Euro JLUR 2020 Punk'n - Vehicle / Build journal

[taram]

Also I've put a grab handles - with power soft top you can use the old ones from JK-series - they are thin enough to fit in between the roller cage and roof structure:

Sponsored

 

[taram]

This is the look with the high line fenders and rear steel bumper - for some reason didn't take more photos from different angles - will do. And today started the front bumper.
P.S. In the future will reduce the size of the photos more to make it more convenient to read.

 

[chkoh]

Hi taram! congrats for your brand new rig and I love reading your build log! I too have a RHD JL Wrangler Rubicon with trailer tow group (but without the hitch and wiring...), premium alpine speakers, adaptive cruise control and mopar headliners! I will post photos over the next few days when i'm free to let you have a look at my rig! A big wave from Singapore!

 

[taram]

Hello Chin Hao!
Thanks for your attention - I still have some posts to come, it's just moving too slow with my progress, so I don't post that much.
I'd like to see your photos too - it's always nice to see other's build/experience or at least just some nice photos. I will post them here as well upon availability.
At the moment I'm having a great challenge with the front bumper - it turned out to be twice as complicated than the rear one and I still got a lot of things to do. At least I have fully disassembled it, drilled the holes and glued the mounts for the park sensors from the stock plastic bumper, and now I have to cut out the inner parts that do not allow to insert the sensors, organize the wiring and etc...

Ah, by the way - RHD owners - please be aware that the original wiring of the winch is too short since the battery is on the other side. Probably I will find the way to pass the OEM "+" wire as I have a WARN power interrupt solenoid which will be placed closer than the battery, but for sure will have to replace the "-" wire with a longer one. It has to be 25 sq.mm copper cable capable to handle at least 600-700 Amp current - I'm thinking of using one of the flat battery emergency cables - they have the same characteristics and mine are 3 m long which should be enough compared to 1.8 m OEM. Cheers everyone!

 

[lohr500]

Hi Taram,
If you use the cable from a flat battery jump start cable, just make sure the cable is pure copper and not a copper/aluminium alloy, or even copper plated aluminium. The cross section may be the same, but the current handling can be a lot less than pure copper. You may well be aware of this anyway, but I thought I would mention it, just in case.

 

[chkoh]

Hello Chin Hao!
Thanks for your attention - I still have some posts to come, it's just moving too slow with my progress, so I don't post that much.
I'd like to see your photos too - it's always nice to see other's build/experience or at least just some nice photos. I will post them here as well upon availability.
At the moment I'm having a great challenge with the front bumper - it turned out to be twice as complicated than the rear one and I still got a lot of things to do. At least I have fully disassembled it, drilled the holes and glued the mounts for the park sensors from the stock plastic bumper, and now I have to cut out the inner parts that do not allow to insert the sensors, organize the wiring and etc...

Ah, by the way - RHD owners - please be aware that the original wiring of the winch is too short since the battery is on the other side. Probably I will find the way to pass the OEM "+" wire as I have a WARN power interrupt solenoid which will be placed closer than the battery, but for sure will have to replace the "-" wire with a longer one. It has to be 25 sq.mm copper cable capable to handle at least 600-700 Amp current - I'm thinking of using one of the flat battery emergency cables - they have the same characteristics and mine are 3 m long which should be enough compared to 1.8 m OEM. Cheers everyone!

yes I have experienced what you have when installing my Warn 10-s winch. if I remember correctly, the negative wire is shorter as it is angled to the left (when looking at the car from the front) thus the length of the ground cable is not enough to reach the battery negative terminal. When ive did was I had to use a pure copper welding cable to extend the length so that it could reach the negative terminal.

as for the mopar metal front bumper, behind the plastic caps you'll have to cut off the round circular metal in order to fit the sensors in, and also at the end cap, you'll have to trim the metal back cover to ensure the sensors and the sensor brackets can be mounted flush to the metal.

Do let me know if you run into any problems and i'll be happy to advise

 

[taram]

Hi Taram,
If you use the cable from a flat battery jump start cable, just make sure the cable is pure copper and not a copper/aluminium alloy, or even copper plated aluminium. The cross section may be the same, but the current handling can be a lot less than pure copper. You may well be aware of this anyway, but I thought I would mention it, just in case.

