Pearl: The Oddball 2 Door XJ

[Buddy Holly]

Looks good.
Where were you wheeling?\
Do you have rock guards for the rockers?

@sammi_davis has a friend with property that we are allowed to wheel on every once in a while. No rocker guards, and it shows The driver side has a couple rust pin holes, and I plan to cut them out and make my own mini boat sides or do 2x6 one day.

 

[Buddy Holly]

I still can't believe this Jeep has come this far from the dirty little blown up thing at the shop. Looks awesome man.

I still get surprised looking back at how much work I put into it. Really glad I made the flash decision to buy it from you. This Jeep means so much more to me than I ever thought it would.

 

[Buddy Holly]

I forgot to post more pictures of our trip from a few weeks ago. I attempted Daniel and almost had it. It would have taken a pretty rowdy bump to get the rear up the ledge so I decided to put my pride away and back down before I broke a shaft. Ended up heading to the outer banks with @sammi_davis a week after uwharrie and drove on the beach for the first time. I’ll be back!

 

[BB98xj]

We need to go wheel!

 

[Buddy Holly]

We need to go wheel!

My next trip is Colorado and Utah next month

 

[BB98xj]

My next trip is Colorado and Utah next month

 

[sammi_davis]

My next trip is Colorado and Utah next month

Hurtful words ...

 

[Buddy Holly]

Anyone is welcome to tag along. Invite is always out there. For those who can’t go, plenty of pics and videos coming. I’m scrambling to get my shit together so I’m halfway prepared. The next week and a half is gonna be hectic

 

[sammi_davis]

Chop chop Rucas.

 

[Buddy Holly]

Colorado is a bust. The project got cancelled which is a very rare occurrence. I’m bummed, but now I have time to add more shit to the Jeep! Finished up my rack. I’m not 100% happy with it but I would rather it function and look a little tall than have it look cool and hit the doors. For the stuff I plan to add it needs to sit a hair high. Beefy as hell though. More parts coming tomorrow, pics when they show up.

 

[Buddy Holly]

My mall cred just went through the roof. New rooftop tent, and my Boostwerks hidden winch mount showed up today as well. Gonna need some tweaking to get my cheap crappy winch to fit but it will be neato to disguise everything behind my stock bumper.

I bought this stuff in preparation for Colorado and just decided to keep it even though my trip got cancelled. The rack and tent are easily removed for when I feel like doing some more serious wheeling. I should be pretty close to being able to do whatever the hell I want with this Jeep now. I just wanna get out and make some memories.

 

[ghost]

Come up to Harlan for the 4th since you trip was canceled.

 

[Buddy Holly]

Come up to Harlan for the 4th since you trip was canceled.

Sounds fun. I’m headed somewhere west to the mountains the 4th through the 7th. Just don’t know where yet. I’ll keep it in mind

 

[Keith1138]

My mall cred just went through the roof. New rooftop tent, and my Boostwerks hidden winch mount showed up today as well. Gonna need some tweaking to get my cheap crappy winch to fit but it will be neato to disguise everything behind my stock bumper.

I bought this stuff in preparation for Colorado and just decided to keep it even though my trip got cancelled. The rack and tent are easily removed for when I feel like doing some more serious wheeling. I should be pretty close to being able to do whatever the hell I want with this Jeep now. I just wanna get out and make some memories.


View attachment 296669 View attachment 296670 View attachment 296671 View attachment 296672

Really want to hear how that winch mount will work. Did it come with tow hooks or d ring mounts?

Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

 

[Buddy Holly]

Really want to hear how that winch mount will work. Did it come with tow hooks or d ring mounts?

Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

BWE Comp Mount

No d ring mounts with it. I made my own a while ago that bolt to the side of the rails.

EDIT: I stand corrected, I never opened up the parts bags when I got the kit, it comes with recovery points. I don’t think the holes are large enough to fit a 3/4” d ring but I could be wrong.

 

[Buddy Holly]

I’ve been driving the shit out of Pearl lately. Just rolled over 376,000. Last week I painted a spare set of eccos and had some 33x10.50 general grabber x3s mounted up. I also installed a metalcloak track bar with an RE double shear mount and a Barnes heim since the MC stock heims suck and don’t last very long. I’m giving the metalcloak rock sport shocks a try this time. I was still running on some used stock lj front shocks and rear stock replacement Sachs shocks. It seems to ride better now. Definitely more compression valving and a little slower rebound which makes it handle much better.

First impressions on the tires are that they are fairly quiet for an mt. Tread compound is very soft and they have pretty thick sidewalls. I like that they have some siping on them unlike the km3, which was the other option I was going to pick. The most weight one tire took was 3 ounces, though I’m going to take it to a friend’s shop in jersey next time I’m visiting to double check.

