Trying to get it mostly right the first time: A 5.9 and 46RE swapped Tummy Tucked Daily Driven Jeep TJ

[dgoodwin10]

It’s road trip time!

After all the work I’d put into the TJ to get to this trip I was beyond excited. Maybe even a little giddy. My wife and I got loaded up and headed out about 2pm, dropped the dog off for boarding and hopped on I-459 headed east at (roughly) 70mph with the A/C going. It was in the 60s outside, so not that hot but warm enough to want some conditioned air. It was peak leaf season and we wanted to take the backroads route, so we chose to drive I-59 to Gadsden, AL and cut over to Blue Ridge, GA with Maggie Valley, NC being the final destination to meet up with some close friends to spend a weekend together. Did I mention that I was beside myself since this trip was actually happening?

About 20 miles in the temperature gauge starts creeping up again and eventually pegs at 260. Crap. I pull over at the next exit, let it idle for a few minutes until the temperature gauge slammed back to 210, hop back on the interstate and keep rolling.

Only for the TJ to overheat again in a few miles.

I find a gas station to pull into and let it cool down. Again. This time, I’m pretty frustrated and starting to feel defeated. We were far enough into the trip that I needed to make the call to either turn around and head home to get another vehicle or turn the A/C off, hope that fixes the problem, and send it. At this point, I'd come too far and put in too much work to call it quits so I made the call to run with the A/C off and deal with a little butt sweat.

We merge onto I-59 headed toward Gadsen and clicked off 120+/- trouble free miles until our first stop in northern Georgia. Bucees.

In Blue Ridge we spotted this rad VW suv turned rock crawler.

We rolled into (I’m guessing – don't remember exactly) Murphy, NC well after dark and came into 30+ miles of 2 lane mountain roads and heavy rainfall. The added weight in the back of the Jeep had apparently aimed my headlights directly at oncoming traffic and I was getting constantly flashed by making already poor visibility even worse. I hate being THAT guy, but that was an issue to deal with later. Add to that a little (okay, lot) of hanger, the little bit of drama earlier in the day, ZERO phone service and my nerves were SHOT. I’d never been happier to see a 4 lane road in my life.

The remainder of the drive went without issue and we pulled into the cabin at 9pm where our friends were already there waiting on us. We proceeded to stay up until well after 1am catching up on life. The next 2 days were spent exploring the area.
We rolled out Monday morning headed to the Biltmore house then to an AirBnB in Knoxville via Tail of the Dragon, a popular road among the sports car / bike crowd with 318 turns in 11 miles. I’m a bit of a construction nerd and really enjoyed BIltmore and would highly recommend that anyone go at least once.

The route from Asheville to Knoxville was almost entirely on backroads and man were the views worth it! The route took us through winding 2 lane backroads and spent a lot of time along the Little Tennessee River. The Jeep didn’t miss a beat and cruised the backroads like a champ.

We completed the Tail of the Dragon as the sun was setting and pulled up to our AirBnB in Knoxville at dinner time.

 

[dgoodwin10]

Road Trip Day #5 (aka Tuesday)

We had 2 days in Knoxville so I got to plan one and my wife the other. So I did the right thing and took us to Windrock, which was only 45 mins away. The general plan was to see the scenic overlook on G9, grab lunch at the prison and possibly hit Caryville Flatts if time (and the tone of the day) allowed. My wife supports this crazy hobby but doesn’t have much interest in participating so I was well aware that I needed to ‘read the room’ and make sure we weren’t broken on the trail past dark. I’m not a fan of wheeling alone and was banking on the park being busy enough to make me feel better about being solo since it’s always been busy when I’ve been in years past.

Side bar - My last trip here ended with a 4 seat RZR breaking an entire corner off the rig and having to be towed up the hardest trail in the park (Trail 39 to Cadillac Hill) by 2 RZRs daisy chained together. I walked most of the trail a few times over helping pull cable for 5 rigs to get us home. At 3am. The most fun I’d rather not have again for a while.

We started the day getting passes at the new General Store and were greeted with a mostly empty parking lot – I guess I’d never been here on a Tuesday before! I also found out the prison was closed during weekdays so we picked up some snacks for lunch. We made it up to the overlook on G9 (which is a paved road...nothing to write home about). This stop included the obligatory poser shots too.

