I will start with the story of my Jeep ownership. I started in high school with a 1991 YJ which my dad bought new, then my older brother drove and tore up, then I got a turn at it. I ended up turning it into my own vehicle and tearing it up off road and learning about redneck engineering when my friends wanted to try new build tricks on my Jeep
When I came home from basic training I kept the YJ and wanted to get it into a pure off road vehicle but ended up not messing with it when I found out it wouldn’t run and it wasn’t ran when I was gone. I ended up buying a 1988 Cherokee 2 door from a buddy. This was already built with 10 inches and 38s.
Then after Afghanistan I decided to buy a pickup truck and traded the Cherokee for a four wheeler and some tires I kept the truck semi stock for a bit and went with a body lift and slightly bigger tires eventually to a 6 inch lift and 36s. When the motor of the Silverado blew I decided I wanted another Jeep.
With a not so well paying job and paying on my toy, the CBR, it was a long painful process trying to find a good wrangler. I came across an 02 TJ that a guy was selling with about 66K miles on it. His kid couldn’t afford payments and I got a sweet deal so I bought it. I had been out of the game so long I didn’t know what an X model was, oh well I now have a Jeep again.
I started the build with a 2 inch budget boost I got off of ebay. I was still at home in MD and my buddy and I got to work putting the BB on.
I stuck with the BB for a while since I didn’t have much money. Then I got a job in Arlington and started to get some money for mods!
I soon bought the smittybuilt stinger from a FU on Nova Jeepers. Now I had a good wheeler starting.
I had the lift but I still had small stock tires on. I searched for a while and found some very used Truxus MTs. I then got some black rock crawlers wheels but the bolt patter ended up being wrong and I had to get rid of them and keep searching for wheels.
I ended up finding some Pitbull Growlers mounted on rubicon wheels for a good price so I picked up those and put those on the Jeep. Now it was looking good.
I got a hilift jack and some d-rings for when I went wheeling and realized I needed some more lift. I bought a Rubicon Express Superflex kit from DamienD w/o springs and waited for a while to get springs. While I waited for a good set of springs I ended up making friends with Jack from Gulch Gear (mainly he had good taste in football teams!) and he was very easy to deal with when buying gear for the Jeep, he talked to me about springs and all and then I ended up with an engine skid (I wanted one anyway).
I also got a safari top, wind jammer and deckcover and ditched the stock soft top. After I kept getting upset that water would flow into the jeep during heavy down pours, I bought a used trektop from a guy in Hawaii. I love this top. Not only does it look cool but it is so easy to take down and put back up.
Now with that on I totally forgot about the almost complete suspension in the shed and went and bought a JKS body lift and a MML. I installed that after I finally got springs (3.5 inch RE) for the suspension.
I was trying to get some help to get that on and Damien was gracious enough to help me and show me how to do work! Thanks man.
After getting the suspension on, I knew the shocks from the lift were pretty worn out so I went and searched for some good shocks. I went back to my friends at Gulch Gear and purchased 4 Bilstein 5100 shocks. They work great!
I was noticing that the steering was pretty crappy so I got a used HD rustys tie rod from Medic and that really helped a lot!
Everyone else and I were noticing that the tires were getting bald and I was getting a little annoyed by all the noise they make since it’s a DD so I went to Jack from Gulch Gear and once again he had a deal I couldn’t pass up. I put some 285/75 Nitto Terra Grapplers on and really notice a difference. Then picked up a new spare wheel to replace the one that had egged out stud holes and put it on the back of the Jeep for when I might need it.
That just about brings me to now, I have some touch ups to do to the Jeep like re paint the flares. I picked up a hardtop this past week. I know its not winter but I found a great deal and since I might be leaving for a bit I wanted to get one now. I have some plans in mind for this thing and a lot of that has me getting a welder and learning to weld so I might do that in a few months and see what kind of trouble that will get me into.