Dual Purpose TJ Part V / Female Rock Crawler - Nicole Johnson

How about a hardcore trail rig. That's also a reliable daily driver. Today on Xtreme 4x4, our hemi

Jeep returns to become bomb proof plus a 14 ft drop will unnerve most drivers but not this rookie mother of two.

That and more right now on Xtreme 4x4.

Now that is a sound that I will never get tired of hearing. And that is the sound of the

hemi that we stuffed underneath the hood of our 2003. Jeep TJ, the last time we had it here in the shop and now this Jeep has come a long way from an insurance write off that we drove in here, bone stock. You know, it didn't take that much work. There's some

simple bolt ons and some hand tools like, you know, custom suspension, both front and rear, 14 inch coil overs all the way around. Some killer Dana 44 axles with 35 blinds, of course, custom roll cage, some custom tube work up front and finally set of 40 inch tires thrown on some aluminum bead locks that simple killer TJ.

It really wasn't that simple. I was just kidding.

Remember we are building this rig to hit the trails and wheel with the best of them, but it's also being built to drive there. So we won't need a tow rig or a trailer

not having to haul this. Jeep is going to save us some cash on fuel insurance and maintenance costs of that second vehicle. Now, this is exactly why a lot of people are making the switch to dual purpose rigs.

But since we have to rely on this Jeep to get us home after a serious day of four wheeling, we wanna go through the drive train and try to eliminate any weak links that may fail when we're out on the trail. It's gonna start with a new set of CTM axle joints that we picked up from North Ridge four by four.

The number one failure in a front axle on the trail is the joint itself. The problem is when they fail, the resulting free spinning on the axle shafts causes them to break as well.

The CTM joint is strong enough to be the last U joint you will ever buy with its unique rebuildable feature. You can simply replace the bronze bushing in the joint if it ever wears out.

Now, we have four other potential problems that we can fix right here today because we know that they're possible weak links. First of all, we're gonna replace these grade eight bolts with something a little bit stronger, holding this high steer arm onto the axle, we'll replace the brake line, not only making it longer but also upgrading it as well. We use a new system to hold the spindle onto the axle shaft itself. And finally, even the oil that we put in this diff all makes a huge difference. When we're on the trail,

high steer arms see a huge amount of load when on the trail, especially when applying added pressure with a hydraulic assist kit.

Now, a RP chrome Molly studs and nuts are thread rolled after heat treatment making their 10 cell strength much higher than standard fasteners.

The braided brake lines from crown performance are not only longer to accommodate our new suspension,

but the Kevlar reinforced line is braided for strength and then covered to protect it against

chafing.

The stage eight X lock replaces the jam nut axle retaining system you stock on most axles. It allows us to correctly torque the wheel bearing, spindle nut

and holds tight against any reverse rotation.

There we go.

Finally, the PX three synthetic gear oil will not only help extend the gear life in our axles. The reduced frick

will result in more of the horsepower from our new

hemi getting to the tires.

Now, we're not just going to be installing small parts today on our TJ. We're also going to be bolting in some major components like this four speed transfer case that we picked up from advance adapters. Now, advance took their tried and true Atlas to transfer case and coupled a secondary reduction box onto the front of it. This is the first ever crate four speed case available and it has four ratios in it. Our model has a 1 to 1, a 2 to 1, a 2.72 to 1 as well as a 5.4 to 1. Now, the case itself is rated to accept up to 5500 ft pounds of input torque and can handle vehicles in excess of 11,000 pounds.

The Atlas bolts right up to the automatic that came with our new

hemi and the indexing ring allows us to fine tune the amount of drop we have in the case,

all atlases come with a lifetime warranty. Just another item we know will not let us down when we're on the trail.

The shifters will mount under the stock console on the TJ

and use cables to control the shifting of our T case.

Now, we have never had an Atlas break a transmission case here at extreme, but we have seen pictures on the net and talked to guys to which it has happened. Now, the four speed is a pretty heavy transfer case coming at just over 100 and 20 pounds. So to make sure that our transmission doesn't get damaged, we're gonna add this rear support to our Atlas transfer case that we got from Roar fab works now mounts around this rear machine surface and give some extra support to take the weight off the extension housing of the transmission

to keep it from breaking. Now, I'll take care of that problem, but we still have one thing that we're worried about and that is the angle of this rear drive line. Our hope drive train package is pretty long and we're concerned that when this rear suspension droops out that this U joint is going to get in a bind. So instead of just measuring the distance of the drive shaft, we're also going to measure the angle that it's going to travel.

I need a tape measure

using some tape as a guide. We measure from the rear axle input plan to the transfer case output.