G9 is a main access road and a former mining road, so the top gravels have worn off and left the large stone base exposed. I’ve only ever ridden Windrock in RZRs and take for granted just how good the suspension and ride quality is on those rigs. With that as my reference, I was severely disappointed with how the Jeep rode - even aired down the trip to the overlook was rough. Really rough. G9 is a large loop that goes back to the General Store, so I made the decision to head back to the store and re-group.
We bounced down a few more miles of trail and I hear the Jeep chime, look down and see the fuel gauge on empty (which I knew wasn’t correct since I’d just filled up), and then the Jeep started to sputter and die, thankfully not in a mud hole. Keep in mind, we’re well into the park and have barely seen anyone all day. So this was going swell. Since the fuel gauge and fuel pump both died I figured the wiring harness had come unplugged and sure enough, the connector had come unplugged. I was able to get us back running with a few zip ties to hold the connector together. The Jeep fired right back up so I put it in gear and kept making tracks toward the General Store, only to have the Jeep randomly sputter for a few seconds at a time on the trip back. But we made it.

I knew at this point it was best to call it a day and head back to Knoxville with my tail between my legs and feeling quite defeated. I’d hyped this trip up in my head and this was NOT the way I wanted it to go, but such was my luck today. The Jeep sputtered a few more times in traffic while getting onto the interstate but didn’t miss a beat while cruising so we continued back to Knoxville.

Once back in city traffic, the Jeep sputtered again except this time it lasted for 30 seconds plus and wouldn’t take any throttle until it all of a sudden cleared up and ran fine. 30 seconds feels like an eternity while sitting still in traffic with a dead engine, in case you were wondering.

It was at this point I knew we had a serious issue and needed to figure some stuff out.

We made it back to the Air BnB, unloaded and I headed to the car wash to clean the Jeep up before going to dinner that night. The Jeep acted up twice on the way to the car wash and once on the way back and was getting to the point of not being drivable. We showered and headed to dinner at Not Watson’s (highly recommended, BTW) and the issue continued on the short trip there. I did get a good picture from downtown:

I tried for our predicament to not dominate the conversation at dinner but it was hard for it not to be. The next day was a trip to Dollywood in Pidgeon Forge and back, then to Nashville and then home so there was a lot of road miles ahead of us and I didn’t want to have to fight the Jeep and risk getting stranded with my wife so we started scheming our next moves. The decision was made to rent a car for the day tomorrow, figure out our plan on the road and enjoy the rest of the evening.

And yes, the Jeep sputtered and tried to stall on the way back to the Air BnB too.

 

[NickMaul]

Tough break. The worst I ever had from my younger days driving my XJ to and from trails was enduring a 4.5 hour drive with a shot front track bar and dash rattling death wobble. Definitely dampens spirits!

 

[NCJeeplover]

The most fun I’d rather not have again for a while.

This is one of the best things I've read all week. I know that feeling well!

 

[gslander]

Nice recap so far!! I love those back roads between Knoxville/Chattanooga and Asheville and find every excuse to take them when I have to go through the area!

 

[dgoodwin10]

This is one of the best things I've read all week. I know that feeling well!

Everyone that's been there knows the feeling all too well. If you're familiar with Windrock, the carnage happened on Airplane Hill and the RZR was yarded from there, up Rail Trail and to the main road.

Nice recap so far!! I love those back roads between Knoxville/Chattanooga and Asheville and find every excuse to take them when I have to go through the area!

That was a first but hopefully not last time for me. That scenery is absolutely top notch. I've got the next trip update already written and should post it tonight to get back to our regularly scheduled fabricobbling.

 

[dgoodwin10]

There’s less chatter and more build coming up, I promise.

The plan was to spend the next day at Dollywood since I’d never been and my wife had worked there for a summer. I knew the Jeep wasn’t able to make the trip so I made the call to rent a car while we figured out what to do with a cantankerous TJ.
Wednesday summary - If you’re ever within a 60 mile radius of Knoxville, stop and grab a biscuit at Matt Robb’s. Yep, it’s that good. Also, Dollywood is a solid 8/10 theme park.

