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So we will pick back up a few weeks later! The driveshafts arrived and I was very excited to get them installed! They came packaged great, full documentation, and I had everything I needed to install! But once again...nothing seems to go as planned...
I spent basically an entire weekend attempting to break the existing driveshafts loose, I tried everything I possibly could and used every tool at my disposal, and all I could do was take the bolts out of either end, the driveshaft didn't go anywhere. So a long story made short while catching up here, I ended up getting a tow up to an off road shop near me, about an hour or so away, and luckily, AAA covered the tow completely the entire way there! Unlimited Offroad was able to squeeze me in the Monday after the weekend and was able to use some addition tricks and tools I didn't have access to, and was able to pop both driveshafts off. With having driven so much with no grease, they were pretty bad and definitely did not come off nicely...
But while I was there and with some much extra vibrations and wear on other parts around the driveshafts, I had Unlimited open up the diffs and check out the how everything in the diff was looking too, which all checked out and got some heavy duty Dana diff covers installed! The covers are the Dana Performance Diff Covers for the Dana 30 and Dana 44. But after that, the Jeep was back up and running and doing great! Here's some pics of the finished products, and they look great!
Next up was May 19th, a.k.a. Go Topless Day! Had a fun day out with the Wolverine Wheelers for a great trail ride through all the back roads to where we had our BBQ. We had a heck of a lot of Jeeps, at least 40+ I believe, and even though it was cloudy and on the chillier side, any day in Jeep with the top down is a great one! Here's some pics from our trail ride!
Man was I incredibly happy though that I brought my entire soft top me! We had been keeping a close eye on rain that was moving in from the south, but for the entire time, it was all just missing us, which was perfect, but then, at the end of our BBQ, it just started absolutely down pouring! So...I was able to get the Jeep closed up without it getting completely soaked, and definitely through some excitement into the end of the day there!
And then the busy times came with plenty of travel and work and things around the house, that no work was done on the Jeep for a while, but...remember those KC Cyclone lights I got a while ago? I finally got those installed under the hood and hooked up to the sPod about a month ago! And man are those amazing to have! Even for working in my garage, which is dimly lit to begin with, but with the lift on the Jeep, most lights are blocked from under the hood, so these are super convenient, and put out an impressive amount of light! And if you already have a switch system installed (sPod, Trail Rocker, Rugged Ridge, Random switch in the Jeep, etc.) then this install was a super breeze! Had em in withing 30 minutes!
So once again, let's fast forward further as it was once again busy for a while, and at the end of August, I started noticing a few small drips of oil on the floor of my garage. And of coarse, i am always glancing/looking/keeping an eye out for something that may not be right...just the car guy in me I know, and I knew this drip definitely wasn't there before and couldn't have come from anything outside. So I climb under the rear of my Jeep, and sure enough, the rear diff is leaking from the cover...only 3000 miles after it was put on, and not even any wheelin' in that time! Just normal on-road daily driving... So i kept an eye on it, to make sure it was coming from where I thought it was and sure enough, it started getting worse, slightly, but more than before, and obviously, it shouldn't be doing that in the first place.
A couple of week ago then, beginning of September, I got all the stuff together I needed to take the cover off and clean up everything in the diff, and then put it all back together with hopefully no leak. I when over the one of my buddies garages from my Jeep Club to get some help in case something more was wrong than just simply cover off, reseal, back on, and man was I very glad I did! What should have been a simple 30 minute task ended up being a 3 1/2 hour project. I had a shop install these, so i assumed they were all good, but definitely need to make a few calls at this point and talk to some people, because what I found was extremely bad!
We went to take the cover off, and before we even loosened our first bolt, be found that the bolt at the very top of the diff already broken! We put a wrench on to start to loosen the bolt, and the head just fell right off of the bolt...there was one of the potential bigger leaks! The bolt actually broke off further in threads, and the remaining couple of threads that came out with the bolt didn't look like it was the same bolt, but when compared, the threads were actually stretched! We the proceeded to work our way around the rest of the diff to loosen bolts, and we found 3 more bolts that were only hand tightened! Starting to see why the diff was leaking now for sure!
We finally moved on to popping the diff cover off, and this was another 30-45 minutes, because the RTV seal on the cover was so thin, we could not get anything in between the diff cover and the housing. After all that time, we were finally able to hammer a razor blade in far enough to break the cover loose! And when we did, there was a 1/4" bead of RTV on the inside of the housing/cover mating surface (the bead was 1/4" thick that was pilled into the housing actually, not on the cover matting surface. We also found most of the bolt holes full of RTV. But there was basically nothing on the matting surface where it was actually needed. So a lot of cleaning up of parts, and on top of that cleaning up a mess someone else had made now!
We then went to reinstall the diff cover, and started replacing bolts, using only hands and small hand tools, because there is no need to over torque anything here! We get all of the bolts hand tight, then to about 11-13 ft/lbs, and then we were going around for the final torque to 22 ft/lbs and...another bolt nearly breaks, but was stopped just short. We backed it out very gently/carefully and this is what it looked like:
The bolt completely stretched out at ~18-20 ft/lbs. Not sure exactly what happened here, if the shop who installed over torqued and had already weekend the bolt, or manufacturer defect? Not sure. My friend who was helping me took some of the bolts and torque tested them, and they were ok up to about 40 ft/lbs for sure, so no reason they should have broke in the rear diff, what we decided that that was it, we did not trust those bolts, and we went and grabbed some Grade 8 hardware from Lowes to reinstall. We also grabbed enough to redo all the bolts in the front diff, as it is the same cover, with same hardware, and installed at the same shop, so we replaced one bolt at a time and got that one all secured back up too! We made sure the rear diff was still clean, grabbed a LubeLocker for the rear diff, and got the cover installed back up with no more issues! And 300-400 miles later and a solid off roading trip with hitting that rear cover a couple of times, and the diff seams to be holding strong! So hopefully that fixed it, but will keep you updated on what the parties who I discuss this with will say!
