TJ: Rockets Build

[Rocket55]

Latest update to my TJ is a Poison Spyder louvered hood to get a bit of under bonnet heat out and away from everything.

First up take the bonnet off, put on the template on, which was the best quality template I've seen on anything to date. Mark it out and start cutting some sizeable holes through the bonnet.



Paint up the bare metal edges and screw the louvers on. Fitted like a glove and looks pretty smart in my opinion.





It's designed to not cut any of the structural bonnet supports, which is good, one less thing to worry about with the boys.



Now just to get used to the new view.



PS: For those wondering about water getting onto the engine when it rains, my TJ sat out the front for 2 days without the bonnet on including sitting through that big storm we just had, no problems, just turn the key and it started right up.

[Rocket55]

These turned up today



To replace the one I broke last weekend doing this

[Rocket55]

Bit of an update, it's been a while.

First things first I replaced my flasher unit with an LED unit to stop the fast flash caused from the LED rail lights.



Then replace the broken bonnet hold downs, came up good.



After this it was time to replace the front brake pads as they had under 2mm left on them, so while I was at it I thought I'd shout it a new set of rotors as well. Went with DBA slotted rotors and QFM HPX pads. They seem to get great reports and cheap to.



So foolishly I do this on the Friday night prior to a Saturday wheelin trip. The install goes off without a hitch.



All excited at about 10pm Friday night i back it out of the garage and commence the bedding procedure. Great initial bit and was feeling good, then they started to stick and got progressively worse. After some quick googling I find this is pretty common with the plastic pistion callipers. Ended up with the TJ parked out the front with the front brakes locked on at about 50% and me sending a message pulling out of the trip the next day. Super bummed. So jump on the net and order a set of front callipers from Rock Auto for $38US each and with freight this amount to about $200AUD landed here. 4 days later they arrive.



Shortly after the install happens again.



Next issue. The drivers side went as planned. The passenger side calliper had the wrong pistion installed and wouldn't retain the brake pad inside the pistion. The hole was too big. So it got put together anyway as the spring does bugger all anyway. I send RockAuto an email and pics and they respond by telling me to fill out there returns section on the web. So I do and go to bed. Next morning I wake up to an email with a new shipping tracking number for my replacement calliper. About 5 days later it's sitting on my front door step. Can't ask for much more than that, so well done RockAuto. Must install the new caliper soon.

Very happy with the performance of the rotor/pad combination, nice powerfull braking compared to what was in there before.

[Rocket55]

After this my TJ spent a while at the fabricators getting a few odd jobs done, namely. Welding up my cracked pan hard bracket on the front drivers side chassis, then bracing it across to the opposite chassis rail. Next the drivers side front upper arm diff mount was sleeved to stop the bush floating around. Finally relocated my spare to the centre by extending the swing arm on my rear bar.

While my Jeep was away I started tinkering on eBay which is never a good idea, next thing you know this stuff starts turning up.







And a STEDI 50" 4K light bar



After painting up all the fabrication work, rewiring my rear bar and installing a new RFI UHF antenna (my UHF actually works now) I stared working on the wiring in the cab. This began with removing the dash and finding huge amounts of redundant wiring.



After fixing this up and modifying dash panels to house switches I started the light install. This starts with removing the 8 windscreen torx bolts. Using heat, 7 of the 8 came out no problems, but one pesky bugger gave me grief, eventually I drilled it out and used an Ezyout.



While I was at it I ran power to the back for a car fridge and installed a camp light on the inside edge of the rear window. Also installed some rock lights under it. They are a good start but need more yet. Lifted the cowl panel and ran some wires, installed the light bar brackets, pod lights and light bar. This is the finished product.





Took it for a spin and it lit up the world, but as expected whistled like a bastard. Having prepared for this I installed a couple of lengths of rubber edge protection from Bunnings, took it for another spin and you wouldn't even know it was up there. Super happy with the result.



All this was completed just in time to take it down the coast and get it dirty with a bunch of other cool Jeeps.

[Rocket55]

After putting some bigger lights on it became apparent that my eBay Chinese LED headlights were just not cutting it. I was also concerned about pulling up behind cars with them on as there was no cut off in the light beam and it just went everywhere. So an upgrade was in order and through the LED headlight thread on this forum I found the Ignite lights and Greg at Beyond 4x4. A bit of research and a couple of calls later and a set was at my door.



They are an impressive looking light



Time for the install.







I think they look ace!!

How do they work, you might ask? Well the work bloody fantastic!! Straight away without adjusting in they were so much better it wasn't funny, a bit of adjustment later and you get this, remember that the photos never do them justice.

Look at that cut off



I could probably lift them up a tad more, but I'll see how it goes with a bit of weight in the TJ first.

[Rocket55]

Well look what Photobucket has gone and done Hopefully they will see sense and reinstate existing photo links and restrict new ones.

Update: Well seeing as though it was starting to get a bit colder I thought I better fix my heater, especially since I'll be going down and doing 6 Stage in a couple of weeks without my hard top. Current situation is nothing works in the middle of the dash. So i bought a new HVAC controller from RockAuto and a new resister off ebay and installed these.



This got everything working except for the fan. So back to Rockauto and a week later I now have a fan



Problem is, they obviously differ from left and right hand drive Jeeps. I know a bunch of the yanks access their fans from under the dash, really simple change, and some have to come through the firewall after first removing the battery and computer. This is how we get to them. Bottom line is the fan didn't fit



Thinking caps on..... Simply swap the housings over!!



This sounds good in theory.

Problem 1: the new screws don't fit through the old housing holes. Its only plastic drill it out slightly bigger. Easy fix.

Problem 2: The new fan blade is a couple of mm taller than the old fan blade and now rubs on the housing. Insert a spacer between the fan motor and the housing. A couple of those left over plastic washers you get with new number plate frames worked a treat. Easy fix.

Install the fan, computer and battery. Moment of truth, yes the fan runs, but no air is coming out, WTF!! .

Thinking caps on again..... Inspect closely photos of new and old fan blades. Not only are the housings reversed but so are the blades, meaning my new fan is not blowing but is actually sucking.

Remove fan from Jeep. Test fan on battery, reverse polarity and retest, yep fan now spins the other way as I hoped. Another small and vital win occurred when checking the electrical connection on the fan. Being a universal fan meant that there was no directional blockers in the coupling, meaning I could simply rotate the plug from the Jeep and plug it in backwards. Big win

Install fan, install plug backwards, install computer and battery. Fire it all up and works like a dream!! happy days

Now I can stay warm!

[Jimmyb]

Originally Posted by Rocket55

Well look what Photobucket has gone and done Hopefully they will see sense and reinstate existing photo links and restrict new ones.

Good to see your image hosting within the forum is working ok. I see you used Tapatalk, that's still a 3rd party to the forum, embedding the images hard into Ausjeep directly with the image uploader is essentially the best way to ensure you images will always be here, well until the zombies come, then it doesn't really matter.