My Yuppie Jeep

[Ron84cj]

Lol. Never in my life did I ever think I was going to buy any "Jeep" newer than 1986. I actually wasn't even looking for anything at all. On a Saturday morning about a month ago I stopped in at Panera to pick up a bunch of bagels for my family with my blue Scrambler. This gentleman walks up to me and complements my Jeep. Surprisingly he actually knew what it was. So we were talking for a bit and he told me he was the original owner of a 92 YJ and then proceeded to ask if I knew anyone that might be interested in it. He told me it had typical Jeep rust and his brother had hit a parked car with it so it's sitting broken in the driveway. He was tired of it just sitting around and wanted it gone. I immediately thought it was going to be basket case and was just going to be a parts rig. Boy was I wrong. I went to go look at it later that day and was very surprised at the condition in person. I later found out that it spent over 10 years at his dad's place in Arizona. The frame is rock solid and so is the body for the most part. Other than the windshield frame it is mostly just surface rust in several places. As far as the damage from the accident goes it has a broken leaf spring and a broken knuckle that bent the RF fender a bit. It has 4 angry squirrels under the hood that runs perfect and the 5 speed shifts very smooth. I ended up getting it for $650. I figured for that it's kinda hard to go wrong. I know most people frown on the 4 banger. But for a cheap little runaround vehicle it will be fine.

And now I will reveal my inner nerd. It's not a Sahara but it is a 92 with the correct wheels. We are really having fun with the idea of making it a Jurassic Park Jeep. Of course it has to be Jeep #10, that's the one that outran the T Rex. Yes, I know I'm a nerd.



Noah (my 10 year old) and I pulled the front axle out on Friday. I'm just going to go through it and replace the ball joints, axle seals, pinion seal, brakes, etc. I want it to be safe for the family.

He was so excited to work on it with me.

 

[Chamba]

Fantastic! I owned a 93 Yuppy Jeep which I bought brand new: 4 banger, 5 speed. I LOVED it. Great car. Is it slower than a wet week? Yup. Is it far more thirsty than any 4 banger has a right to be? Yup.
But it's very reliable, simple to work on and sounds great at idle. As an added bonus, the starter has the coolest sound of any of the Jeeps.....
Great score. Great first car for Noah. Congratulations.
And as an aside, I still consider it an AMC Jeep given it was designed in Kenosha by AMC. It's really the very last AMC they ever designed.

 

[Ron84cj]

Fantastic! I owned a 93 Yuppy Jeep which I bought brand new: 4 banger, 5 speed. I LOVED it. Great car. Is it slower than a wet week? Yup. Is it far more thirsty than any 4 banger has a right to be? Yup.
But it's very reliable, simple to work on and sounds great at idle. As an added bonus, the starter has the coolest sound of any of the Jeeps.....
Great score. Great first car for Noah. Congratulations.
And as an aside, I still consider it an AMC Jeep given it was designed in Kenosha by AMC. It's really the very last AMC they ever designed.

Lol. Nice. Now in all seriousness, will this thing actually maintain freeway speeds? 75mph ish?

 

[Ron84cj]

Noah and I got more done tonight. We didn't work really long, but pulled out the ball joints, inner axle shaft, and that weird vacuum axle disconnect thing.


The 4.10 gears are in great shape.

 

[Chamba]

75? At sea level.... downhill. Possibly on level ground, but you'll be back and forth between 4th and 5th doing it. With the Air con on it'll never, ever hold 75. I was so excited the first time I took mine to sea level because it felt like I'd turbo charged it (relatively speaking of course).

Going back to the original 29" rubber would likely increase the likelihood of maintaining 75. I remember putting slightly larger BFGs on mine (30×9.50 if I remember correctly) and it was notable less sprightly.

 

[spankrjs]

Lol. Nice. Now in all seriousness, will this thing actually maintain freeway speeds? 75mph ish?

Not sure on the injected 2.5, but that 1985 2.5 CJ7 that I worked on recently could hit 70, but was much happier at 65. 2.5, T5, 4.10, factory computer controlled single barrel carburetor, AND stock size tires.

