KTI Off Road

Short visit in Badlands Offroad Park in Attica, Indiana.

Completely stock Range Rover (including air suspension), street tires, Iza driving – no extremes just few hours of fun.

Recently on our trip to Moab I have noticed that driver’s front door in our Grand Cherokee started to sag a little bit and they no longer close properly. Knowing that it’s probably classic pin problem I ordered new pins with nice brass bushings and started to tear things apart. To my great surprise when I looked at it I saw something like this:

clearly simple pin replacement job turned into not-so-simple hinge welding one…

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Technorati Tags: front door, Grand Cherokee, pin, replacement, hinge

Recently our Cherokee (XJ) started to develop problem with back up lights – they worked erratically, then stopped to work at all. Two months later problems with starting showed up – sometimes I had to move the lever to N position to make starter working. Diagnose: dying neutral safety switch. Pretty common problem for AW4 transmissions – both mounted in Jeep as well as those in Volvo. Fortunately most of the time you can easily fix it without spending $200 on new one or scarifying backup light feature or having to start your car in N position.

When you crawl beneath your Jeep on the passenger side you will see something like this:

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Technorati Tags: Cherokee, XJ, back up lights, neutral safety switch, AW4, Jeep, Volvo

Time has come to lift up our Cherokee (XJ) a little bit. After carefully browsing offers I decided to equip it with 3″ lift kit from IROC upgraded with full leaf springs from Procomp. Installation process is quite easy and straight forward. Everything is well described in the installation manual. Except of one thing – how to unbolt leaf spring front bolt.

Jeep’s engineers did really great job here – they welded the nut inside frame rails. Why is it a problem? Because during the years of life rust slowly glues together bolt with the inner steel sleeve of the leaf’s bushing. When you have access to the nut you can unbolt it and then carefully tap the bolt to loosen it out. When the nut is welded inside the rail the only way to take it out is loosen the sleeve on the bolt beforehand. How to achieve it?

First you have to loosen the rust inside the but. They were kind enough to leave inspection openings in the rails. Using them you can spray the nut with some good penetrating oil. The goal is to be able to turn the bolt about half of the turn. And not screw the thread. In my case it took about 5 sprays over 2h to loosen the rust enough to turn the bolt about one turn. Then the real fun begins.

Armored with die grinder with cutting wheel cut off the leaf spring just next to the bushing ear. Then turn the sandwich (ear, bushing and bolt) about half turn and cut it again into two halves. The result is shown below:

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Technorati Tags: Cherokee, XJ, leaf springs, front bolt, Jeep

As you may have noticed some time ago we figured that worn out ball joints in our XJ are a reason for annoying death wobble constantly bugging our car. Recently we got some queries about how difficult this task is to perform by average garage mechanic, so here it is – small how to replace them. this Procedure apply to all Jeeps that have front Dana 30 axle: Cherokees (XJ), Grands (ZJ) and Wranglers. Probably more or less to any car, but I didn’t try it there so no warranties.

First, before you even start a list of special tools you will definitely need. All of them usually can be rented out from your local parts store. You will need tie rod end separator, good torque wrench, ball joint replacement set and a slide hammer. Be prepared for leaving there quite a nice deposit – but it will motivate you to finish the job quicker and get your deposit back sooner .

To make things easier and faster jack your car up and take off both front wheels. Safety first – chock your rear wheels and use good jack stands to hold your front up in the air.

Then unbolt brake caliper (12mm bolts shown on the picture) and carefully hand them somewhere out of your way.

Be careful not to stretch (nor hang them by) brake lines. (…More…)

Technorati Tags: ball joints, replace, Jeep, Dana 30, Cherokee, XJ, ZJ, Wrangler

One of the worst thing that can happen to you and your Jeep while driving at higher speeds (mostly on the Interstates) is thing called “death wobble”. It happens usually when you hit some pothole or uneven bridge – road connection with only one side of the car. Suddenly everything shakes like your Jeep was falling apart. Most of the time the only thing you can do is slow down till it stops and continue driving, this time much slower.

Recently our Cherokee (XJ) developed quite annoying death wobble case – it was doing it every time we hit 45mph (which hardly can be called high speed) making it almost completely undriveable even in the town. Unfortunately neither of the “standard death wobble solutions” worked. More – as we upgraded steering to the 1 ton version and replaced track bar with brand new OEM replacement the XJ behaved even worse – death wobble moved down to 35mph. Now we have a problem! After careful checking for plays in every front suspension component it turned out that at least on driver side ball joints are completely worn out. Could it be the case?

We decided to give it a shot. After quick (well 3h per side) ball joints replacement – as we replaced all four – time had come to make a test ride. And… full success – death wobble is gone! So next time… well there’ll be no next time as since now ball joints are on our list of maintenance on every front axle we got in our hands.

Just received freshly cut out prototype piece of Jeep Grand Cherokee (ZJ) tank skid plate. Looks nice, isn’t she?

Technorati Tags: Jeep, Grand Cherokee, ZJ, tank, skid plate

If you had a chance (or need) to remove drive shaft in your Jeep you probably noticed how weak factory mounts are. And it’s not those thin [tag]straps[/tags] that cause the problem – it’s those tiny small bolts supposed to hold everything together. Last time when I was taking out mine I accidentally stripped one bolt’s head completely round. Fortunately I did it while fastening them so there was no immediate problem – it was holding good. But upgrade went on top of my list and I was constantly thinking about it.

Finally time to change the u-joints came. Remembering that one rounded bolt I looked for the upgrade and found that I can use u-bolt kit (originally Ford’s part).

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Technorati Tags: drive shaft, u-joint

Ever thought about some nice looking CB antenna mount for your Jeep ZJ? Instead of fabricating some brackets, mounts etc. go to any website selling Firestick’s products and pick up the MK204R kit. I picked up mine at Walcott CB for less than $30 and considering there is cable in the kit looks like quite cheap thing.

Now to the mounting part. I decided to put mine around rear left tail lamp. The thing is that I wanted it to be as less obstructive for tailgate and lights as it’s possible. Here is a picture how I manage to achieve that goal:

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Technorati Tags: CB antenna mount, Jeep, ZJ, Firestick

Electric winch can draw up to 500 amps of current and standard alternator on 4.0l Jeep Grand Cherokee is able to produce as little as 90 amps. Then you have to subtract from that current needed to run the car (ignition, lights, CB radio, fan and other). So for most of us one of the biggest worries is how long will out winch be able to work on the trail. Here is a little upgrade which makes those worries much smaller.

Recently my alternator started to slowly die so I figured out it’s a good moment to look not for simply replacement but also for an upgrade. I started to browse the Internet and I figured out that at the end of ZJ’s production they were offering optional 136 amps alternator both for I6 and V8 engine. As the difference in price wasn’t big (about $40) I decided that’s the way to go and went to local parts store to pick my new alternator up.

Whole replacement procedure is easy and quick so here I’ll post only some tricks that may help you to do it even easier and faster.

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Technorati Tags: alternator, Jeep, Grand Cherokee, upgrade, ZJ, 136 amps