Christarp's slowest build up ever

[Christarp]

Hey guys, I've mainly posted all my stuff in the what have you done to your jeep this week thread, but I figured I'd finally give in and consolidate some stuff for my own thread so I can easily look back and see the kind of progress that's been made! So, let's start at the beginning shall we!

It all started when I sold my trusty ford explorer sport trac. I'll be honest, sometimes I miss it. It could definitely tow better than my JKU can hah.


Then I ended up coming home with my new (to me!) 2007 wrangler unlimited sahara (which I now sort of regret not getting the rubicon)



It wasn't long before I started doing things to it, and I believe my first ever mod was putting in some lame LED's under the fenders for rock lights (which I later tore out because they just weren't bright enough to do anything!)





Now after this, I ended up getting my Rubicon express 3.5" Superflex lift with bilstein 5100 shocks. I'll just say it's extremely stiff. I don't have any pictures of the install left, I must have accidentally deleted them, but you can see the results below! I also went with some rugged ridge wheels and 35" KM2's, and then the final touch was putting some rugged ridge auxiliary lights on the windshield.

 

[Christarp]

Soon after I had decided I wanted to get a nice tire carrier that would hold the spare steady and be aesthetically pleasing and look near factory. I didn't want to replace my bumper as well. My fathers rugged ridge XHD tire carrier he had put on at the time was the worst thing ever. It rattled like no tomorrow and was a pain to open, and the latching mechanism was the worst thing I'd ever seen, we had to make our own latch for it just to safely run it. At the time, teraflex had just released their tire carrier and I was in love with all of it, the looks, the simplicity, the way it opened with the factory door. So I got it and ran it for a while. Never did have it break on me, I did contact teraflex for their new updated version after I had heard of the breaks and they sent me one, but had me destroy my old one because they didn't want that model still circulating. Whatever.



I ended up running it like this for a while, pretty happy with where it was and didn't have too many plans to do much else, I liked the cleanliness of it. Then I wanted to do more stuff...



It wasn't long before the sand got stuck in every inch of the carpet and it became the biggest pain in the ass to clean, so i pulled the carpets and went to town with a chisel and wire wheel, and some raptor liner.

 

[Christarp]

Prep took FOREVER, maybe I overdid it, but I took all that gunk off, wire wheeled the hell out of everything, wiped it down with mineral spirits, put a bit of primer on it, plugged all the holes, and finally masked it all off for final spraying.



I do however like the final results, and I still like them to this day. The only problem is things do slide around on it much easier than carpet, and cleaning it isn't quite easy (unless it's sand in which case you can just sweep it out and don't need to spend 4 hours with a vacuum like before) Overall I like the way it looks and it's pretty damn tough too!



For a while I again hadn't done much. Until I finally pulled the trigger on something I had been wanting for a while!



And with this, it was finally the point of no return. I couldn't back out now. Putting in nutserts was a pain since I used the old bolt with washers trick to do it since I didn't have a tool (except the harbor freight one that I broke after about 10 nutserts) Definitely will have to pick up the astro that you all recommend later if I plan to do more nutserts.



Oh how much it hurt to carve out this hole.

 

[Christarp]

Finally getting ready to paint everything and put it all together. I used a lot of rustoleum truck bed coating for all of the tire carrier and it looks great and touches up fantastically, but it truly is garbage. It chips if you look at it hard enough. You'll see later I used VHT satin black frame paint for something and I'm thinking of doing it over with that because it holds up MUCH better.



Finally everything installed!



Took it out to Tillamook State Forest and got my first beauty mark :blush:



So to stay legal in oregon, I needed my third brake light, reverse lights, and a license plate light. So I got to work making my own bracket that would mount onto the tire carrier that had all those provisions (if only to stay legal) This was only my second time welding so it was pretty ugly but after grinding everything smooth and rounding the edges I think it came out alright!



This is how it turned out. I know I know some of the holes aren't centered and it bothers me too. My drill press is garbage and likes to walk a lot. The outer 2 lights are white and wired to reverse (one white at an angle, one white straight back), the outer angled white ones have no lens to get as much of an indicator out to the side as possible so people driving perpendicular to me might see me backing out. The two center lights are red and my third brake light. There are also two license plate lights tucked underneath to illuminate the license plate (but I need to shim them out because currently they don't work THAT great.

 

[Christarp]

You can see how right now it kinda casts a shadow with the raised lettering on the plate. Oh well, still legal.



After this I needed a way to attach rotopax, and I didn't need them there all the time, just when I was on the trails so I decided to make a little thing to hold them beside the tire using scrap metal.



Then I ground all the edges down so they wouldn't cut into the straps I was going to use.



Here's how it looks on the tire. I had originally used these cheapo harbor freight ratchet straps that had like a 300lb working load, but I wanted black ones, so I found some nice black ones with a 1000lb working load, that's all I could find. At least I'll have two 1000lb ratchet straps with me in case I need them on the trails now.



