Project Bruised: 2000 XJ Limited Build Thread

[muddeprived]

Welcome back dude.

What wheels did you have on there before? Were they the teflon coated wheel? I can't recall......


That sucks what happened. I never had a tire wallow out the lug holes and fall off, nor has one ever become loose. I check them when I change my oil and make sure they are 100 ft lbs. How tight do you put your wheels? You use stock lug nuts?

I'm gonna wait till you get around to typin up the full story.

[flawlesslydisturbed]

Dang, it really sucks when you see a wheel fly by you and then realize it was yours.
I have always checked my ride before, during and after hitting the trails, had to help some friends retrieve their rides too many times because they broke something they wouldn't have if they pre inspected.

[2000XJ]

Originally Posted by flawlesslydisturbed

Dang, it really sucks when you see a wheel fly by you and then realize it was yours.
I have always checked my ride before, during and after hitting the trails, had to help some friends retrieve their rides too many times because they broke something they wouldn't have if they pre inspected.

I preinspected, and tweaked as necessary prior to getting on the road to drive home.... as the saying goes "$h!t Happens"

[Doobie]

the torque for all jeep cherokees and almost anything mopar is 110ft-lbs. the exception is the fullsize trucks at 135ft-lbs.

[CT99XJ]

Originally Posted by 2000XJ

as the saying goes "$h!t Happens"

moreso with people like us who use their Jeeps to the fullest extent... that blows, man. two wheels in one trip!

i had that happen to my old Yukon, it wallowed out the holes and came right off. how much carnage was there? the brakes survive? i saw the bent backing plate, was curious if your rotor bit it or if it was lucky and rolled away in one piece.

as to checking everything... thats why i never havev room for people in my jeep, i carry spare everything and a small garage's worth of tools.

[2000XJ]

Originally Posted by CT99XJ

moreso with people like us who use their Jeeps to the fullest extent... that blows, man. two wheels in one trip!

i had that happen to my old Yukon, it wallowed out the holes and came right off. how much carnage was there? the brakes survive? i saw the bent backing plate, was curious if your rotor bit it or if it was lucky and rolled away in one piece.

as to checking everything... thats why i never havev room for people in my jeep, i carry spare everything and a small garage's worth of tools.

Carnage seems to be minimal actually. Backing plate is definitely toast, but I may just run without one for now. The caliper piston needs to be reinserted, but for $30 it may just be safer to get a new caliper. The rotor, after a brief inspection, looks good. I'm going to have a good look at it to make sure that there are no cracks. If it checks out A-OK, then it'll be reused. I want to pull the axle shaft and make sure that it didn't bend or bust the bearing and seals on the impact with the pavement. I doubt anything is wrong with it, but I want to make sure it's 100% OK.

Only space in my XJ when wheeling is in the front passenger seat. Otherwise the rear is always off limits. I carry spare shafts for the 44 and 30, spare steering (when I know I have to drive it home), 33" spare, tool bag with like you said a "small garage's worth of tools", bottle jack, recovery and safety equipment, etc. It weighs it down, but hey, it's worth the peace-of-mind.

[2000XJ]

Originally Posted by ZJ_PAT

Resting

Well here goes.....

The day started off great. I hadn't wheeled in a while, and was itching to hit the trails. I went over the XJ tooth-and-nail the week before and it was 100% ready to rock.

I drove out to RC that morning with my buddy, then met up with a few other club members and we caravaned out... just like old times. The ride out was nothing but uneventful, thank God, and we all got to RC aired down, disco'ed, etc. - you know the drill.

We got to our last trail of the day and we got to this (the pictures don't do it justice):


My friend, his buggy, and the swampers, wanted nothing to do with that rock, and no matter how much he made that V8 work, it wasn't making it. If his front ARB was functional he would've crawled right over it. So after heckling the crap out of him and his non-functional ARB, I had to put my money where my mouth was. I got lined up nice, and gave it hell a few times. The 33" tires just weren't enough to get me over, I kept getting high-centered - even at wide-open-throttle bouncing off the rev limiter. On my last try, one of the clamps on the exhaust came loose, and I lost the muffler and tail pipe. No biggie, just fell off, something that I could fix in the staging area before driving home. I took the by-pass so as to not to continue to push my luck.

Later down that same trail, we were crawling through another section when I literally sheered the bolts off of my tcase skid. At this point, I drew the line and called it quits. I pulled off to the side, removed the tcase skid completely, and threw in the towel, knowing that I'd be driving the rig home today, and that I had a flight to catch in the wee hours of the morning.

At this point, something in my other friend's Rubi D44 busted, and the axle wasn't trail-fixable. He made it off the trail under his own power, but 2/3 of the way back to the staging area he started to smell weird smells from the Jeep, so I towed him back. Nearly back at the staging area, Phil tells me to stop because my driver side tires are wobbling. I don't think anything of it because as I've been told by other senior members of the club "always check your lug nuts before you drive your rig home." I got out, tightened up all my lugs, and got back to the staging area.

This is when things got quite funky to say the least. My brake pedal got really mushy, so I had my friend who is a certified master tech take a look at all my lines, the reservoir, and drive it around. Everything checked out fine, I drove it again, and there were no issues at all.

I aired up, re-checked all of my lug nuts, did a top-down, front-back check of everything like I do when I drive it home and everything was A-OK - or so I thought.

