One of my friends recently bought a couple of Jeeps for parts, and he invited us over to come and grab something if we need it. Dave needed some new strikers, since Harry lost the ones I’d sent over to his place, and I was thinking about getting the dashboard from his Golden Eagle, since it has the factory tach and clock positions already punched through (from the factory). I’ve been slowly turning my Base model CJ-7 into a more generously optioned model, and since I needed a new tach because the SunPro column-mounted tach won’t work with the automatic column I now have, decided that the factory tach location was needed.

The poor plastic piece was toast, but that’s OK because I’m still on the fence as to whether I want a new one or not. I’m definitely thinking about getting a new set of black billet knobs for the HVAC/Lights/Wipers, since the bright aluminum ones I have are just a little too much ‘bright aluminum’ for my liking anymore.

So, when I started in on this whole Jeep transformation project, Harry found a source in Austin for a whole bunch of cool Jeep stuff. I bought a whole Jeep so I could harvest the 304 V8 & TF999 automatic transmission to upgrade my Jeep’s drivetrain, and wound up sending the ‘leftovers’ home with Dave for a project of his own. When Harry and I went to pick up the Jeep, I also grabbed an early YJ Hardtop (with bigger glass) so I could upgrade the top on mine. Dave found me a set of late-model ‘paddle handle’ doors, and that got me just that much closer to where I want mine to be. Well, Dave didn’t want my old top and doors, instead opting for a YJ half-door and soft top set-up like he had on his ’92 YJ Islander (knowing Dave would want them, I snagged a set of YJ half-doors when we picked up the Jeep from Austin.

So my Jeep’s in the carport with its original top and doors lookin’ all spiffy.

Since I got my new top and doors, I no longer needed my originals, and Dave didn’t want them. Harry asked if he could get them for a future project, and along with my old rims and tires, he now owes me $600.

Here we are with the new Pro Comp 069 rims and 35×12.50 Swamper SSRs (March 2022)

Fast forward to May of this year, and for some reason, Dave is now wanting a hard top and full doors. Well, Harry still hasn’t paid me for my wheels, top and doors, so let’s pay him a visit. Suffice it to say, Harry hasn’t gotten anywhere on that project he mentioned, and has realized that retirement pay is substantially less than he was making before… so, we took the doors and top back. Unfortunately, Harry left the top out in his back yard and the doors, while tucked away inside his barn, he’s managed to lose the striker plates and hardware needed to function properly.

Dave wasted no time getting busy with the doors, but they were pretty ragged compared to how nice there where when I first took them over the Harry’s.

Lesson learned: If you want something to age/look old rapidly, take it over to Harry’s and let him store it for a bit.

Sometime soon, I’ll be getting a double kit of U-POL RaptorLiner, which we’ll wind up doing both tops, and I’ll finally paint those paddle-handle doors to match. Dave’s already working on stripping down and repainting these doors. Just gotta find some strikers now.

So, after a tumultuous start to the year, Dave found himself at a crossroads. His company (for whatever stupid reason or another) made the decision to let him go, which didn’t sit well, of course. Add-in some other factors, and the next thing I know, I’m on a plane to Phoenix to help Dave pack-up his home and move to San Angelo. After a whirlwind week of packing his things, visiting with his friends one last time driving, taking a nap in a parking lot while he’s conducting a telephonic job interview, we finally made it home. After getting settled in (since he’s going to stay with us until he gets situated after the relo), we started in on Jeep stuff.

Since I haven’t really driven Dookie (other than to the convenience store last September), and I’d gotten everything else pretty much ready to go, we decided to take a quick trip to a coin-op car wash to get him cleaned up. It seems like there are only 3 or 4 left in town, but we found one over by the university and proceeding to hose off 3.5 years of driveway grime. Thankfully, he still cleans up like a new penny, so at least that’s a plus.

Unfortunately, during that little romp over to the car wash, I learned that I really didn’t like driving Dookie… or least not in this configuration. Dave and I came up with the idea to modify the Corbeau seat brackets so that they don’t feel like they’re trying to dump me out to the front and lower the seat height yet even further. The brake pedal was painful for me to use because it bounced back too high for my right leg engage without putting pain to my hip flexor. So, he cut and re-welded the driver side seat bracket for a bit more ‘recline’ and dropped it another almost 2″ – to which, it feels just about right now. The brake pedal needed adjusting, and he was able to give me another 1.5-2″ of room so I can effectively do a ‘toe-and-heel’ transition between the gas and brake pedals – MUCH better!