We had 2 things that needed to be accomplished: get to St Louis by Friday and get the TJ home. After running through no less than 6 different scenarios, calling a friend that’s a U Haul rep and trying to shotgun an IAC and MAP sensor on the Jeep as a quick fix, the final plan we settled on was to leave the Jeep at U Haul in Knoxville, drive a rental car to the Nashville airport to get to St Louis as planned, then come back and trailer the TJ home. I wasn’t crazy about this option but it was the lesser of all the evils.

Time to execute. As we were packing up on Wednesday night, I just couldn’t stop thinking about what might be wrong with the Jeep and on a whim figured I’d check for vacuum leaks with brake cleaner. I started on the driver side of the intake manifold and worked my way around the Jeep and sure enough – I got a reaction in the front of the intake manifold. I sprayed that spot a second time and the engine backfired.

And caught all the brake cleaner on fire.

Fire extinguishers are important, y’all. I snatched the extinguisher off the roll bar and put the fire out There I stood in the driveway of our AirBnB with the Jeep still running, a fire extinguisher in my hand just staring into the engine bay wondering what on God’s green earth just happened. It’d been a long few days, the AirBnB, although really neat, had gotten SMALL for 2 people, and I’d had enough.

I took all of our planning from the day prior, wadded it up and threw it in the preverbal trash. We’re towing this junk home tomorrow. We roll out the next morning headed to get a box truck and car hauler from 2 different stores, grab a biscuit and head back to Birmingham. Side bar – the new GM 6.6L gas engine and 6 speed tow really well.

We made it to Birmingham without issue, dropped the TJ off at home, hopped in my wife’s car and headed to St Louis for the weekend. In all, we were on the road for 16 hours and 800 miles that day. The TJ sat untouched for a few weeks while I got caught up on some other projects I’d been neglecting.

Now, back to more mods and building stuff!

 

[baggednissan]

 

[dgoodwin10]

I finally carved out some time to update this thread.

Picking up from where we left off, I decided to take a weekend to get the Jeep back up and running. The short answer is that it's fixed, though I'm not entirely sure what the problem was. I pulled the intake off and re-sealed it (in hindsight that was mostly a waste of time), cleaned and reinstalled the original IAC and cleaned the throttle body and that fixed the issue.

The test drive for the Jeep was a few trips to work and then a 300 mile round trip to Auburn (where ECORS held races in 2011 and 2012) and though the stalling issue was resolved, it developed a bad misfire that I suspected was due to poor plug wire routing on my end. A few poser pictures from our Auburn trip:

The misfire got so bad that the Jeep was practically undrivable so this was the next issue to dive into. These engines are known to have an issue with spark knock caused from improper spark plug routing (there's actually a TSB for it), so wire routing was the first thing I confirmed correct. Next I started pulling plug wires one a time and checking for resistance. Sure enough one of my brand new plug wires had gone bad (or I'd broken it) so I threw on an old wire and it's been running like a top since.

Enter January of 2024 and the cold temperatures exceeded my motivation to work outside so I moved to working on things that fit inside my shop. I ran to the farm and picked up the 8.8 I purchased a while back and stripped it, welded the center section to the tubes and primed and tacked the Barnes 4wd truss to prep for the axle swap. I'm shooting to swap the axle out this summer once I've sold a few jet skis to replenish my project fund.

 

[dgoodwin10]

No real updates on the TJ as it’s been serving part time DD. Total miles on the swap to date is 5,779. I’ve been collecting parts for the next round of work, including 3.5” JKS Dual Rate Springs, a set of JL Fox shocks and am planning out the cooling system changes / upgrades / modifications as well.

I do have an update on a Jeep related bucket list thing that I’ve wanted to do for going on 20 years.

I first subscribed to Peterson’s 4 Whell and Off Road in August of 2003 which featured UA coverage in the southeast at some of my local parts and I still have that issue to this day. Frankly, I credit that subscription to 4WOR to much of my passion for the off road hobby. The issue with Easter Jeep Safari in 2004 would have been my first exposure to Moab and it has been a bucket list trip arguably ever since.

