Walk around my XJ

all right so you asked for it so here it is this is a video on the XJ and what I've got done to it and how I use it and how I have it set up for my off-road recovery program it's kind of hard for me to do videos like this because I have no experience doing it but I hope I hope it turns out good enough that you guys don't tune out or do I love my XJ [Music] all right I don't know how to start this [Music] we're filming it they want they want to know what I've done to this yeah so we'll start up here I need you guys to realize that I am cheap and I'm lazy and so some of these things that are done to this you can tell that somebody who is cheap and lazy did it so under the hood we are bone stock as far as the engines concerned air cleaner stuff like that I do have an aftermarket water pump that was touted as being higher flow especially at idle it may be working I don't know I've got an aftermarket radiator with 33% more capacity that's once again that's how it was touted it came with three electric fans worked awesome at idle did not work on the highway so I ended up getting rid of two of them and putting a stock fan back on but I upgrade it I think it's the W J fan clutch that's supposed to kick in earlier it was kicking stronger so most of my cooling problems are handled with that and then there really nothing else and here I added these louvers these are from an early model Corvair and I was I had one of those deck lids laying around I cut these out flip them over and put them on I think they look good and they're really functional they let a lot of heat out additional training cooler on the front talking about this front bumper I built it just to put the receiver in to give me more options for that I don't need it I'm gonna redesign it sometime this summer and big surprise I may be adding a winch I don't know I'll talk more about why I don't have a winch in a minute but that's all that I've done there now I do on my own fabrication right here in this job I really enjoy engineering the fabricating we'll put this up on the lift in a minute and go over it I'll just really quick run down here the front axle is a date of 44 out of a jeep wagoneer I think like an 82 83 I think the audio on this people are really gonna complain about a little have a mic yet what are you gonna do so the long arm kit on the front is homemade I built it just out of common schedule 40 pipe [Music] front Springs are Rusties that I somebody gave me they're really soft they were set up for the weight of the Jeep if I put any more weight on them I'm going to have to get a stiffer spring rate for sure let's see I got a light bar that was salvaged off from a rental truck better show them how you attached it yeah I'm getting a lot of grief from this I just drilled holes straight down through parked it in there this is a workhorse this is not a show I needed to mount this in 15 minutes and I did these fenders are homemade fenders I traded Erik Erik Tata XJ that had these on I think he said his cousin built somewhere his cousin had him built they work great for this rear axle is near as I can tell is out of a 1968 to 70 Chevy ambulance like a station wagon ambulance it's a pretty rare axle it's a semi float Dana 66 lug it's also narrow track like so I didn't have to narrow it to make it fit you might notice the leaf springs are gone in the rear here and this up and look at this some more but I got rid of those four reasons and I'll go over those reasons to I'm not very good at this I apologize but it's a it's a wide length rear suspension it works really really good for what I needed completely eliminated my axle wrap makes it so I can clock the differential to set up my pinion angle perfectly it's it's a been a nice upgrade the rear springs I think your old man email somebody gave me had to reinforce the frame and build a spring pocket put my track bar there the rear suspension is made up of jeep wranglers suspension parts so the rod ends that I'm using in the links that I'm using are just out of a scrap pile from a four-wheel drive shop so I factory factory installed receiver it is connected better than stock I don't know what say about this great conversion kid on the rear for ten years I've got the factory power loss posi in the rear and I love it the front has a Detroit Locker I've got the worn three-quarter hop turn hubs and that's the basic platform we lifted up the stuff here's my leaf springs I took off you can see their s-shaped and and they were causing the pinyin interference problems when I win the axle drat so that's why they had to eventually go away I ran those for a long time though currently I'm running 33 Duratrax they've got about 8 pounds of air in them they pretty much stay there unless I'm driving long distances all pump them up in 20 or 25 pounds there we go the Los Angeles some sort of sports team I guess [Music] all right so up up front here does that washing out we need to shut down you all over this front suspension like I said this is out of a like an 82 Jeep Wagoneer or Grand Wagoneer so it doesn't have a disconnect right there so that's i welded all these brackets on and I'm using these this forward style bushing here I might be the first person to ever do that but it works really good and it makes it so I can adjust adjust my pinion angle the caster angle here's where I went from the metric to the SAE welded that on there sup to get a little bit longer arm here [Music] I don't know what I don't know what you guys want to see you got Springs I extended my bump stops I told when I was trying to figure out what I was gonna say here is I'd be like I made this out of metal and I made this out of rusty metal and I made that out of rusty old metal that I had laying around so I there's no place I can send