Pearl: The Oddball 2 Door XJ

Buddy_Holly said:
Next up should be some red underglow too :flipoff2:
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Dont forget to paint the valve cover and alternator. Red dizzy cap and wires. Or better yet, find one of those clear caps that make the light show.
 
Anybody got some 24s and an 8” exhaust tip? I can drop the shackles and make it squat. Maybe them young kids will accept me that way :rolleyes:
 
Oh speaking of exhaust, I built a complete 409 stainless setup a month ago. Bought a universal builders kit which is just a box full of bends and some v bands and went to town. I used a flowmaster cat and hooker aero chamber muffler. Redid all the hangers so it would tuck up nice and tight. Sound ended up being more mellow than the magnaflow I had on there. It’s quiet again!

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Damn, it’s been a hot minute. I’m gonna compress a 3 year update into one post so strap in.

Pearl is still chugging along. I left Holley and moved to Mooresville in November of ‘21 to work for one of their brands, a shop called GearFX Driveline. GearFX got closed by Holley in January so I made the move to our sister company Detroit Speed. Just moved from sales into a new position as the engineering technician. Before GearFX closed I built a new HP30 with a locker, truss, and a REM polished ring and pinion. Helps to have a shop at your access to do things like the REM polish and powder coat.

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Put a new set of KO2s on in February. Hit a big milestone recently as well :smokin:



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Went and sold my old Tepui tent to a friend and bought the Inspired Overland wedge tent. Way happier with the quick setup time and it’s more comfy. Build quality isn’t as good as I would like but it’s only marginally worse than the Tepui I had.



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With the tent on I finally added some lights to the rack. I’ve wanted to do lights since we designed it several years ago. They’re cheap Amazon 7” LEDs. Hooked those up to an MSD solid state relay.



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Just got back from a trip to Cape Lookout. We spent 4 days out there being beach bums.



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And finally right before we left for the beach, I decided to change fluids and see why the rear end was howling. I found this



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Countless clutch dump burnouts, plenty of wheeling out west, and a fair amount of other shitheadery finally killed the ole junkyard Liberty 8.25. I built it with a new Spicer track-lok, but that wasn’t up to the task of me driving like a dumbass. But that’s ok, I’m building a new rear end soon and once the parts are in my hands I’ll get some pictures posted. This will be the first I am aware of this combination being used in an off road application and I’m pretty excited to show y’all. I think it will be a pretty solid little setup ;)
 
Blaze said:
I'll be honest, I'm shocked that thing only has 420k miles on it. Didn't it have like 320k when we brought it in at the shop back in like 2016?
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It was 308k when I bought it off you, she’s a little over 422k now. I haven’t driven it much besides 10 minutes to and from work for the last 3 years. My Commander is still apart waiting on the stroker kit so this is seeing more miles again
 
Buddy Holly said:
It was 308k when I bought it off you, she’s a little over 422k now. I haven’t driven it much besides 10 minutes to and from work for the last 3 years. My Commander is still apart waiting on the stroker kit so this is seeing more miles again
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We spent so much time killing them, I love seeing the updates knowing that one made it out alive. :lol:
 
Updates! Finally have parts in my hands and they are now assembled into something cool. I told y’all this is to my knowledge the first time this setup is going to be used in an off-road application. If not, it’s the first Jeep with one for sure.


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This is what we call the FN988. It’s a custom designed third member that allows you to run a Ford 8.8 as a dropout third member in a Ford 9” housing. When I was at GearFX we developed this to address the noise issues common with all the aftermarket 9” ring and pinions. I helped iron some of the bugs out when we had the first batch and am super proud of how well they turned out. They’ve been very well received in the pro touring world. I always wanted to build one and see how it worked for wheeling. The casting is super beefy and it has a perfect 4 bolt flange in the front for mounting a pinion guard. The pinion also doesn’t hang down nearly as low as the 9” so ground clearance is pretty good.

Anyways, I had some 8.8 parts already and a free 9” housing we built that the customer abandoned. It’s the right width and pinion offset. I got the hookup on some 11” drum brake parts and a deal on some axles through Moser. I’m still waiting on the axles and some parts for the housing so I went to a friend’s house tonight to build the gear.

