Jeep Maintenance

Over the summer I installed a lift kit on my 2004 Jeep Wrangler. It took about two weeks to complete due to a variety of issues related to the fact that the vehicle was 17 years old and spent a few of those years in the great state of Ohio where salt is used in the winter. For those who are unaware, salt greatly increases the rate of corrosion leading to broken and stuck bolts. During my install I broke five bolts and had to cut off about 10 bolts out of the 30 or so involved. However, that install is done so I will not be covering it here. I haven’t completed finished it yet, though. There are three things that I still need to do in order fully finish it. 

The first task was aiming my headlights. I’m sure everyone has had the experience of someone driving their car and having oncoming traffic leave their brights on, so you flash your brights to have them turn theirs off. But, instead of the traffic turning their brights off, they flash theirs back at you. A lot of the time this is caused by poorly aimed headlights. In my case, I was that guy for a few days. Luckily, I realized the first time I drove at night, so I just avoided driving at night until I got it fixed. The fix is really simple – just two adjuster screws are involved. One, circled in red, adjusts the headlight vertically while the other, circled in blue, adjusts it horizontally. Adjusting mine was fairly easy since I had the horizontal adjustment dialed in previously. I just had to aim the headlights down a few degrees. To do this I just waited until night, parked around 25 feet away from a regular car, and adjusted them until they didn’t shine into the windows. This worked the last time I had to adjust them, so now it is just a matter of driving around and seeing if others flash their brights at me. If so, I know I need to aim mine even lower.


The second task was adjusting steering stops. These are bolts that prevent your steering wheel from turning too far and rubbing your tire on other components of your car. I had adjusted mine to reduce my maximum steering angle when I got oversized tires before my lift. I performed the adjustment by placing washers under the bolts. After the lift, I was able to remove that modification since the components causing the interference were lifted above the tire. It is nice to have my full range of steering back!


The last task is installing a slip yoke eliminator. I haven’t done any real work regarding this, so it will be covered in a future post. For those interested, I am considering rebuilding a transfer case from scratch instead of upgrading the one currently in my Jeep. Any input from those with experience would be appreciated! 

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