Cool project

 

[FLCJ8]

Lol. Nice. Now in all seriousness, will this thing actually maintain freeway speeds? 75mph ish?

Have you looked into this?




Oh, you said "in all seriousness"... never mind.

That has to be one of the best long term educational, fun investments for Noah ever.

 

[Ron84cj]

Lol. That cai should add at LEAST 50 hp right? Especially if I put the AEM sticker on the back.

I do hope it can maintain 70 to 75. I don't expect passing power but just cruising that fast would absolutely be fine. The tires are a little bigger than stock but are still only 29 inch tires. They are 235/75R15. The original tires were 205/75R15 which were a little more than 27 inches. Lol, that's so small!

Overall, this whole thing is so tiny to me. I'm so used to Scramblers and actually having room behind the back seat. The tailgate on this is right behind the back seat. I know I've said this to some of you, but I very firmly believe the Scrambler would have sold way better if it wasn't marketed as just a "truck" in the USA. If it was advertised with a full top (hard and/or soft) with back seats plus luggage room, I think it would have sold much better. Most local Jeep people I talk to didn't even know that you could remove the bulkhead and turn it into an SUV. They thought Scramblers were just mini useless trucks.

 

[Kim Dawson]

YJs with the 4 cyl, 5 speed get up and go just fine and travel at highway speeds. I've had 4 of them for my wife and some of the kids. Fun to drive and dependable. They cost less than the 6 cylinder ones but the sixes get better MPG. I miss having a YJ with Borla exhaust to run around town in.

 

[spankrjs]

Your 92 is MPI, correct? I know the earlier YJ 4 cylinders were TBI.

Not the same, but a friend of mine had a 4 cylinder/5 speed TJ and that thing would easily do 70-75mph.

 

[Ron84cj]

I finally had some time this past week to work on this thing. I didn't take a picture of it but I stripped the it down to the bare axle. I wire wheeled and painted the housing. Nothing overly exciting. But it is nice working with clean painted parts rather than old rusty and greasy crap.

Everything looks good.

So in goes the pinion.

Definitely don't want to forget the shims. These set the preload.

I just tap the bearing in with a hammer and big socket.

Now the washer and then the seal can go on.

 

[Ron84cj]

I put grease on the outside where the seal rides and sealer on the splines of the yoke. I do that so when I put the yoke on it pushes the sealer outward instead of into the bearing.

Torqued the pinion nut and then checked rotational torque. Everything looked good.

On this Dana 30 there is only one axle seal by the housing like CJs.

The other seal is by the lock actuator thing. This was kind of a pain to install. I used crap I had laying around to make a homemade install tool.

 

[Ron84cj]

Installed the rest of the guts. Torqued the caps.

Next I installed the ball joints. The wheel bearings just bolt in with 3 bolts each. I didn't take the stub shaft out. I didn't want to risk damaging the bearings.


And all together. Noah helped me get the axle back in.

I didn't take any more pictures at this point, all I did was finish bolting down the springs, sway bar links, torque arm, and the brakes. Of course I completely forgot about ordering the shocks. But I still went for a test drive anyway.

This things actually drives surprisingly really nice, especially considering there are no front shocks. But good grief I need at least 2 new tires, they are very badly cupped. Looks like from a lack of rotations.

I expected it to be slow, but holy crap it is REALLY SLOW. I like this thing. Lol

 

[Chamba]

The beauty with the 4 banger in my experience is that they haven't got the power to break or wear out drive line parts. Thus your efforts here should last many, many moons.
Nice work. Axle rebuilds are one of the most rewarding and satisfying projects.

 

[bigwalton]

I missed this entirely until this morning... I despise those headlights and the grille with the burning fire of hell and just could never get past it to actually own one, but this thread made me smile so big. That photo of Noah is CLASSIC. It needs to be framed in the garage.

So, now that you need tires, are you going to drop down at all to help this poor slug of a Jeep out?

 

[Ron84cj]

I missed this entirely until this morning... I despise those headlights and the grille with the burning fire of hell and just could never get past it to actually own one, but this thread made me smile so big. That photo of Noah is CLASSIC. It needs to be framed in the garage.

So, now that you need tires, are you going to drop down at all to help this poor slug of a Jeep out?

