house 2 home property transformations

this week on dirt every day we have 14days to get this jeep ready for the moab easter jeep safari.we got a lot of work to do. weeee! so as you probably know i have a bunch ofdifferent jeeps. there was that cj7 you've seen in a previous episode i've got an oldcj5 but i've never had a wrangler tj andthat's what this is. now in '97 they went to thewrangler body style and what's different about it from allthe previous open-top jeeps is that it has coil springs. with coil springsit rides a lot better than most of those

leaf springs jeeps. so i've always wanted to build one ofthese, i've never been able to find one i can afford, and i came across this one, and it was actually a really good deal.this jeep hasn't really been off-road in its life and i want to transform it into a cool little off-road vehicle for going out to moab. one of theproblems with this jeep compared to a lot of the wranglers is it only has a 4-cylinder engine. notbad as a trail rig

but out here in the dunes and whenyou're running big tires that can be a problem so that's one ofthe things we're gonna have to address is how do we get more power to theground that little tiny engine? overall we got a lot of cool things todo this jeep and one of the things that's great about jeeps is there's so much aftermarket support thatyou can get just about anything for a jeep and most of it boltsright on. hopefully in the next 14 days we can turn this thing around and beready for moab. okay, cool little jeep. little 4-cylinderengine but also

little tires and you probably know mebeing an off-road guy i like big tires. there's a good reason to put big tireson your 4x4: when you have a larger diameter tire it helps you roll over obstacles but italso gives you ground clearance it brings that center of your axle up higher so all those axel tubes and their center differential have more ground clearance to help getover boulders and rocks a lot of the type of stuff we'll be running over when we're out in moab. another thing is this vehicle has a lotof low-hanging fruit such as

transmission crossmembers and these sidesteps. these are really good if you wanna helpyour mom or your grandmother get into your jeep, but we want to take this jeep rock crawlingso this is probably gonna go, but then we're going to end up with all this bare sheet metal right here. that's something that when we're rock crawling we may smash this into some boulders so that's gonna need some protection, butone thing we don't want to do with this jeep is get it too tall. you get too tall andthen you're off road the thing feels

like it wants to tip over so that's my conundrum on this projecthow do i put bigger tires on it without makingthe whole jeep really tall? some of the things we'll address is thefront fenders and hood. these types of things we may be able tocut, or modify, or change to get a bigger tire in there withoutthe whole vehicle having to get really tall to clearance them. another thing is up here in the fronthere's this great factory bumper. it's got these plastic side things here

you know if you're in a fender bender with a honda that's not really a big deal this would protect you but when you're rock crawling you want this tire to hit the boulder first you don't get hung up on a bumper. so we're probably gonna remove thisbumper, come up with a more rock crawler friendly bumper, and right about here its gonna need awench. oh one other thing i need to tell you guys about is lockers. so let me hop in this thingi'll show you whether this vehicles like

doesn't have lockers and that's going to be a big problem. most vehicles have an open differential in the axles. whatthis allows is when you're going around a corner the wheels are going to turn at differentspeeds so it has a 'differential' allowing the tire speeds to differentiate from side to side. that's great when you're driving on thehighway the problem is when you're off-road

and you want traction going to everytire. if you're off road and one tire has traction and the other tire doesn't and you have an open differential allthe power's gonna go to that tire that doesn't have traction say you're on sand,or in mud, or in a ditch, and that tire's hanging in the air thenthe vehicle won't go anywhere. so if i try and start this vehicle up hereand there's a little rock pile right in front of me i don't have very big tires i don'thave a lot of suspension travel right now and all the sway bars are connected

i just wanna try and climb up this thing and next thing you know i'm on it and i'm spinnin tires. once those tires start spinnin they're gonna start digging in the sandand i'm not going to go anywhere in fact i may end up getting stuck. i can back up and get a little run at it i can try to bump it, but without lockers i'm not goinganywhere. the same with gearing you have a smallengine you have big tires you'll need gearing to help multiply thatlittle bit of torque the engine makes and turn the bigger tires so we're gonnaneed to address gearing, we're going to

