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Project White Cracker

363K views 364 replies 124 participants last post by  Swag Off Road 
#1 · (Edited)
Project White Cracker....Daily Driven TJ on 40's

I have ran and broken many, many parts in my day with a 91 Cherokee and 35” tires. These parts include (15+) broken Dana 30 parts, this includes ripping out the ball joints on a trail run, one busted front carrier in Moab, spider gears in Rubicon….I live in Oregon (2) Tera 4:1 Transfer case, Steering, Cracked frame.......uni-body, rear hatch, tail lights, lockers, and even managed to flop it on it’s side twice.

Once my life of being the poor college student had subsided, and my broken ass Cherokee was sold. I set out to build a dependable off road, daily driven TJ on 40’s
 

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#328 ·
New shoes...If you have followed this build then you know that I use my jeep for hauling the family to Moab 1,100 miles each way, wheel for a week and drive it back home. Give here a bath and take it to church the next day. After 36,500 miles the radial Iroks have seen there last days.:smokin: Not bad for a 5,000 lb TJ.

As for the black Walker Evans wheels........well they were polished, however they lacked a clear coat for obvious reasons. When you daily drive your vehicle polishing wheels is quite low on my priority list.
 

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#330 ·
A few years ago when I built my TJ I had no intention of getting into the Jeep bumper business. Everything on my Jeep is welded on and built to pass a nuclear blast with flying colors.....fast forward a few years and as luck would have it I'm now in the bumper business. Today I spent ~10 hours cutting and grinding off my rear bumper, reinstalling the factory rear cross member so I could fabricate and install a Swag Bit-Hit rear bumper and quit being a poser that did not run what I sell. I'm beat, the shop is a wreck, but hey the bumper looks good.

If anyone wants the rear bumper I pulled off it is free for the taking.

Troy
 

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#331 ·
In the last couple years if you have seen the Swag TJ out and about in Moab, Rubicon, or the local grocery store, chances are you have noticed I pack around Swags biggest fan...My 2.5 year old son Lane.

He is staying home while I will be at King of the Hammers, so $14 in steel and an couple hours later I made a 100% bolt in bracket to mount my goodies. It slides into the factory seat bracket and bolts to existing brackets in the rear. It can't be permanent or my #1 fan would not be happy loosing his seat to Baja Bins.

Troy
 

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#337 ·
Any photos of your rear shock setup? I noticed at first you had them on the front of the rear axle and looked like the top was attached to the frame but i couldnt tell in the photo. Then later they are attached to the rear of the axle and again cant see the upper mounts.

Great build! Im currently in a similar build. 5.5" stretch up front which is done. About to start the rear with 37s and keeping it legal with rear fenders and flares.

Thanks!

Sent from my A101IT using Tapatalk
 
#338 ·
Any photos of your rear shock setup? I noticed at first you had them on the front of the rear axle and looked like the top was attached to the frame but i couldnt tell in the photo. Then later they are attached to the rear of the axle and again cant see the upper mounts.

Great build! Im currently in a similar build. 5.5" stretch up front which is done. About to start the rear with 37s and keeping it legal with rear fenders and flares.

Thanks!

Something like this?
 
#340 ·
Looks good Troy, keep up the bad@ss ideas! I'll hopefully be stopping by in the next month to pick up a front bumper and tailgate:smokin: if I don't see ya before you leave have a good safe trip.. Oh and next hear for Moab, do you have a truck that can pull a 50' car trailer with a goose neck?:flipoff2:
 
#342 ·
I thought I would post up what is new.

My Jeep has a total of 7 super flex joints and 2 Ballistic joints. A few of the joints on my TJ I had on my old cherokee 10 years ago and the RE joints have over 150,0000 miles on them, and other than yearly tighten and grease they have been great.

The other two joins on my TJ have been a big disappointment.

After their first trip out they were loose and clunky as a shopping cart on gravel. The 2nd time I tried to tear them down, the 3 pronged tool they provide broke as it can't be used with a 3/8" air impact. FIY, the RE machined tool can stall out my Ingersol Rand 1/2" drive titanium impact gun and shows no sign of wear.

Back to the Ballistic joints. The large 1.25" shank is so galled up I can not unthread it, the threaded races are locked up as well, the washer on the back side of the joint is one grade above warm butter.....you see where this is headed.

I made a quick unthreading tool out of an old pair of needle nose pliers, you can tell how fawked up the threads were as it bent and broke the pliers. I was giving the 1/2" impact gun a serious work out trying to free things up.

I used a bushing I have on the shelf that I use for the roll cage tie in kits
Pictures will show the rest.
 

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#343 ·
As for the other Ballistic joint, I was able to open this one up and double stack washers to one side. The joint is now centered in the middle of the bushing as opposed to everything pushed to one side like it had been since day one.

Rant off.:p
 

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#344 ·
MAter Cylinder

The cutting brake kicked ass. I can lock up the rear tires at 60 mph and the 99 dodge master cylinder stops the Jeep like it is still stitting on 28" tires.(Quote)

What is the exact make and model you got for your master cylinder i have a 2000 TJ I am putting rear discs on and want the best brakes possible for 60/14 combo. What other mods did you do for rear disc. Other than the mods for cutting brake.
 
