Destroyer: The '21 JLUR EcoDiesel

Welcome everyone to an entirely new build thread for my latest (and planned LONG TERM) acquisition.

Some of you might be familiar with my previous builds but for those that aren't, feel free to visit here to get brought up to speed: Kiwi & Achilles

To give a brief summary, this is Jeep #4 for me in roughly 3 years. My first Trailhawk Hemi WK2 stuck around for about 6 months before I bought into the 4xe hype and ordered one factory fresh in Gecko Green. Both were pretty faultless and amazing vehicles in their own right. I had a short stint of madness that drove me to replace Kiwi with a Nissan GT-R, thinking I didn't need the "Go Anywhere, Do Anything" capability anymore, and found out just how badly I missed having a Jeep in my life. Enter 4xe number 2, Achilles. Achilles went from stock to mach f$#% in less than 6 months, but it also proved to be the biggest pain in the ass of all my Jeeps to date. Achilles was a factory flawed mess that really pushed my patience to the breaking point. So much so that the first opportunity I had to bail out and start over again, I was taking it without any regrets.

I made DAMN sure that I did my homework on powertrains this time since I didn't have any experience with JL's running conventional engines without hybrid assist. I drove several vehicles and even explored a few JT's just to make sure it truly wasn't a proper fit (it wasn't, not even close). The EcoDiesel really bit me hard after driving 3 of them almost back to back. I really dug deep in technical info to make sure it was something I could not only take care of myself long term, but figure out if my driving use would make the best use of the engine.

So, on Thursday the 28th of this month, I finally bit the bullet and went after one that I had been watching for a little over 3 weeks that showed up at a local Ford dealer.




Destroyer is a 2021 Sting-Gray JLURD with a little over 30k miles on the clock that originated out of California when it was new. During it's time on the road, it's been routinely maintained and inspected with regular maintenance and gaining a few mods as well. Most notably, Teraflex ST2 suspension coupled with Bilstein shocks, Evo Tire Carrier, Black Rhino Abrams wheels, and Falken Wildpeak AT3W's in 37x12.5R17 flavor. Essentially, it's already in prime condition to replicate what I was trying to achieve with Achilles but never managed to finish. Picking up where the last owner left off is going to be extremely easy and straight forward.

It's a new year tomorrow and a fresh start with a proper Rubicon this time. Thanks for following me along this frustrating journey of mine and stay tuned for more. 2024 is gonna be epic!

Nice rig!

I’m a little overdue for a progress report so here’s where we’re at with Destroyer after a little over 3 weeks:
As is tradition, parts started getting ordered immediately (most preferred interior bits and minor things that are quick to install like grab handles). I put my GMRS back in and took a little more time to get the wiring and antenna coax routed a little cleaner this time. Much happier with how I have it laid out compared to before. I’m waiting on a lot of armor right now to reach me as it’s all getting fabricated (guess the CavFab and LoD backlogs are pretty steep already). I did swap the shocks out for some Fox IFP’s which made a huge difference in the way it rides. I’m still not totally sold on this Teraflex lift so at some point it’ll get replaced. I’ve already got a new driveshaft on hand so that’ll get bolted in next week to take care of any potential issues there with clearance.
One thing I’ve noticed though being under the jeep now to change oil and the fuel filter is the amount of bump stops installed. I can’t help but feel like whoever installed this lift did it for the ‘mall look’ instead of being truly functional. I’m gonna need to figure out how much it needs removed now that I’ve made sure rubbing my fenders won’t be a problem:


Still haven’t finished the rear fenders yet…


Front is coming together nicely.



Yep, I finally fender chopped one of my Jeeps. ? Admittedly I’ve had the inner fenders on hand for a while. They were meant to be installed on my last 4xe, Achilles, but it never happened (lucky me since I don’t have to buy twice this time). The real “DOH” moment for me though is when I realized I bought the Motobilt BLANKS instead of the precuts. The original thinking here is to minimize splash in the engine bay from dirt and debris. The sucker punch though was having to cut out the material I didn’t need to clearance for the spring towers and shock movement. Luckily my band saw made short work of it, but there were a couple trial and error cuts to slowly whittle away the material that I didn’t need.

