ForMatt Fab

April 24, 2005 By Leave a Comment

Picked up some FormattFab tube doors and their taillight housings for my 97. Ok there was a little more to it than that. I now have the FIRST set of their tube doors for a 97+ XJ. hehehe

The story of the day is my drive home from their place. Well all I have to do is say it was frick’in cold. It’s good thing I packed some heavy clothes for the drive back. It was raining and about 34 degrees, I must mention the snow started about 2 miles from my house. The driving rain was so bad it was whipping back into the XJ. I needed wipers on the inside of the windshield and the back glass. I had to stop and towel down both just to see. My rear view mirror was dripping at one point. I must say it was a very interesting and painful drive.

I can’t stop without mentioning the quality of these doors. Opening and shutting them is easy and smooth. The doors do add a bit of security for those of you without doors that think you might fall out.

I will be adding a few coats of paint in the next few days. I will post of some pictures up in the FormattFab part of my forum.

Filed Under: Products

Pulling apart the rear D44

April 23, 2005 By Leave a Comment

Holy smokes it’s been a long time since and update has been posted here.

A few weeks ago the pinon gear got tore up; missing 2 1/2 teeth. I’m not sure how it happened. At first I thought it was the front driveshafts double cardon joint. I had some trouble with that while in Moab back in October. After turning off the hubs I relized it was in the rear. I first went to the thre rear driveshafts double cardon. I has it checked out and re-balanced. It turned out the balance was slightly off, but nothing was worng with the joints.

Advice on NAXJA said to pull the cover. I did and found the teeth missing. I friend of mine has a contact who does a tremendous job putting in gears. After a few phone calls he was nice enough to come up from Colorado Springs to help me out. Last nigh I put the first 15 minutes on the gears, and then let them sit overnight. The installer said that is the best way to break in a new set.

Why he was working on the gears I was busy with my own project, removing the front and rear doors. The guy at FormattFab are hooking up with a set of their tube doors. I really wish I had removed them a long time ago. The felling of cruising doen the highway without doors in ir trulley very “Jeep Like”. I did save the hinges and plan on atl east getting everything all lined up to put them back on if need be.

The next step is to finish the fender trimming and add a cage.

Filed Under: Wrench'in