you online to get any of this stuff so okay so back here I did buy these off of ebay they're just some polyurethane bushings a little heat shield on here so that the bushing won't be affected by the exhaust that stainless steel it's not pretty I know that I know that this is a this crossmember I just laid some look ii laid some 3/16 on it and plug welded it to beef it up i added an extra mount point there i did drop it about an inch I'm able to use the factory driveshaft in the front I did slide the axle forward about an inch let's see exhaust come back here this is just a your GP last pack cherry bomb it's just here because it fit nice ok so moving on the rear suspension this is all beefed up and the double play to the stack but it's all Bolton I can move this to another XJ without any cutting and then I tied it together with this Chevy crossmember which kind of fit nice and a little bit of modification makes it work Jeep Wrangler this is a control arm from there I don't know if it's front or rear I don't know but it's off a Jeep Wrangler this is just pipe these ends are off of the Jeep Wrangler - and I just cut it in half out of the length that I needed beefed it up where it needed to be beefed up you can see on the outside here the only cutting I had to do I cut the stalks leaf spring mount there so if this has room to go up in there this is an aftermarket track bar that would have been for the front of a Jeep but took that that link from the Wrangler and and this is actually both ends of opposite ends of the same rod they bolted together and are they able to weld them up there so that's how that works Dana 60 semi float factory posi in it rear springs just built these pockets there they're not pretty but they're working rear spring mounts I just had to Oh I built this for a shock mount there's a lot of work just to relocate the shocks but I needed to move them out of the way so that I could clear the track bar and the springs and all that would work so I built this and like I said it relocates oddly enough I didn't do a bar pen Eliminator after all that work so somebody can chew me out for that I don't know what you guys wanted to see I've got a slim field eliminators just the factory 231 with a slippy oak Eliminator so that's that's been working really good oh I'm using these filthy addictions mounts I've got the transmission mount and then both of the motor mounts with the stock mounts when I'd be pulling hard my whole engine would shift forward and punch my radiator never made a hole but it did you could see where the family's kissing the radiator I switched to these filthy addiction polyurethane they transfer a lot of vibration into the Jeep but my motor doesn't move at all so it's been the worthwhile upgrade happy within you know it frustrated a lot of you to watch me fabricate because I don't really measure things I just kind of put them and do it and it ends up working good I don't I don't know house this better how would you despair that right frustrating or incredibly but it always works no matter what that's why they call you junkie yeah in my other life I'm called junkie so to have a little bit in demolition derby for a while and stuff that would never work for anybody always works for you right I've got an adjustable proportioning valve bought that from Summit put it in was able to adjust it before when I put those disc brakes on I had too much braking bias to the rear and I had to put that in to tone it down a little bit so I'm gonna replace these bushings with Johnny joints cuz I don't have a lot of articulation in the rear right now and I don't need a ton but I need more than I've got just to make the ride smoother so I'll leave the rubber bushings here and here and then here on the Y link I'll put a Johnny joint right there so the frame stiffeners are on the bottom on the side of the frame they go around there [Music] boy I'm bad at this and then one little one up on the inside that goes up put this on there so that I can get my fluid level up to the right level even though there's a the differentials cocked back rock crawlers are probably gonna cringe at that but I gotta hit it on something to break it off so there's a couple things I mentioned I would talk about later one of them was the winch why don't I have a winch the number one reason I don't have a winch as I never need it and it's a weight penalty for me I'm thinking about adding a permanent winch to the front when I redesigned the front bumper I'm gonna be going up to 35 inch tires and so I figured that the larger tire for floatation will cancel out the added weight of the winch up there and if I redesign the bumper I might be able to add the winch without actually gaining a bunch of weight because I can get rid of rid of a lot of that front bumper and it's cantilever it out there pretty Park so that's something that's coming in the future but talking about weight weight is super important to me for what I do I just need to be able to float on top of stuff so anyway I hope you liked the video I can do some more updates as it changes those of you that own jeeps or other project cars know that they're constantly evolving it's not going to be the same next year as it was this year when I when things break or or I could see some things to be changed all upgraded as I need it okay so I hope that answered most of your questions about the Jeep and how its setup and why it's setup the way it is and I really appreciate you guys tuning in and watching there's the cameraman [Music]

Channel: Matt's Off Road Recovery

Views: 778,499

Keywords: XJ, Jeep, Lockers, Modifications, Lift, Lifted, jeep cherokee, jeep cherokee (xj) (automobile model)

Id: W1LmP25f4aE

Length: 16min 2sec (962 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 23 2019