Tomasz Korwel
programmer, administrator, engineer – my everyday fights with reality

I probably should have done it before I went to Hannibal Rocks :-) Better late than never – the winch is finally on. I went with an Atlas 9500lbs winch which being quite inexpensive still has some nice features like series would motor or wireless remote.

The whole idea was to mount the winch securely and yet keep as much of stock bumper I could.

I had some problems how to accommodate universal mounting plate.

I even considered getting rid of it and fabricating something else in it’s place.

But finally I did it and it doesn’t look that bad. I also gained nice mounting point for fog/driving lights!

Technorati Tags: winch, 9500lbs

On Saturday I did my first serious off-road. I went to Hannibal Rocks off-road park to test my new 3″ lift I put on earlier last week. Results? I am very disappointed. I mean the lift, the whole suspension performed very well. Just my tires weren’t able to keep up with it and I got stuck two times in fairly easy (you would say) terrain.

First it was step climb. Here is the picture before:

It starts just after this mud puddle. Normally there would be no problem in going up, but my tires got filled up with mud in the puddle and they became very slick. The results?

The car went not the way I wanted it to, but slipped with it’s rear tires right into ruts pulling whole car towards the tree.

Although it doesn’t look that bad there were moments I was closer than inch from this tree. So after 3 tries I decided to back up and try another route.

Then there was muddy trail in which I just couldn’t move anymore – I got high centered – all wheels were spinning with no move at all.

Conclusions? I desperately need to buy new tires.

Ever thought about some nice looking CB antenna mount for your Jeep ZJ? Instead of fabricating some brackets, mounts etc. go to any website selling Firestick‘s products and pick up the MK204R kit. I picked up mine at Walcott CB for less than $30 and considering there is cable in the kit looks like quite cheap thing.

Now to the mounting part. I decided to put mine around rear left tail lamp. The thing is that I wanted it to be as less obstructive for tailgate and lights as it’s possible. Here is a picture how I manage to achieve that goal:

I used 4 self taping screws to securely bolt it to the body. Also the rotating part of the mount was bolted upside down – it will allow to put some heavy duty spring and quick mount and it still won’t be looking like R/C model with 5ft antenna I’m going to install.

Here you can see how I routed the cable

I used existing hole in the body, so I limited amount of drilling to zero.

Another nice thing is that tail lamp if firmly fitting in it’s place now holding the mount in it’s place and keeping it from swinging around on heavy wind.

Final efect

with 5 ft stick went over my best expectations. Now my Grand Cherokee looks clean and nice, almost like factory equipped with this.

Technorati Tags: CB antenna mount, Jeep, ZJ, Firestick, Grand Cherokee

As our plans for going to Jeep Jamboree this year start to look more promising I started to prepare our ZJ to this (I hope) demanding task. First things first – we need some recovery gear. So I ordered strong radiator support form Kevin’s Off Road Below is small howto.

Unscrew 3 bolts keeping grill in place and take it out:

Remove plastic pins on both ends of bumper cover:

Then remove 3 bolts on the bottom:

and 3 pins on the top:

At this moment you can take it carefully out and put away to not damage it during the rest of the process.

Now remove three bolts on each side of oem radiator support (15mm socket):

and take it away.

Before putting new support on check if radiator’s positioning pins are short enough to fully hide in new support and trim old rubber stoppers:

Now it gets a little tricky because you have to lift and keep new support in place while putting bolts in factory mounting wholes. Having help is good, but it wasn’t that heavy so I managed to do it by myself. Remember about putting trimmed rubber washers between radiator and support:

Now when all four lower bolts are in place it’s time to put side bolts in. Use existing holes:

Insert small plates through openings in front of frame rails and bolt them on:

Now funny part begins – carefully put the bumper cover and look where mount (and tow straps attached to them) will interfere with it. Mark it with pencil, take the cover off and carefully trim it. I did something like that:

You have to be really careful to notice that it’s not factory shape (especially after I painted trimmed areas white).

Using first part of this howto put the bumper cover back on, insert three top pins and 6 side ones. Mount grill, open beer and enjoy your work.

Technorati Tags: recovery gear, radiator support, Kevin’s Off Road

Done yesterday. It took less than 4h (total – even with changing information center’s connections). Probably because it was direct swap. When I was looking for replacement I clearly stated that I need a NP242J from Grand Cherokee with 42RE transmission. Thanks to that everything worked like a charm.

First impressions very positive – the car is more quiet, mileage went up about 3mpg in 2WD and last but the most important – due to locked visco it was impossible to do almost any maneuvers on the concrete parking lot – now it works. I hope it will save me huge amount of bucks on front differential replacement.

Technorati Tags: NP242J, Grand Cherokee, 42RE