El Jeepe!

[AgentOrange76]

Camper flex




I just let it putz down our half mile driveway in low 1. Turns out El Jeepe doesn't like towing things. If you so much as look at something that resembles a hill she wants 3rd or else. And the Jeep does a little bit of the humpy dance going down the freeway. Gotta love that short wheelbase and 3.07 gears :smiley_drive:

 

[AgentOrange76]

So here's an update on the progress of the camper. First it got pressure washed and everything was taken out and cleaned. We re-glued all the trim on the tables and cabinets and fixed a small water leak. Now for the big stuff-the front fascia! A bear busted the old one out and thankfully there was no water damage after it got stranded in Tennessee. This is the first time I've really fabricated anything so there's some stuff that's not perfect but overall I'm very happy with it!

Old broken plastic fascia off



First we framed in support for the back




There were some real funky angles and a couple cuts were a little messy but its solid.

Next on went the plywood backing



And then we sheathed it in stainless steel and finished the edges with aluminum angle iron. Airstream pop-up!




I hope to have it out this weekend, I'll upload some better pictures then!

 

[Nomad_Romeo]

Great thread and nice to see other TJ's on this board. Subscribed!

 

[AgentOrange76]

Thanks Nomad! I love her to death and I've always sworn this will be the newest Jeep I'll ever own haha.

This thread is gonna be slow for a bit as I just moved back to college and with classes and marching band and all that jazz I won't be doing too much with the Jeep. I did fit 4 totes worth of camping gear and dorm stuff in the Jeep and the only stuff I couldn't fit was shared stuff which I liberated some space in my roomie's tundra for. Nice to know I can be independent in the with all my stuff in such a small platform. I even managed to keep the back seat in, which is good cause I've already used it. Out here its hotter'n a hoochie coochie with heat indexes hitting 108 for the past week. My brother is at App State and his highs are cooler than our lows....man I miss my mountains.... Hopefully as I get into the swing of things I'll be joining the Offroad Club at NC State, so I'm pretty jacked for that and I'll keep y'all posted. The Jeep did great on the highway all the way here, the new top is so quiet and I could actually listen to the radio and maintain cb comms at 70, and my speedo is only about 3 mph off at those speeds. I was very happy with it.

Unfortunately I didn't get the camper out like I had hoped, but we did get in one last day trip in before I left and got my brother's Power Ram out for the first time. This is out in DuPont, it was pretty sloppy with all the rain we've had.





Before I left we installed most of a new exhaust system on Fluffy. That's my Dad's '05 Dakota, we call her that cause we went out looking for a work truck back in '07 to use, but we came across an absolute steal on CarMax for this baby with only 1500 miles on it fully loaded, so we couldn't pass it up and ended up with a princess truck instead. Its a great truck, wouldn't mind picking one up but with a 6 speed. We've had it on 3 wheels clawing up our cabin road and its still by far the best driving vehicle we have. It had a real bad manifold leak and sounded like a tractor, so we threw on a flowmaster 50 with duals and had the manifold machined and the gasket replaced by the same guy that did my brother's El Camino for a great price. There was also a sweet sleeper Nova wagon (I'm an absolute sucker for wagons) with a big block there, a sweet El Camino, and a '49 Ford pickup with Jaguar suspension underneath.

 

[AgentOrange76]

Time for a long overdue update! School is kicking my butt and keeping me awful busy but I have found time between games and never ending work to get out and do a couple daytrips. Its all I can afford as I'm drowning in work; I have more stuff to do this semester than the last two combined....

