1998 Cherokee 4.0 Ltd - Project

[Fourpot]

Front end all back together. Road-tested and it feels better now that it's all properly adjusted and aligned.

Also found the fault with the front fog-lights - duff relay (and one duff bulb).

[Fourpot]

Finally fixed the rear de-mister. As with many of the things that haven't worked on this car from when I got it, there is more than one fault. This time it was the relay and a broken connection. The relay was easy enough, apart from getting to it. The broken connection was a little harder, even after I'd manged to find it.

The break was in the grommet/tube that goes between the body and the tailgate. Apparently it's a common fault, the wiring flexes every time the tail gate is opened, and as the de-mister wires are quite fat (big current) they don't do flexing too well. So I've added a long length of wire, using two thinner ones for each fat one and also they are now much longer to allow more 'loop' which again aids flexing. I also re-routed them through the grommet/tube that's for the washer pipe, as the original wiring route is very crowded already.

A lot of faff for a straight re-connection, but hopefully an improvement as well as a fix..

[Fourpot]

New wheels waiting, new fat tyres ordered and being fitted tomorrow, so time to get the wider Rugged Ridge 'fender flares' on.

Front first as they're easier.

Step 1, rubber trim off the doors and front wing

Step 2, get the inner arch liners off.

Step 3, remove the washer bottle from under the nearside arch.

Step 4, measure (at least twice) then mark out the cutting lines

Step 5, (no way back from here!) Cut metal!

Step 6. on reading the instructions from Rugged Ridge, I realised that if I'd blindly followed them, the back end of the car could fall apart!  The front wing is just one skin of steel so you can cut big chunks out without worry. The rear arches have a spot-welded seam around them where they join to the inner arches/rest of the body. The instructions bade me cut these back so a) there'd be a big gap up into the body cavity and b) there'd be a big gap in the structure of the unibody. So, consult Youtube/Fora etc etc and come up with plan B (Step 7.)

Step 7. mark where all the spot welds are and cut at 90 degrees to the archline, between the welds, up as far as the line where they wanted me to cut out. Next step is to bash the resulting 'tabs' back and up. so the structure stays sound and you get the same amount of arch moved out of the way as you would if you cut it out. I've painted the cuts and bare metal bits, so will finish the bashing etc tomorrow when it's dried...

[Fourpot]

Time for the FBH precision tool!  Tabs all bent back to where they need to be.  I cleaned and then sloshed Waxoyl behind the tabs before I bent them back, so no rust traps. Some of the orginal paint cracked and flaked off at the bend points and where I hit them with the Mk1 precision tool, so a bit more painting to do and some stonechip to finish.

I'll have my new wheels and tyres on by tomorrow so will mount the fender flares once I'm sure I don't need to hack off any more tin. The new tyres will only be 9mm greater radius which is no big deal, but they will be 30mm wider and 20mm further out as the new wheels are zero ET.  Possible rubbing point will be where the front wing is bolted to the inner wing at the bottom of the sill. I may have to take a corner off there and end up with just one bolt.

(Current Yokohama tyres are 235/75x16, new BFG AT KO2 ones are 265/70x16.)

[Yellow]

I've not posted in this thread before, but I've really enjoyed watching your progress as you go along, especially on my favourite Cherokee

[Fourpot]

I've not posted in this thread before, but I've really enjoyed watching your progress as you go along, especially on my favourite Cherokee

 

Thanks Harry,

Plenty more to come, I keep adding to the original list of mods I want to make  :icon_eek:

[Fourpot]

Tried out new wheels and boots yesterday. The extra 3cm of sidewall height makes for a much more comfortable ride, especially over Nantwich’s finest potholes and sunken manhole covers!

I decided to cut off the bottom rear corner of the front wings, as, whist they don't make any tyre contact with the car level on roads, there's a possibility they could if the car was over to one side and leaning on the sway bar and at full lock at the same time.

 

I now have a set of five wheels and tyres for sale...  16x8 Gojo steel wheels with stock offset/ET, tyres are Yokohama Geolander iT 235/70 x 16s. The spare is still virgin, the wheels are the same age as the tyres - about 2 years but only about 10K miles. see all the previous photos on this thread.  Tread all good and even. (These are directional tyres).

[Fourpot]

The nice postman came yesterday with some stuff from the USA. Most of the little boxes had the words 'performance', 'race', or 'forged' (no, not as in 'copied', as in made of well hard stuff) on them.