Finally I made a matching one for the other side and then slotted the top to put a small cam buckle strap between them to lash them together and so they wouldn't fall down and smack stuff when you try and take them off. I knew I didn't want to paint them with that garbage truck bed coating because the strap would just destroy the paint on them, so I decided to use some VHT satin black frame paint on these, and it's held up AMAZINGLY well. Really big fan of it. Looks very nice too! I did use an entire can on each one of them though, I wanted some thick paint on them.

 

[Christarp]

This is sorta how it looks when it's on the spare.



Then I really wanted to add some USB ports into my dash just so I didn't have to carry USB adapters around with me and I'd have them free for other things, so I got to work on that.



Came out just how I imagined it would really, You can check out my thread on it HERE



And now were pretty much caught up! The last thing I did was talk to my neighbor who recently got a new jeep and said his soft top wouldn't fit his newer model and asked if I wanted it, and naturally I said yeah but I just can't afford it right now, to which he responded with "I didn't ask you if you wanted to buy it I asked you if you wanted it" and my jaw dropped! I ended up taking out all the cash I had in my wallet at the time and just handing it to him and saying "That's everything i've got" and we made the trip down the road to his house and he handed me everything. We got to talking a bit more and he noticed my sahara steps and was thinking about buying a set because his kids can't quite get into the jeep right now (he has rubi rails) and I said, hey if you want to trade I'm willing to do that, just bring it over and I'll do all the work, I ended up getting rid of my sahara steps for some factory rubi rails! I love my neighbors!



Finally, this is where it's at right now. This was taken on july 18th this year on my trip down to bend, Oregon to run some trails on my ATV with a friend, and this is how it's been since then.



So what does the future hold?

In a few weeks I plan to start my next phase which is focusing on recovery, communications, and lighting. I'll be getting the evo quarter pounder with the stinger and a winch soon (as I go wheeling alone sometimes), and a CB radio because in the places I do wheel, there's almost never cell service. I'm also planning on finally getting some truck-lites as the stock candles just don't throw out enough light, and coming back down an unlit mountain road with the stock headlight, fogs, and even my auxiliary lights on was not the most fun. Whew! After that I'll probably start saving up again for a regear to 5.13's (Using 4.10's right now, as 4.10 was an option for non rubicons in 2007 [plus I almost didn't make it up the mountain to get to bend, I slowed to like 25mph at wide open throttle towing a 16 foot trailer with 2 quads and a bunch of gear and water on it]) and throwing on some C-gussets (I know I know I haven't done it yet), and hopefully a rear ARB locker. Don't want to throw any more money than a regear and c-gussets into a D30.. Oh, and at some point I'll probably redo the rock lights with some brighter LED's that'll mainly take time instead of money.

 

[Clem319]

Wow. So far a great build. You've had some great ideas so far. I lack that kind of imagination so it helps me to see stuff like this. Keep up the updates coming.

USB ports = genius

 

[Dune Crawler]

Jeep looks great. The fab'd up light setup and fuel canister looks really clean also


-Nicco

 

[DA RUNT]

Looking good man, nice work :thumb:

 

[jmedgar]

Looking great!

 

[Christarp]

Thanks guys, it's not much compared to some of the stuff here, but it'll get there eventually!

 

[Christarp]

Hey guys, so one small thing I did since my last post here was repaint my seat brackets as they were starting to rust, good as new now! Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures.

Now, as for everything else! I ordered some Truck lites, evo quarter pounder, revolution stinger, and an engo winch from northridge 4x4 yesterday, and received everything today! I also put it all together today and everything is working great, only a few hiccups in between.





Now I know a lot of you are gonna dog on me for the engo winch, but i've read decent things about them all over, and decided to give it a try, if all goes as planned I won't be using it much anyway, it's more for a big oops moment when I'm alone. Also took a picture in the middle of the teardown (after cutting off the small crash bar), but alas it was too dark to take a decent picture when I finished (which was just 20 minutes ago), I'll get some pictures tomorrow!



Here's the small hiccup I ran into today. Worked pretty smoothly and didn't catch on anything it just snapped clean. :thinking:



The other issue I had was with the engo control box for the winch, the way the bumper keeps the winch so close to the body and the cables go straight out the back and how far it's recessed caused it to push straight into the grill, so I had to rotate the box 90 degrees and jerry-rig the mounting plates to make it fit (they couldn't have made the mounting plate screws in a square pattern, they had to make them off by like 1cm in one direction to prevent easy rotation :icon_crazy but whatever, got it done and it works fine now. So far all I've done was give it a few squeezes of the trigger to make sure it spools in and out properly and freespools easily, which it does. I'll have to take it out and actually test it soon!

Again, I'll get some pictures of the finished product tomorrow in the light.

 

[cozdude]

Congrats on the truck lites, 1/4 pounder and winch! No one is gonna dog on you for the winch. We all know warn is the best but not everyone can afford one or justify the cost if they don't wheel a lot. I'm sure for you it will work perfectly.

 

[dannymalkin]

Looks great man!