Let my pain be a lesson for you to avoid. ?

As far as the lights/brackets go, I went with kind of an unknown quantity and ordered Infinite Offroad’s kit. Overall it’s pretty high quality and I like the coding for the lights. Looks very nice installed…from 5-10 feet back. Up close is where I have issues (and maybe it’s just inherent of these kinds of lights and brackets) but the fitment isn’t really that great. They don’t perfectly align the fenders contours up front and they stick with VHB tape. I can see them popping loose at some point so I might need to modify them at some point but the lights themselves have a 25 year warranty which is pretty incredible.

The front fenders got an ‘upgrade’ with Artec mounting hardware to replace all the plastic clips. I have the hardware for the rears but I’m tempted to leave the plastic clips and see how they hold up vs the fronts off road (I’m sure it isn’t gonna make a tangible difference but it’s worth at least trying).

Next updates: front bumper, winch, rock rails, and rear bumper.

Little update since I got bored and I’m still waiting for parts:

Made some more progress today.





Normally I wouldn’t go for something from Rugged Ridge, but I’m fairly impressed with the quality of this bumper coming from Cavfab. It’s not nearly as thick of steel, but I’m not gonna be bashing into anything like a demolition derby anyway. Reminds me of my old EAG unit on Kiwi, that thing was notorious for shrugging off some pretty big hits so we’ll see how this stacks up by comparison.
It was a minor pain to install since I wired up my winch at the same time, but otherwise it’s solid. I am missing the lower skid plate currently but I need to work on getting the diffs and FAD armored up anyway so it’s not super critical at the moment.
In other news, my new lift arrived today as well. We’ll see if I can dig into that tomorrow or if I’m gonna put it off till next week. ?‍

I got impatient and decided to sneak in a preview of whats been going on:




Shouldn't have any air flow issues now. ?
Suspension is in work, I'm half way done, just haven't had the time or patience to pull the front apart yet. That'll happen tomorrow most likely. The rear's already done if you can't tell (the more observant of you probably can because of the rake) and it's a night and day improvement over the teraflex junk that was stuffed back there. Yeah, I said it, junk. And before y'all jump down my $hit trying to bash Metalcloak in return, I'm not installing MC suspension either so you can hold fire and wait for the details later.

After what seemed like an eternity working in the garage yesterday, the new suspension is finally finished:



Rock Krawler's Ultimate Adventure 2.5" lift was the choice this time around. After having 2 4xe's riding on Metalcloak suspension, I figured it was time to branch out and try something different.

Pulling parts out of the boxes gave me a pretty clear indication that this system is very robust in it's build quality. All of the arms feel significantly more stout and better made than Metalcloak. The bushings are very interesting. The inner sleeves are some kind of delrin or poly material that will fly out of their home if you aren't careful (they're all secured with zip ties from RK in the box). The trackbar is a little different in design from the arms and has a heim joint with 2 stainless caps that slide over to complete the adjustment end while the frame side has a zerk fitting to keep the bushing lubed. Everything was packaged probably about the same as MC apart from everything had it's own soft plastic bag. I don't remember that being the case for some of MC's parts so it's nice to see RK takes a little extra care here.

One thing I'd like to note that's diesel specific is the passenger side upper arm frame mount. Who the F$#% at the factory thought it would be a GOOD idea to mount the bolt in such a way that the damn DPF has to get unbolted from the manifold in order for it to be removed?! Luckily I managed to wiggle the heat shield and the bolt enough that I got it out (several hundred curses upon the engineers later) and reversed the orientation of the bolt and flag nut. How? I simply bent the flag nut in such a way that it now catches on the inside of the mount bracket (without interference to the arm mind you) and can still cinch down to spec. The bolt head is still easy to access from the outside of the frame hole. *IF you're curious, feel free to drop me a DM and I'll send photos. It makes life WAY easier should you need to unbolt it later down the road.*

Apart from the removal of the Teraflex junk testing my patience (their bushings are god awful just like stock. Seriously, don't waste your time or money on their arms) and getting everything torqued to spec, I bolted up my new driveshaft (MC) and took Destroyer for a quick test drive. ABSOLUTELY INSANE transformation here. No more jarring bounces and bangs, no more squeaks, just silky smooth road manners. It's hard to compare this to my MC suspension on the 4xe's but from what I can tell, the handling has less of a tendency to roll and dive. It's firm but not overkill. Paired with the Fox IFP's it just flat out drives like it should and doesn't feel like a handful.