Then by dropping an angle finder onto the tape line, we will know the maximum operating angle the shaft will see

on the front. We just have to measure the length because the angle is low enough due to the distance from the transfer case to the front.

Now, all we have to do is call the guys at Je Real give them our two links as well as the angle of the rear shaft and they'll build us two perfect drive shafts for our TJ

coming up. She's cute. She's tough.

I do want to be taking this seriously as a man and determined to make her mark in her rookie year.

You're actually the same. I can

w as good as any other guy out there. Pro

Crawler Nicole Johnson. When Xtreme 4x4 continues,

look out boys. There's a new chick in the driver's seat and she's got your number. Here's our extreme event of the week

after five months off. The we rock drivers arrived at the first event full of butterflies and anticipation as a competitor opening day is by far the most nervous time. I mean, you think you got it all figured out, you think you remember everything but you just don't know. Kicking off in the heart of off road country, we're super stoked on being in southern California. The new season brought out a crop of fresh faces who were looking to fulfill their dreams of rock crawling glory. This is opportunity, lifetime most will spend their pro careers competing in anonymity.

Nicole Johnson will not be one of them, Mike and will as good as any other guy out there

last year in the four seat starter class. Primarily our background is about 15 years of family trail wheeling. My husband and I have had an old 72 land cruiser for, since 1993. This season, Nicole decided to move up to the pros.

I

guess it's just a competitive streak in me. I just had to

get a better car

even before her first gate expectations were high for the mother of two. She's an extremely capable driver and now you get her into an extremely capable vehicle and she's going to be a threat to those guys. Like Dean Bullock and Brad Love and Tracy Jordan

expect to see here up in the higher ranks there putting the buzz aside.

Nicole was looking for a more modest top 10 finish.

I've had other competitors. Tell me, no, that's not good enough. You need to make first place a second place is the first loser.

That's a really big, big task to bite off too and tell everybody that you're gonna, gonna win right now. We're gonna get hopefully some really good seat time, be competitive. Keep everyone else on their toes still. The pre

race hype almost brought the rookie to her knees. I was really good. Um, about

this competition right up until about 20 minutes before it was my turn to go on course. And I thought I was gonna throw up, teamed with husband Frank

over

go to three. He knows exactly what the suspension is gonna do. So I put a lot of trust in him

to get their groove. Marital niceties, take a backseat. Sometimes

we get a little heated and we

have some exchanges. You know, I wanted to be in three wheel drive.

You were in three wheel drive.

Hey, Nicole, this tire was off the ground.

You know what? They should have marriage counseling at the end of every course. But no, we're not. It's good. We've gotten better

on day one of the two day competition.

The team struggles

off the line

finishing mid pack in the 24 car field. The Johnson team wasn't disappointed.

I think we did a great job today. We're very,

getting into the top six and qualifying for the shootout. Look grim. We give it our best shot and that's all we can do. Clawing her way into seventh place on the second day. The cole was on fire

to punch a ticket to the shoot out.

It came down to the final course and the toughest of them all, a 43 other people's done it. That means you can do it right.

Little Rich Klein designs the courses they do say I'm sick. Some say I'm twisted his demonic mind created this monster.

We've got about a 14 ft undercut drop that a lot of people are just going, going for Nicole Johnson may be green behind the wheel, but she's not yellow.

It was I and it felt really good actually.

Oh,

wow. She became one of the few drivers to qualify for the shootout in her debut,

you know, a little bit, a little bit more.

She's gonna be good and finishing the event in fourth

Nicole backed up the hype and proved that she's the real deal. I don't know what the future really holds. We're just gonna just take it, you know, one season at a time.

I'm just, just really excited to have made it this far

time now for an Xtreme 4x4 tech tip.

A

lot of you guys know that after mig well, and for a while, you get a lot of slag built up on the end of your nozzle causing a gas blockage.

This causes Perox

in your welds which you don't want.

So to prevent this, I like to dip my tip in some tip, dip

the paste coats the end of the nozzle and keeps the splatter from sticking.

We're back on Xtreme 4x4 where we are really close to getting our 2003 Jeep TJ out of the shop and onto the trail. And more importantly, also onto the highway as our dual purpose daily driver and weekend wheeler truck. Now, I'm sure a lot of you guys are thinking right now, there's been a lot of parts put into this build up. Why didn't you just fix the quarter, throw on a lift and some tires and go wheeling? Well, we didn't do that for a couple of reasons. First of all, enough of these Jeeps have been built that you can really

research every single week link in this truck and evaluate what you wanna do it before you even start. Like we have here, we've gone through the whole Jeep and replaced everything that we know might fail on the trail. And also this has become a real popular way of building trucks lately, guys sell their tow rig, sell their trailer and get rid of their weekend wheeler and put together one complete package all in one shot. All right now, we need to deal with a couple of things that have come up since we've converted this thing from a stick to an automatic,

a new tail mount shifter from low

car will help us pick what gear we want.

