Finishing Jeep Projects

I drive a 2004 Jeep Wrangler. It has been a mostly reliable vehicle in the nearly two years I’ve owned it, but there have been a few things I’ve broken and needed to change. I like to take it off-roading and overlanding. The biggest deficiency is the ride height of the skid plate, as I have gotten high centered a good number of times. I wound up breaking my driveshaft at the rear differential over the summer, so took the opportunity to install a lift kit since it would require a new driveshaft. All in all, this endeavor wound up costing me around $2,000 in parts, ignoring new tools needed to install them. I got the lift installed prior to coming back to ONU, all that was left was installing a slip yoke eliminator (SYE), driveshaft and new pinion yoke. Getting these installed wound up taking a total of around 15 hours.

The first task was installing the SYE. This entailed tearing apart my transfer case to remove the existing slip yoke output shaft and replace it with a fixed yoke output shaft. I installed an Advanced Adapters SYE that was estimated to take around six hours to install, but it took me around seven. That wasn’t too bad, as I did not have the best tools. The hardest part of the install was snap rings, and I had a bad pair of Harbor Freight snap ring pliers. Investing in a good pair of automotive snap ring pliers will be required before I partake in this endeavor again. During the install we wound up using a bunch of screwdrivers and a hammer to remove and install snap rings. This did result in an oil pump being destroyed, but it was from a spare transfer case. The original oil pump was removed and able to be reinstalled. If you ever install an SYE, be sure that the oil pickup tube remains inserted in the oil pump. Mine fell out during installation and I nearly missed it. I caught it as I was installing the tail shaft housing and was able to fix it, but it is very easy to miss. Other than those two hiccups, the install went smoothly, although slowly. While I had the skid plate off and was working near the transmission, I took the chance to replace the transmission mount. My factory mount had broken so I replaced it with a $25 Duralast mount that resulted in a lot of vibrations. I replaced the Duralast mount with a $150 Mopar mount. It was absolutely worth it. Nearly all vibrations were removed. In fact, the first few times I came up to a stop sign I thought I managed to stall due to how few vibrations remained. Spending the money on a good mount is absolutely worth it in my opinion.

Once the SYE was installed, it took about a week to get my custom driveshaft from Tom Wood’s Custom Driveshafts. Before I could install it, I needed to put in a new yoke. I got a new one and got it installed in around two hours using a method where the crush washer doesn’t need to be replaced. Most of that time was spent on researching the method. The new driveshaft is much thinner than the old one, but it feels like it weighs twice as much. It was harder to install due to the increased weight, so it took around an hour to get in. Once the driveshaft was in, I was able to set my pinion angle. Originally, the driveshaft was a two joint shaft which means you want the output shaft and pinion angles to be parallel. The new driveshaft is a double cardan shaft which means you want the pinion to point at the output shaft. This is very easy to do once the driveshaft is installed. All I did was place a floor jack under the yoke and raised it until it made the driveshaft look straight. Once that was done, I set my adjustable control arms and was good to go. I have very few vibrations now. I have a bit of a vibration at constant speed or under heavy acceleration in low gears, so I plan to resolve those over Christmas break.