We jump on the road as we're leaving RC, and I hear this really loud banging noise - sounds just like a loose rim after wheeling. Gee, I already tightened them, must be something else. I get out, and sure enough the driverside front tire is loose again (driver side rear was nice and tight - still). I look at it, because I swore that I was getting those damn lug nuts as tight as I normally do, but the tire was still wobbling while I had the axle on the bottle jack. Turns out that the mounting holes for the rims had all wallowed out. This actually destroyed the lug nuts on that unit bearing, damaged the unit bearing, and damaged the bolts that hold the unit bearing on.

I get the axle shaft and unit bearing swapped out for my pre-setup spare that I carry, throw the spare tire on, and get going.

We get up to the Paragon exit, fill up on gas, and then I get a call from my buddy asking me why I'm going Southbound instead of Northbound. I was tired, frustrated, etc. I turn around, get going on 81 Northbound this time at exit 141, and literally a mile onto the highway I heard:

BANG BANG PINK PINK, felt a nice shake and shimmy - along with a colorful variety of words that I said out loud. I quickly threw on the hazards, pushed gently on the brake because I knew that I lost a tire and didn't want to careen out of control. Since the rotor was loose, the caliper had nothing to bite, so I lost a little pressure on the brakes, slammed the trans into the 1/2 gear and pulled off the road.

It wasn't fun, I was beyond pissed. My two buds turned around after they got my call, and stuck it out with me until AAA showed up 1.5 hours later. I couldn't swap in my spare D44 axle shaft because the caliper looked like it was F-ed to say the least, the backing plate was bent to hell, and I had no other spare tire/rim to use at this point.

I made it home by 12:30, checked out the rim that was on the rear tire - and sure enough, that one too had all the holes wallowed out causing the failure.

In all honesty, I'm honestly extremely thankful that the tire rolled off to the side of the road about 20 yards in front of me and that my vehicle didn't go out of control - and that neither the XJ or the tire caused and accident or killed anyone.

In retrospect, it sounded alot worse than it turned out to be. The vehicle stayed pretty level and easy to maneuver due to the momentum and how well balanced it was. Once I got to about 20 MPH or less is when I finally felt and heard the tire-less rear touch the ground. At this point I was already far enough onto the shoulder where I was out of harms way.

Luckily less than 24 hours later I was on a beach in Mexico, in a pool overlooking the blue ocean with a heavily liquored drink in my hand.

[CT99XJ]

damn dude. thank god no one got hurt. if that rear had touched any sooner...

haha you make boy scouts seem ill-equipped, it sounds like. i dont carry axle shafts, more because i dont have spare than im overconfident in my wheeling abilities. i do carry a spare driveshaft- i dont have a SYE yet so one wont fit all, but i carry a spare front DS off a v-8 ZJ. i plan on going to the JY and nabbing myself the shafts off a junked XJ to carry. i do carry a spare drum and a spare rotor/caliper, ive had those bust. plus some flexible brake lin and the tools to make a quick fix.

[flawlesslydisturbed]

A perfect ending to a not so perfect evening.

[Doobie]

you got real lucky!

[OverlandXJ]

Originally Posted by 2000XJ

Start carry'n a jack stand bud, we had a dude killed recently when his ZJ fell off a bottle jack. Just had a Charity drive for the family left behind... sad event.

Please...

[Rinkor16]

Wow that's scary man! My older brother (Donrinks) was driving his F-150 pick up back from Lake Tahoe a couple years ago and one of his front tires came off and jammed into the wheel-well while going down hill. Les Schwab had just done work on his pick up and they didn't tighten down the tires properly... Scary stuff.

[2000XJ]

Originally Posted by OverlandXJ

Start carry'n a jack stand bud, we had a dude killed recently when his ZJ fell off a bottle jack. Just had a Charity drive for the family left behind... sad event.

Please...

No worries, I had the tire that I removed from that corner, as well as the 9.50" wide spare stacked, and under the frame rail/slider. If the bottle jack had failed the Jeep would've only come down about 1.5" onto the rims. I do understand and appreciate your concern though, I never do a trail repair without a back-up plan in place. About a minute after that picture was taken I fixed the stacked tires so that they were actually directly on top of each other in the event of a failure instead of "semi stacked" as seen in the photo.

Originally Posted by CT99XJ

damn dude. thank god no one got hurt. if that rear had touched any sooner...

haha you make boy scouts seem ill-equipped, it sounds like. i dont carry axle shafts, more because i dont have spare than im overconfident in my wheeling abilities. i do carry a spare driveshaft- i dont have a SYE yet so one wont fit all, but i carry a spare front DS off a v-8 ZJ. i plan on going to the JY and nabbing myself the shafts off a junked XJ to carry. i do carry a spare drum and a spare rotor/caliper, ive had those bust. plus some flexible brake lin and the tools to make a quick fix.

Wheeling ability and spares don't go hand-in-hand You can be the best driver in the world but something can always fail, so carrying spares is the best thing to do.

However, I do recommend that you save some weight and stop carrying the extra caliper/drum and start carrying some 3/16" brake line plugs. If your brakeline fails, or your brakes physically brake at one corner, it's a ton easier to plug up that corner than to fiddle with the brakes on the trail. You could even drive it home in an emergency and be OK with just three brakes. I don't, however, recommend driving on 3 brakes all the time, but to get home or off the trails you'll be OK.

[CT99XJ]

hmm. that i never thought about. ABS or lack thereof affect the plugs?

[2000XJ]

Nope, you can use the plugs with or without ABS. If you do feel the ABS pump/computer acting up if you plug it, just pull the fuse/relay for the ABS and you'll be good-to-go because the brakes will act like a typical non-ABS setup.