Anyways onto the good stuff! Over Labor day weekend I was able to get home and back in the mountains and I took ol' Orange out for a cruise. The weather was absolutely perfect and got even better the more I climbed. I was kinda sketched about bringing it up to the parkway since the brakes have been acting up lately but it was going great and the weather was just too perfect. I forgot how much fun that thing is to drive, I love it so much. Its such a riot with the windshield down, man I need a CJ so badly.....Anyway she ran like a champ all day even over 6000 ft and its a hill climb BEAST at about 40 in 3rd gear....what I would do for that kind of power in the blue Jeep......gosh I love that little Jeep so much. As you can tell I had a blast and here's a couple pictures I took. I wish I had gotten more but the sky looked foreboding on the way back so I decided to not lally-gag. I ran one of my favorite trails and this was the first time I'd driven Orange off road save the cabin. Man this thing hauls the mail in low range!!! Holy crap it boogies! Man that was so much fun sawin at the wheel bouncing all over the place! I swear that thing was just hopping all the rocks instead of driving over them! Only time I've had more fun in a vehicle was my buddie's rusty ol' Toyota pickup. This one time we had just put a new carb in and decided to take it to town to go get pizza. Well, the carb was defective and there was about 4 inches of dead travel in the middle of the gas pedal so if it wasn't downhill you had to floor it and dump the clutch to make it go anywhere and then it would hop and bounce, almost die and then it would hammer about 4 grand and you could bang it through the gears. Well, at least to 3rd cause that was the last gear you could put power down in. Well, we decided it would be smart to go drive downtown in the thing, so we yanked the doors off and hopped in the bed and off we went! That thing must've been about 4 colors by then and half the bed was missing to boot, it was actually the biggest pile in the world. Well, come downtown we get stopped on all these hills and this thing doesn't have the power to move so we put that baby in low range and went bangin through gears like a big rig all through downtown.....ah man those were the good times. we were the biggest rednecks in the county that day, between that old pile and us whoopin and hollerin.

Anyways I diverge! Here's a couple pictures!



Notice the visors folded back, gotta live that mpg life :********:

 

[AgentOrange76]

So driving that thing was an absolute riot to drive and the mountains were just what I needed. Everyone loved the Jeep too, almost everyone on the trail struck up a conversation about it or at least had a comment. met a lot of really friendly folks out there. I also stopped at the same overlook (Pink Beds) and took a picture over the hood of orange just like the one I took of the blue Jeep a year ago.



Speaking of the Blue Jeep I took her out for her maiden voyage at Uwharrie last week and had a blast. It was awesome to pull the doors off and go spend a day in the woods. We also had everyone rubber necking as we hauled the doors down the dorm hall to our room :********:

There was hardly anyone there so I decided to be a little adventurous and try a little harder trail (trail 90, marked "difficult" on the map I have) reasoning if I came to something nasty I'd be able to turn around easily or even winch. There was one pretty nasty obstacle with a bunch of loose rock on a real steep grade and a couple wallowed out holes to twist it up it wasn't happy about, but after my Toyota fanboy making fun of me and a couple different lines the Jeep chugged right up. Was super impressed with it. That's also the first time I've had the KO2s out and they were beastly. Also, I'm going to take a moment to rage about rough country's swaybar disconnects......AGAIN. Yes, they broke, again. Same side different part. And I used red locktite the second time around.....the stuff that doesn't ever come off....ever... So thanks to them I am once again driving without a swaybar, but this time I'm 4 hours from home. Piles of crap. 10/10 would not recommend.





Pieces of junk...



Was feeling artsy, wish I knew how to rotate it.

 

[AgentOrange76]

Other general non-relevant shenanigans- Went to go see Zac Brown Band in Charlotte...with no swaybar lol. They were amazing, they were my favorite band and they're just as good if not better live. 10/10 would reccomend. The water pump on my brother's truck went out on Labor day, the day he too had to drive back so we jammed on that to get it goin again. Oh and El Jeepe had to rescue my buddies Tundra. It was just a bad battery but I had to rub it in because he firmly believes anything other than Toyotas are not worth owning because they're unreliable.

I think y'all will appreciate my dorm room



Also I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of a flag bearing a remarkable resemblance to my front license plate hanging in our window or the decoration of our walls with papers victim of small holes caused by the penetration of high velocity projectiles.

