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The Jeep also ended up getting a new sibling in March! I ordered a new 2019 Ford ranger back in December, and come March, it was finally ready to be picked up! the Ranger was meant to be the new daily driver so I could have even more fun with the Jeep! The new Ranger is an XLT with the FX4 Package in Hot Pepper Red! Definitely feel lucky to have such great choices to pick from when i gotta grab a vehicle and go drive some where! Here's a few shots of the siblings together!
Also, as an additional note, I got my ORV License and permit for the 2019 season too and got those updated on the Jeep! Blue this year!
That's neat that you visited Ludington, my folks are from up that way and I've spent many summers up there in the orchards.
Nice! Yeah, my parents just got a house up there just off of Lake Michigan, so there are definitely going to be a lot of trips up there for me! It really is a great area right there!
Next up was looking into maintaining the Jeep nicely when it is not getting driven every day since it was no longer the daily driver! I wanted to get a battery tender and looked through a lot of options and reviews and decided on the Optima Batteries Digital 400 charger. now I paid a bit more for this charger than a lot, but it has a nice interface, and I do feel in some cases, you get what you pay for, and for my peace of mind, this i felt was a good all around option for me!
The charger worked great right from the start, and was very easy and simple to figure out! I started by using the clips for the battery, but i found those to be hit or miss, and with out much I would be taking the cables on and off, I decided that the best route was to use the included hard wire kit. And this was another point for me purchasing this kit! The kit came with leads that you permanently install on the battery, and there is around a 2-3 foot length of cable with a nice plug with a cap. This then plugs into the long cables on the on the charger itself, and you are good to go! And when you want to drive the Jeep, you just unplug the wire and tuck the end away in the engine compartment of the Jeep, and the cap protects the leads very nicely!
Overall, I have been using it for 5 months at this point, and it has been working great! No complaints!
Last edited by WxNerd2015; Aug 23, 2019 at 10:12 AM.
In may I finally got around to installing the new spark plugs and wires into the Jeep! It definitely made a huge difference in the feel of the Jeep now and I actually got a really nice MPG bump of almost 20%! Pre-install I was consistently getting around 12 MPG for a long while, and after, through many tanks of gas at this point, I have been getting an average of 14-14.5 MPG! Can't believe I got that much of a boost, but nothing else at that point changed besides getting the plugs and wires!
Additionally, the gaps on the plugs in the 3.8L are supposed to be at .050, and all of the old plugs that I took out were between .065-.080, so they were out of spec, and it was definietly time to get em changed! i swapped out the stock plugs with around 70xxx miles on them for NGK Iridium IX plugs and the NGK Performance Ignition Wire Set.
The install went fairly according to plan, just took a while getting the right extensions and joints for the sockets put together to get each plug, as well as carefully breaking the old plugs free, as they were very well stuck in there. And as expected, the driver's side was much easier to do than the passenger side of the engine. I did remove a few hose and such to gain more space into the passenger side of the engine as described in many write-ups, and I did everything from the top side. Also, fishing the plug wires behind the engine for the passenger side was also extremely hard. I tied some wire to the ignition coil end of the oil wires and pulled it through so that I had a path to follow to get the plug wires back through and that definitely aided in getting the wires back through the other directions. Additionally, i did not break the wire tray removing it, but i did not try and open the old wire tray as i had already purchased a new one to install.
The tips and tricks from many write-ups definitely came in handy, so if you will change your plug wires yourself, definitely go and read a few good omnes to have some ideas what you need to do to get everything done! But anyways heres a few pics of the old plugs that came out, along with the finished product with the new, blue NGK wires. I definitely like how the blue wires look under the hood!
I also found some great deals on a few new things for the Jeep, and the deals were too good to pass up! So I placed a few orders!
1. I finally decided to upgrade those tube steps on the sides of my Jeep to some real sliders! I ordered the Deegan 38 HD Rock Sliders, which also come with 4 KC Cyclone LED Rock Lights integrated into them as well! I got these on sale for a great deal, for only $230! And on top of that, I really liked how they looked! They have a nice and high tuck on them to the rocker panel, and they have a great step on the side to use! So for me, this was a no brainer!
2. I also finally decided to get some sway bar disconnects for the Jeep, as I really have never even disconnected the front axle before, and for some trips that I had planned, I was definitely going to need to! I did some research, and I know the popular brands, but the prices were a bit higher on those too. I then came across the Steinjager Sway Bar Disconnects which were only around $60! They use a ball stud coupler on one end that bolts to the Jeep, and the end link side is actually similar to an air hose coupler that is spring loaded. You just pull up on the collar to connect and disconnect the end link on one side, and it is definitely more forgiving to get the sway bar reconnected too! They also do rattle a little at slower speeds, but this I am ok with, as the Jeep is already noisy! but if you are interested in these, be aware of that!
3. Lastly, I also finally go around to order some new wire to rewire all my accessories in a much cleaner and more professional way. Right now, all the wires are all just red and black and zip tied in a bundle, but I actually am going to go through color code each accessory to different wire colors to more easily identify them, as well as add nicer wire coverings, and add connectors at key points as well if anything ever needs to be disconnected. I will add in the graphic that I drew up a bit later as I do not have it with me at he moment, this is all the components that I got to make all the connections:
I also did manage to get the old step sides off and the new rock sliders on! Man did the old nerf bars not want to come off at all! i was able to get the tubes themselves off the brackets themselves relatively easy, however the brackets did not want to let go of the body side of the Jeep! I They badly rusted in place, and the hardware was only allen head bits, so not the greatest hardware to work with for this setup. I ended up having to go buy a rotary tool (Yay! new Tools! Haha!) and cut most of the pinch seem bolts off. It took a while, but I finally go there!
