The Maintaining and Building of Jan the WJ

Stotch said:
I've had some trouble with Jan having a inconsistent idle while in park/neutral so I took a look at the throttle botty and found that the IAC module was pretty dirty. I cleaned it up with some TB cleaner (and the throttle body while I had it open) and she's got a perfect idle now! Gotta love an easy fix.
Here's the IAC before cleaning, pretty gunked up:
View attachment 257785
I didn't get an after, but you can always Google WJ IAC if you want to see what it is supposed to look like (metalic and shiny).
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I've done that as well on mine. Does the trick.
 
Ok, I've been having some continuing power problems. If she sits for more than a few days the battery is dead as a door nail. If driven regularly there's no issues. The alternator charges between 13.5 and 13.7 volts at idle. The battery is fairly new (purchased 10/2016) and charges and tests fine as far as I can tell. The only lead I have is the battery terminals. I have avoided changing them until now since I'll have to cut the cables to do so and they don't have much slack in them as it is, but I guess I'll be doing it regardless. Here's one of the terminals now (the other is in similar poor condition):
terminal1.jpg
terminal2.jpg
I will update soon with the new terminals...
 
Alright, the battery terminals I picked up from the auto parts store are in. Here's the run down:
battTerm.jpg
I couldn't find good ring terminals in a 6-8 guage (which I think is what the WJs cables are) only a 2 guage, so I connected both wires for each terminal to one 2 gauge each. It worked out pretty well. Which was good because I didn't have much cable to play around with.
battTerm2.jpg
They were each crimped on first and then filled in from the back with solder using a small butane torch. I'm glad I bought extra because I screwed up the crimp on the negative and had to redo it.
battTerm3.jpg
Ring terminals done, moving on to the easy part; bolting on the battery post terminals.
battTerm4.jpg
battTerm5.jpg
battTerm6.jpg
All done! (I almost left those vice grips in there :eek:)
battTerm7.jpg
 
Looks good. I had a voltage drop on mine as well. Ended up being high resistance in the end of the positive cable. Hope that fixes yours.
 
WJCO said:
Looks good. I had a voltage drop on mine as well. Ended up being high resistance in the end of the positive cable. Hope that fixes yours.
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Thanks, me too. I can already tell it starts up better, hopefully that was it. Otherwise I'm going to have to go through every fuse one-by-one to find the amperage leak :grayno: :crazyeyes:
 
The last of Jan's new goodies are on the FedEx truck! They had to break it all into multiple shipments and it's been trickling in over the past month so I don't have tracking info :mad: Hopefully I'll get to start the work this weekend; if not then it should be next week.

Also, it looks like the new battery terminals fixed my voltage problems whoop whoop!
 
Stotch said:
The last of Jan's new goodies are on the FedEx truck! They had to break it all into multiple shipments and it's been trickling in over the past month so I don't have tracking info :mad: Hopefully I'll get to start the work this weekend; if not then it should be next week.

Also, it looks like the new battery terminals fixed my voltage problems whoop whoop!
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Glad the voltage drop is fixed. What other stuff are you working on?
 
So I went ahead and started, but I got a nasty surprise. I haven't worked on WJs much, but I'm pretty sure the spring perch shouldn't look like this:IMG_20170727_192238.jpg
Or this:
IMG_20170727_192139.jpg
Not really sure what to do at this point...
 
Stotch said:
So I went ahead and started, but I got a nasty surprise. I haven't worked on WJs much, but I'm pretty sure the spring perch shouldn't look like this:View attachment 270203
Or this:

Not really sure what to do at this point...
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Not normal, but sadly it's common. Clayton is the only company that makes a rebuild kit that I know of, I'll try to find you a link.

https://www.claytonoffroad.com/jeep_grand_cherokee_coil_mount_repair_kit_1999_2004_wj

300 bucks. May be better to diy it if you can weld. He'll you may be able to get a used axle for that.
 
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WJCO said:
Not normal, but sadly it's common. Clayton is the only company that makes a rebuild kit that I know of, I'll try to find you a link.

https://www.claytonoffroad.com/jeep_grand_cherokee_coil_mount_repair_kit_1999_2004_wj

300 bucks. May be better to diy it if you can weld. He'll you may be able to get a used axle for that.
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Thanks, I'll probably see if I can work something out to fix this one. Maybe some 0.25 steel and capped pipe to get something like this:
springPerch.jpg
Then I'll have to borrow a welder or finally spring for one for my garage. I can't even count how many times I wished I had one...
 
Stotch said:
Thanks, I'll probably see if I can work something out to fix this one. Maybe some 0.25 steel and capped pipe to get something like this:

Then I'll have to borrow a welder or finally spring for one for my garage. I can't even count how many times I wished I had one...
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That should work. I know guys have repaired them before.
 
Oh wow that sucks on the spring plates. I think your idea with the capped pipe would work well and be fairly easy to do.
 
Wow. That's nuts. I wonder why that rusted so bad? Water should run off it...or maybe it rusts from the inside out. Hope you can find a cheap way to replace. Sounds like goods excuse for a welder.
 
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