I used a takeout original Ford 4.10 R&P I had laying around that we REM polished. It also got a 31 spline Eaton Truetrac, ARP bearing cap and ring gear bolts, and a forged 1350 yoke. Besides my used ring and pinion we have run this exact setup with 800+ hp in street cars with zero issues so far. If it can handle that, it can surely handle a 175hp 4.0 in a jeep and some 33s.


Safety wire makes my pants tight :smokin:


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And all finished. Pattern turned out good for a gear that was used and then REM polished. Doing an experiment to see how a used r&p sounds after getting REM’d. I plan to put a new Ford Racing ring and pinion in later on after testing this one. This R&P came from my mom’s XJ when we rebuilt the 8.8 a few months ago. It made a little noise at light loads when it was taken out. I’m hoping the polish improves the noise but will report back.


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I’ll get pics of the housing up once it’s cleaned and welded. It’s all TIG welded and I plan to to the brackets with TIG as well.
 
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Paint! I used Steel-It. Dear god it was expensive but it seems to look good and be adhering well.

I did my own thing on the drain plug. This is an O2 sensor bung with plug that uses a copper crush washer for sealing. I then took a piece of 1.5” 0.250” DOM and welded that over to make a guard/jack point. I did use the TIG on them just for a little flare. This is similar to the fittings we used in our housings for racing but they were machined out of billet and 1/2” NPT.


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Buddy Holly said:
It does, I wish it was still being made.
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I run a currie hi 9 in the front of my yj with an arb 35 spline. It is a link unique like yours will be.
 
I’ll leave this here


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Success! It was tight but I had Pearl done in time to drive her to the 4th of July party. Roll center is fixed with the spring over. No more weird handling! Ride height is just about right. No gear noise, no vibes, and the brakes work.

Ok, the brakes work too well. Factory XJ drums are 9” and these are 11” so the braking power increased quite a bit. I can lock the rears up with normal pedal pressure. I’ll have to put an adjustable prop valve in to fix the bias, but otherwise incredibly pleased. More pics when I get back from vacation.
 
Wilwood prop and residual valve installed. Still fighting rear lockup but it got better. The drums I have seems to be machined badly or warped, even though they’re new. Going to try another set after I check them on the lathe with a dial indicator.
 
New better(ish) drums installed and the lockup issue is drastically improved. I checked runout on the lathe and these are about 0.005”. I’m going to check the bad ones Monday for shits and giggles.

Now, I want to tell a story but first I’m going to preface that I’m an idiot. Ok, now you can continue.

So yesterday I was following a coworker home. He has a C4 corvette. He did a burnout in front of me at a stop sign. I also tried to do a burnout. With the spring under, the xj was a burnie machine until I broke the 8.25 (see above statement). I figured I would try with the new setup and see how it did. This was a bad idea. What happened is the wheel hop and spring wrap was so horrendous it bent both new Dorman leaf springs and damaged the u bolts on the pinion yoke when the driveshaft bottomed out against them. After this my pinion angle was like 4-6 degrees higher than it was and I had a vibe on takeoff.

So today I ordered a pair of OME CS033RB springs and some poly bushings but that didn’t solve the fact that I needed the jeep working by tomorrow morning. I’m taking the ole lady to the mountains tomorrow to kayak Price Lake next to Grandfather Mountain. I’m towing my trailer with the boats as well since the tent is still on the rack. Bent springs and warped drums are not a good idea on a trip while towing.

So I got a friend to come help and we took a spare set of saggy stock XJ springs and the add-a-leaves from my old IRO 5.5 packs to make a bastard pack setup. Shockingly it worked and ended up at just the right ride height. Pinion angle is fixed. And behold it works again! It actually works better. The increased rate from the extra leaf improved the handling a lot.

Moral of the story: don’t be stupid like me. Don’t buy Dorman leaf springs. Don’t use brake drums that have been stored on their side with weight on top of them. And especially don’t do burnouts in a relatively untested setup two days before you have to go on a trip for your GF’s birthday.

