Project : Trixy the Official MallCrawlin Project Vehicle (now with more lift!!)

[BigDaveZJ]

Got a call into the guys at KOR, Trixy's gonna grow a bit here in the next few weeks. Finally putting some 3.5" coils and new shocks in there, and using some of my leftover short arm parts. Hopefully we can do a nice little writeup for a basic lift install to help out some of those who may be a little skeered of trying it out on their own.

[Bustin' Loose]

Damn it he beat me to it.

Well to give a little more info on the wonderful PITA that is my jeep. . .

We put 32' tires on her last year after I blew out one of my MTR's. My spare was no where near street legal. I'm happy to see those go. I hated them. The were loud as hell and the wear on them was craptastic.

Once the 32' tires went on I had WAY to much rub to get her off road. She's been fine for DD duty though. So to make her wheelable for the rest of the summer and the off chance we want to take her to Moab in October in the Fall - 3.5 coils are going on in the next few weeks. Our aim is to have them done by 4th of July.

We already have Dave's monstrosity so I'm aiming for something a little more low key with my jeep but still very functional. I've purposely taken the jeep in the "build it slow" direction to improve my driving skills. I didn't want to compensate for driving skills by over building my jeep. She's done well all considering but there is just not enough clearance to do what I want anymore. I have reclearanced just about everything underneath that damn jeep.

So, we'll take her up a little bit and between that and the new tires I think we'll be good for a little while. The lift will hopefully resolve an annoying clunk I have in the front drive side tire area. Along with the lift I am thinking on replacing the motor mounts since I think they are about shot. I'm really looking forward to the new shocks and coils cuz right now she rides like she was disconnected and I think my coils are really sagging. Should make the ride a little nicer and give her the extra hight she needs to get through some of our favorite trails without draging everything on the rocks.

So, I know it's been slow for this particular build but keep an eye out for more updates here soon.

[BigDaveZJ]

I didn't want to compensate for driving skills by over building my jeep like Matt did.

FIXED!!!

Also gonna be putting some new ball joints too to get rid of the gangsta lean her tires are rockin.

[Bustin' Loose]

Oh, and for the record, I did the plug change myself (with a little help from the resident muscle). For the most part, I'm doing my best to do as much of the mods, repairs and maintenance myself. Sucks being female though - not nearly enough upper body strenght for some of this shit.

[fpkites]

The upper body strength can be overcome with impact tools Pam

[BigDaveZJ]

Got the motor mounts done tonight. Pretty much sucked. I don't remember my motor mounts being anywhere near that big of a PITA. Swapped out the upstream O2 sensor as well hoping that would clear up a P0420 code but it didn't do the trick, must be the downstream sensor.

[BigDaveZJ]

Ball joints actually went very smooth tonight. Took ~3 hours to get both sides done and all cleaned up. Ran into one issue thought that I should've known better on. When we pulled out the long side shaft, the CV boot was torn. So we grabbed another shaft with the hub already attached out of the pile of spares. I didn't take the time to make sure it was the right hub (later TJ's have a different hub than ZJ's do) and sure 'nuff it was the wrong damn hub. By the time I was sure it was the wrong hub, I didn't wanna fuck with it anymore so I loosened up the lug nuts to release the rotor from the knuckle so we could put it back in the driveway. At least this time around none of the shit will be rusted together like it was taking it apart!

[Colorado 5.9]

I'll take that hub off your hands so you don't make the mistake again.

[BigDaveZJ]

I'll take that hub off your hands so you don't make the mistake again.

You pull it and put the right one on and it's yours!!

[BigDaveZJ]

Downstream sensor did the trick.

Scott, got both of those hubs loose, lemme know when you want 'em.

[BigDaveZJ]

Trixy's going under the knife tomorrow, hopefully it will all go well and we can get some pics up tomorrow night.

[fpkites]

Good luck Dave - I promise not to call for a rescue

[BigDaveZJ]

Suspension is in! No pics yet, will get some up tomorrow probably, was a loooong day out in the garage.