From there, the Deegan38 sliders were installed pretty much like the directions described and went on fairly easily! For more details on the sliders or full instructions, see the videos in the above posts, but I basically followed those and everything went as it should! One of the biggest keys was to not tighten anything down until all the bolts were started, and I believe that I ended up needing to use the the thicker spacer pieces that come with the kit at each pinch seem plate. I really loved the welded on metal tabs which were attached to the nutsert plates! Those made it really easy to control where the plate went and to get it in place and hold it there until the bolts were started! Additionally, I also used the included wiring harness only partially. I ended up modifying the harness to collect all of the lights together, but instead of using their relay box, I connected the lights to my sPod, and that has worked perfectly with no issues. i also used the square holes in the body under the rockers to run the wiring for the rock lights inside the body and slider to leave nothing exposed to get damaged or hung up on anything! I also ran the wiring up behind the inner fender liners in the backside of the engine bay on both sides, and there was plenty of space to run it there!
Overall, I am absolutely loving these sliders in fit, and function! The steps work great, and the high tuck of the sliders is exactly the look that I wanted! It is really clean and for the deal that I got, these definitely couldn't have been beat! Here's a few more shots with the lights on at night too!
Had a great time back in May as well with the Wolverine Wheelers at our Go Topless day event! Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate the best for too much topless weather until later in the day, but it was still a great time! And we had a great turnout of Jeeps! I believe it was just over 30! Had a couple of chances to get a little bit muddy, and i was able to get some good shots with my Drone of the whole crowd! And any day driving the Jeep is never a bad day!
Also had a few various travels and adventures throughout the summer months here, and got lucky for one of my work trips and managed to snag a Jeep Cherokee for my rental. I was actually pretty happy with it, at least for not being my Jeep, it wasn't too bad! And especially for a mostly highway trip to Canada and back, it definitely beat the other smaller car they were trying to give me! Haha!
Also had a fun trip down to Universal Studios in Orlando! And of coarse had to find the Jurassic Park Jeep!
And just having some good times driving the Jeep around! And having a second vehicle now, I am loving more top down days since the Jeep gets the garage! I can open the top up, and just park it in the garage on rainy days! A very nice benefit of having the truck now too!
In July this year I finally got enough to to take the Jeep out and actually enjoy it where it's meant to be, and definitely needed to as well as I was registered for DOA 2019 up on Drummond Island and wanted a good test run to shake everything down and make sure that all was good before an entire trip up there! And good thing I did! So we met up with the Wolverine Wheelers again and had a nice trip up to Rocks and Valleys ORV Park, and nothing was too hard this day, and tried to take it easy most of the time, but actually ended up being the start to a few good events for the Jeep.
However, before I get into the details on issues found, here some shots throughout the day of the Jeep having a blast! I am still so happy and impressed with this Jeep every time I get out wheelin' in it!
Also, here's a great video and a few pics of the hardest spot of the day, as I said, a relatively easy day, but the Unlimiteds were getting hung up and bottoming out on this climb, and I gave it a good bump, but made it up on the first try! SWB for the win on this one! Haha! And some good tires!
Anyways though, onto the start of all my issues that I found out...throughout the day, the Jeep started running warm, especially when I was using the A/C, and it has never done this before. I was able to manage it throughout day, but the drive home definitely pushes it much warmer than i would like. It was about a 3 1/2 hour drive home on expressway on a near 90 degree day, and the temperature never passed the acceptable range, but it was definitely running warm! I managed it all the way home, and when I got home, the coolant in the reservoir bottle was actually boiling, so I let the Jeep cool down. When I checked later, the coolant reservoir bottle was empty and I could not see any coolant in the radiator, about 60%-70% of my coolant had actually boiled off! Ended up being mud packed between the A/C condenser and radiator that was preventing air flow to the engine, so i had to take the grill off and the upper radiator cover and spray a good bit of water down between there for a couple of days to get it all cleared out, but it did get all cleaned, and got the coolant filled back up and bled the system, and all was set there. I additionally changed the thermostat as well and installed a Ripp Superchargers 180* thermostat to keep the engine a little bit cooler.
When searching for the issue above, I actually found a new issue! When backing the Jeep out of the garage, there was a loud bang, and my passenger rear, inside brake pad came shooting out of my caliper. There are about 35000 miles on the rear brakes, but upon inspection of the pad, it seemed to have separated from the backing plate and just shot out. So i will cover the whole brake situation in another post, however, these issues started piling up, but i am glad i found this before Drummond, and while I was at my garage as home!
And lastly, I also snapped my CB antenna off on the trails at Rocks and Valleys. Just hung on a branch the wrong way, and after all this time, it finally decided to let go, but I believe I have had that antenna for 8 or 9 years, so I definitely got some good use out of it! But now time to find and decide on what the new antenna setup should be! Maybe a 102" Whip? Maybe! We shall see!
