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.

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

To begin the job I pulled back rubber hose covering electrical wires and using T25 torx bit and very small 1/4″ wrench unbolted wiring harness from the door.

Then find a help to handle the door and unbolt 4 10mm bolts fastening hinges to the body. After this carefully lay down the door on some soft surface (I used soft cardboard for the lack of any dirty blanket).

In my case I only needed to unbolt upper hinge. As you can see the lower one was already fixed by somebody who did not have idea what he was doing before and now completely separated from the door.

Repairing process was started by cleaning carefully door’s surface to get rid of any rust and remove all too thin to be reused parts of the steel.

It was quite hard to get to it from the inside but I managed somehow to get clean surface. Then I cut out plate from 3/16th steel to cover whole area and clamped it from the inside as backing plate. Then using my TIG toy carefully and slowly (to not overheat thin steel) I filled out craters ripped off by hinge to get more or less even surface. After this i filled down the surface with grinder and welded the hinge back on. Unfortunately I was so consumed by the work that I didnt take any picture of clean, nice and even surface before welding the hinge on.

Small spray of rust preventive paint and voila – hinge better than new.

Now it’s time to get to original task – replacing pins. Most of the job is non brainer one. The only big task is removing old pin. On many tutorials over the net you can see the pin cut in half. Somehow I was unable to fit even the smallest cut off wheel I had there. Instead I used cut off wheel to file one of pin’s head (the shop one)

and then was able to hammer the pin out.

Now it’s time to replace bushings. As you can see factory ones doesn’t show very good quality – it’s just cheap metal collar with some graphite liner inside.

You can get them out by nicely bending old collar so you can pry it off.

Now new bearings. I used my vise to slowly and nicely press them in

but you can also tap them with hammer. Then insert hinge back in (correct side up) and tap new pin in. Remember that top pin goes in from the bottom side and bottom pin goes in from top.

Remember to clean and oil small wheels responsible for blocking door in open position – they get seized by dust and they greatly contribute to bent and broken hinges creating additional force on the pin. It took almost half of an hour to clean and lube mine. they looked awful and didn’t turn at all.

Now get your helper to keep the door while you put four bolts back in, connect wiring harness and enjoy nicely working door!

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

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

Not a pretty look uh? Now using 12 mm wrench unbolt the upper locking bolt. Then using flat screw driver straighten out locking tabs and unbolt (should be hand tight only) the bigger (lower) one. Then carefully pry off the locking washer, disconnect plug (located in the engine compartment next to the transmission oil level dip stick) and take the whole thing out.

First clean it out a little bit

unscrew six bolts holding the cover

and carefully pry it off. The whole switch is assembled from three parts. Cover:

moving finger and metal body:

Now clean very carefully all finger parts (springs, copper tabs and finger itself). As you may see on those pictures in my case it was covered in dried out grease blocking it from moving:

Here is how it should look like

Now lets go to the most important part. In the plastic cover there are some copper slide rails on which the tabs in finger goes. As you may see here they are very worn out in the reverse area:

Lucky us – it’s not that hard to fix. All you need is some 600 grit water sand paper and piece of flat surface. I used some 1/4″ steel plate lying around in the garage. Mount it in the vise and water it a little bit.

Then file the switch cover

till everything is even and shiny

Now using a little bit of dielectric grease put it all back together.

Some small hints for the installation – using fish wire helps a lot with pulling wires back to the engine compartment.

After checking switch operation lock it in place with locking bolt, finger tighten the bigger nut and lock it in place with washer tabs. Here is how it should look like at the end:

Whole thing took less than 4h and required 12 mm wrench plus flat and philips screw driver – nice and easy way to save some $200

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

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:

Now when you get rid of the leaf spring ear, cut and remove the outer bushing shell:

It’s quit tight there so I used air grinder with 3″ wheel. After this you have exposed bushing rubber. Cut it with utility knife

and get rid of it. Now we got to the point – inner sleeve glued with rust to the bolt. Fortunately this sleeve is made out of sheet steel part without welding. So turn the bolt until you see small grove in the sleeve:

Using sharpened flat screwdriver and hammer and bend out the sleeve. Then pour some penetrating oil and loosen the sleeve completely. Now taking out the bolt is real breeze!

Here is some puzzle picture to show all the parts again together:

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

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.

Then disconnect tie rod end from the knuckle itself:

our steering setup is a little bit different than stock one (it’s upgraded to the 1 ton version) but it works the same way – take off the nut and carefully (use tie rod end removing tool) pry it out from the knuckle.