Overall I'm extremely pleased with my decision to go RK this time. I honestly don't know if I'd even consider MC as a 'recommend' any more. RK might be a bit pricier especially since they rarely run sales on their products, but in my opinion it's absolutely worth the extra coin. Special thanks to @Roky for his build thread and input to this board. It made my decision easier to justify this time around.





With this, Destroyer is about 95% ready for EJS '24. I'm waiting on a handful of parts that are all armor related to show up including rock sliders. Once that's all here, it'll be one last update and then it's off to Moab.

Thanks everyone!

DewHawk said:

After what seemed like an eternity working in the garage yesterday, the new suspension is finally finished:

Rock Krawler's Ultimate Adventure 2.5" lift was the choice this time around. After having 2 4xe's riding on Metalcloak suspension, I figured it was time to branch out and try something different.

Pulling parts out of the boxes gave me a pretty clear indication that this system is very robust in it's build quality. All of the arms feel significantly more stout and better made than Metalcloak. The bushings are very interesting. The inner sleeves are some kind of delrin or poly material that will fly out of their home if you aren't careful (they're all secured with zip ties from RK in the box). The trackbar is a little different in design from the arms and has a heim joint with 2 stainless caps that slide over to complete the adjustment end while the frame side has a zerk fitting to keep the bushing lubed. Everything was packaged probably about the same as MC apart from everything had it's own soft plastic bag. I don't remember that being the case for some of MC's parts so it's nice to see RK takes a little extra care here.

One thing I'd like to note that's diesel specific is the passenger side upper arm frame mount. Who the F$#% at the factory thought it would be a GOOD idea to mount the bolt in such a way that the damn DPF has to get unbolted from the manifold in order for it to be removed?! Luckily I managed to wiggle the heat shield and the bolt enough that I got it out (several hundred curses upon the engineers later) and reversed the orientation of the bolt and flag nut. How? I simply bent the flag nut in such a way that it now catches on the inside of the mount bracket (without interference to the arm mind you) and can still cinch down to spec. The bolt head is still easy to access from the outside of the frame hole. *IF you're curious, feel free to drop me a DM and I'll send photos. It makes life WAY easier should you need to unbolt it later down the road.*

Apart from the removal of the Teraflex junk testing my patience (their bushings are god awful just like stock. Seriously, don't waste your time or money on their arms) and getting everything torqued to spec, I bolted up my new driveshaft (MC) and took Destroyer for a quick test drive. ABSOLUTELY INSANE transformation here. No more jarring bounces and bangs, no more squeaks, just silky smooth road manners. It's hard to compare this to my MC suspension on the 4xe's but from what I can tell, the handling has less of a tendency to roll and dive. It's firm but not overkill. Paired with the Fox IFP's it just flat out drives like it should and doesn't feel like a handful.

Overall I'm extremely pleased with my decision to go RK this time. I honestly don't know if I'd even consider MC as a 'recommend' any more. RK might be a bit pricier especially since they rarely run sales on their products, but in my opinion it's absolutely worth the extra coin. Special thanks to @Roky for his build thread and input to this board. It made my decision easier to justify this time around.

With this, Destroyer is about 95% ready for EJS '24. I'm waiting on a handful of parts that are all armor related to show up including rock sliders. Once that's all here, it'll be one last update and then it's off to Moab.

Thanks everyone!

Click to expand...

Looks awesome brother, nice work…..

Armor:

Stabilizer:
Armor: Complete

I have returned from EJS ‘24 and so has Destroyer…in ONE PIECE. Not a single fault or failure on its ‘maiden voyage’ / first shakedown off road trip.

So, what exactly did I learn other than EJS is an absolute blast? Well for starters, my rig is definitely in need of some minor alterations to capitalize on available articulation space.

