Project Rambler: Jeep ZJ

[jonb8]

I did a grand awhile back and played around with coils, what worked the best for me was a stock ford f150 coil on the front and the original ZJ front coil in the rear, gave me around 3 inches and cleared 31's just fine. If you go any higher then that then you gotta run adjustable arms on the rear to get the axle back far enough to stay in the wheel wells. Then the rear trackbar wants to get into the gas tank...Here's a pic of it finished, stock shocks and arms, this was just a runaround jeep though...

 

[Boogey]

Long Overdue Update

So I've been slacking lately on updates. I have done a few more general maintenance and repair things so I'll sort everything and update!

 

[Boogey]

New CV shafts and Hub bearings

01/14/2017
So today I finally got the opportunity to tackle the task of replacing the bad CV shafts and decided to replace the bearings while I was there. These things were a pain in the *** to remove. It would have been much easier to do on a lift with air tools. However, I didn't have that luxury this time so I did it in a friends garage on jack stands. The first issue was getting the axle nuts off. These things were stupid tight and rightfully so. I torque was 175 ft lbs. the next issue was getting the three rusty bearing bolts off. i had to use a three foot breaker bar with a three foot cheater bar on the end to get them to come loose. I did manage to catch my jaw with the end of the cheater bar when one of them broke loose rather violently. I replaced the axle and put the new bearing in. I elected to go with Moog bearings due to the amount of lower quality bearings I've read about failing. Reassembly went smoothly. In all it took about four hours which I believe is pretty good considering book time was three hours.

I apologize for the lack of pictures during this process but i was on a pretty tight time constraint and taking pictures was my least concern at the time

 

[Boogey]

First Mileage Milestone

01/19/2017

Today was my first small milestone with the Jeep. I hit my first even one thousand which happens to be 129000 miles.

 

[Boogey]

Transmission Service and Adjustment!(fixed flairing)

01/20/2017

Recently the transmission started having a pretty pronounced flair from second to third. I thought the worst and began looking for transmissions. I decided before doing that i would try servicing and adjusting the transmission. I started by adjusting the TV cable. It helped with my shift timings but not the flairing. So in my Automatic Transmission class we were doing transmission services so I decided to do the service in class. The transmission fluid was really clean. I have a suspicion that the PO serviced the transmission himself because it had a cheap rubber gasket that was seeping and didn't have ATF +4 in it. Next was to adjust the bands. This usually gets rid of the two to three flair. There is a pretty specific procedure that you have to follow that can easily be found with a quick google search. I would suggest trying to find the factory service tool as it would be very difficult to adjust the front band without it. After that I decided to check the condition on the accumulator spring. I removed the plate and found this:

This would cause a very mushy three to four shift. It is a very common issue in the ZJs and WJs. One of my classmates did a service on his WJ and had the exact same spring failure.

I then replaced the spring, put a new filter in it, bolted the pan back up, and filled it up with fresh ATF +4.

I took it for a test drive and had no more two to three flair and the three to four shift was much firmer. Since doing the transmission service I have picked up about two miles per gallon.

 

[Boogey]

Stock Flex!

01/24/2017

Today on the way home from class I found a small embankment to stretch the old ZJ's legs for possibly the first time in her life as far as I can tell.

I was impressed for being 100% stock with sway bars still connected. I think it is a good baseline for future modifications.

 

[Boogey]

Paracord Steering Wheel Wrap

01/31/2017

Today I decided to pull off the old and ugly Harley Davidson steering wheel cover. Under it was not pretty so I began looking for a solution. I really don't like steering wheel covers because they pose a safety hazard in my opinion because they sometimes slide independent of the steering wheel while turning. So a new cover was out. I found my solution in a ten dollar one hundred foot bundle of paracord from Wally World. It only took an hour to do and looks decent in my opinion and has a ton of grip.

 

[Boogey]

Up to Date

Somewhere in there I replaced the idler pulley, tensioner and pulley, and belt. The idler pulley was bad enough it sounded like a rod knock and when I pulled it off the ball bearings all fell out.

So with that we are now up to date. I am taking a weekend trip in Indiana with my girlfriend at the beginning of March. So hopefully we will end up doing some exploring at HNF and I'll have another update. Then at the end of April I am going to try to make it to the Ohio Backroad Expedition with the Midwest Overlanders.