Nate's 2002 TJ, Not so simple anymore by gst95dsm

10 minute(s) of a 391 minute read

Added a couple photos to garage photo wall, also a couple new plates thanks to GBeasley, thanks man! My new garage has tall 10' ceilings so i've got more room. I have a couple more printed out, but Target was out of frames. Oh well.... Mike you made the wall man.  

6-26-2013

Printed out a nice 20 x 30 of the group shot today and framed it. Nevermind the glare from the photo I took of it, it looks awesome. Thanks for sending me that version Kyle.



I've been kind of bugging to wrench lately and got to do some today...... I put new shocks on my wife's civic, and re painted my exhaust tips on my truck, it seems the plasti-dip didn't appreciate the 16 hr. marathon drive to Moab.

Needless to say..... that kind of wrenching sucked. I want to tear my Jeep apart but don't want to miss out of wheeling this summer...... I guess I better go wheeling soon to get over the urge.

7-1-2013

Drove up to Backdoor and put my tires on it, not doable for me but it was fun, got some good pics, ill try and post some later today. Getting hot so were heading on down the road..... can't wait to come back and spend a few days here.

http://s13.photobucket.com/user/gst9...tml?sort=3&o=6

I think I finally figured it out!! Thank you Beasley!

7-3-2013

Here's a little taste of Chocolate Thunder in a pretty Mild TJ. It's a GREAT TIME!
I don't know why my boy is so shaky with the Gopro, sorry about that! I wish my wife would have filmed me going around the big boulder from a little closer.... that was about as sideways as I've been, the rock would keep you from going over at the expense of your body, but I stuck with my line and it went right around without even touching. That was a FUN moment though, I said "holy ****" in my head for a few.

7-9-2013

Took the first step in my stretch project...... refilled my gas cylinder for my welder!!! Haha.... I'm also eyeing a piece of frame section from a TJ on Ebay.

I also refilled my 10lb. CO2 tank. I got 6 fills from 7 to 20 at Moab, and I filled my rear truck tires from 10 to 40 once at the Hammers. Pretty good! I love the speed of CO2.

Looking through my photos I thought this one was cool that I hadn't posted yet.

Chocolate Thunder....

7-12-2013

Well all this talk about stretch and rear axles and this and that has my head spinning, so to remedy this I decided to plan some wheeling for Sunday. I've got a little group lined up to run "Mirror Lake" trail. It won a 2012 outstanding trail award from BFG. I've never run it although I've passed the trail head many times. Should be a fun time. This video I watched on Youtube of anothers trip motivated me to cross this one off the list.

http://www.ufwda.org/2012/04/bfgoodr...anding-trails/

7-14-2013

Wheeewwww..... long day of wheeling today. We did Mirror, which was a blast, and then ran Red lake also. 10hr's wheeling, 13 hour day.... i'm beat. I also beat the crap out of my rig today. I don't know why, I was just in a bit of an abusive mood. It took it with no complaints as usual, just some missing paint here and there,  . I had my first real Gopro fail.... forgot the memory card in computer and only a 512mb as a back up...... so I only got a couple clips, and nothing of myself. Barely got any photos! All in all a good day.....

This is the gatekeeper to this trail..... it used to be pretty easy, but some HUGE rocks are now in way different places. I got myself in a bad spot and had to winch up it. That kinda pissed me off so I had to go back around and try a little harder. I made it no problem focusing on my line a little more.





It takes a lot to upset this 4runner, He lifted the tire HIGH right here and had to back out of it and reset.




Father in law's YJ, one of the nicest and most capable I know of.





Me being a dork with my good ol flex shots.....





This is a fun section...

I drove up Highway 1 from San Fran through half of Oregon. It was BEAUTIFUL, once you got into Oregon, haha.

Well my rig has Moab dust, Johnson Valley dust, and Sierra dust in every nook and cranny imaginable. I got her cleaned up pretty good though. A little black paint and she'll be good as new. I'm amazed at what it put's up with. I've probably wheeled a years worth or more for most people just in the last two months, with no issues to report.

7-16-2013

Pretty cool photo from Helldorado courtesy of Lu.

7-18-2013

Well all I can say is that I hope everyone who wants to make the trip finds a way to get it done. It looks like it's going to be one to remember!  

I bought this today! Pretty excited to actually have purchased something for the stretch project. I paid a **** load for it, but I really want to accomplish this as cleanly as possible. It's a left side frame rail from a TJ, I'm going to make my frame stretch sections out of it. It's way more material than I needed but it was the only piece of straight framefrom a TJ I could find on the web right now.

7-21-2013

A local Junkyard was having a half off sale today, so I finally went and extracted an 8.8. I scouted it out the other day and they had 4 so I went with the cleanest and easiest one to remove. It was surprisingly easy to pull it. I was by myself and the only help I needed was to lift it onto my wheelbarrow. The stretch project is taking precedence over this axle build, but this will be something to tinker with also. The plans are for a Detroit and 4.88's, not sure on what brackets yet. Oh yeah..... $85 OTD!!!!!  

Junkyard fresh!



It's home for a while!

7-23-2013

So..... I think I started my teardown.  



THE LEGEND!



Well this is a little hard to admit, but I think I'm going to try and sell the D35. Adding up my build costs, I just simply need the money for parts. We will see if anyone wants to pony up some cash for it. If not... oh well.

The big dilemma now becomes what front to run. It's a crap shoot financially. I personally think "I" could make a HP30 Live a long time on 37's, but being limited to 4.88's messes up my crawl ratio. It's good for me to start thinking about that again..... it just totally reminds me how NOT worth it, it would be to run 37's. New wheels.... tires are way more. Ok screw it! 35"'s fo life.  

I just cut my link mounts off the frame....... it was just as bad as I envisioned it. Those mother****ers were on there. There was NO hope of saving them after the BFH had to come out. Oh well.... it was the part of this I was dreading the most.....and it's done. Besides cleaning up the frame a bit. For ONCE I was smart enough to use ear protection and I feel so much better after all that grinding than I normally do!

Build day ONE!