Back in '22 I made the mistake of buying someone else's project Jeep on FBMktplace. After 2 years of fighting the combination of a patchwork frame and a myriad of electrical gremlins, I finally got the shits and decided I would start hunting for a project to call my own. Around the turn of the year I finally found what I thought I was looking for.
Enter:
Another marketplace find, sure, but I talked with the owner, got some promising pictures of the frame and underside, and took the 2 hour drive to take a look. The frame was as clean as I had hoped but the tub could have used a little attention, which at the time seemed like no big deal. It also had a brake controller and air suspension inlet ports which I maybe should have been a little more suspicious about. A month later in early February, I made the trek out one last time to take it home. To the tune of a flat 10k (a bit on the steep side, I know,) I was the owner of a mostly clean manual LJ with about 112k miles on it.
And so the fun began.
The first order of business was to replace the top. It been sitting under a carport for the twoish years and the old rampage top was ROACHED. Trampstamp be damned, Bestop had the only top style I liked, so I flushed $1500 to keep the weather out. The mirrors were all around in pretty bad shape too, so I again put out about $120 for new a new rearview and side mirrors with offsets. Next was to poach as much as I feasibly could from my previous TJ as possible. In order, I swapped/stole: wheels & tires, head unit, subwoofer, radio control steering wheel, backup cam, intake, rear underseat drawer (which is currently sitting in storage, another story for another day).
All of that gets us here:
Nothing too insane but progress nonetheless.
"Why the cribbing?"
Well,
I had one last thing to poach from the other TJ. The goal was to pull the AX-15 I had swapped into the '01 on the right into my new LJ. Unfortunately a running theme of this entire project reared its ugly head for the first time. I hadn't done enough research to learn that the NSG370 bell housing was not only molded into the transmission itself, but was also patterned different due to the '06 models having the revised 4.0. I also had only realized this after I had dropped BOTH transmissions, like a moron. Thankfully, AdvanceAdapters makes bellhousings to convert the new-style 4.0s to the older AX/NV trans bolt patterns, so I decided to pick up one. While I was in here at least, I decided to swap the Centerforce out of the TJ, replace the pilot bearing in the LJ, and get its flywheel machined. After putting the trans back in the TJ so I could get it out of the garage and let my brother get his project in from the rain, I moved on to the other reason for having the trans out and the Jeep on blocks. I needed to undercoat the body.
For this, I chose Eastwood's rust encapsulator and just honestly went apeshit up underneath the main tub until I had an even, flat coating across everything and couldn't feel my face from all of the fumes (full respirators with this are a godsend.) The rust encapsulator also worked pretty well as a primer for a couple spots on the body where paint was rusting through. After sanding the areas down and priming, I painted with color match and clearcoated to hopefully stop or at least slow the spread. While it was up, I also took this time to put on a new rear bumper/tire carrier from RockHard and a winch plate from Quadratec to host my XBull winch I poached off of the TJ. Once I got it down and rolling, I replaced the fenders and headlights.
This put me at about early March, and I decided I was done with major work for a while. The bellhousing adapter wouldn't be in till may and I had some planning to do for my next steps forward.
Enter:
Another marketplace find, sure, but I talked with the owner, got some promising pictures of the frame and underside, and took the 2 hour drive to take a look. The frame was as clean as I had hoped but the tub could have used a little attention, which at the time seemed like no big deal. It also had a brake controller and air suspension inlet ports which I maybe should have been a little more suspicious about. A month later in early February, I made the trek out one last time to take it home. To the tune of a flat 10k (a bit on the steep side, I know,) I was the owner of a mostly clean manual LJ with about 112k miles on it.
And so the fun began.
The first order of business was to replace the top. It been sitting under a carport for the twoish years and the old rampage top was ROACHED. Trampstamp be damned, Bestop had the only top style I liked, so I flushed $1500 to keep the weather out. The mirrors were all around in pretty bad shape too, so I again put out about $120 for new a new rearview and side mirrors with offsets. Next was to poach as much as I feasibly could from my previous TJ as possible. In order, I swapped/stole: wheels & tires, head unit, subwoofer, radio control steering wheel, backup cam, intake, rear underseat drawer (which is currently sitting in storage, another story for another day).
All of that gets us here:
Nothing too insane but progress nonetheless.
"Why the cribbing?"
Well,
I had one last thing to poach from the other TJ. The goal was to pull the AX-15 I had swapped into the '01 on the right into my new LJ. Unfortunately a running theme of this entire project reared its ugly head for the first time. I hadn't done enough research to learn that the NSG370 bell housing was not only molded into the transmission itself, but was also patterned different due to the '06 models having the revised 4.0. I also had only realized this after I had dropped BOTH transmissions, like a moron. Thankfully, AdvanceAdapters makes bellhousings to convert the new-style 4.0s to the older AX/NV trans bolt patterns, so I decided to pick up one. While I was in here at least, I decided to swap the Centerforce out of the TJ, replace the pilot bearing in the LJ, and get its flywheel machined. After putting the trans back in the TJ so I could get it out of the garage and let my brother get his project in from the rain, I moved on to the other reason for having the trans out and the Jeep on blocks. I needed to undercoat the body.
For this, I chose Eastwood's rust encapsulator and just honestly went apeshit up underneath the main tub until I had an even, flat coating across everything and couldn't feel my face from all of the fumes (full respirators with this are a godsend.) The rust encapsulator also worked pretty well as a primer for a couple spots on the body where paint was rusting through. After sanding the areas down and priming, I painted with color match and clearcoated to hopefully stop or at least slow the spread. While it was up, I also took this time to put on a new rear bumper/tire carrier from RockHard and a winch plate from Quadratec to host my XBull winch I poached off of the TJ. Once I got it down and rolling, I replaced the fenders and headlights.
This put me at about early March, and I decided I was done with major work for a while. The bellhousing adapter wouldn't be in till may and I had some planning to do for my next steps forward.
