Turning a $200 Jeep XJ into a Service Truck! (Beater with a Heater)

[Applause] [Music] so yeah all right welcome back to diesel creek my name is matt this beautiful gem behind me here is my 200 beater with a heater it's a 99 jeep cherokee uh also known as an xj as some of you may have seen on my instagram at diesel creek my blue f-350 truck was on the trailer that's not a good sign ended up not being a bad breakdown at all the ac pump locked up and just wouldn't allow the engine to crank over fast enough to start so we dodged a bullet there i got it over at the shop right now because i don't have the fancy ac gizmos to do all that uh freon work and whatnot anyways it's getting fixed a guy trust to do all that stuff had quite a backlog of stuff so i've been working out of the old jeep xj as a service truck for about a week now now i should have my truck back at any time now so i carry around a lot of tools in my truck and it was imperative that i still have access to tools and be able to drive around to my job sites and machinery and have all my tools with me to work on stuff which the old xj's really coming through in that department she's been pretty reliable and it's actually pretty nice to work out of a smaller vehicle like this i can get around into tight places pretty well the only downside is i don't have a fuel tank on this setup but i can live without that sometimes the tools are all in there anyways with so many tools jammed in the rear end of this thing you can kind of tell she's sitting pretty low in the rear here in fact the tires are actually up past the fender they're really close to bottoming out you might be able to tell the leaf springs they're bent negative in a big way and that's uh that's not good the slightest bump right now with all this weight in here will max out the rear suspension and hit the bump stops it does it quite a bit in fact i can probably just jump on the rear end here yeah that that maxes her out she's got about three inches of travel left before it hits the bump stops so in the back here i bought me a used pack rat weather guard toolbox here and this thing has been great i don't have a hundred percent of my tools in here but i have probably 90 of the tools that i use often in here and it's been nice so between that box and then this one real nice guy bought this thing off he threw this one in for free and i got all my other stuff in here i didn't spend a whole lot of time organizing this stuff because i didn't think i would be in it this long but you see how these drawers are all just open and on their own that's because pretty much no matter where you park when the suspension's this low it's angled downhill so all the boxes just want to open so i got that stuff there this side i got antifreeze first aid kit hydraulic oil all my fluids and chemicals welding helmets more fluids and chemical stash back there some parts i'm installing right there this side i got my grease gun some more parts that need installed there three-quarter impact it's all in here and i actually have grown to really like working out of this thing because you're not having to look you're not having to reach up real high and look down into the toolboxes it's all right nice and low where you can see it easy but something's got to be done about this suspension popped on the old al gore machine there and found the airlift company i have no affiliation with these guys but i know that they've been making air ride kits for a long long time and i found this guy which should remedy all of our problems so basically what we're going to do is install these air springs in here and that will just lift that rear end of the jeep back up to uh leveling and we should be ready to giddy up down the road with all that weight in the rear that it pulls it around just fine i mean to drive it you almost can't tell that there's that much weight in the vehicle with you uh it's just you know because you're staring up at the sky is the only real reason you notice it so i'm pretty excited uh the rear suspension this jeep has been weak since i got it they're it's a 1999 i'm i'm pretty sure they're the original springs so they weren't exactly in stellar shape to begin with and then you put all this extra weight and they're really just crying for help so let's give them some help today i've never installed one of these kits we'll see how this goes exhaust clearance modification yeah i have a sawzall anyways we got this thing here it's got some air lines in it i see some quick connects in there a couple nuts and bolts maybe a heat shield we've got some heavy duty brackets here i assume those mount the air bags nuts and bolts u-bolts here and of course two of the actual air bags here a little bit smaller than i thought they'd be but what do i know let's see if i can't throw the directions in the garbage and figure this out for myself that's what i'm talking about i want that thing to ride like this oh yeah these poor little anemic springs actually they may have been replaced at one time they don't they're not as rusty as the rest of the vehicle and they have this jrs name on the springs so i don't know i'm not a jeep expert apparently we've had a couple good bumps here where the suspension actually did come up and contact the body of the vehicle that's not good that's that's bottomed out all right now as i said a bit ago there i've never done