They included a Clegg Engines 4.6 stroker kit to give a 9.3:1 comp ratio, with new long-stroke crank, a stage 1 cam, duplex camchain set, posh bearing, rings etc and a shiny set of six lightweight pistons and scat forged rods, upgraded push-rods and lifters and a very lovely BBK performance 62mm throttle body.

Time to get on with the engine build! 280 bhp and 400nm torque here we come! (About the same as my old C43 AMG V8 Merc had!!)

[Fourpot]

I couldn't wait to get that BBK 62mm throttle on, so started the job today as soon as the Australian grand prix finished. The stock throttle is 60mm at the top ('Is an extra 2mm worth it?' you ask..) but tapers down to just 55mm at the bottom. The BBK is 62mm all the way through and, as the hole in the manifold is about 62.5mm, it's a simple bolt off the old one and bolt on the new one job. Any bigger throttle and I'd have to grind the hole wider (maybe when I supercharge it...!?!?!)

Did I say simple? Well yes, theoretically. The various sensors have to come off the old body and are held on with very small steel bolts in an aluminium body that have been lock-tited in for 20 years (you know where this is going don't you?). I snapped my only, rather cheapo T25 security torx key, so I'm stuck now until I get another one tomorrow. I'll have to walk..

[Fourpot]

Another accessory fitted that's been sitting in the garage for well over a year! Got the fender flares on!

 

Stonechip painted all the metal work, cleaned up and painted some other areas (door bottoms) that needed some TLC and set to it. The first task was to finish moving the side-repeater indicators.

I'd marked these out and started drilling/cutting, with it having slipped my mind that I'd taken the washer reservoir out. The lense-fitting posed no problem, but trying to put the bulb-holders in, I found that the reservoir was in the way. Two options, 1) cut a fillet off the reservoir and glue a slice of plastic over the hole (it would be high up so if it leaked, I'd still have about two-thirds capacity left in the reservoir. 2) Move the reservoir. This I managed to do with just a tiny bit of tin work, moving it forward about 1 cm, which was just enough to wiggle the bulb-holder in. Phew!

Now, this is where it becomes apparent that this particular flare kit is not much better than the horrendous instructions that came with it. I eventally got them lined up and in the same place on each side, marked the holes and drilled.  The ABS mouldings are a bit iffy and some slight bending/twisting has to be done to get them to fit properly. This leaves them slightly stressed once bolted up.  I may yet trim some of the inner/bottom edges off. The spacers provided that go between the moulding and the car body where each bolt goes, are all the same size, yet the spaces are not, varying by almost 1cm!  So another job to do will be to get a selection of spacers and do that all again. The self-tapping bolts are also all the same size, except for two shorter ones. I used one of the short ones where that blasted washer reservoir is, to avoid screwing into it. They are, I think, meant to go where the bottom of the rear doors are, as they come out through the inner skin. However, because the space beween moulding and door is what it is at these points, the bolt is too short to grip the door skin. So I've used a longer one. luckily it doesn't touch the sill when the door is shut. I'll grind the end off later. Also at the rear, there is a space that is so big the long bolts are again too short to grip well, so I'll have to find some the same type but about 1cm longer.  And finally, the rubber trim that goes around the upper edge, well there isn't enough of it. I didn't waste a single mm but was shy of about 18", so the door part of the nearside rear flare has no trim at the moment.

If you're thinking of putting flares on your XJ - I would strongly advise against the Rugged Ridge ones!!  I think, I may at some distant point, go for the steel type that fit over most of the quarter-panel (Rusty's Off Road?) and don't involve the rear doors (Yes, I have now got holes in my rear doors).

Anyway, I'm quite pleased with how they look and with correct spacers, bolts and more trim, I may even be happier!

[RichBris86]

shes looking amazing mate, you've done a brilliant job.

[Jeepmoo]

Seems like a lot of patience is involved fitting those fender flares! I'd love to know how the performance and economy changes once you've got that BBK throttle body running.

[Fourpot]

shes looking amazing mate, you've done a brilliant job.

Thanks Rich.... love watching your thread too!

[Fourpot]

Seems like a lot of patience is involved fitting those fender flares! I'd love to know how the performance and economy changes once you've got that BBK throttle body running.