Damage for those who want to point and laugh:


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426k and counting! OME leaf springs are in. When I went to SOA again I shortened my Ironman shackles and put poly bushings back in place of the Synergy dual durometer bushings. Two weeks was all it took for the poly bushings to wear and become loose. That’s street use, mind you. Haven’t even wheeled yet with the new rear setup. Anyways, I’m still searching for a good option for shackle bushings. Might just spin some delrin and call it a day, or go back to a “factory” shackle and put the OME add-a-leaf back in to level the height. If anyone has a source for good rubber bushings sold by dimension, I’d really appreciate the link.

Noise with the FN988 is nonexistent. I gave up on the drums and put a Baer 11” disc setup in the back. It uses SN95 Mustang Cobra calipers with the parking brake integrated into the caliper. So far very happy with performance, especially the parking brake. With the truetrac I’ll be able to use the parking brake as a sort of traction aid to keep the diff “locked” when one tire is off the ground.

Small rant: SET20 bearings and seals are the bane of my existence. These axles were brand new from Moser, custom ordered for the SET20 tapered bearings and came with them pressed on, ready to install in the housing. The SKF bearings they came with leaked immediately. Moser said tough luck, buy a set of Timkens which kinda pissed me off since I had 50 miles when I noticed them leaking. You would think they would be more helpful than that.

So I bought some Timkens with OEM Motorcraft seals. They leak too! Albeit less than the SKF set. I’m going to pull axles eventually and try polishing the seal surface more. Other than that I’m at a loss. The housing is dead straight, checked it with the alignment bar at work. If the polishing works, great, but why the hell wouldn’t Moser take time to ensure a leak free seal before they leave? These things weren’t cheap. The complaint is common enough they admitted the SET20 bearings weep on almost every order they ship out with them, so why wouldn’t you try and solve the problem? Ugh. /rant

Went camping on Old 105 a little while back. No other cool pics since most of the time Pearl has been a daily.

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Few projects coming down the line. Need to finish the new fan shroud, trans crossmember, tire carrier, and build some more overlander bling BS. Stay tuned for pics ;)
 
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Welp….. it’s time for the annual thread update. Life has been a whirlwind since January.

I don’t have any XJ “build” updates because it’s been sitting most of the time living the easy life of a second vehicle. Actually I had to yank the front driveshaft because the slip wore out and it was vibrating. It’s a mall crawler for now.

Back in early January I picked up a TJ and have almost exclusively been driving it since then. BUT! There are plans in the works for ole Pearl. I don’t know when I’ll get to them, but I HAVE a plan.

Here’s a couple pics of the TJ. I had it for sale a while ago but ended up keeping it. It will get a build thread eventually. Reminds me of my old red YJ but it actually works.

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The real update is less Jeep related and more of a life story. Right around the time I got the TJ I got set up on a date with a girl in Raleigh through a mutual friend. Actually, the friend was an ex from high school that called me drunk late one night asking if I was still single. I about had a panic attack until she said she wanted to set me up with one of her friends. I’m glad I very cautiously said yes :lol:

Anyways, I knew this girl was different because she put up with my stupid Jeeps and constant profanity. She didn’t seem to mind that I’m a little rough around the edges.

On a beautiful day in April I decided to pull the doors off and we went shopping in Pearl. While we were out I bought a cheap ring at TJ Maxx and proposed to her, in the XJ, in the parking lot, with two pizzas on her lap.

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Things moved pretty fast after that in the best way. In May I quit my job at DSE and moved back to Raleigh to be with her. We got married in August, and now we’re officially living the dream :D

It’s amazing how quickly life can move sometimes, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. To think how much this stupid POS Cherokee means to both of us now, and how much has changed since I bought it from @Blaze on a payment plan in 2017. Seriously. $1320 purchase price and I had to make payments for two months :lol: My wife has told me she never wants me to sell it, so I guess that means we get to keep building :rockon:

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Ok, enough with the schmaltzy shit. The next post will be back to Jeep things :driver:











By the way, it’s got 433k now :smokin:
 
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