address lockers, were gonna do all thatto get bigger tires on. the stock axles probably won't hold upto that gearing those lockers and that big tire so we may even address the axles completely and replace themwith something stronger. moab is a small town in southeasternutah known for its off roading and rock running trails. we go there every year for the bigeaster jeep safari. in face last year we went there and did a night run which wecalled the mustache ride. this year our goal is just to get therein time before the easter jeep safari is

all over. we've got a lot to do to our little jeep. our first stop was poison spyder customswhere we hooked up the little jeep with better bumpers, rock sliders, and a safer roll cage. with only a four cylinder engine we're being very weight conscious so weweighed the jeep prior to adding the body armor just to see how much it would increase withthe new parts. in stock form the jeep weighs 3,145 pounds.

since our jeep is mostly rust-free the guys from poison spyder are havinglittle trouble on building our stock roll cage and bolting in our new powdercoated fast-track style cage. while the guys are swapping the cage i'm working on ditching the lame stockbumpers and beefing them so they'll work better off-road. so of all these bolts that hold the front bumper on and the sway bar which weall have to remove to put the new bumper on 90% of them i can take off with the impact so they can

blow right off. and then there's that one butyou have to do a quarter turn at a time with a hand wrench because it's stuck underneath thegrill. somewhere there's a jeep engineer laughing because they engineered this thing to me just a little more difficult than all the other ones. alright put the new one one. with about four bolts per side this spyder bumper is bolted on. we'll put a winch right here and they'll be a skid plate to protect the steering box that'll go on right there.

it allows you a lot of access to thetires so once we get bigger tires on here you'll be able to go rock climbing. plus it's angled here so it should slide up over obstacles. we got some shackles hangers here forrecovery if we need to get pulled out or pull somebody out but basically pull that big number off, put this smallstronger bumper on, now we're ready to go rock crawling. the rock sliders bolt directly to the tub of the jeep. we're also replacing the factory tailgate with the lightweight aluminum version. otherthan that tailgate

everything we've added is made of steelbut even so we only gained 55 pounds overstock. goes to show thatwell-designed parts can give off-road protection withoutoverloading the vehicle. we're here at curry enterprise picking up some axles for the tj and we're runnin outta time to get readyfor moab. as it turns out john curry is also trying to get a jeep build for moab. his is a lot farther along thanours. what all will you do to this jk? well we start with a brand new jk we went and bought. we put the rock track 70 inthe back, the full float, the 40

spine axle. this one's got an arb in it. and then in the front we put our rock chalk 60 in the front, 35 spine axle with the detroit in the front. built some custom aluminum links on it. full john joyce suspension, used all ouraluminum arms on it so we got a little more work to do we just got the fendersbolted on last night. we put the the rock slide engineering, weput their rock sliders on it. none of us are getting any younger so we had those on one of our othervehicles

and we liked him so well we put them on this vehicle too. hopefully we put a few miles on it beforewe end up in moab but i doubt if we'll really have much off-road time. you've been building jeeps for a long time so i'm pretty sure you got it figured out. well, i guess we better get back to work. yeah. igot a lot to do thanks john. alright thank you. the front axel we're building for the tj is a rock jock 44 so this is a dana style-44 axel.

one of the things we want to do with this axel is put arb airlockers in them. the air locker will evenly displace thetorque from the engine to each side of the axel giving you moretraction basically it sends power to both tires and that way no matter whichtire has traction it will help you pull that vehicle up the trail. thiscopper line that runs through here it actually runs to a fitting at thetop of the axel that runs to an air compressor on your jeep. we'll be able to flip a switch, turn onthe locker, and you'll have power going to both tires.

