Wife's MJ

reson46 · Sep 30, 2008

After a couple of years of wheeling with me in my XJ my wife wanted something of her own. I let her drive the XJ whenever she wanted but she didn't feel comfortable with it and was always afraid she would break it. Which didn't really make much sense to me considering I break it all the time. :scratchhead: But, I never claimed to understand women, plus it was an excuse for another rig. :redneck:

We casually looked around for a few months on eBay and CraigsList. She wanted a truck so we initially started looking for Toyotas. One night we drove by a parking lot where this was sitting with a for sale sign.

'88 2WD, Peugeot 5 speed, D35, 4.0, fancy rims, and very clean. A few negotiations and it was sitting in our driveway.

I already had most of the parts to convert it to 4WD besides the transmission. The Peugeot had to go no matter what. I had originally considered replacing it with another manual, but after a couple of "lessons" with the wife I thought better of that. About this time a buddy came across a parts XJ for $200. There were four of us that all wanted parts from it so I ended with a AW4 and lots of other miscellaneous parts for $50. :cheer:

Besides the AW4 and 4WD, I had a few other plans for it.
- 231 doubler
- TNT long arm front suspension
- Spring over with 8.8 rear
- ECTEDs front and rear
- 4.88 gears
- 35" Mickey Thompson Baja MTZs
- Lots of other fun stuff :clappy:

Here it is after most of that stuff.

I've got plenty of progress pics that I'll post up as I get time. Here are a couple of the latest updates.

Front bumper:

Rear bumper:

Willy

4xjunkie · Sep 30, 2008

:awesomework: Looking good.

zukkev · Sep 30, 2008

Looks Great! :awesomework: I've always kinda liked the MJ....

dirtygoat · Sep 30, 2008

Looks good...

I like the Chevy in the background...

xraidedj · Oct 1, 2008

sweet...you pretty much had to do what I had to do on all the converting from 2wd to 4 and pugoet to aw4. awesome...im gonna do the double 231 also...I just put d60, and hp 44 front...and converted to leafs front...still a work in progress for me though...its alot more work doing all that crap then people think! I also like the front bumper...pretty burl...

reson46 · Oct 1, 2008

We barely had it for a week before it received its first dent...while parked. At this time we had up to five (running) vehicles in our driveway. Which meant that getting to some of them required a pocket full of keys and a game of musical cars. I think on this day I was working on my XJ so I parked my Ram - which I picked up two weeks before - and the MJ on the street.

That evening one of the neighbors came by and told me that somebody had just side swiped my truck and took off. Luckily they missed my Ram but put a dent in the bed side of the MJ. A couple other neighbors got the license number and the cops caught the drunk a couple of blocks away. I was told that they removed a couple of empty liquor bottles and had to carry the driver to the cop car. :wtf: I hope she spends a long time in a small space and never endangers anybody else's life with her stupidity again. :looser:

Here's the damage.

At least one good thing came of this. Her insurance did pay for the front long arm kit.

The dent wasn't enough to care about considering we were just going to add our own dents later on.

Willy

reson46 · Oct 1, 2008

A few months later the front suspension arrived. :nana1:

I had them lengthen the belly pan so that it would protect the extra transfer case.

Willy

reson46 · Oct 1, 2008

A few of the other parts I started collecting for it.

Parts XJ:

Tires:

8.8:

Doubler:

I already had a '98 D30 and an NP231 to use for the front case.

Willy

reson46 · Oct 1, 2008

Over the next few months I worked on the suspension. Progress was a lot slower than what I would have liked. Besides doing 10 things at once on the MJ, my wife was trying to get into graduate school, we were planning a move half way across the country, and we were looking for a house half way across the country. Here are a few pics at various stages.

Willy

reson46 · Oct 1, 2008

Pics of the doubler going together.

This is the front half of the case with the new main shaft and shift rod in place.

Here I am deciding where I need to cut to remove the front output.

Then I shaped the block off plate to fit in the hole that is left.

Got the block off plate welded in. The second case is going in another project.

Putting the cases together.

You can also see the beginning of the extra mount I made to support the weight of the second case.

Willy

reson46 · Oct 1, 2008

Once I had the cases together I could figure out where I was going to need to clearance to get everything to fit. A sledgehammer worked pretty well.

Here is the finished mount I made. I countersunk the bolts so that the belly pan remained flat.

This shows the bracket mounted on the cases.

Everything installed.

I'll have more later.

Willy

NotMatt · Oct 1, 2008

Excellent tech from the new guy! :awesomework:

reson46 · Oct 2, 2008

With two transfer cases I had to figure out a way to shift both of them. I could have used the stock shifter and linkage for the front case, but the stock design is utterly retarded in my opinion. :scratchhead: I wanted everything mounted to the drivetrain and nothing mounted to the body. A lot of trial and error went into this. In the end I had a nice headache and was very glad to be done with it.

This is the linkage I ended up with from below.

The shifters from the interior.

Willy

reson46 · Oct 2, 2008

With the transfer cases in I could start installing the 8.8 and get measurements for the driveshaft. I used MORE anti-wrap spring perches and a Tom Woods driveshaft.

I cut the shock mounts off the D35 u-bolt plates and used them on the 8.8.

Axle installed.

Willy

reson46 · Oct 2, 2008

I went with a Riddler differential cover for the front axle.

For the rear I went with Ruff Stuff only because Riddler wasn't producing their 8.8 covers yet and I didn't have time to wait. It is very tough, but I wouldn't buy another one. I had to enlarge a couple of the bolt holes because they didn't line up and it didn't come with hardware. Also, I'm not really concerned about the pretty little half circles on the outside of the cover, but if you are going to add those at least make them line up with the differential.

Willy

reson46 · Oct 2, 2008

The fenders were trimmed and I moved the flares up a few inches.

Willy

reson46 · Oct 2, 2008

I used a carrier bearing on the front driveshaft for a couple of reasons - I didn't want the driveshaft hanging down lower than the control arms and I didn't want to weaken the belly pan by notching it. I had a stock XJ front shaft that was used with the carrier bearing and shortened rear shaft from a Mazda B truck. The spline count on the Mazda shaft was the same as the front output yoke of an NP 231. I installed the NP 231 yoke on the Mazda shaft so that I could mount the front XJ shaft to it.

Here is everything mocked up before I had the Mazda shaft shortened.

Shortened shaft.

Here is the mount I made for the carrier bearing. It's mounted to the belly pan with counter sunk bolts just like the transfer case mount.

Willy

reson46 · Oct 2, 2008

I made a mount for the CB antenna and spare tire out of some spare angle iron.

Willy

hwcurtice · Oct 2, 2008

Nice...

I had a MJ once, except it was a 4x2 and only had a 4 beater in it... :-(

I like the shade tree mechanics too. Shops get too messy sometimes. When you shade tree it, you have to clean up after yourself!

What's next?