Took her out for a test spin and the suspension is riding REALLY nice. Got a small vibe issue to figure out, at highway speeds when you're on the throttle it's fine. Let off, and it vibes. But the part that stumps me is ANY throttle completely gets rid of it, even just pushing the pedal down as little as I possibly can, don't even notice an increase in RPM's. Pinion angles all look really good, so got a little investigative work to do.

[dirty]

Suspension is in! No pics yet, will get some up tomorrow probably, was a loooong day out in the garage.

Took her out for a test spin and the suspension is riding REALLY nice. Got a small vibe issue to figure out, at highway speeds when you're on the throttle it's fine. Let off, and it vibes. But the part that stumps me is ANY throttle completely gets rid of it, even just pushing the pedal down as little as I possibly can, don't even notice an increase in RPM's. Pinion angles all look really good, so got a little investigative work to do.

I have the exact same issue with mine. Touch gas at all and everything is perfect, let of gas...vibrations. My pinion angles aren't perfect...but pretty close...I've seen way worse that didn't vibrate, take off front DS and no more vibes, so I know it is up front. I'm down to thinking the front output of my TC is shot or my motor mounts are bad causing some sort of shift that I can't reproduce on a lift....

I have tried wheel bearings, new spicer unit on DS, different known good DS, different pinion angles...it's down to TC output or motor/tranny mounts for me. Only other notable fact is that I haven't SYEd the rear yet, but as stated...no vibes without front DS. Weird, good luck, can't wait to see photos!

[BigDaveZJ]

Think I've got it narrowed down to the rear shaft just based on where the noise is coming from in the vehicle. Gonna slap new u-joints in there tomorrow and see if that solves it.

[BigDaveZJ]

We still haven't nailed down the source of the vibe/noise we're getting, but it's pretty easy to keep it from happening while driving.

Anyways, on to the pics of the install.

As it sat before we started, 2" BB, RE adjustable lowers up front, KOR Trackbar, and JKS Disco's with 265/75R16 BFG AT/KO's.





Shaft came out to stupervise


Now I know most of these pics will be pretty boring to most on the site since a lot of us can do this in our sleep, but remember Trixy's goal isn't to be the ultimate hardcore wheeler. The purpose of the build is to keep a very low budget, but still build a rig that can do very well on a lot of trails, and still maintain DD duties as well.

Teardown of the front end


Driver side completely torn down (for our purposes anyways, UCA is still attached since we didn't replace those)


With all of that stuff out of the way, it's VERY easy to get the coils in and out. We never even came close to needing a spring compressor at any point in all of this, and if we did, I just would've taken more apart to make it so we didn't need them since I don't care for them at all.


Now you might've noticed in that picture that the coils don't exactly look brand new. Well dumbass me didn't check the box before we tore everything down. RE goofed and sent us their 4.5" coils instead of the 3.5" coils we wanted. Now IMNSHO, 4.5" is too tall for short arms, especially still using stock uppers. A whole new can of worms gets opened when you breach that 4" mark, and Trixy doesn't NEED to be that tall, nor did we want to make the additional investments needed to make her a solid rig at that height.

Well it turns out that this was sitting in the driveway with some RE 3.5" coils in it.


Since my ZJ is really already at about 4.5" of lift using the RE 3.5" springs and some spacers, and it's properly setup for that much lift with long arms, we decided to yank my 3.5" springs out and put the new 4.5" springs in my ZJ since it was more up to the task of being that tall. It put a little hiccup in our day, but ended up going MUCH smoother than I originally anticipated. Using a hi-lift I was able to get the 3.5" springs and old spacers out, and the new 4.5" springs installed in about 15 minutes. At one point though I got a little careless and let go of the hi-lift handle while letting the Jeep down, and the handle flung up in the air, coming down on my windshield. The crack isn't TOO bad.

Anyways, back to Trixy.

So after we solved the coil issue, it was time to put Trixy's front end back together. Here's Pam bolting something back up, looks like the caliper which we removed to help assist in getting the axle to droop far enough to get the new coils in.