we are back in the dirt every day shop with our little white jeep. now thislittle jeep needed a name we call it tube sock. i know it'scompletely ridiculous but you're not going to forget that we named our jeeptube sock. this jeep is going to end up with 37 inch pitbull tires. we want thejeep to be low, we want to stuff these tires under the fenders, but as you can see it's already gettingright into that fender. but you'll notice there's somethingstrange about this. this is a fiberglass hood we put on the jeep this is a chris durham motor sports hood.

we sent it out and got it painted and this isactually where our fender is going to end up so a lot of this is going to get chopped away so that our tires don't rip out our flares like that. i got some prp seats, they're nice suspension seats that are really going to hold us tight. we pulled all the old seats out the backseat is gone we're not going to have a back seat because of our cage design and what our jeep is going to be used for. i'd really rather not have too manypeople in it plus it's only got a 4-cylinder engine

so we're only going to have 2 seats. the stock axles are gone i've ripped them out the stock suspension is gone, stock coils the stock shocks, all that stuff gone. we're going to use abds long arm kit. now it replaces the short lengths on the tj with a longer link and when you use alonger link it has less of an arc to travel for thefront axle so the axel will move in more of a vertical line instead of a curve like it does with a shorter length arm. we're hoping that a 2-inch coil with our chris durham hood and our long arms will keep it lowenough but still have enough

clearance around everything for these 37-inch pitbulls. also we have these jks echoes they're kind of a bump stop that replaces the factory bump stop. bds supplied us with a set of their fox shocks. some really good shocks so that even though it's a low jeep and it's built as a rock crawler with those fox shocks and with these jksparts we should be able to bomb around through the dirt. kind of keep that go-kart feel that we had when itwas stock. the general idea here is keep in low, light, wide, stable and getit all done in the next 10 days.

it is thursday. we're supposed to befour wheeling in moab, utah on saturday at 11 o'clock and we still have parts everywhere and a jeep in pieces. the shop is totally destroyed. there's tools everywhere luckily i called in reinforcements mybuddy tony flew out here from detroit. tony's been working on the rear. the rear axle's in i've been working on thefront. the front axle is in. both axels have air locks and that's what we'redoing now is i'm putting in a mount for thecompressor.

you can put this thing just aboutanywhere we have a great little spot in the corner. we can run the wire into the battery we can run the switches inside. plumb our lines down to our differentials. wire our switches inside and we should have locking differentials in no time. in about 12 days we've done a ton totube sock our dirty white tj. we added a new cage,rock sliders, and bumpers. a onesie on winch, new seats, put lower gears in the transfer case for the tare manufacturing as well as adding a new aluminum generate gas tank with an

gnarly steel skid plate. we also added apair of curry sway bards in addition to our bdssuspension. this will give us stable rock crawling and on-road driving. the old fenders weretrimmed with our new fiberglass hood. i replaced all the front lights with better lights like pf and arb. finally we added a daystar bodylift to helpgive us more clearance while keeping the jeep low and stable. alright its friday morning at 11 o'clock. we're leaving here at 9am so that meanswe're only slightly

late but we've gone through our entire list and the only thing we didn't finish waswiring up one of our off road lights so that's easy it's something we can getdone in moab. we also ordered drive shafts which they're actual shippingstraight to moab so we had to mock up with the stockfront drive shaft so that the jeep can run, but we are ready! tube sock is done-ish kinda. its about 11 o'clock on saturday.

we drove through the night and got tomoab at about three in the morning this morning. the jeep made it on the trailer but we still had towork on it this morning. tom woods overnighted us some driveshaft for this thing and they bolted in perfectly so we werelaying in the parking lot of the hotel this morning bolting the drive shafts in so the jeep really doesn't have anytesting other than getting onto the trailer. we just got out here to area bfe just east of moab.