At the moment, it just seems to have crisped up the throttle response a little. No idea about economy yet, probably very little change. I've haven't floored it either. With the air intake I've put on, 1999+ inlet manifold and 4-hole injectors, There's a lot more air going in and exhaust coming out. I've just had it MOTd and the exhaust gases were very clean, so perhaps it's a bit on the lean side at the moment. I have some 24lb Mustang injectors for when the 4.6 stroker kit is done, then it'll probably all come together. with the ECU mapped so it gets lambda/stoich evenly across all revs/openings.

[Fourpot]

I recently bought a great big Smittybilt XRC bumper with tyre carrier. Because the wheels tyres are now much bigger than standard, the spare won't fit in the boot unless it's on the floor lying down. I've secured it to the original spare mounting point using a fat ratchet strap, as the thought of it smacking me in the back of the head in the even of a collsion is, well.... crikey.

I already have a Smittybilt XRC bumper fitted so no need to go through all the pain of fitting the mounting brackets on the car. Should be a straight swap over and just six bolts involved which aren't hard to reach.

I put the bumper on a few week ago, with the intention of fitting the tyre carrier (and also moving the number plate and a light for it to the side). It didn't sit straight at all, one end hard against the body and the other about 2cm away from it. Pushed for time, I did the bolts up and, remembering it was quite a pin to get the first bumper to line up properly, decided to get it all square when I get around to finishing the whole job. Which I have tried to do. Tried..

After a lot of heaving, grunting, using two jacks and big lever and everything else I could think of, it would not line up. I was pretty confident that the mountings on the car were straight as they've been there for ages and were squarely on. Checked anyway and yes, all spot on.

So I checked the bumper. The bumper is made up of several bits welded together. The sub-assembly that has the six captive nuts (to mount onto the car brackets) is not welded in straight. In fact you can easily see it with the naked eye

I thought about  enlarging the holes (that the bolts go through) in the car brackets, to get it all to line up, but this would mean that the brackets on the car will not be in proper contact with the brackets on the bumper, they'd be at an angle. Given the amount of weight that will/could be hanging off the bumper (tyre carrier, wheel and tyre, 20 litres of fuel and a jack) this wouldn't be very good engineering. 

I contacted the supplier (them from Hull) who said I'm not the first to have issues with this item. Fair enough, they've offered a refund or some money to go towards a fix. A fix would be cutting out the bumper mountings and re-welding them back in straight..  I'll probably go for a refund and just leave the spare on the floor. Or in the garage and get a decent puncture repair kit. 

It's a shame, the Smittybilt XRC bumper I have on the front and the standard XRC bumper I put on the back to start with, look good, are very solid and were not too hard to fit. I understand that Smittybilt have a lot of their stuff now made in China (Trump would have a fit!). Looks like quality control has gone down the pan.

[V]

You could get a quote for the rectification from a fabricator then let the supplier know how much it will cost you to fix it. See what offer comes back, then decide.

 

Your supplier is probably going to end up with a stack of reject bumpers that they have to send back to China or have reworked themselves.

 

The welding may require the whole bumper to be stripped first and repainted afterwards.

 

Is it possible to insert a 20mm spacer on the tight side to even up the gap both sides?

 

[Fourpot]

Whichever way I do it, unless the brackets are square with the bumper it always leaves the brackets less than flush against each other, i.e. only contact is the bolts and an edge, rather than two faces being bolted tight to each other. A bit like having your brake caliper out of line with the disc, it'd only grip at the pad edges.

 

I do know someone who could do the fabrication, I may take it over to him to have a look at, but as you say, all the powder coating would have to come off and be re-done which won't all add up to cheap, whoever's paying. I'm not sure I can be ars*d with doing all that running around. I don't really NEED an external tyre carrier, just fancied one to claw back some boot space that I rarely use anyway. Only in my head will I ever need four seats and all the boot;  I do all my 'expeditions' on two wheels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Fourpot]

A nice new table arrived yesterday for the garage..  So, time to put it to good use.

All the shiny new bits for the stroker upgrade laid out in their boxes, tools ready and start the strip down of my spare/donor engine.

Various ancillary bits off first, then the head.  Apart from clearly having run rich for a while, plugs, valves and combustion chamber all quite sooty, it looks in good shape. Bores are nice and no sign of any deterioration in the head-gasket or any seals.  It's the same age/spec as the engine in the car at the moment but (I'm told) far fewer miles. Current lump has done 160K, this one 115K.

[Marcus Durand]

Thanks for the posts Glen, really interesting and great detail.

[stewart]

Keep it coming great post! 

[Fourpot]

All the rest of the bits now off the block, ready to go for its clean, bore and honing.  Head next.