 

[336wheeler]

My XJ chassis has 439xxx on it. Awesome to see other high mileage XJs getting a new lease on life

 

[Buddy Holly]

Nothing constructive to add but I did some social distancing in my back yard last week. I have to let all the air out of the tires to get it back out of the garage after I put the tent on it

 

[Buddy Holly]

Well I guess it’s high time to post an update. Somehow I got the opportunity to travel to Moab for work for 4-5 weeks. I know, rough life, huh? There was no way I was gonna go to moab and not wheel so of course I took the Jeep. A few days before departure I went to defile @sammi_davis ’s shop and build a set of rockers. Of course nobody had 2x6 so I built my own out of some 1.75 hrew and broken 1/8” plate. Turned out super slick and I think stronger than 2x6 with the ability to plug weld it to the inner rockers. Not to mention a helluva lot lighter than 2x6 .250” wall.

 

[Buddy Holly]

With the rockers done I went home and thrashed to finish up some small projects and do a full fluid change. My dad and I packed up and left on Friday the 25th. We got to Paducah, KY the first night and stayed right on the river.

The next day we went and checked out St. Louis where my dad grew up and made a major push for Denver so we could take all day Sunday to see Colorado and enjoy the most scenic part of the trip. This was a super long day, about 18 hours of driving, but we got to Aurora at midnight.

Sunday we woke up, ate breakfast and headed down I-70 out of Denver. Instead of taking the usual route through the Eisenhower tunnel we decided to go up Loveland pass. Completely worth it. After that we got back on the interstate and headed towards Utah. Glenwood Canyon is amazing too, and I’ve fallen in love with Glenwood Springs, CO where we stopped for lunch.

Made it into Utah!!!

Next we took 128 south into Moab. This was the best part of the drive. So scenic.

The next day we hit some trails. More on that in the next post.

 

[Buddy Holly]

For the first day of wheeling I decided to take it easy and run Chicken Corners to get my feet wet. This was actually a good idea because I found out my front axle needed to be pushed forward a little. The bump stop tower kept hitting the coil after drooping and compressing. We got about 60 miles of trail in before we got back to town to fix the front axle. Definitely time for some mid arms when I get home. Possibly an antirock too. This thing is pretty tippy with the tent on top.

The next day we decided to run Fins and Things but stumbled across a local guiding a couple in a JKUR up Hell’s Revenge so we decided to tag along with them. Between the three vehicles I was the least equipped with open diffs and yet had the least amount of trouble. These tires hook up. I have videos I’ll upload later of Hell’s Gate and a few of the bigger ledges.

That night I drove pops back to grand junction so he could fly home. Next morning I tagged along with the same group on Poison Spider. Again the Jeep had the least amount of trouble on all the hard stuff than the other two. I don’t know how it works as well as it does. I ducked out about halfway through the trail to go back to the hotel since I had some school projects to finish up before the semester ended.

Pictures are fairly limited after this because I did a lot of solo exploring after work. I’ll upload some videos to YouTube to post here soon. I ran Fins and Things last night by myself and had a blast. Also went up Geyser Pass into the snow last Saturday but got turned around because of the snow blocking the road. I wish I could camp out here but the local health order prohibits it and there is a stiff fine if you get caught. Hoping I can swing back through later this summer after my project in Idaho to be able to camp and enjoy some real solitude. Oh yeah, I’m supposed to be headed to Idaho Falls, ID after Moab for another work project. 1.5 hours from Yellowstone.

 

[Buddy Holly]

The drive to and from Grand Junction put a hurting on Pearl’s poor unknown mileage ax15 (>200k). I started hearing noises when we ran Poison Spider. I still don’t know exactly what parts are bad, but it sounds like the countershaft bearing is failing and causing things to not mesh tightly. Anyways, in fear of catastrophic failure I ordered a brand new ax15 from Novak since no rebuilder had one in stock. Can’t believe Aisin still makes these things. As much as I would love to swap the trans in the hotel parking lot for the sake of a good story I decided to pay a shop to swap it for me. Luckily Dixie 4wd is right down the road. I had the ax15 shipped there. It showed up a day late (thanks fedex) but they said they would thrash on it tonight to get it done by tomorrow. Awesome folks to deal with so far. The owner and his wife are running the Moab location right now while their son is home helping with his newborn. They seem like genuine Jeep nuts, and I actually trust them to work on my Jeep, which is rare for me after seeing the shit that some shops will do to customer vehicles. Hopefully all goes well. I’ll have a report on that when I get things back. Anyways, here’s some bling:

Novak sends the shifter unbent so the end user can set it up to their preference. It also uses a set screw to hold the shifter on the pivot instead of that stupid ass press fit design they used to have. Pretty cool. This thing shifts super tight. Can’t wait to test it out.

 

[sammi_davis]

I think I have the garage back to normal...

 

[Buddy Holly]

I think I have the garage back to normal...

You are full OCD. Every time I would look for a tool I had just put down you had already put it away

 

[Buddy Holly]

Nice rig! The rock sliders are definitely a good addition.

What’s funny is with all the wheeling I’ve done so far I haven’t even touched the rockers yet. But they help stiffen things up, so I’m not too upset about having them.