1994 Hunter Green SE “Back to Stock” Thread

[ACKyj]

The jeep looks great. Nice work. I'm not of fan of the front bumper end caps but otherwise i think you did a great job bringing it back to stock! The tire/wheel combination looks great as well.

 

[machoheadgames]

The jeep looks great. Nice work. I'm not of fan of the front bumper end caps but otherwise i think you did a great job bringing it back to stock! The tire/wheel combination looks great as well.

Thanks, I'm happy with how it has turned out. Just continuing on to tidy up the final loose ends. It feels endless, but slowly I am getting there. At least it's drivable now.

 

[machoheadgames]

In the quest to solve never ending exhaust issues, I wanted to eliminate more variables from the equation. I wasn’t a huge fan of the Banks header - not to say I wouldn’t recommend it, it was overall a fine product, but it wasn’t quite my cup of tea.

My biggest complaint was the donut gasket getting mangled up while installed. I’m not sure if this is my fault or the exhaust’s fault, but I couldn’t get the downpipe to install in a way that landed squarely on the gasket. As such, the downpipe dug into the gasket and ate it up. With just a few heat cycles and some miles, it worked deeper and then the bolts were loose. The gasket was so mangled up that the connection couldn’t really seal properly anymore…..this wasn’t causing any known problems, but the idea of that connection not being seated perfectly was making me itch.



Minor thing but ever since I installed that header, I noticed audible expansion and contraction noises when temperature changed (i.e. warming up & cooling down). Neither my stock Mopar or the replacement Dorman did that. All exhaust makes some noise, but this was more noticeable than normal. I tend to wonder if it was adding to my rubbing problems due to heat expansion.

Last thing, the OE manifold used studs and flanged lock nuts. I prefer this for easier assembly…not that I work on exhaust all the time (well, lately I work on it more than I should), but it’s nice to not need 5 hands when you do need to take apart and put something back together. I struggled with the loose gasket, bolts/washers/nuts, and still properly seating the pipe to the donut all at once. It was a job that needed several hands.

So enter the Mopar. I spent too much on it and haven’t been able to drive with it yet, but I think and hope it was a decent choice.

04883385 - Exhaust Manifold (1999 with expansion joints)
J4007109 - (2x) Studs for manifold
J4005142 - (2x) Nuts for manifold
52005431 - Donut gasket

It arrived last week and so before heading out of town, I installed the studs. Easy job using a nut, some washers, and some ratchets and wrenches.





I got the intake manifold ready to remove mostly last night and then removed it and swapped the manifold this morning. Easy job when you know all the nuts and connectors by memory.





Can’t report back and won’t be able to for a bit longer as now I need to dive into the t-case once again. I’m thinking the t-case I bought years ago for parts (using lots of those parts in my 94 case) may be bad. Maybe the main shaft is bent. I am still hearing the high frequency of the bearing style noise, so I am thinking maybe the main shaft was damaged and has noticeable runout making the driveshaft rub the rail come bushing or something. I honestly don’t know, but whatever the issue is, I’m tired of it.

So now I’m rebuilding the new 95 t-case, and that awaits a few parts. Since I need to remove the tcase that’s in the jeep, I am going to pull the transmission mount at the same time and work on the exhaust. The donut gasket and downpipe are not put together yet, and with the exhaust being in place during the install of the manifold, I couldn’t get the gasket in. So while I have the tcase out and skid plate off again, I’m going to go ahead and put some more work into the exhaust since it’s easy to get to at that point anyways.

Still need to finish the Smittybilt bumper install which I need to drop the tank for. That bumper is so annoying to install that I’m waiting until I can drive again and then I’ll move it to the other side of the garage. It’s too tight where it’s parked currently.

Not really much else going on. I still keep pushing the interior finish up because I insist on waiting until the bones are proven solid to drive on. I won’t have that confirmed until whatever the high pitched noise is, goes away…I really think it’s the tcase. Hope to see soon.

 

[machoheadgames]

Good news. The t-case seems to have solved my issue. It was an expensive project, but I no longer have any noise. I used the following:

• 1995 2.5L AX5 T-case
• Mopar 23-spline long input gear - 04796965 (purchased new)
• True neutral shift plate (Omix, purchased years ago)
• JB conversions rebuild kit
• TJ backup light switch
• Mopar rear bearing retainer (the one off the 1995 was nasty caked with mud) - 83503573
• Mopar TJ/XJ front driveshaft yoke for double cardan factory shaft - 04798120
• Crown seal for TJ/XJ double cardan shaft - 04798112
• Crown extension housing tail cone - 83503156 (came with slip yoke support bushing)
• Duralast 4370n rear output shaft seal (for now), going to get a more stock looking seal soon

I used a long input gear because A) it was available new and B), it’s advantageous because it will fit the automatics and the 23-spline manuals each with no issues. I didn’t need the long gear, short worked just fine but my factory short gear was the early cut which won’t work in a 95 t-case, so I had to make a purchase regardless. So if I had to buy something, it seemed to make sense to go with the universal option in case I sold to someone else later. Interestingly enough, Mopar started using the long gear anyways on both auto and manual 4.0s in the 1998ish TJ. It might have even been as early as 1997, but I know that the early 1997 AX15s received short gears like the YJ AX15s did.