and we're going to see what our little jeep can do. the area bfe is this really cool private property just east of moab utahand what's cool about it is there's a ton of neat trails here they do off-road races here, motorcycle stuff, but unlike in town where it's all blm and public ground you can come out here and run all these different trails. a little bit more hardcore stuff out here there's upper colorado which is a very well-known trail and we're going totake our jeep out

some of the guys from pitbull tire are here. arb is here. they brought some of their vehicles outwe're gonna take the jeep out there we're gonna test the air lockers and our big tires, our bds suspension, and see how the whole thing holdstogether. we're crossing our fingers because it's a new car and there's always news car blues but we've gone over the thing three times justlooking for bolts and nuts that we might have forgotten to tighten in our mad mayhem to moab, but we're hereright now. the cooler is stocked we're ready to have some fun.

after airing down the pitbull tires to9 pounds we head up the trail and let old tube sock stretch its suspension. the pitbulls actually have a tough carcass and need to get worn in a little for best rock crawling performance. i pushed the tires over some boulders at bfe and was fully impressed with the abuse they cantake. in fact mike green from pitbull flew tomoab just to make sure i had zero issues and because he likes this awesome littletown as much as i do. you actually have a pitbull? no i do not i had a great dane

and a black lab. uh oh. there we go. too much traction it's nice when the tire makes up for the lack of horsepower. mac glass from arb rode along to givesome pointers on when best to use my lockers so i have no problem getting all that 4-cylinder torque to the tires. so you push this button, you turn on thecompressor. right. then you push the button to turn on the rear locker. right. push the button to turn on the front locker. yup. with one locked you have the full

maneuverability of the vehicle so you can get yourself set up on the line you want. then as soon as you want to start getting after it you hit it and turn it on real quickly, hit the obstacle, turn them on, climb off. most people don't realize that justbecause something says it's 4x4 doesn't necessarily mean its 4 wheel drive because it has open diffs. right. you're only sending power to the tire with the least amount of traction. exactly. the bds suspension and fox shocksflexed their stuff up the trail. other than the fact i forgot to add a coil retainer to the axel

the suspension worked flawless on our test run. i did find a few minor new car issues like a nasty leak from a transfer case after weforgot a front seal but nothing that was gonna stop us from enjoying a great dayin moab. in fact if it wasn't for a bad lightningstorm that threatened zapping our camera crewi'd probably still be out there today. do i have jumper cables? (thunder crack) who needs jumper cables? yeah. just put a golf club on the battery. yeah. they have a saying in moab that if you don't like the weather

just wait a few hours and sure enoughthe next thing you know the rain was gone and we were looking for something else to do. mike green from pitbull said we've gottago meet scott mcfarlane. he's a local guy with a class-8 race truck. and when he offered to give me a ride icouldn't pass up the opportunity. it was the perfect ending to a perfectday in moab. well that is it for our mayhem to moab we did a lot to this little jeep in a very short time. we added tires, wheels, suspension, locking differentials,

axles, roll cage, a wench, bumpers-front-and-rear, a rock slider, seats, transfer case gear, skid plates. we did alot in a very short time and we made it out here to moab one ofthe greatest places you can ever go four-wheeling. if you wanna see more about this deepcheck it out in the pages of petersen's 4-wheel and off-road magazine. if you wanna see more of moab you'll just have to come here yourself because our show is over but i wanna thank all those companies that we worked with. we got a lotta great products on this

jeep and i especially want to thank my buddy tony who saved my ass by coming out to california and helping me build this thing. that's it for dirt every day we'll seeyou next time. moab is such a cool place. it is. we should try and quantify it. my friend tony is an engineer i know we could get him to quantify it. hey tony you're an engineer how do wequantify how great moab is? look at the camera. how do we quantify how great because you're an engineer. a requirement shows that depends on and how much

articulation you achieve through the obstacle. so if we take the amount of fun and multiply it by a given known constant. create the fun quotient. detail dan how do we determine, how do we quantify the fun quotient? i mean it's all a place from the west coast to the east coast that we meet to discuss in the center you know (laughs). this episode you can end with that. this episode just got much better (laughs).

yeah!