Unfortunately, the summer’s looking to be another scorcher with more triple-digit days than not. What that means for me is Jeep projects basically come to a halt until the weather gets better.

I got the other ‘wackers installed on the passenger side today – ran out of daylight, or I would’ve gotten some pics. They look the same as the driver side flares, so no surprises here. Hold your screen up to a mirror looking at the pics above, and it’ll give you an idea of what they look like. 🥴 

The passenger-side (marked as the “Left Rear” flare) went on just like the one on the driver side (hangs down about 1.5″ at the rear), but the front flare seemed to fit a LOT better. Still, I made the same notch on the trailing edge and massaged it into the same configuration as the one on the driver side so they match. Anybody need any Bushwacker rocker flare extensions for theirs?

Well, I didn’t get ALL of the remaining flares installed, but I did manage to get the driver’s rear (labeled Right Rear) installed today. Eyeballed the other flare (marked Left Rear), and it just was not going to fit right… as I mentioned before, all of the other CJs with Bushwackers have the rears mounted reverse of how mine are labeled, anyway.

There’s a trim strip on the bottom of my rockers that came with the Jeep, which I’m not in love with, but I don’t want to expose the ugly, worn paint underneath, so I just busted out the Dremel and wacked about a half inch off the trailing end. I’m not cutting the flares to fit those relics, after I held the flare up and got it where I thought it would look best. Then I marked and drilled the holes for the top 2 screws, loaded them into the flare, and used the flare holes to punch the rest of the holes. Loaded them up with screws and spacers, then tightened everything down. It came out pretty good, although the optical illusion has the leading end of the flare looking like it’s closer to the wheel than the rear, but it’s really not – the leading end is just more angled (which might actually help with aerodynamics… pfft! who am I kidding).

Anyway, here’s the final result (for the driver side, anyway). I’m still not really liking them, but tire clearance is more important at this point. Plus, it does look better now that both flares are on. Oh well… “I can’t see ’em when I’m driving,” as my wife always says when I talk about new rims and/or tires.

That should’ve taken care of the clearance/rubbing issues. I’ll need to take it out for a spin to see if there are any more issues.

Not liking how far the flares stick out, but that’s the trade-off, I guess.

I guess I’ll get the other 2 installed tomorrow.

OK, First things First – here are the pics from what would’ve been yesterday’s progress: removing the factory style fender flares. It’s super clean, since the originals were distorted a bit when I got the Jeep, and soon after I quit muddin’ and started hitting local car shows, I got some new flares.

The Bushwacker instructions say that these can be installed in 3-4 hours. Yeah… if they label stuff right, make the stuff to actually fit, and offered better instructions (OK, the instructions aren’t THAT bad, but I gotta gripe about those a bit as well).

Here’s where the fun begins: took the new body saw to the sheet metal… no going back now. That should give me enough clearance for basic street driving and light trail stuff – the mid-’90s Pro Comp 4″ lift suspension is still plenty sturdy, after all.

After holding up the flare to the fender, repositioning a dozen or so times, and realizing this one’s a bit warped, I eyeballed where the flare really needed to be ‘notched’ for the styled flange at the bottom of the fender (it was almost 2″ too low on the flare, so I needed to use the Dremel to make a new notch). After getting it back where I thought it’d fit the best, I eyeballed the second screw-hole back from the indicator and punched a hole. Then, mounted the indicator and that newly finished mounting point, straightened out the ends, and started punching holes for the other Torx-head screws. I noticed some of the screws are going to need double spacers in order to work properly (which I also read in another thread here in these forums, BTW), so I’ll make a trip the hardware store tomorrow before I get started again.

About a half hour later, we have an installed driver side front flare. And… I don’t like it.

Here’s one of the issues I’m not happy about: the flares hang down lower because they’re expecting to be mated up with the (included) rocker extensions… normally found on YJs. This kit is for both CJs/YJs of course, so the pieces are tailored more for YJs. Well, at least they finished these pieces so I don’t need to put the rocker extensions on (they would prevent my fenders from opening up).