this before so don't really look to this for a how-to video i'm just kind of figuring this out as i go and there's a good chance i'm going to screw it up because it's actually a bit more complicated than i first thought it would be but uh i've got the vehicle you know kind of loaded to where it should be riding at that's what's important here because you have to get this bracket and everything to clearance with the suspension compressed like it was you'd never be able to do this this is an installation tool this comes out this just helps you align everything but basically we're just mocking everything up i got this u-bolt i just sat on here and we're going to go ahead and throw the brackets on it loosely clamp it down there all right so this all situates sort of like so here i'm gonna clamp that u-bolt down here now the installation tool is all in place correctly and you got this big slotted thing here so that you can push the tool over and that's gonna align everything that's gonna be the center of your airbag after you get it mounted but the bracket fits in the frame area well now we're gonna drill some holes and then they have self-tapping bolts which is kind of scary to be bolting something like this to your frame with but they got self-tapping bolts that should work just fine to hold that bracket on all right i guess now we're supposed to center punch and drill out the lower mounting hole here on the frame it's a little tough to uh get everything centered the best thing to do would be if you had the 3 8 transfer punch which has like a shoulder and then a small tip at the end of it so it would fit perfectly in the center of this bolt hole [Music] oh we're committed now we're drilling holes in the frame there we go all right so we just put that bolt in right there as a placeholder basically from what i'm understanding now we're going to drill out the second hole here i'll make sure i center punch it first [Music] that's how you're supposed to do that get this tool up and out of the way now maybe we gotta drill these two holes clear through right now which is a little tough to do try to make sure we're straight here best we can [Music] all right i don't know why the directions tell you to do it like this i would uh if it were me i would have drilled all four holes while i had that installation tool in there but i got this little lip hanging down here i might have to trim that a bit make it easier to drill these holes through because i don't have a super long drill bit all right so to drill this last hole i would need a really long drill bit to get clear through the frame because i'm hitting up here but what i can do i just cut a little notch out of this this is like a one inch flange that hangs down here this isn't in your installation manual we've got clearance clearance [Music] ta-da we should be ready to mount this bad boy up [Music] all right as you can tell we have our brackets mounted in here now the way they're supposed to be um we do have the issue of this exhaust here that's in the way and we can't let that get real near the air bag otherwise the heat from the exhaust will rupture the air bag i had to modify it a bit from their uh directions but what are you gonna do this well i finally got that stinking heat shield put on here hopefully that thing works now we gotta collapse this thing i guess while getting it started on this bolt should be fun all right well we got that thing threaded on there at least it seems like all right kit says to leave that bolt loose for now got to install this plastic jam nut they're calling it a powell nut that holds the top of the airbag in i guess instructions say to tighten this plastic jam nut up to 15 foot pounds so uh click next thing we got to install this little uh quick connect air fitting in the top of the thing it already has thread sealant on it all right so i haven't decided where we're gonna route our air hose to inflate these things to yet so uh we will come back to the airline instructions i'm gonna go ahead and buzz the whole bracket and everything on to the other side and uh yeah should be a good time all right we got the uh air inflation hose here it says to cut it into equal lengths with a razor knife done all right i think right here is going to be a good place for us to have our air inflation valve there's easy access behind it to route the line right up to the airbag so we should be should be golden i'm not going to drill in the spot weld here i'm going to drill kind of right up here next to it [Music] nothing i have is sharp and 5 16 nothing so all right now we got about six feet too much air hose here we'll go ahead and cut this off and should be able to plug it in and inflate that bag here we go these quick connects are super imp super simple you just got to make sure you have a nice square flat cut across your uh your line there and then it just shoves right in here and you'll feel it click and that's it there you go should be all we need all right now the last thing it says to do is go ahead and inflate the bag up to 10 psi check for leaks and we still have this bolt loose on the bottom so we have to check our alignments and everything with pressure in the bag ready holy crap that went up super quick i barely touched the air thing to it i have 36 psi in there whoops let's bleed some of that off there we go nine psi that's a little better i'd say