Average TJ Build

Repainted the bumper and got the new lights in and wired as reverse and switchable for rear trail lights. Learned something important on accident. If you're driving your Jeep Wrangler and when you use the brakes or your turn signal and your running lights come on, you've made this mistake:



You put the wrong lightbulb in the wrong spot. Face palm.

Quick fix though.
 
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BobNH

Member
Lol, nce catch, and really great work so far. Those simple electric bugs are the best. Took me a week and a bulb to figure out why my third brake light wouldnt come on. I fot to tracing the wiring, saw it goes to the two metal contacts on the tailgate, and realized where those to contacts hit the tub, I had a blanket covering them. D'oh!

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Gave it a shake down run. 150 miles on engine rebuild so far no issues.





And look what found its way into my trunk ;)




And this is what happens when you're driving along minding your business and see a big ass furry spider crawl out of your center dash, and then retreat back in.


Yes, I got him.
 
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PT1400

New member
What did the people at the gas station think? "Uh oh, Jeep Guy forgot to take his crazy pills!" Nothing like a interior rebuild to keep the locals wondering. My wife was driving my TJ one day, called me up to tell me I needed to get the snake out of the dash before walked into the sporting goods store to get a baseball bat! I almost stopped off to see a lawyer on the way, lol! She felt bad about making a threat to my Burro, so she bought me a new stereo. Good girl!
 
Snake? Nope nope nope. For sale sign, "comes with free pet"

I'm normally not bothered by insects and stuff. But this was one of the hairy jumping bastards, there was one cute girl that was filling up and watching me like wth dude... and then she saw me go 7 yr old little girl on a spider with a snowbrush. I'm not ashamed at all. Okay maybe a little bit.

Got the lift kit installed today, so that was fun. Those upper bolts on the rear shocks are a huge pain in the ass and I never want to touch a tj suspension again. Obviously from previous posts you can assumed that the bolts all rusted seized and sheared off instantly. No big deal right? Everyone that's done a tj suspension has run across this and he solution is to take a punch and nail the "tacked" on square bolts straight up and they pop right off. Well. Apparently, whatever guy that built that cross beam at the factory on my rusty piece of crap decided it was necessary to fully weld around the entire nuts. So that was a fun few hours to remove 4 nuts., luckily my buddy was able to beat the Living shit out of them until they gave . But finally it's on, 4" lift kit, dual steering stabilizer, and new cushy shocks I am excited to try out. It just wouldn't be my jeep if it didn't fight me the whole way so now that it's back together it developed a fuel leak above the tank when pressurized. Deal with that one tomorrow.
No good pics bc it's dark out.



 
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No cool pictures. But got a new swaybar in, mine had snapped where links attach, extended links on. Quick disconnects on. Did an alignment. Swapped the blown out steering gear box with a good one. Installed a dual shock steering stabilizer, came with lift kit. Recentered the steering wheel. Completely removed the rear swaybar that doesn't really do much. Put air in the tires. And it's finally spending the night on a battery charger and will be road ready tomorrow morning. It's got another 100 miles til it's first oil change in the rebuild. Gonna swap the soft top on it and enjoy summer!
:wings:
 
Got sick of having to hide the garage door remote every time I left it outside with no doors. So picked up a sun visor homelink for $20 on ebay. Not in the best of shape but neither is my jeep :)

Took gauges off and picked a good spot it will fit. Cut the hole for the buttons epoxied it all together. Then powered it from a wire that's switched by ignition so it won't work without key on. Quick simple project.

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Sharkey

Word Ninja
Nice work. I will do this to my next Jeep if they haven't finally put homelink in from the factory.
 

DeJkUnlimited

Caught the Bug
Very creative, nice job! I was going to do something similar but we wound up losing our two garage door openers (amongst other things) due to a power surge during a thunderstorm. We wound up installing the MyQ from Chamberlain that uses a phone app for opening/closing/monitoring. The remotes are just sitting in a drawer.
 
Ya I like the apps for openers but these don't have that feature and are brand new, replaced after fire.

Does anyone know a good file hosting site? I'm begun the tedious task of downloading 1000 pictures one by one.

This helps though ;)
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Been a few things I've been putting off for awhile so here starts the mini projects.

First up clutch slave cylinder blew
Got that swapped out.
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Did some touch up painting on the frame repair
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Then jumped back into the lighting projects I never finished. Slider had to come off but three of the bolt heads stripped so removing took most of the day and a lot of creative measures to get out. Then when I removed it I found the paint I used on a previous rust fix was apparently a bad choice. So I fixed it up and repainted it with much better paint.
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Then I got the lights on and reattached the slider with new bolts
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I did learn a lesson, buy all your lights at once. The new ones I got are a different color temperature and look a little weird If you can see both at once.
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Also rewires the power lock system as the cheap wiring it came with turned brittle and broke apart and stopped working. And reinstalled the remote start system.

More lighting projects tomorrow, as well as some door panel crack repair, maybe some other things, time off is fun ;)


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Only had half a day but I still got a lot done. More of the fun projects that make the interior nicer and more comfortable, small things that make you happy for the daily driving.

The driver door panel has been cracking more and more, started after some trail damage but it's time to address it as I had the panel off anyways fixing he door lock solenoid.
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Not going for beauty as the entire door will be replaced at some point, but enough to stop the spread and give it some rigidity

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Some epoxy and a couple pieces of scrap metal and it's a lot better.

Most the day I spent addressing my dash issue as I have never really finished or decided which way I wanted to go with it. It pretty much sat in my first mockup duct taped together for the last year.

How it was, gorilla taped up and Hvac controls flopping around
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Detailed fabrication has never been a strong suit for me and I still have to finish the outer plastic trim piece, might pickup a new one of those and start over. But overall I'm very happy with how it came out.

I've been wanting to play with these COB led lights for awhile so I picked up a few for cheap on amazon. They claim they can be used for drl and exterior, there is no way in hell these are even water resistant. They also use a wire so tiny that I couldn't even strip the insulation with the smallest wire stripper I have. However, they are relatively bright. So I clipped off the old lightbulb housings under the footwells and soldered these onto the connectors.
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Not bad, we'll see if they last.

Next up is the winch connection. I have a lot of extra parts and wiring for this winch and I wanted to put a remote connection inside. So I picked a spot, drilled it in and ran the wires.
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And brought the wires to the solenoid box I have mounted on the inner fender. And will hardware them to the solenoid tomorrow.
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Now that I have an easy access hookup I wanted a much shorter remote so I cut about 8 foot of wire out of it and soldered it back together. Now I have a nice small remote that can be kept in the glove box not taking up much room.
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I have another full size remote that I will keep in my full recovery kit that I can still use outside the vehicle if needed.







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BobNH

Member
I like the fun you are having with this build, very refreshing, and great work

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Yeah it's nice to do fun projects on it vs just fixing it. Fixing gets old fast.
Finished all the wiring of the interior winch controller, finished the rewiring of the lights and rebuilt the dash, vacuumed up the sand from silver lake, and redid all my stereo settings- I really wish those would stay in memory. And it's back up and ready to play again.

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