When family vacation was planned for Park City, Utah this year I knew this was a prime opportunity to make that happen. Side bar – turns out I’ll be driving from AL to Moab in October to ride co-pilot with a RZR crew. After some research, the plan was to leave Park City one morning, hit Arches National Park around lunch and then do a ride along Jeep tour with Twisted Jeeps. The next day we’d hit Canyonlands National Park and head back to Park City.

I pulled some strings at the airport and changed our rental car to a ‘23 Rubicon 4xE. I love my TJ, but man is the JL plush! The trip went exactly according to plan (shocker) and Twisted Jeeps was fantastic to do business with. Our guide, Jeeper Jeff, was a super cool dude and let me drive a few obstacles he technically wasn’t allowed to. Here are a few pictures from the trip:

 

[dgoodwin10]

Update time! Apologies for the long post, but I’ve been busy.

I swapped out the front Rough Country springs (intended for a 4cyl) and 2” spacers for 3.5” JKS dual rate springs without any issues. The JKS springs provided the same lift as the RC springs did with the spacer but made a substantial difference in ride quality. Crazy what the correct parts will do.

Before:

While I was working on the front of the Jeep I just couldn’t ignore the shiny JL Fox shocks that I picked up on Marketplace for $135 any longer and decided to swap those on as well. The inspiration for this swap came from this thread: JL shocks on a TJ
This is the front shocks in question: Fox Shox 985-24-171 Fox Racing Shox 2.0 Performance Series IFP Smooth Body Shocks | Summit Racing I intend to swap rear springs and shocks when the D35 is pulled for the 8.8 swap. This was a pretty simple swap that took a few hours and some basic fabrication skills. The upper mount landed right at a factory hole in the shock tower, so I pulled a weld washer and shock tab out of my stock and ended up with this:

Onto the lower mount. The original shock mount was removed to make room for the tabs needed to catch the lower eyelet. The lower mount ended up being a simple clevis that was attached with the LCA bolt.

The tabs are meant for ½" hardware and the shock bushings are drilled for the foreign equivalent (aka 13mm), so I drilled the bushing out to ½" to work with the tabs and hardware I already had.

I only had time to get the passenger side done this weekend but can already tell a positive difference in the on road ride quality. The difference will really become apparent once the rear axle is swapped and the track bar isn’t trying to coexist with the fuel tank.

After:

Next on the list was to spend some time on the cooling system to make it better than marginal. I’ve learned time and time again to start with the basics when troubleshooting and made something resembling a plan which was:

1. Remove / relocate the power steering cooler.

1. Relocate the transmission cooler.

1. Revise the steering cooler mounting bracket.

1. Install the driver side grill shroud between the grill and condenser.

1. Revise the upper radiator hose to remove the chance of an air pocket.

I know that my cooling fan needs an upgrade (and that’s coming) but I wanted to start the above list and see what happened. I unbolted the front grill shell and tipped it forward enough to get to the transmission and steering coolers. The transmission cooler was zip tied under the front bumper and the steering cooler was deleted for now.

The upper radiator hose was reconfigured using a hose I’d originally bought for the Summit Racing radiator:

Picture placeholder.

The host fit the neck on the engine but was too large for the radiator inlet so I cut a piece from the old rad hose to act as a temporarily permanent spacer.The system was bled and I’ve driven it around town and to work one day and have noticed the a lower coolant temperature on the gauge. It is still running around 220* with the AC on full blast, which is higher that it should be but was able to maintain that temperature on the interstate which is an improvement. I’m also going to pull a page from Roadkill and drive it without the hood one day to see if a louver might help the issue. If nothing else it’ll be entertaining, right?

The next step is to replace the existing radiator fan with a pair of 10” fans that can better keep up with the demand. Swapping to a pair of fans not only will increase CFM, but will allow a thicker fan since the water pump pulley will no longer be the limiting factor.
Another update that is completely unrelated to the cooling system was installing this Warn Zeon 8k winch that I picked up with a brush guard from, you guessed it, Marketplace. The brush guard is for a truck that I’m buying in the future and I managed to get the unit for less than the brush guard is worth – I'll take that all day! The Superwinch that it is replacing has been flawless for 10+ years now (and frankly, really didn’t need replacing) but I’ve always wanted that Warn ‘W’ on the front of my Jeep.