#346 ·
The cutting brake kicked ass. I can lock up the rear tires at 60 mph and the 99 dodge master cylinder stops the Jeep like it is still stitting on 28" tires.(Quote)

What is the exact make and model you got for your master cylinder i have a 2000 TJ I am putting rear discs on and want the best brakes possible for 60/14 combo. What other mods did you do for rear disc. Other than the mods for cutting brake.
I went to the local pick and pull and said a 99 one ton Dodge master cylinder and that is all I know. They told me that 97-03 half ton and up all use the same master cylinder. I never confirmed that but I know mine came off a 99 Dodge.

Why did you lose the rear sway bar? Just curious.
I didn't it is in front of the rear axle. I needed to move it when I outboarded the shocks.

Troy
 
#348 ·
I'm still running the factory proportioning valve, as far as brake like dia? I don't have a clue what I ended up with. Call the boys at Crown they specialist in custom brake lines and could tell you if you need to step up the dia on size.

As for running one brake like back to the axle, if you are running a cutting brake there are two lines out of the unit, so you would have to run dual lines out

Troy
 
#352 ·
All mig welds, I wish I had the time and patience to learn how to be a great tig welder.

Thanks for the compliments.

As for the Jeep there is nothing new at all. I'm knocking the dust off of it to play with her at KOH in a week, but other that that absolutely nothing has changed over the past year.

Troy
 
#354 ·
KOH,

Was a blast. The only issue I had was I developed a rather large air leak in the rear ARB. I think it has something to do with high speed desert chasing rabbits out in the sage brush around midnight :laughing:. My co driver said I came real close to a few of them.

It looks like I side loaded the axle and shifted everything over enough to rip an O-ring.
I do have a local guy who might make a new roll cage for the Jeep. As my seats are officially done. I will go with full suspension seat front and rear.

I need to paint the hood and order up a new set of shafts for the rear axle as one of them has a severe twist in the splines, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it does not break at EJS next week.

As for pictures if you were on my Facebook account you would have seen a few of them. However I did not take many pictures my self as I'm getting lazy. I have more pictures of my TJ our in the rocks that I care to look at, and nothing has changed on my Jeep in the past few years, so every picture looks the same.

Troy

Troy
 
#355 ·
I have to bump this...just read it all the way through. Just picked up a '99 TJ project lacking legs and shoes and wanted your opinion on what stretch and suspension you would run for another DD/trail rig (80/20) if you had to do it all over again. Something very similar to how your TJ started out as. Already have 60's recycled from another project
 
#356 ·
The only thing I would like to change is coil overs in the rear and V8 power, however I did not have the $$$ back them, now I don't have the time....funny how that works out. I love the Detroit front and ARB rear combo.

I love the Iroks and WE wheels. She still needs a new cage and new seats. She gets worked over over other month for a few day then put back in the trailer. It needs a bit of TLC in the cosmetics department but mechanically she is solid.

Troy
 
#357 ·
Update:

This Jeep has taken its fair share of rock love over the past few years, Johnson Valley, EJS, MOAB, Rubicon, all of our local trails, however the hardest terrain per square inch is down in central Oregon. On our latest outing down at Swartz Canyon in Prineville Oregon, she finally started showing here age and fair share of moans and groans.

While at Swartz, the front Anti Rock broke in half due to fatigue, a tie rod end and rear U-joint, she barely made it back home. This was the final straw, and she is slowly being build up with some off the shelf parts as well as a bunch of new parts which we will release over the next few months.

I recently installed a Genright full roll cage and added my fair share of additions, the biggest upgrade was I added the tubes going through the dash for added piece of mind as I don't want to have any second thoughts wile pushing the Jeep to the limits. About a year ago purchased two seats from PRP a teen and a pre teen bucket seats with 5 point harnesses keep my 2 year old and 5 year old safely secured while out on the trail, and pair of Master Crafts seats up front. I also installed a set of Savvy Off Road aluminum half doors. I like them so much that I sold my set of custom tube doors as well as my Bestop half doors.

We have a slew of new products that we will soon release for the Wrangler, give her some upgraded armor, lighting, paint and eventually a 5.3:smokin:

Stay tuned.
 

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#360 ·
I installed an AEV hood which I think is a beautiful design. The PSC Defender fenders do not fit the AEV hood contrary to what there website says. The PSC fenders are designed to follow the stock TJ hood line on the side which slopes towards the front of the Jeep, the AEV hood is completely flat.

To remedy this it took a couple days with a lot of grinding and a big hammer to get things aligned up as you can tell by the gap in the first picture.

I also built and installed a set of A pillar light guards that hold a 50" Rigid light bar below the soft top. Installed a set of SWAG skins, aluminum side panels just behind the front fenders to cover up a couple dents and add additional protection.

In addition I recently had the front half of the Jeep painted.

Other that that just playing with is every month or so.

Please let me know if you have any particular questions about it.

Troy
 

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