You're absolutely right, Tony. It turned out exactly like this - the flat battery jump cables are exactly copper plated aluminium - I've noticed that when cut off the original bracket. So I went to the specialized shop, bought 3 m of pure copper cable 35 sq.mm., terminal clamps and crimping tool.
It all worked well in the end, I spent a lot of time looking for a suitable position for the WARN power interrupt solenoid - finally decided to mount it on the plastic cover of the fuse box with plastic rivets/glue. I finished quite late today again, but finally the winch works. I've put it on the AUX1 button - probably could use AUX3/4 as for the solenoid a 5 Amp on AUX3/4 is enough, and AUX1/2 are 40 Amps rated. Anyway, I don't know if I'm gonna have any other auxiliary devices in the nearest future, and it's very easy to switch the cables later.
Tomorrow I truly hope to finish the front bumper, and as @chkoh has stated that involves a lot of cutting/trimming, but the main thing is that the sensor mounts are already glued in place and hopefully I will be able to assemble it all together tomorrow.
By the way, I can already see that the nose went down around 7-8 mm with winch/winch mount, and it will probably go down another 5-7 mm with steel bumper installed... I hope it won't worsen the rubbing issues (still waiting for the spacers), but I still consider some leveling kit as a possible option, e.g. 0.5-1.0 inch from Teraflex or similar - in order to compensate the heavy mods and level the factory "nose down" tilt.
Photos to come tomorrow when the sun is back shining
Cheers!

 

[lohr500]

Sounds like you are making good progress Taram.

Mine is pretty much stock apart from the tow hitch and electrics.
Yesterday I finally got round to removing those horrible filler pieces between the front wings and bumper. It definitely improves the looks, although the EU spec front bumper still looks ridiculous. At some point I will have to get a steel bumper, but I am hoping prices for bumpers in the EU/UK may come down this year as more options become available. Right now I can't justify spending a lot of money on a bumper, just to improve the appearance.

 

[taram]

Hey everyone.
This is gonna be a very emotional post...
So, yesterday I managed to assemble everything back to summarize the following:
1. The so called "Rubicon winch" which I purchased as a Mopar part (part #P5160095AC ) and is actually a regular Warn Zeon 8S has an old-style clutch release lever with a 180 degrees turn which is not compatible with the JL OEM steel bumper as the bumper doesn't allow to fully turn the handle. So I need to purchase somewhere the WARN upgrade kit that replaces the 180 degree to a 90 degree lever... For this the winch must be totally removed from the Jeep and disassembled from the transmission side ... DANG
2. The Rugged Ridge winch mounting plate that has a lot of positive reviews and etc. doesn't allow to tighten the 4 inner nuts of the steel bumper (out of 8 in total). That really sucks as these are the mounting points of the tow hooks and the last thing you want is to have some weak connection there... OK, probably I will manage to tighten the upper inner nuts , but the lower ones are fully blocked by winch/winch plate and front suspension parts. I really don't know how to deal with this issue as these are the most important nuts in the whole front bumper I guess. In the worst case I will have to buy a new winch plate OR somehow cut/alter the existing one
3. Now something truly ridiculous - after making a great job (at least as I thought) with front parking sensors I get a false alarm in the end of the days... What's more confusing that it looks like only the right side is faulty, though everything was done symmetrically. That's something that had really knocked me out as I wasn't expecting anything like this, but probably I was too self-assured for a totally non-experienced car mechanic. Also the problem is that I don't understand what's wrong actually and I have cut the holes already. OK, in general, I can order new plastic caps in order to change the sensors' position, but I also get a false alarm from the right sensor on the edge where everybody placed it! I kept the original mounting and orientation of the sensors - I even marked that while removing, even looking at all 6 of them I can tell it's exactly the same sensors with the same part number. Another thing that makes the situation worse is that my rear park sensors' mounts haven't still arrived, so the system says the rear park sense is faulty and switched it off, so I cannot do any test for now. Probably I will have to wait when these parts arrive, install the rear park sensors, and then check what's wrong again... Maybe my mounting is too deep in the bumpers so the sensors can "see" the edges of the hole? Hard to believe, but I have no other ideas.

And the cherry on the cake - after winding the rope on the winch I realized that I should had put the protection sleeve first before fixing the rope end on the winch drum, and it cannot be put later through the hook end... But OK, this is just about some patience , spooling the rope fully out, removing the fixing anchor (which probably is not that easy afterall), putting the protection sleeve and everything back.

I'd appreciate your comments/thoughts on my issues. I'd appreciate a feedback from those of you who have winches and steel bumper - what winch plate did you use and how did you manage to tighten all 8 nuts fixing the bumper. Also it would be great if you could share the front parking sensors mounting in detail...

A bit tired of the build, honestly - so many nuances, nothing is as stated to be "bolt-on" and etc. and etc.
From 1 month of owning the Jeep I've driven it for 400 km in total for around 5 days...