I wish I knew what the actual problem was from the other transfer case, which as a reminder, was my original transfer case but had a 6 pinion planetary, a stock main shaft and rear housing out of a 1988, and an Allstate gear tail cone that had numerous bushings installed since I kept wearing them out.

I am thinking the main shaft maybe was bent or something. Not really sure. I’ll still keep all the parts around because it never hurts to have these hard to find parts, and maybe somebody else will need something that I can sell to for a good deal for both of us. Annoying to spend so much time and money on a t-case but at least the problem appears to be gone now.





Next up I still need to do a final brake bleed although they do work and lock up the tires. I need to reinstall all the dash trim panels and secure the wiring, I need to clean out the interior, install fog lights, and a few other minor things. And dust it off.

After that, I should pretty much be just driving it unless I find things I want to tweak.

One last thing I’m looking at doing is going back to the factory 1330 yoke to make it stock. I already bought one because I found the factory part (04746835) as new old stock. While I don’t need to do this, I prefer to keep as many things year specific as I can. The only additional cost at this point would be the matching driveshaft. I think I have a bit of a driveshaft imbalance anyways, so I feel it could be beneficial to do this regardless. I have just the tiniest buzz at 75-80 mph. Could be the angles and maybe it gets better or goes away as the suspension settles in, but for now it’s a bit annoying.

I also tore up my 1310 yoke and shredded the sides during crush sleeve install, because of all the impacting I did. So I bought a yoke holder tool, which when I finally go to swap the yoke, should make it a cake walk to crush the next crush sleeve without marring up my nice new 1330 yoke. So I may work on that Saturday/Sunday.

 

[machoheadgames]

Totally unnecessary, but since I found the 1330 yoke, I decided to go ahead and swap it today. I had nothing better to do. Now my driveshaft can officially be “1994” year-correct. In the meantime I got a conversion u-joint, but soon I’ll order up a shaft either from eBay or Tom Wood’s.

I would have done this back during the original axle builds (and moved over to the new axles recently) but I couldn’t find a stock yoke back then. I did originally order one from Denny’s, but it seemed to have some weird runout that made me nervous, so I went with the 1310 at the time. Well, now it is correct for the year.

 

[machoheadgames]

Fog lights have been remounted. Not sure if I’ve said it before but these are the now discontinued Gravity G4 fog lights in amber by KC Hilites.



I previously had these on my Warn bumper, which had holes for lights already drilled. I set the wiring to the proper length for that application. Now that I’m back to a stock style bumper, no holes were available.

The stock setup for YJ fog lights on non-Renegade models is to bolt a bracket up where the bumper end caps go, which then provides a mount for the light. The light sits on top of a roughly 1/4” spacer on top of the bracket. The factory brackets are not available, but there was a guy on Etsy named DogFoxIndustries making replicas, so I bought a pair a while back:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1295839704/?ref=share_ios_native_control

The fitment was perfect. I went with gloss black and they are nice quality and the finish is great. No complaints about them.

The KCs sit a bit low, so I bought a couple spacers, flange bolts, and flange nuts from Ace Hardware.



Overall I like how it turned out, though I’m not a huge fan of the wiring coming out of the right side of each light. It looks asymmetrical. I did not extend any wiring for this installation, I am going to go back and do that at a later time. I just wanted them on so I would have less loose parts lying around. These lights are discontinued and I’m not sure if I’ll keep them forever or not. Might switch it up to something else, but I don’t know what. I love Rigid products, but they look so modern that they don’t always fit in with something classic like a YJ. However, my headlights are new and modern anyways, so halogen fogs would look weird. For now I’ll leave these.

 

[machoheadgames]

Ordered and received the Tom Wood’s shaft. Looks like nice quality. I like how they use a full size 1330 u-joint and not the conversion type.

Interestingly, they use a 2” tube instead of the factory 2.5” tube. I imagine they do this because it’s simplest for them, as they build tons of shafts with 2” tube, so it’s easier to use what they have in stock. Doesn’t matter to me as long as it works. Shawn Wood actually told me that they’re easier to balance when narrower too, because the weights are closer to the centerline, so ultimately you’re balancing less weight at shorter distances. Probably negligible but interesting to know anyways.

Hopefully no more 75 mph highway vibes, if I do have them then I’ll need to put some weight out back to try and weigh down the springs to break them in and lessen the angles a bit.