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I love them too! I was shocked how much road input they absorb compared to the stock cloth seats. The wife and kids are way more comfortable too. I like that the kids now have head rests too, just...

Couple other improvements happened over the winter time as well.

First and foremost, I got a new Sony radio installed so I can now stream the XJtalkshow straight from my phone!!!

Second, I...

So this brings us up to Thanksgiving break 2014. I had slowly gathered all the parts for a 2.5" lift. Rough Country 2.5" front coil springs, 2.5" AAL for the rear, Rough Country rear shocks and new...

The very next weekend we took the XJ to a new ORV park demonstration that is being built 1 mile from my house. The proposed park is slatted to be around 400 acres when complete. This was a trial...

Moving right along...

This brings us up to the Halloween time frame and a local event called Jeep Creep. Loaded up the family to make the day trip and enjoy our first offroad experience in the...

After seeing DD duty for about 2 months, the remaining pieces of the steering systems began to show their age. Seeing as I was still at stock height, and never plan on going higher than 3" anyway, I...

Back to the front end work. The passenger side unit bearing was howling something fierce so it was time to replace that for sure. Go the bearing and a U-joint for the passenger axle shaft at the...

Next up on the list was to do something about the worn out shocks. Now, I knew there would be some sort of a lift coming in the near future but I just couldn't deal with it any longer. I found some...

I've been slowly working my way through the front end piece by piece. I'm still not done but it's February in Michigan and my barn time has reduced proportional to the temperature.

I needed to...

At this point I began slowly introducing the XJ into DD duty. I wanted to do a proper break-in period for the engine so I spent some evenings driving around at different speeds and RPM's just to get...

So all this brings me up to the end of May 2014. The last major thing I wanted to do while I was rebuilding was to rewire the headlights. A friend of mine clued me into this upgrade. I used the...

A few more items needed wrapping up but I was getting a lot closer by the week.

First item was to redo the entire rear brakes. This was before I knew of the disk brake conversion so I just...

Due to the switch from the 2000 exhaust manifold with the dual drops to the 97 manifold with the single drop, I needed to fab up some kind of exhaust pipe that would allow for the O2 sensor to be...

Agreed. It is obvious that the power I get on a daily basis is very clean. Nothing dims the lights. No sluggish fan. Love it. Well worth the upgrade.

There were a couple other tings I did while I was in there with the engine out but I didn't take pictures of them. First thing is I replaced all of the hard brake lines from the MC all the way to...

Next up on the list was dealing with the electrical system. Thanks to all of the good advice I had read here on XJtalk, I figured that I would upgrade the main wiring sytem as I reassembled...

Right around that time I found a deal on a nice set of new tires that happened to be mounted on XJ wheels. Seeing as I needed new tires anyway, and I really didn't care for the snowflake wheels to...

While I was painting I did the bell housing on the trans and the intake manifold. Then finally after 2 long months, I started the reassemble process!!! :bacondance:
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Seeing as the weather stayed nice for a couple of days, I had time to grind out the rust spots in the engine bay and prep them for paint. Then I got the paint out and went to town. I wasn't overly...

Yeah I was wondering if maybe the mating surface wasn't flat or something. Looks like one of those things where there was an irregularity between the manifold and block so when the bolt was torqued,...

I've had a few people tell me they had the same thing happen to them. Must be an issue. Wondered if it had anything to do with being overheated at some point in it's life.

So while I was waiting for the weather to give me a break, I took everthing I thought necessary out of the engine bay. So this is what it looked like when I was done.
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So once I had the engine thing all figured out, it was time to turn my attention back to the jeep itself.

This is what I was looking at
...

So my original intent to reuse the intake and exhaust from the 2000 went south when I found this small issue. Not sure how or when it cracked but certainly wasn't going to be able to put this one...

You guys are very wise in your observations on time! I ran out of time last night to continue the thread. Something about 12" of snow coming down distracted me.

Anyway, on with the story. I...