After the shocks were installed and brakes were hooked back up, we carefully lowered the Jeep back to the ground to re-install the new lower control arms. I always find it easiest to do this with the weight of the Jeep on the tires so it easier to determine pinion angles, and you also do not want to torque down the control arm bolts until you have weight on the tires as it can damage the bushings by improperly preloading them.



Once the front is done, time for the back! The back's always a little easier to work on IMO since there's much less going, and the shorter coils make it a bit easier too.


Putting the rear back together. Notice the bottle of antiseize, we put it on every bolt and all the threaded sections of the control arms. They like to use Mag Chloride on the roads here and that can cause major issues with the threaded portions of adjustable control arms and other bolts.


We dropped it back down and finished installing the lower control arms and torqued everything down. Then we gave it a tape measure alignment and took it out for a spin. Outside of the vibe issues noted in the previous posts this was VERY successful as the Jeep rides a LOT better now and actually feels safe going down the road.

I don't have any finished pics yet, but we're heading to the mountains this weekend for the 4th and definitely plan to get some good action shots while we're up there.

For now the immediate future doesn't hold much for Trixy. Her stance is a little narrow, especially with the taller lift, so we might add some SpiderTrax wheel spacers to help out with that. Other than that, Trixy should sit as is until the tires wear out, or I get new axles for my Jeep and my current axles go under Trixy.

Big thanks to Kevin and the crew at Kevin's Off-Road www.kevinsoffroad.com for helping us get all the parts we needed for this!

[Ds4x4]

At one point though I got a little careless and let go of the hi-lift handle while letting the Jeep down, and the handle flung up in the air, coming down on my windshield. The crack isn't TOO bad.

Been there Done that, I bet you didn't think that it had so much force when your letting it down. the other thing that gets me is the clamp the i have at the top of mine and it rips the door handle off or digs into the door.

And both rigs are looking great.. hopefully will be getting another grand and doing something along the same lines for the woman..

[DJJordache]

haha the purple parts are so cute

[BigDaveZJ]

Jeep did great driving back and forth to Gunny for the 4th, but unfortunately we didn't get any chance to get her on anything other than graded dirt roads. We'll probably be taking her to Chinaman's on Sunday though, which should give her a nice test.

[SuicideTireZJ]

Got any 'after' shots?

[BigDaveZJ]

Action shots!

[BigDaveZJ]

Trixy passed another test, did GREAT out in Moab. The new suspension kept everything from dragging all over the place, and Pam was able to go a lot of the places that the 35"+ tire guys were going. In some places, she even made those of us with bigger tires look bad by walking right up stuff.

A couple things we're going to need to address over the winter though. Pam's a/c hasn't been blowing cold for a while. We found a leak in one of the lines and swapped in the same line from my ZJ that was good. Recharged the system and the compressor still won't stay on long enough to push out any cold air. We didn't do a full evap and recharge, so we'll probably start there before trying anything else.

Her 249 is also pretty much done. The VC is locking up pretty good, so its time for a 242 or 231 here soon. Shouldn't be too bad of a project though. Haven't decided yet if we'll do an SYE when we put it in or not, no real need at this point, but while we have it apart and out of the rig might as well right? If it didn't add $500 (SYE and new rear driveshaft) to the cost of the t-case swap we would do it right off the bat, but we'll see how it goes. Since Trixy will probably "eventually" be on long arms and 35's, we know it'll be a good thing to have sooner or later, but it all depends on the almighty dollar really.

Most of the projects on our Jeeps probably won't start until after the new year, so it'll be a while before there's any more major updates, unless we win the lottery or something.

[nc59dude]

Did you by any chance install a new front or rear track bar / bracket? I thought it was necessary at this height. I'd like to see some pics if you did. Thanks!

[BigDaveZJ]

We put Kevin's adjustable trackbar conversion up front over a year ago, JKS adjustable out back.

[BigDaveZJ]

So the VC in the 249 has pretty much been fried for about the last year or so. Found a couple decent 231's on CL, so hopefully Pam can stop driving around in 4Hi here soon!