Then unbolt three 12 point 13 mm bolts holding axle hub to the knuckle. Here you can see two of them – the third one is on the other side of hub (behind the axle from this view).

Taking out hub can be a little painful job, but nothing than can’t be done using slide hammer.

No we can get to the real jog. After getting off bolts from both upper and lower joints:

and then using ball joint separator and quite a heavy hammer pry off steering knuckle from them:

After couple of heavy hits you should end up with this nice view:

Here is where the real fun begins. Using ball joint press you have to carefully press out first upper ball joint:

and then using hole after it you can get to the lower one:

Now before you put new ones on make sure that you carefully clean the seats for new ones – use fine grit paper or even better – steel wool.

After this carefully press in new ball joints starting from lower one (yup you still need this upper hole) and then upper one.

Now when you have new shiny ball joints in place:

you can start installation procedure in revers order:

- put the steering knuckle on, carefully tighten nuts to the specification and lock them inplace using new cotter pins

- insert the axle shaft in and tighten three 12 point 13 mm bolts to 75 ft lbs

- connect tie rod end a d tighten it’s nut to 55 ft lbs

- put the brake rotor back on and bolt on the caliper

- move to the other side.

After you’re done with both sides put your wheels back on. Test your brakes before you move as they probably will need two or three strokes before they start working after taking out and putting on both front calipers. Make a test drive to your party store to get back your deposit .

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

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.

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

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).

As you can see here there is quite a difference in size between straps and u-bolts. Especially if you look at thread size.

The upgrade process is quite easy and fast. First remove four bolts and discard old mounting straps

then using drill (any type is ok – yoke is not very hard so there is no problem with drilling) and gradually changing bits up (I used 1/4 then 7/32 then 5/16) ream yoke holes. Be careful – there is a seal just behind the yoke – if you press too much you can damage it!

Here you can see reamed holes and one u-bolt inserted in yoke.

After this just put drive shaft back in place and bolt it on. Whole process takes less than hour even with replacing both u-joints at the time.

Technorati Tags: drive shaft, u-joint, u-bolt, yoke

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:

I used 4 self taping screws to securely bolt it to the body. Also the rotating part of the mount was bolted upside down – it will allow to put some heavy duty spring and quick mount and it still won’t be looking like R/C model with 5ft antenna I’m going to install.

Here you can see how I routed the cable

I used existing hole in the body, so I limited amount of drilling to zero. Notice turned around L bracket – it allowed to have everything a little bit lower mounted.

Another nice thing is that tail lamp if firmly fitting in it’s place now holding the mount in it’s place and keeping it from swinging around on heavy wind.

Final efect

with 5 ft stick went over my best expectations. Now my Grand Cherokee looks clean and nice, almost like factory equipped with this.

Technorati Tags: CB antenna mount, Jeep, ZJ, Firestick, 5 ft stick, Grand Cherokee

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.

First – loosen serpentine belt. You don’t have to take it out completely – it’s enough to just take it out from alternator’s pulley. Then take out the battery and battery tray as you see on the picture:

Initially I removed just the battery but later on I figured out that it’s the only way I can put new alternator in (as it’s slightly bigger than stock one) so I had to take out the tray anyway.

After you have battery and tray out disconnect all wires on the back of the alternator and then remove two bolts (marked by arrows):

To remove upper one you have to use extension and access it trough A/C mount whole:

Now as we have both alternators out and lying on the ground it’s time to do some comparison:

overall view: mounts:  

and backs:

Notice that plastic cover/guide for main charging wire is mounted in opposite direction. Unfortunately it’s built this way (with small pin in different place)

so you have to replace it with the old one. Then reverse all steps and mount new alternator in place. Remember about setting correct serpentine belt tension and enjoy new power plant giving you twice faster charge for your winch!

Last comment. When you’ll be ordering new alternator remember that there are two model numbers – one for I6 engine and another for V8. I checked carefully both of them and the only difference I could find is number of grooves on the pulley. I6 has 6 of them while V8 version has 7:

Unfortunately the I6 version I needed is quite hard to get (they wanted me to wait two or three weeks for delivery). Also switching pulleys is not an option as you instantly loose your warranty on the new one if you do so. So I carefully measured everything and figured out that V8 version with 7 groves should work fine. All you have to do is make sure that belt will stay on first 6 groves. Here is how it looks like:

So far it did about one thousand miles and everything works great without any problems.

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