Speaking of that, this is my new friend. I'll be getting my conceal carry in less than a year and now I have something to carry! Its the LCP Custom and it was on sale for $219 :Wow1: Its not what I was looking to buy, but you cant not at that price......and I'm a small dude so this is gonna be perfect and it feels great in my hand. Really happy with it.



And of course GAME DAYS



Also someone please talk me out of buying a 78 Toyota pickup.......
I'll throw up a picture when I get it on my computer.

 

[SilicaRich]

I recommend you check out JKS's Quick Discos to replace the Rough Country discos. Easy installation and I have only heard good things about them. The one time I had them out, they performed flawlessly.

 

[AgentOrange76]

I learned my lesson for sure with the cheap discos. I ended up paying almost as much as I would have for the good stuff for junk after after going through two sets (having to replace the broken one the first time) I too have heard nothing but good things about the jks discos, good to hear the same from you. I will definitely be ordering some as I feel extremely lucky neither of the failures caused punctures or other damages. These things have definitely taught me to not always do the cheapest option and do things right the first time. I also would like to (as funds allow) make any replacement part an upgrade. The quick discos were an upgrade from the (also broken) factory links but now I know to just spend the money to do it right instead of spending the same amount twice on junk. I also considered going to an antirock but can't justify or swing the price difference between it and quality disconnects.

My next thing to sort out is why it's so down on power right now. It tripped a code a while back for an "intermittent slow reporting oxygen sensor" and I was like, nah, I'm not gonna replace something that sometimes doesn't work all the way, so I let it be. The light always went off whenever I drive off road, like the Jeep just knew and was happy, but it always came back on after a few days. It hasn't been on for a few months now but occasionally the Jeep will just get really tired and down on power and get terrible mileage, especially a ways into long trips. Not sure if O2 sensor fixed itself or check engine light also broke......hmmmmm..... Considering changing O2 sensors and maybe plugs and wires too, even though they only have 20 or 30k on them and seeing if that makes things better. Also read somewhere that 4.0s run lean and therefore hot from the factory and this can cause the headers to crack, causing O2 sensors to poop themselves so when I find some time I'll be investigating that too. The entire block is also wet, that is to say the mud covering it is darker than the mud covering everything else under the hood. Not sure what the deal is there, it doesn't burn, drip or lose oil. I know the 2000 model years had some head issues but who knows. ....head gasket would explain power loss right? It seems to go pretty good, it's all just little things that I would like to not have present haha.

Other things I would like. I would like it if I got a new transmission. Ever since the mud it's not the same. Much better after 3 fluid changes and no more mud inside, but you can't bang through gears like you could, you have to shift real slow, sometimes slow enough you have to rev match to UPshift... Oh and it would be lovely if first gear would stay in.....that would be fantastic actually. I would like to put cruise control on it. I'll have to see how expensive and involved it would be. I need wheels so I stop rubbing everything when I turn off road and to keep the spare from being crammed against the tailgate. Would really like to get 5 spoke steelies with 4.5" backspacing (as little as i can get away with and not rub) but those don't seem to exist for some reason. I want a 102" whip so I can be done messing with stupid antennas. I'm really excited for the morryde carrier to come out so I can put the HiLift back there and make folding the windshield down easier. And I'd like a compressor of some sort to air down tires. Oh and if I could fix my parking brake that would be lovely. One last thing, if my professors would stop bombing me with homework that would be great . I think that about does it. I am of course open to anything and all comments and suggestions and critiques, ect. I love this place and the people on it, there's a reason I spend all my time here instead of on the Jeep forum haha

 

[SilicaRich]

You might just need to do a rebuild on the transmission. You might have completely trashed your synchros and maybe damaged the assembly when all the mud wasn't out, also make sure you are running the recommended gear oil. I know those 5 speeds can be extremely finicky if they don't have their Redline MTL.

I refuse to say anything bad about Currie's Anti Rocks besides the fact I am unable to run them. If you have plans for a big full width bumper (Ex. ARB), make sure the design doesn't compromise the installation of Anti Rocks. The big thing those have over just about any disco is that they are bulletproof and are a one and done setting.