Another “WTF” moment I discovered with this kit: The rear flares are either mis-marked (Left vs. Right), or they expect them to fit a whole lot differently than anything I can envision. The trailing ends of the flares would wind up hanging around 3″ below the bottom of the body, if the pieces were installed properly (levelish top surface) according to the labels I found on the inside of the flares. Fortunately, my line of thinking is to swap them, putting the longer end of the flare forward, so that both ends of the flares terminate at the lowest edge of the body. I also appears that the rest of the ‘CJs-with-Bushwackers’ world seems to agree with my line of thinking, and mounted theirs opposite of how mine were labeled – to include Bushwacker, as one can clearly see in their own pic that the leading end of the rear flare is longer than the rear. More on that tomorrow when I get the rest of them installed

In the back of my head, I knew I wasn’t going to like these, which is why I hadn’t ever ordered any. But – reality is, I don’t want to lift my Jeep any higher despite having gone with 35s, so this is my compromise. I guess I need to reserve judgment until they’re all on, even though the one above looks a LOT like my Jeep with them installed.

Oh yeah, my gripe with the instructions: For the rear ‘trimming’ they mention, they say to “align the rear corner of the flare with the vertical seam at the rear of the vehicle.” Yeah… if you don’t have that (like those with fiberglass tubs, or CJ-5s, or when I filled-in the corner seams when replaced my corners), you’re kinda screwed.

Another “Yeah… Right” moment in reading the instructions: “mark the mounting hole locations on the vehicle fender using the holes in the flare as a guide.” And what kind of a tool am I supposed to use for that, since I don’t have anything suitable to stuff through a 5/32″ hole in the flare to reach up to 3/4″ away. I suppose I could use a scratch awl… if I had one. Easier just to eyeball and mount up a couple of holes, then use a quick-release drill bit with an extension (3/16″s in the included instructions, BTW – not 5/32″ as they say in the online version of the instructions) to drill the remaining holes with the flare in-place.

OK – enough whining. Hopefully, I can get the remaining flares installed without any further hassle tomorrow.

Man, I need to find a decent working coin-op car wash ASAP. I hate my Jeep being THIS dirty.

Got back at it this morning after a quick trip to Harbor Freight for a new body saw so I can trim the wheel well openings to install the cut-out ‘wackers (3rd one in just 13 years – 2 in various states of failure from cutting apart the Mach 1).

First things first – tightened up the valve cover bolts as they were barely finger-tight. I know it said to ‘not over-tighten’ them, but dang – there was a lot of ‘tightening’ left to do. Hopefully, that’s the end of of the oil leak.

So here’s where we were from yesterday – pulled the main harness loose and started in on cleaning everything up.

I had to relocate a few things on the driver side to tidy things up a bit (I know it doesn’t look like it, but this is an ‘in-progress’ pic). Still need to find the steering column bolt and get the rest of the main harness over here. The cool hard line for the vapor vent to the Edelbrock Hi-Flow fuel pump was captured between the column shifter hardware – that’s fixed now.

SUCCESS!! After running the ’78’ wire over to the starter solenoid, I learned that it needed connectivity to the ‘S’ terminal, not the main ‘Batt’ post I’d suspected (that turned everything on once the battery was connected). I also discovered the 1156 in the passenger side had given up, but I’d ordered some 1156 LEDs to replace them – SCORE! (I still need to modify the YJ hatch to work with the CJ tailgate, but that’s for another day)

So, today being gloomy (40-ish and trying to rain), I’m stuck just thinking about things and poring over my [extensive] list of things to be done, and now add “install Bushwacker cut-out/pocket flares” to the list. Here’s why – 35s and 4″ lift puts things pretty close to not workable. The ‘wackers should add a few inches to the trailing edges of the front fenders and a bit of room to the rears… without needing to add any more lift. Not really what I wanted to do as I’m still kind of on the fence about how they look… but, I really don’t want to lift this sucker any higher (my butt just slides into the seat as it sits). Plus, that oughta make a few people around here a little happier that most of the rest of the tires will be covered.

Just realized I didn’t get any good shots of the engine from the driver side. Here’s how the power brake booster and cool billet master cylinder (gifted to me years ago by my pal Jim) came out. I love it! Still need to clean up all those [new] stray wires and find the carb/TBI all-thread stinger to mount up the Edelbrock chrome air cleaner. Need to also clean and paint the original horn and finish up the A/C hoses when I hang the factory style evaporator in the cab. Also need to make sure everything gets bundled up and stays clear of the steering column, cable shifter, and header.

I think I found out why the reverse lights aren’t working. Even though I had ’em plugged in, the plug on the left is from the ratty ol’ harness I harvested from the parts Jeep (Klooge) and the contacts are super corroded. Gotta clean ’em up and hope for the best.