 

[taram]

Some photos. Later will post the one with everything assembled:

 

[taram]

OK, so after sleeping the whole thing over I have some ideas regarding the issues that I've run into.
1. Winch clutch lever needs to be ordered and replaced when the next time the front bumper goes off. I can still use the winch, I'm pretty sure it's not gonna happen in the nearest future, actually. No rush.
2. Regarding the bumper nuts - I've purchased some 1/2" ratchets and adapters that could possibly help to get to these nuts. This will take for sure hell a lot of time, but could be done possibly, I think, in the end it's the matter of right tools... and time... and money )
3. Now back to the main problem - the false park sense alarms. I've Googled the issue and found a very nice video clip from the guys who had run into some issues with the aftermarket rear bumper and replacing sensors on it -
I think that as soon as I receive the bezels/mounts for the rear sensors - I will remove the glued plastic ones from the front bumper and will try to play with the 2-part rear ones. This gives me an opportunity to play with sensor position by rotating it 180 degrees and also the mounts have an inclined design that allows you to turn the sensor slightly away from what could possibly cause the false alarming. Even I still don't understand what's wrong with my installation - I think this is the right way to move. I only regret that I discovered this too late as I could order extra mounts/bezels together with the rear bumper's set and have them here soon. Anyway, we'll see.
So at least these are some positive ideas after yesterday's fail , LOL)

 

[Rudolph Hart]

Hi Marat, a couple of suggestions. You should be able to easily remove the hook from the end of the rope, will the sleeve fit over the eye?

If you’ve installed your Tazer it might be worth turning off the sensors, reboot...turn them on again and reboot again. Also it may be that the Jeep doesn’t like only having the front sensors installed. There are options in the Tazer for no sensors, front + rear and rear only but not for front only so it may be that the fronts will be ok when you’ve reinstalled the rears.

I don’t have the clutch lever on mine so I’m not familiar with it, could you rotate the existing one so that it works?

These things are often easier to resolve if you walk away and start afresh, good luck!

 

[taram]

Hey, John!
Thanks for your input.
Of course I was trying to remove the hook - the sleeve wouldn't fit over the eye, that's the problem. But probably it's not that bad - I will take some pictures tomorrow, I decided to make a custom reg plate mount that will cover almost all exposed part of the rope - probably, I don't even need it.

Regarding the park sense - yes, I'd definitely wait for the rear mounts to come, so I fit them correctly and then will check again. But I'm quite sure there's a problem, because I hadn't had these false alarms when I'd already removed the rear sensors, but kept the stock front bumper. I think using the OEM mounts that allow you to rotate the sensor 180 degrees could solve this issue (at least i need some kind of freedom of positioning the sensors which I totally don't have now with the glued plastic mounts).

I still haven't installed the Tazer as I want to finish the hardware part before messing the software, LOL )

With the winch lever - it's quite a well-known issue, as starting from end of 2018 WARN has updated their winches with a 90 degree clutch lever. That's what is strange why the WARN Zeon 8S which is being sold under MOPAR part doesn't have this update... but what's done is done - I will manage to change it for sure .

I already left the Jeep to rest for couple of days , myself to cool down as well, and I will get back to it when I receive my rear park sensors mounts.
In the meanwhile tomorrow I will post some pictures with the reg plates fixed, I hope, and 1" spacers installed if the weather is nice.
Cheers!

 

[taram]

Hello, everyone!

Sorry for keeping silence - these have been some crazy days, you all know ))) but after the quarantine was introduced I had quite a lot of time to wrench the Jeep )
There were some updates since my last postings, I will separate them in several posts as I think a huge post with a bunch of photos is quite difficult to read. I also still need to take some good photos in detail - will do that tomorrow as today the weather was not that nice.

So, first things first, I've purchased 1" wheel spacers. As you might probably remember I had some rubbing on the upper control arms in the front as some members warned me because of narrower axles we have in EMEA-spec Rubicons. I didn't want the tires to stick out too much and ordered the minimum available thickness of 1 inch (25 mm). And THAT was a mistake. After receiving the spacers I was to realize that the original wheel studs are long enough (approx. 43-45 mm) to stick out from the 25 mm spacers and they do not let the rim to be installed with good surface contact. OK, assuming that I've already had so many challenges with this build I was neither surprised nor disappointed, and ordered another set of spacers. I finally ended up with 1.5" thick spacers (38.1 mm) to be on a safe side. In general, the 30 mm spacers would have solved the studs issue, but I decided to be on a safe side as my tires are not only wider but also higher than stock, and there's not that much difference between 30 and 38 mm already. It's important to have the hub-centric spacers IMO so that the weight load is distributed not only on the studs, but the central ring as well. In the end, surprisingly, I find the look absolutely fine - the tires stick out a bit, but not too much and I think it's acceptable for this exactly Jeep )).

Here're some photos of the spacers, then the photo of NO spacers side, and the last photo shows side WITH spacers installed.

 

[taram]

After that we went on a first small trial not far from home and I took some nice pictures of Jeep to get an overall impression from the build (I call the last photo "FIRST MUD!" ))))

Sponsored