Early model TJs (1999-00?) were prone to a cracked manifold so check up on that, that could potentially be a culprit for bad gas milage. On the O2 sensors, make sure you only replace with NGK. Chrysler being Chrysler, TJs are stupid picky on their sensors. As for gas milage, good luck. I've been fighting the same battle for 2 years and can't solve it. Looking to go back to a stock air box and even potentially take my chances with Super Chips Trail Dash Programmer. You might want to consider 3.75" rather than 4.5" backspacing, it'll open up more rim options and actually is considered the optimum backspacing for TJs in most situations (that being said my current back spacing is around 4.5" but I don't rub so I have no worries)

 

[AgentOrange76]

I got a quote from a shop for rebuilding the tranny and it was a couple of grand since it's the newer, more complicated New Venture unit (NV3550). For a thousand bucks I can get a remanufactured one and slap it in in my garage. Was tempted for the longest time to slap a 6 speed in it but the Jeep forum folks were real helpful and takes me out of it. Plus it would likely nickel and dime me. Right now I've got synchromesh in it, and it helped the not wanting to go into second when it was cold before I sunk it in the mud. 3 changes later all the mud is fone, but like you said, I think the synchros have had enough.

Yeah, I really like the just one and done simplicity of the antirock, it's just so expensive. ..... I just don't want to cheap out and buy discos if I'm just going to end up having to go the antirock line at some point anyway. I also like the I can go full mallcrawler whenever I want haha. I don't plan to do anything with bumpers for a long while and I prefer the look of the mid width ones (extreme terrain comes to mind, at least in terms of style). I feel like there's other stuff I could address long before bumpers. That's good to know the compatibility issues though, I wasn't aware of that. Thanks!

In terms of gas milage I really can't complain. With stock 3.07 gears I get an average of between 16.9-17.5 per tank. All of those averages were taken from a combo of mostly backroads with interstate, gravel and low range trail driving mixed in. And thats all in the mountains too. It's just that sometimes it likes to drink more than a quarter tank in less than half an hour on the freeway and go no faster than 65 while doing it. She just gets cranky sometimes I suppose. When i go home over Christmas I need to degrease the whole engine bay and check out all those things you mentioned. And definitely sounds like itcan be picky with parts so I'll do some research and make sure the parts store gives me the stuff to make it happy. NGK it is.

As for the wheels I love the look of tall skinny tires and the Jeep to be as narrow as possible. If I ever to to 33s they'll be 10.5s too. I would love it I I could dump the flares and suck the tires under the tub like the CJs are. But alas, no suck luck. 4.5 seems the least I can get away with so that's what I'm hoping to find some 5 spoke steelies in. My grandfather had 3.75" on his wheels and just looks a little squatier than I would like mine to look. With that being said I'm not closing off that option. Also, your Jeep looks amazing and if mine looks half that good I'm set haha. Thanks for the confirmation 4.5" doesn't rub!

 

[SilicaRich]

In terms of gas milage I really can't complain. With stock 3.07 gears I get an average of between 16.9-17.5 per tank. All of those averages were taken from a combo of mostly backroads with interstate, gravel and low range trail driving mixed in. And thats all in the mountains too. It's just that sometimes it likes to drink more than a quarter tank in less than half an hour on the freeway and go no faster than 65 while doing it. She just gets cranky sometimes I suppose. When i go home over Christmas I need to degrease the whole engine bay and check out all those things you mentioned. And definitely sounds like itcan be picky with parts so I'll do some research and make sure the parts store gives me the stuff to make it happy. NGK it is.

As for the wheels I love the look of tall skinny tires and the Jeep to be as narrow as possible. If I ever to to 33s they'll be 10.5s too. I would love it I I could dump the flares and suck the tires under the tub like the CJs are. But alas, no suck luck. 4.5 seems the least I can get away with so that's what I'm hoping to find some 5 spoke steelies in. My grandfather had 3.75" on his wheels and just looks a little squatier than I would like mine to look. With that being said I'm not closing off that option. Also, your Jeep looks amazing and if mine looks half that good I'm set haha. Thanks for the confirmation 4.5" doesn't rub!