After taking on Metal Masher and Steel Bender (for my first time ever seeing these trails let alone in this rig) and coming out virtually unscathed (sans some scrapes in the armor, as expected), I decided to take a down day to not only recharge and explore the various EJS booths/vendors (including Jeep’s concept area). The bigger goal here though was to visit Metalcloak’s CTI trailer and see what fixes I need to make.





While it might not be so obvious from the front, it’s definitely obvious from the side that I’ve got a TON of space left to fill before I’m even close to stuffing into the fenders. This was area one that needed to be addressed front and rear. Removal of about 1” of bump stop up front and nearly 2” of bump stop in the rear (I’m gonna start at dropping them both by 1” and incrementally reduce from there).

The other issue was glaringly obvious and something I should’ve known would be a problem based on what @Roky ran into a while back with his setup. The damn front shocks were contacting the frame and bowing the shaft at full droop. Clearly outboard brackets need to be installed to correct this (which I’ve already ordered Metalcloak’s NEW outboard bracket design to fix this).

One thing that wasn’t so obvious until the guy pointed it out to me was my rear diff cover making contact with my fuel tank skid at full flex limiting my uptravel on the left corner. Very easy fix, just need to use my cutting wheel and take some material off the diff skid to make some room or just ditch it entirely for a better designed skid. Finally the sway bar in the rear needs some light grinding of material to eliminate contact into other components. Again, another easy fix, not really a huge deal.

Beyond that he made the obvious recommendation to ditch the electronic sway bar up front since it’s also preventing about another 2” of up travel that’s available without it. Until it inevitably fails, I’m not super concerned with it. Remember, I just made it through Metal Masher and Steel Bender without any issue, so in my mind I’m already exactly where I wanna be in terms of capability. Going beyond this for the sake of extra articulation just seems like a waste until I decide to take on more difficult terrain.

So, what was its score? Well…


Not great, not terrible. There’s definitely room for improvement, but given my limited ability to really test my suspensions capability in my garage I’d say it’s pretty damn decent. Once I make the adjustments they advised and maybe some other alterations, I’ll have to get it back on their trailer when they’re out this way and see how much of an improvement was made.

As far as how the armor did, here’s the battle damage assessment:














Things to note:
- Rancho’s front diff skid took an absolute beating this trip and didn’t crack, bend, or buckle at all. Just superficial paint scuffs. Top marks here to Rancho.
- Asfir gas tank skid and DEF tank skid held up extremely well. For as cheap as it is and being just basic 5052 aluminum, I was very impressed. Another diesel in my group on steel bender managed to bend one of his rear mounts of his Metalcloak def tank skid. Not sure how, but definitely made me think twice about Metalcloak’s armor.
- The cheap tow hitch skid I bought off amazon was a damn trooper on this trip. I smacked the ever loving hell out of it at least 3-4 times coming off of ledges and it held up strong the whole time keeping my tire safe from getting snagged. 100% recommend this to everyone. Such a great little addition that saved my ass literally.
- LOD Destroyer step rails took some pretty good bangs but didn’t bend or buckle into my body at all. Very stout construction here and absolutely worth the investment.
- I earned the signature bent up tail pipe on this trip (most likely descending the left side of Dragons Tail on Steel Bender). I consider this a mark of honor and will leave it as is until it becomes a problem. ?

And finally, the mileage/fuel report. Keep in mind this is after being in 4L on 3 trails (Metal Masher, Steel Bender, and Seven Mile Rim) trucking over I-70 twice through Eisenhower tunnel and Vail Pass with 37’s and all of my tools, recovery gear and various other bags of stuff for the trip:


If I hadn’t been stuck in stop and go traffic on the way back from Georgetown all the way down to basically Morrison, I imagine my average mpg would’ve been even better.

Thanks for humoring my post trip report. More to come in the near future for this beast. ?

So I got the new Metalcloak relocation brackets installed. These damn things are so new the only place to find the correct install guide is through the rocksport black shocks. Apparently they’re designed specifically for them whereas the originals are meant for fox and rocksport red (as far as I can tell anyway).