I checked the speedometer with the GPS on my phone and right now it's dead nuts perfect (I had it up to 55 mph). I thought about going back down to the 205/75R15, but I wasn't sure if it would make that much difference. Neither tire is big or heavy. I definitely understand going up to a 31 or bigger adds a lot and would hurt drivability. Not sure if these little 235s would. It's about a 150 rpm difference at 70 mph.

 

[bigwalton]

I checked the speedometer with the GPS on my phone and right now it's dead nuts perfect (I had it up to 55 mph). I thought about going back down to the 205/75R15, but I wasn't sure if it would make that much difference. Neither tire is big or heavy. I definitely understand going up to a 31 or bigger adds a lot and would hurt drivability. Not sure if these little 235s would. It's about a 150 rpm difference at 70 mph.

I was just curious, I've never driven one of the 4 cyl. The guy who owns/owned Goferit Offroad in NC and his wife were known down there for wheeling circles around people in their built 4 cylinder TJs. They were always up at Tellico (back when it was open ) and on the local NC4x4 forum posting pictures wheeling everything and anything.

I don't think, however, that they could manage going down the highway at 75 in those rigs

Anyway, that's my only 4 cylinder story to offer...

 

[Ron84cj]

It's winter time which means it's time to do jeep work. I bought a snow plow from this crazy guy I know down in Mississippi. Never in a million years did I ever think I would buy a plow from Mississippi. Lol.

It has an old school belt driven hydro pump. I had this exact same setup on my Scrambler about 20 years ago. It was awesome, it just never had issues. So I'm looking at my engine and surprisingly there's really not a lot of room to add the pump. Where the AC compressor sits would be a great spot. I took a closer look at the AC system to see if it was worth saving. The line going to the compressor was broken off and there was a ton of dirt and corrosion in the compressor. It's kind of hard to see in this pic.

The condenser also had a hole in the bottom. Everything about the system just looked like it was in really poor condition. It is also an R12 system which means I would have had to flush it out, add the right oil, and hope it works (half the time they don't). I just don't see it as worth it, especially on the already ridiculously underpowered 4 banger. So I'm taking it out.

It's amazing how much more open and roomy it feels sitting in the Jeep with that under dash unit out of there.

Pile of AC parts. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this stuff. I'm not going to throw anything away just yet.

 

[Ron84cj]

Next thing I want to tackle is the hydro pump for the plow. It was a v belt setup for an AMC 258. The crank pulley actually bolts up, but if I put the pump where the AC compressor was (which is the only spot) then the V belt would hit the fan where it bolts on to the water pump. This pic kind of shows what I'm talking about.

So I'm just going to swap over a serpentine belt pulley in place of the V belt pulley. I looked all over online for the correct diameter, bore, and number of ribs for the belt. The only ones I could find were for superchargers and they were like $200. I momentarily got a little discouraged until I glanced over at the power steering pump. That pulley is the exact same size as the v belt pulley, just the wrong bore. I'm good with that, so I ordered a new pulley for $18.

The crank pulley is the same size too so the ratio is correct.

To correct the bore issue I made a little adapter on my lunch break at work. It has a .001 press fit along with 2 set screws.

And installed.

Just because I'm paranoid I welded it too. I really suck at mig welding (wire feed). I really just need to invest in a tig welder at home.

I didn't take a picture but I tried it on the pump and it fits perfect. It spins nice and true too, no wobbling.

The idea is to simply buy a second belt, but for the non AC setup so all I have to do every spring and fall is swap on the belt I need. Super easy and cheap.

 

[Ron84cj]

Other than the hoses I finished mounting the under hood stuff. The pump fit nice where the AC compressor used to be.
The 4 way valve and control rods fit hilariously close. The rods just clear the coolant tank, washer fluid tank, the clutch master, the fuse box, and the clutch pedal. Lol.


I mounted the tank on the fender. It was a nice big and open area. But now after I'm wondering if this was a mistake. Should the tank be above the pump? Right now the top of the tank is basically the same height as the inlet of the pump. Will this cause the pump to lose its prime? The instructions don't mention anything about this other than to keep the tank as vertical as possible.