Edited June 30, 2018 by Fourpot

[Fourpot]

I went to the 4x4 and Pick-Up Show at Stoneleigh the other week and some money fell out of my pocket and a winch found its way home with me. Time to get it fitted..

Actually two jobs here: the first to re-route the wires from the auxilliary lights so that they go through the light bar and out of the way and then second is to fit the winch.

 

To re-route the light wires, I drilled two holes in the bar near to the light mountings and a hole in the base on one side, with a corresponding hole in the bumper. With much fiddling with sail thread, magnets and a small nut, I managed to get them through. I've ended up with just three wires coming back to the car: supply for spotlights, supply for fogs and a common earth for both. I could have just earthed them through the bumper, but there's a lot of powder-coating and Waxoyl involved which doesn't make for good continuity.

 

The winch, a Terrafirma 1200A comes in two parts, the winch itself and the control box. The latter has the on/off switch and the socket for the hand-held control, solenoids and other electrics. Between the two are several thick cables, but they're not very long and all the pictures show the control box mounted on top of the winch. I don't want it there as it is yet more in the way of airflow to the radiator and it looks untidy. To put it in the engine bay would mean making up longer cables, which I may do some day but for now, i am fitting it behind the bumper and inside the front cross-member. The problem now of course, is that the on/off switch and hand-held socket are unreachable.

So I dismantled the control box and have remoted those things. The switch to the centre console in the car and the socket to a handy place on the bumper.

I had to cut some holes in the bumper for the cables, but otherwise the winch was easy. Mounting the control box also required some drilling for its mounting bracket, fiddly but not too difficult. 

 

Tested and all working. Well, except for the fog lights..  I'd forgotten that for some Jeep reason, the wires from the car to the original fogs are blue for supply and black to earth but these switch round at the original connections from car to bumper ! Sorted that and now all good.   Beer o'clock!

 

Edited July 3, 2018 by Fourpot

[TimC]

Very tidy

 

[Fourpot]

Finished taking the head to bits, using a valve-spring compressor that has been unused since I built my kit car in 1997! Carefully made sure I kept the valve assemblies in exactly the same order.. Head gone to join the block for cleaning etc in 'Headshop Ltd' an engine specialists in Warrington.

[Fourpot]

Irritating little and very intermittent fault has started. For about 5 or so seconds the engine will stutter slightly, like misfiring on one cylinder. As it has six cylinders, it's not as lumpy as missing one on a four cylinder engine, but it ain't right. Only lasts briefly and then is fine for hours and many miles and then it'll do it again.
The 'check engine' light also comes on, which sort of eliminates the plugs and dizzy as (I don't think) the ECU can't 'see' them.. I've bought one of those OBD2 wi-fi things to plug into it with an 'app' on my phone reading the info.
Anyway, it tells me, "Open circuit - injector No.1". Which I guess means there's an intermittent break in the wires somewhere between the ECU and the injector and/or earth, but also could be the injector itself, or the little adaptor between the loom and injector (as I have later type injectors now).
So I swapped injectors 1 and 2 over.

By fiddling with wires and using WD40 all over the place, the fault disappeared for quite some time, to the point where I was thinking it must have just been a duff connection.

So I'm happy for a while, but ready for it to happen again..
If it then still says "Open circuit - injector No.1" then it's a wire or the adaptor.
If it then says "Open circuit - injector No.2", it's the injector. 
Expecting it, with my luck, to next say "Open circuit - injector No.5". I've driven around for a while with no problem, then get the stutter again. OBD2 still blames Injector No.1, so I swap the adaptor with another cylinder.  OK for a while again and then a wee stutter this morning. Once more, OBD2 says No.1 injector. Therefore, injector and adaptor acquitted and wires charged with the offence.

I set about having a look at the wires by opening up the loom where it runs alongside the rocker cover inside a plastic guard thing.

Crikey, in the length between the front and half-way back, the whole loom was baked hard and trying to separate the wires, I found that some of them were now bonded together from heat melting the plastic sheathing. Separating them resulted in a sticky mess of split wires and bare copper.

So I did some vascular surgery and cut some lengths out and put new wire in, wrapped it in heat tape and then put some heat-shield aluminium around the plastic guard for good measure.

I'll replace the whole lot (and maybe re-locate the injector loom further away from the engine) when I pop in the stroker engine.

All DTCs cleared and she's running sweetly... time will tell.