So a couple of notes on these:
- There’s no torque specs for install posted ANYWHERE. Use your best judgement and send it. I torqued the shock mount itself to factory spec and the rest of Metalcloak’s hardware to G’NT.
- The front post relies on your existing brake line bracket under the spring pad to still be there as it reuses the 10mm bolt for security. If your setup has moved on to something like the Teraflex mounts, you might wanna source your own hardware to ensure it doesn’t go anywhere.
- The primary bolt/sleeve that attaches the new bracket to the existing axle bracket uses a new hex head style bolt that tightens up to a countersunk hole. This is a much cleaner design that I remember the original relocation bracket being and ensures there’s no possibility of the shock eye hitting it.
- This might be a me problem but the included grade 8 bolt and nut that’s meant to secure the shock eye to the bracket is just too damn big for the Fox IFP’s I’m using. Save your stock hardware just in case you run into the same problem. It works just fine here.

The big advantage this bracket has over the existing design is that it simply rotates the mounting point 90 degrees and outboard. The original also dropped the mount location about 1”-1.5” which made you do some extra math to figure out which shocks were right for your planned up/down travel in the front. Kind of a pain in the ass if you ask me.

As far as I can tell though, these work just fine for my IFP’s. I can’t imagine anyone having issues with them on other shock brands/models either.

If I have any issues with them going forward I’ll be sure to share, but so far my frame contact issues at full flex are no longer a problem. ?

DewHawk said:

So I got the new Metalcloak relocation brackets installed. These damn things are so new the only place to find the correct install guide is through the rocksport black shocks. Apparently they’re designed specifically for them whereas the originals are meant for fox and rocksport red (as far as I can tell anyway).

So a couple of notes on these:
- There’s no torque specs for install posted ANYWHERE. Use your best judgement and send it. I torqued the shock mount itself to factory spec and the rest of Metalcloak’s hardware to G’NT.
- The front post relies on your existing brake line bracket under the spring pad to still be there as it reuses the 10mm bolt for security. If your setup has moved on to something like the Teraflex mounts, you might wanna source your own hardware to ensure it doesn’t go anywhere.
- The primary bolt/sleeve that attaches the new bracket to the existing axle bracket uses a new hex head style bolt that tightens up to a countersunk hole. This is a much cleaner design that I remember the original relocation bracket being and ensures there’s no possibility of the shock eye hitting it.
- This might be a me problem but the included grade 8 bolt and nut that’s meant to secure the shock eye to the bracket is just too damn big for the Fox IFP’s I’m using. Save your stock hardware just in case you run into the same problem. It works just fine here.

The big advantage this bracket has over the existing design is that it simply rotates the mounting point 90 degrees and outboard. The original also dropped the mount location about 1”-1.5” which made you do some extra math to figure out which shocks were right for your planned up/down travel in the front. Kind of a pain in the ass if you ask me.

As far as I can tell though, these work just fine for my IFP’s. I can’t imagine anyone having issues with them on other shock brands/models either.

If I have any issues with them going forward I’ll be sure to share, but so far my frame contact issues at full flex are no longer a problem. ?

Click to expand...

Yeah, I’m glad they came out with ones that don’t raise the bottom of the shock 1.5” …. I couldn’t use them because I didn’t want to loose any uptravel…running the long travel shocks, uptravel is at a premium, lol…..

just ordered the blacks. Has anyone heard anything on them yet? I have a lot of faith in M.C. so I sent it lol. Already have the 3.5 Game Changer with the reds, so this will be a nice upgrade I'm thinking

Anthonylewis208 said:

just ordered the blacks. Has anyone heard anything on them yet? I have a lot of faith in M.C. so I sent it lol. Already have the 3.5 Game Changer with the reds, so this will be a nice upgrade I'm thinking

Click to expand...

The general impressions I’ve been hearing on the cloaked owners Facebook group is very positive. Haven’t seen anything that would concern me so far. The reds just aren’t cut out for wheeling with any kind of speed involved over a crawl. There were a few GC owners on reds I had running with me on all 3 trails that I did at EJS. All of them struggled to maintain the same kind of speed I was managing with the Fox IFP’s. That being said, EJS definitely has left me looking at adjustable shocks for the future.

All that being said, the brackets have been a noticeable improvement on their own. The freedom of movement vs the standard mounting point has made something as trivial as a curb entering my driveway feel like it barely exists whereas before the whole cabin would get upset. Amazing how something so simple can make such a big difference.