And a firewall

mounted flexible transmission dipstick will replace the stock one that was damaged during shipping.

Now, the donor motor that we've stuffed into our Jeep did not come with all the filters and air boxes that we need.

So instead of hunting around for a bunch of original equipment stuff, we're going to replace it all with an AM cold air intake for a 2005 Dodge truck with a

hemi.

The kit comes with a new one inch throttle body spacer.

The long smooth inlet tube is mandrel bent to help improve intake flow. Since this kit is designed for the Dodge truck, we have to modify it slightly to fit into our Jeep.

Now, the nice thing about the A EM kit is it uses what's called dry flow technology, which means the filter itself has no oil on it.

Now, that really helps out when you're installing it in an off road vehicle like this, the oil filters tend to sometimes get clogged up with dust and dirt. Now, this filter here, if it starts to get clogged up, all we gotta do is knock it around a little bit, wash it out. It's good as new.

The one item that often gets overlooked on a trail truck are brake lights and tail lights because you don't even really need them. But on a dual purpose rig, like our TJ, we're gonna have to have them. Now, the downfall of the factory light is it mounts off the back of the tub and basically hangs out in the way and often gets broken when you're on the trail. And that's not that big of a deal if you're just gonna throw your rig on a trailer and haul it home. But if you plan on driving on the highway with a broken tail light could mean a ticket.

So for our TJ, we decided to replace the stock lights with a set of light dots from off road unlimited.

These flush mount tail lights replace the bulky stock units. But with a lower profile and brighter led technology.

Now, no matter what engine you swap into your project, keeping it cool can become a major issue. Now, there's a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to the heating and cooling of an engine under the hood. But the main thing you got to do is get cold air in and hot air out. Now, we're in pretty good shape on our TJ because we ditched our inner fender wells that's going to help dissipate some of the heat from our V8 and help keep it cool. But no matter how many ways we slice it, there is no way that the six cylinder radiator that was in our Jeep will keep our new

hemi at a good operating temperature

and you have a lot of different options. When it comes to picking a new radiator for your project, you could research on the internet and talk to people who have built something similar.

In our case. The guys who did our wiring harness suggested that we called the guys at doc's blocks and they went ahead and built this full aluminum direct replacement radiators for our TJ. Now, the nice thing about this is it's specifically designed for the hemi

swap in our truck.

I wanna grab that

cys

the 100% aluminum construction of our new radiator will help dissipate heat better than a mixture of plastic and aluminum or copper and brass like a factory radiator,

plus the full polish looks killer under the hood.

And while we're at it, we had Docs make us some of our AC lines and they are direct fit for the hemi

swap into the TJ

since we've been spending the majority of our time today showing you guys all the little things that we're taking care of on our TJ. It's a perfect time to show you how we're gonna control the air lockers both front and rear.

Now, this a RB air locker activation system is not only a small air compressor, it also has an integrated air tank that will hold just enough air to control the lockers, both front and rear.

Now, it comes with a pre terminated wiring harness that's set up in a way that you have to engage the rear locker before you can engage the front that will help keep some parts inside your front axle.

Now, instead of just mounting the switches up in the dash, we called up Darren the 12 volt guy and had him build us a custom switch panel, the integrated winch control, as well as all the controls for our lockers,

our custom switch panel mounts right in our dash behind the factory trim. And it also gives us 212 volt power sources to power, things like cell phone chargers.

Now, the A RB air compressor is going to mount right underneath the seat.

Now, you guys out there who build Jeeps know that this is the point of time where you basically run out of room for everything and that's the case for our battery.

The only logical place to mount in this truck is behind the back seat. Now, you don't just want to throw the battery in there with a ratchet strap to hold it in place because when you're throwing tools in the back, if you short out across the posts, the battery can explode. So the best thing to do is to use a battery box. Now, we picked up two of these Alumin

Summit racing battery relocation kits, one to mount the battery in and then another one to cover up the natural vacuum leak detector that we moved from the other side of this fender. Well, that'll just protect it from any tools we throw in the back.

As you can see, this, Jeep has made a huge transformation from an insurance write off that we just dragged in here basically for free. And the next time we have this Jeep in the shop, we'll have buttoned up all the stuff that's left on it.

We'll hit the trail

and hit it hard.

That sounded dirty.