Allow me to correct myself! I meant NTK, I get the two mixed up because of how close the names are. Lol I don't even think NGK makes any O2 sensors.

Allow me to correct myself again, my rims were 5.5 backspacing, needed an adapter plate (1.25") so it dropped it down to 4.25 backspacing. I'm also on a lift so that may play a factor too.
Really old photo but it might help. That's back when I ran 33"x10.5"R15 KOs on 15"x8" Alloys with 3.75 backspacing. I think the tires stuck out maybe 1-1.5" beyond the flares. Then again I'm unclear of whether or not the accusation that Rubicons had flares wider than stock is true so it could be deceiving. The only real reason I recommend looking at 3.75 versus 4.5 is due availability. 3.75 has a HUGE selection

On the gas milage, I would be jumping for joy if I even got 14. Currently getting about 8 around town because Fayetteville is so darn hilly, I normally get 12 on the highway.

 

[AgentOrange76]

You can tell I haven't researched it all based on how readily I agreed with you haha.

As for wheels, I really want the Jeep to be as narrow as possible. I already hacked my fenders so there's already a little width missing from them. I ran no fenders for a while and got absolutely covered in mud every time I went out, and forget driving in the rain with no windows haha. Here's a picture of my grandfather's wheel on my Jeep, not the greatest but it kinda shows how far it sticks out. Not sure I want it out that far. His are 3.75" bs.



Another option I have getting spacers and running his old wheels (see older pictures) but at that point its about as much to get steeliest. There's a set of 5 bullet hole pro comps for $279, but they only have gloss black in 4.5" bs.

Also, stop tempting me with your amazing Jeep, I want it haha. Looks great dude, and that's helpful for the backspacing too.



I really hate to throw this into the mix of all the other things going on this thread right now but someone has to talk me out of this. My folks went to the flea market last weekend and there was an older gentleman selling an old '78 Toyota pickup. I've never been a huge Toyota fan but I really dig the older ones, especially with the round headlights (pre '83?) Its a little 2wd 4 banger with the 20r, not sure if it's a 4 or 5 speed. Comes with an extra head. I dig the super cool bed cleats and tailgate latches and the twin lights, truck just has a lot of character. The guy really wants to sell it as a whole truck to someone who would drive it around and not part it out, which is what all his previous offers were for. He seemed to really like my folks and I guess he liked what he heard about me and told us he would cut us a deal. It runs and drives, dad drove it around the lot, fired right up. He loved how me and my buddies always talked on CBs and told them all about the one he has in the truck. And here's the kicker, he wants to sell it to me for $900. Here she is.




I really don't need another vehicle, especially being away at school, and this means whatever funds I had in reserve for the blue Jeep would be pretty much dried up, so nothing could break haha. I know this is the Jeep section, but I don't wanna bug the Toyota guys with something that may or may not happen. It would be really cool to get this and drive it around for this dude. Someone talk me out of it cause I want it haha

 

[unkamonkey]

I'm not sure about the '78 Toyota pickups but the '79 2x4s kicked butt on the hills. A friend used to deliver soil samples from Vail to Denver a few times a week. It was a personal challenge for him to see how fast he could do the trip. The one you posted looks to be in great shape.

 

[AgentOrange76]

That's an awesome story! I too live in the hills, so I bet this thing would be a blast to carve up some corners in. It really does look to be in good shape, the guy selling it has had it for the past 20 years. There's some rust in the bed and a little in the rocker, but the only real cause for concern is he said it had some frame rust. All in all it looks like a solid little truck for the price. I don't know much about early Toyotas, my buddy had an '87 that was a real piece of work and another of my friends now owns it and is restoring it, but that truck is 10 years newer haha. I'm debating starting a thread somewhere to learn more about it but for now I'm just going to see what I can learn about them here! Thanks for sharing, I'm a sucker for cool old stuff and stories, I should've been a history major haha