XJ: My first 4x4 (Not the last)

[Aaron89]

Well, I've had this XJ for about 8 months now, and after all that time I've finally accumulated enough pictures for the start of a build thread.
This will be a long journey, I'm sure.

It's a 96 model XJ, picked up for $800 unregistered, with a busted transfer and a mere 180,000km on the clock.
My first 4wd.

Excuse the rushed photoshopping in some of these. Had to blur the background at times.
And a lot of pics will be of custom stuff, but it's part of the build so I don't see why it can't be here.

As is was when I picked it up at the beginning of May 2015:



Crappy re-tread tyres:



It was filthy inside and out, as the previous owner loved mud.
I don't.

Engine bay clean-up:





You get the idea, the entire car, inside and out, looked like that.

One of the first things I did was clean up the nudge bar and fit a lightbar. Slightly less embarassing in black:



To fit the lightbar I planned ahead and sorted out relay and fuse space:



First 4x4, so of course I took it home and "flexed" it LOL (swaybar still in)



Well that's the intro. Not really sure what I'm building this to be. A tourer of sorts, I suppose. But it is the daily now, and so I'll still try to keep weight to a minimum and mods will reflect the reliability I'm aiming for.

[Aaron89]

Driving it to and from work was killing me. My back anyway. The drivers seat was stuffed and had to go.
Picked up a cheap adjustable SAAS seat and chucked that in. It's the complete opposite to a Jeep seat in every way.
Very snug, very hard.
But it's not that bad.

Out with the old:



Seat bracket, version 1.0:





In with the new:





Everything is very snug. The seat fits nicely, but any errors in the measurements in the seat bracket and I'd have been making another one.

Which is exactly what I did anyway:



Version 2.0 lowered the seat another 30mm or so, which was much more comfortable. And it doesn't weigh a tonne either.

One day soon after, a car was being dropped off at work and the tow hook ripped out of the front of the car (euro POS), sending it rolling off the truck and into my jeep.

Hit hard enough to bounce a rear tyre up onto the stop block:



Wrote the lady's astra off (push the rear quarter into the door):



And did this to mine haha:



As you could imagine, I was extremely upset lol.

[Aaron89]

Scraped some money together so I could sort out the first decent mod.
Wheels and tyres.
I needed wheels that looked good and would later accommodate bigger tyres, and tyres that would last. I do 400km's a week just travelling to and from work, plus weekend travels.

So I went with a set of Dynamic Soft 8 wheels in 15x8 -25:



And Kumho KL78 AT's in 30x9.5":



Took the nugget from this:



To this:



It's smoother, safer and quieter and I'm extremely impressed with the offroad capabilities of these tyres.
On and off road they are grippy as hell.

[Aaron89]

I've never been a fan of leaning forwards and squinting into the mirrors to see what's behind me at night.

So I ripped the rear bar off, knocked out that dent and fitted these:







And they're bloody bright:



Tough Dog RTC Steering Damper:







Went through a few different rear drawer designs before settling on a simple setup like this:



Just about complete:



Final test fit. Slides are full extension type:



And the reason for the small right hand side drawer, is i also fitted a dual battery system and upgraded the audio while I was at it.
Needed a bit of depth to my music.



Plenty of room for tools and spares, audio sounds great and the spare tyre is still easy to remove. Hat-trick win. I will be re-making the drawer system completely out of aluminium at a later date.

[Aaron89]

Rod end was cactus so, planning ahead, I went and bought an adjustable panhard rather than track down a rod end.



Took a short holiday, went to see a mate in QLD, with the hopes of doing some 4wding up there.
Lady luck had other plans and my alloy radiator gave out on the way up.
Since that time (last August) I've been through 3 alloy radiators. 4 including the one that's currently in the car, also cactus.

And if you don't believe me:



So anyways, there's a reason the nudge bar is off the car in that pic.
While I was in QLD, old mate "Richard Buttocks" hooked me up with his no longer required winch bar.

So this should look familiar:







That there is a "Domin8r" 12,000lbs winch from 4wdsupacenter.



Brilliant winch. Gearbox is a bit noisy, compared to other brands, but it hasn't let me down yet. Pulled a 45 series with 38's up rocks, single line pull. No dramas.

Re-mounted the light bar when I got back home and went for a drive. Had a day left of my holiday to kill.





Starting to look like a 4wd, no?

Heard about all the trouble with the factory steering box spacers, so I whipped up a little something:

[Aaron89]

I can't remember which radiator I was up to at this point. My 3rd, I think.
Needed some better fans:



Wired up with a low/high thermo switch, with a high speed over-ride in cab.

A little pinch weld to help seal it up:



Next up were the light mods that I had been trying to get done for months.

I had been running LED H4 globes for a while, which were a decent improvement over halogen.

LED globe low beam:



LED globe high beam:



But they still weren't good enough.

Picked these up cheap on ebay:





LED headlight low beam:



Dat cut off



LED headlight high beam:





These lights are brilliant. Exactly what I was after, in terms of light output.

But of course, they have no built in parker, so I had to sort out the LED parker/indicator/DRL at the same time.

When I replace a part, I like it to bolt in just the same as the original. Easy to remove and replace that way.

So I made up some rough but functional brackets:





They were painted black of course.

Fitted and after a well deserved wash, she's sittin' pretty:





Don't worry, it definitely goes off-road. I mean, I ain't building no mall cra...



...Yeah well, they ran out of spaces.

So running wheels that don't have a center bore that matches your hubs is silly, so I order some hub-centric rings:

[Aaron89]

Got sick of not having my a/c working.





FOURTH alloy radiator in, as well as new a/c condenser and hoses.



And this radiator was leaking before I even started the motor.

Currently, it's full of stop leak. So if somebody can recommend a place that does decent alloy radiators that don't cost as much as I paid for the car, I'd appreciated it a great deal.

And after having the licence plate zipped-tied to the winch for months, I finally sat down and made a small bracket for it, to bolt onto the front bar.







That's about it for the stuff worth mentioning at the moment.
I'm hoping that by making a build thread on it, I'll feel a little more motivated to continue work on the Jeep.
Things I'd like to do next are a lift and rock sliders.
I may get a start on the sliders very soon.

But I'll leave you with these for the time being:







And just to re-cap: