained how it all worked.

 

[sjstar]

cool thanks for the pics. Yea I will have to hit up that trail again maybe next month.

 

[sjstar]

Hey guys,

Heading out to Utah this Saturday for a week and should have some great photos when I return. The one thing I wanted to make sure I had was plenty of maps and info of places to explore in central Nevada and all over Utah. So to go along with my traditional maps, atlas, and factory GPS I downloaded MotionX onto my Ipad mini. Lots of good info out there about how to use the system off network and so I downloaded the maps for the areas where I was going that I wanted to make sure I had this GPS to go off of. After some playing around I think im somewhat knowledgeable on how to use it for the trip.

Now for mounting the Ipad. For safety reasons I wanted to stay away from the airbags so it seemed like above the radio head unit would work best for both driver and passenger. Only downside is that it does take some getting used to having it up there on the windshield but it doesn't really block much view.

I started off buying this which is supposed to hold your cellphone but I wanted to figure out a way that it could hold an ipad. The ball end on it is a little over .5" where a normal ram ball is 1".
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01B1F4BNO/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I bought this ram tablet holder and also a ball arm to get the height I would need.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B002L9LW00/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B006OQQ27E/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1

When I bought all this I didn't know the phone ball mount on the bracket was smaller so when I got it I realized it wasn't going to work right off the bat. So I got a rubber plug and slipped it over the smaller ball size to make up the difference. It worked but it was a just not as solid feeling as I would like so I came up with plan B.
I bought this little universal ball mount.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012TRIY4/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
So with a little trimming I was able to get the ram ball mounted on the base and attach the ram parts from there. Came out great looking and is very solid. The entire system looks like it came that way and I would recommend anyone looking to mount an ipad to do it this way.

 

[Tombstone17]

sjstar, I did something close to your GPS mount, but if you use the 6" clamp it would bring you tablet out further and be able to move it closer to the front of the radio. When I get a chance I will post pics of mine. My ram mount and LG8 might be a little smaller than yours. I use Gaia and FunTreks maps , what do you use?