Back on September 15, I went out with the Wolverine Wheelers Jeep Club and we had a small convoy up to Rocks and Valleys ORV Park in Harrison, MI for the "Wheelin' for Ronald" event benefiting the Ronald McDonald charity. It was a great turnout and fundraiser for them, and we had an awesome time wheeling! Actually did some of my first more extreme trails, and was once again blown away by how great the Jeep did! And the Jeep again is still surpassing my abilities, which is a great spot to be in!
Here was one of the best spots of the day on a trail called Python! This is where most of the mud you see above came from! Haha!
On top of an awesome day wheeling, they had a raffle, and I ended up taking home a bunch of great prizes including a Mountain Bike and a Full detailing from M-59 Jeep! Just that just made a great day even that much better!
Can't wait for the next trip out with the club, which I believe is a fall color tour Up North in Michigan here!
Last edited by WxNerd2015; 09-26-2018 at 07:06 AM.
As a quick update on my Rear Differential Issues. I was able to contact the shop who installed the covers, and they had me bring the Jeep right over, and they extracted the remaining part of the bolt, re-tapped the hole and made sure all was right there and installed a new Grade 8 bolt. I also noticed that I had a leaking front pinion seal, which this shop did my regear, as well as the driveshafts and diffs, so I asked them to fix the front pinion seal while they were under there and get the driveshafts greased too. So I had to cover the labor on these parts and fixes unfortunately, but they helped on that with a good discount, and all is back to how it should be now!
As for an update on the bolts though, apparently the Dana Performance Diff Covers in the early runs had a bad batch of hardware that the hardened steel bolts did not harden properly and were weaker than they were supposed to be. This is what the shop informed me of. they were calling any Jeeps back in that they sold these covers to to replace the hardware as this was happening on all of them. I was not informed, as I purchased my own through Amazon and brought the cover to them to install. So if you have these covers, make sure you have good hardware for them, otherwise go to the grade 8 bolts right away for a secure and solid fit.
But anyways, just wanted to make sure that i wrapped that story up, as everything was finished and taken care of yesterday! And sorry, unfortunately, I did not take any pics for this post!
So as you saw a couple of posts above, after Rocks and Valleys, TWSTR was very muddy, so a good cleaning was in order, especially under the hood! And yes, I did win the detailing, but it wasn't quite dirty enough yet for usage of that coupon, so I will save that for a bit later! So the Monday after our trip, I got to cleaning! I ran TWSTR through the touchless car wash outside of our sub to knock a good layer of dirt off, as well as get the under body cleaned off a good bit as they have a great under body sprayer! ANd then I headed back home to continue the cleaning! I spent about 3-4 hours Monday evening cleaning out all the nooks and crannies and spraying the frame out and just trying to get as much mud off and out of places I don't want to leave it! Man was that a good workout!
I got her about 80% clean and pretty good at this point, but TWSTR will still need a good cleaning later to finish off the final 20%, and the engine bay definitely needs some more work, but for just the first round of cleaning, came out pretty dang good! Front the pictures here you can barely seen any of the dirt left at all! But I did find it...all over the driveway! And i couldn't believe how much was still there after so much came off at the car wash! But that took me so long to clear off of the driveway as well, as I didn't want to leave all the mud there either!
Lastly, I also had some time this week to put together the bike I won! And man is it pretty dang nice! It has click shifters and disc brakes even! Now I gotta find some new trails to get the mountain bike off road and enjoy some good trails that way too! Here's a could pics of it all assembled!
Also did a quick "install" a couple of days ago! I got some of the Quadratec rear floor mats for the 2-dr JK. I have been meaning to do this for a while, but was the right add on to my order finally! These are made of a really nice more rigid rubber material and i am actually really happy with them! Time will tell on long term quality, but as for floor mats, it's hard to go too wrong! And i am sure they will do just fine! And now I can protect the carpet when i do have anyone in the back with snowy/muddy/sandy feet!
I will say though, I am amazed at how few companies do actually make the rear floor mats for the 2 doors, being that there are still plenty of 2 doors out there! but seems like a big miss from Mopar and Weathertech! I know Bestop, Rugged Ridge, and Quadratec all have their's though, and they work just fine! But anyways, here are some before and after shots! The fit is perfect!
Also, just to give you a preview, i have a whole bunch of boxes sitting at home of Jeep projects that I need to get to! So...stay tuned for a lot more write-ups, and post updates as i get the time to get to them, but there parts I have ready and waiting on me to go are:
'13+ Windshield Washer Nozzle to Swap
Gates Tensioner Puller and Gates Serpentine Belt
NGK Iridium IX Spark Plugs
NGK 3.8L JK Plug Wires
PCV Value
Xprite LED Marker Lights
Teraflex HD Ball Joints
Steer Smarts Yeti XD Tie Rod
Steer Smarts HD-N Neutral Steering Stabilizer
I believe that is everything! But definitely a lot of work to do and lots to come to get the Jeep back to better than tip-top shape!
09-19-2018, 10:37 AM
So i kept an eye on it, to make sure it was coming from where I thought it was and sure enough, it started getting worse, slightly, but more than before, and obviously, it shouldn't be doing that in the first place.
