Project XJ

[Jeff]

Well we took the roof rack back off in preparation for installing the gutter mount kit. We removed the stock roof rack cross rails as the gutter mount is lower profile. Sorry for the bad pics, I think my camera might be getting ready to take a dump.

It looks horrible slick topped!


Zach's Jeep


First thing was to bolt on the custom tire carrier I fabbed up.


Zach was generous enough to give me a set of 4XRac Hi-lift mount brackets. You can see them to the right of the tire mount here. We drilled 2 holes and used one existing hole to mount them to the cross bars and the floor bar on the outside edge. Very strong mount.


Loaded pics. These show the rack as it will be on the truck with tire and jack in place. We turned the jack around from the concept pics to better distribute the weight.




Anne came down to supervise for awhile and bring us delicious lunch.


The final project for the day was installing new U-joints and measuring the driveshaft angle so I can shim it to reduce vibrations.


Th U-joints were actually a bit of a challenge as they had to be pressed out and in. I just thought the clips held them in. I opted for a set of sealed, one time lube, Brute Force U-joints.


Then we played in the snow!




(yeah yeah, I hear you, I was up farther on the other side but the pics didn't turn out. These are bad enough.