our alignment looks pretty good hard to get your head in there and actually see if everything's square copacetic i think that looks good go ahead and tighten down this bottom bolt now all right i believe this side's done let's go ahead and get that other side [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right let's hit this thing with some air how about that right where it's supposed to be everything looks copacetic i think we can go ahead and tighten up our lower bolt there and we are ready to throw the wheels back on this thing and hit the road [Music] all right this is it go ahead and lower this thing down onto the airbags for the first time i'm pretty excited all right we're ready to drop this thing down for the first time but we have to keep in mind that i only have 10 psi in each bag right now so it might still set fairly low and then we'll have to inflate it i think the max in these airbags is 100 psi so i'm sure we can get the lift out of it we want and then some all right this that 10 psi helped a heck of a lot we're sitting just about level maybe just squatted just a hair still i'm gonna go ahead and bump these up to like uh 15 or 20 psi i'll put 15 in and see where we get all right that's 21 psi in each bag it's really hard to take these things up in slow increments i mean i just one time as quick as i could basically on the schrader valve and it was 36 psi my buddy has these on his rig he said the same thing he said i inflate mine with a bicycle pump and i thought he was uh being a little uh over dramatic but no he's he's right it's a small cylinder you're filling up with air so it really doesn't take much volume to get a lot of pressure in there all right time for a first ride in this pig oh yeah it's nice to be able to sit here and not look up the sky anymore oh yeah this is way more gooder guys now the actual like suspension shocks are probably already shot i'm really not that concerned but if i was concerned about ride quality i'd probably replace those two because it feels slightly springy right now and i think that's probably because the shocks are no bueno oh this thing is great with with so much weight on it before when i would hit the gas and really gas it the rear end would just squat so much it was unbelievable i mean you'd be looking at the sky cruising down four lane highway here running about 60 i can't believe how nice this thing rides now i mean i didn't know how bad it was i mean this is riding better now with all this weight in here than it was prior to the airbags with no weight i mean this is this is crazy there's a hard acceleration the rear end didn't squat down like it used to riding nice we're actually sitting up high you feel comfortable you know felt like i was in a low rider before the hitch before the airbags with all the weight in it the hitch was only about like six or eight inches off the ground it was it was getting pretty bad [Laughter] so [Music] [Music] i'd call that a successful test rod guys that air suspension really impresses me again i'm not affiliated with that company in any way shape or form as far as i know they've never even heard of me but i really say i'll really say that that was a well thought out kit the directions were pretty clear they had updated the design they included revisions in the directions of you know things to do and don't and it all went pretty smooth the kit claims you could do that yourself in two and a half hours i'd say without having done one before it's going to take you a little longer but uh definitely would have helped to have a lift and a real shop to do things in you guys see i just kind of work out here in the elements wherever i'm at so i got some more work to do with this thing but the jeep is out here my new service truck and again i actually kind of like working out of the jeep and i might keep doing it for a little while yet which surprises the crap out of me because i thought this was going to be miserable but it's even better now because the tailgate's actually up here where i only have to bend down sort of slightly before it was like down here and i'd have to come in crouch into my tool box now not as bad not as bad at all i did up the airbags to 30 psi everything is uh riding really good right now it's sitting really good i like it i'm very happy with it all right i guess we're gonna have to call at the end of this video guys as far as i'm concerned great success uh it was very easy i didn't have any air leaks to deal with or anything and everything seems to be working out great as always guys if you liked the video don't forget to give it a big old thumbs up it really helps the channel out and doesn't cost you guys a thing if you're not already be sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future videos and if you're looking for any diesel creek merch don't forget you can get over to the store at dieselcreek.com and pick yourself up some cool stuff there we got hats t-shirts mugs stickers all kind of good stuff but that's it for me thanks for watching guys i'll catch you on the next one later [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: Diesel Creek

Views: 358,484

Keywords: Air, life, bag, shocks, Suspension, jeep, xj, wrangler, lift, air ride, upgrade, diy, lift kit, installation

Id: i1DMjlrEnkU

Length: 27min 35sec (1655 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 17 2021