Project A.J. Payoff

Welcome to Xtreme 4x4 in the show. I'm sure you've all been waiting for the ultimate payoff with our J Jeep

and our alloy Jeep. Now, both these Jeeps were built with very different plans of attack.

Yeah,

the AJ was put together with some of the best Jeep parts available from companies like curry enterprises, advanced adapters

GM performance and more

the cheap Jeep was our first ever budget bill using less than five grand to put together a capable trail rig that would be loads of fun but also safe.

You've already seen us take out a couple of vehicles and thrash them on some trails.

But this time we decided to go wheeling and have a good time and teach us some tips and tricks on how to actually four wheel.

Now, I know a lot of you guys are serious pros when it comes to trail running and some of you are new to the sport of off roading and I'm sure we'll have tips for all you guys and it all starts with what you take to the trailhead. Now, why you load in your truck?

It all depends upon how serious of a trip you're gonna be taking. If you're just going for the day or a few hours, you can probably get away with a toe strap, a good high lift jack, an accessory kit to go with it with gloves, chains, hooks, a basic tool kit, flashlight. And of course a spare tire.

When you're on the trail, you should keep safety in mind as well. You should carry a good supply of water, a fire extinguisher, a first aid kit. And if you wheel in an open top rig, get yourself a helmet.

Since these trucks are dedicated trail rigs, we decided to add some creature comforts as well. Like this low

rants global map 4 80 C GPS.

It's got a five inch 256 color display. It's got shock absorbency for those rough trail rides and it's completely waterproof. We'll show you how it works later.

One thing that might not be as flashy but certainly as, as handy are these stone tire deflator or

sties. You simply screw these in place of the valve

stem and

lower the tires. P si to the preset on this item. Now, they're great for long trail rides because you can screw them back on after a break. And if your tires expanded at all, it'll put it back all the way to that preset amount.

And of course, you're gonna wanna bring your spare parts with you. So don't think that this is the be all end all list of the things that you're gonna wanna bring because of course you're limited on space. So be picky about what you're gonna bring with you

and with the cheap Jeep on the trailer, all you have to do now is load this one up and then we're out here.

Let's go get.

All right.

Can you tell Jesse's a tad bit excited to go play? Well, yeah, it's been seven months since we started working on these jeeps. So who wouldn't be pumped at the chance to ring them out?

We decided to trailer both into Western North Carolina and the Nata Hala National Forest,

Upper Tellico. Ohv is loaded with trails some easy, some about as extreme as you can get.

We reached the trailhead knowing this wouldn't be the C J's first rodeo.

It had been off road many times. AJ on the other hand, hadn't been driven around the parking lot yet, let alone on the trail.

Hey, Rob, how are you doing?

Good. How are you doing? I'm doing all right. Nice.

Nice

to see

you again.

Rob Ellis will be our trail guide along with Rob Stapleton and Troy Slaughter. These guys are professional rock crawlers. They run some of the most extreme competition trails in the east, build their own rigs

and have to fix them on the trail when they break down.

So for us, let's just say they're a nice insurance policy.

So if there's one thing that might be a

weak spot that

isn't just perfect yet. What is it?

Well, the thing, it's got no break in time yet. Do

you know what I mean? Like

all

those little, no, no, I mean, like all those little stuff, like the engine's got a warm up break in time.

But, I mean, as an entire unit, so all those little bugs that you normally have, like, a week to work out, you go out in the parking lot and you find if things not strapped down tight or

exactly, that's the stuff that's gonna jump up. But you know what? That's,

that's what,

why we brought it out when you finish,

put

together

an hour and a half before I loaded on the trailer to drive here. Yeah.

Yeah.

Wouldn't be real if it all came out here and worked. Perfect.

So do we,

we got tools in a welder

and along with a bunch of others willing to lend a hand,

we'll attempt to push both our project Jeeps to their utmost limits.

So stick around to see how they perform.

Oh my God. Did you see that? Like that was so cool

once gone

and

have

time.

Welcome back to extreme as we head eight miles into the Nata Hala

Forest to Upper Tellico Ohv area.

This is our first crack at seeing how our ultimate Jeep AJ will do on the trail.

We've bolted on the fast after market parts available. Curry axles, skyjacker suspension, pro comp wheels and tires. And an

aqua

aluminum tub on an advanced frameworks frame.

The 82 CJ is our cheap Jeep. A $5000 budget allowed us to beef up the suspension lock, the diffs and add other inexpensive goodies for better ground clearance and more flex.

See the CJ is lucky. It's already been on the trail a couple times. This thing's never left the hoist until today.

You know what it could be,

it could

hold on. We gotta go bigger after a few minor delays to fix a loose shock mount

transmission cooler leak

and adjust the shift linkage.

Here we go.

AJ was back on the trail

but not for long.

Watch carefully as sparks come flying off the alternator which eventually throws the serpentine belt from the pulley

as the

bell.

This is obviously a major malfunction that will take some troubleshooting.

So a few of the guys stayed back with me while Jessi and the rest of the crew headed up to the first obstacle.

We're gonna hit the slick rock today. It's got a nice rock garden down at the bottom and then they, they call it slick rock because at the top there's a big slab of gran, it's usually got,

it's usually got water running down and it's pretty slick getting up. It takes, it takes a little driver's skill,

but when it's dry, you can pretty much run anywhere you want and uh just try to make it fun.

Uh I was trying to pick the harder line just to keep it interesting. I

like getting on the gas making it a little fun.

So, when it's wet, it's definitely a different story. You gotta,

you gotta work it.

It's one thing to tackle slick rock in a modified crawler.

There you go.

Come

on, Jes.

Let's see if cheap Jeep can dig in.

Go drive our side hard.

All right. Now, come back past your side,

That

back up just a hair.

What's that?

Mhm.

Thanks yourself

f

your side.

I have a little bit of trouble.

All right

now. Cut your wheels back, driver and back up.

Hey, stay fasten, fasten

passenger,

no passengers.

But once Patrick got me on a good line, I finally made it

not without a little ribbing from the guys.

We, we noticed the engine kept dying. Is, is that a, is that a fuel related problem or is that because you don't know how to work a clutch?

Well, Rob,

good thing I like you

a little side trip down the squeeze in. Alice's buggy.

It was back for a descent of Slick Rock. Ain't nothing to it

now. Way

I broke it

first, the clutch linkage,

then the separated beat off the wheel.

So it's a good time for a commercial break because when we come back, day two of our tele

trail adventure,

time to fix what we broke and a chance to see a repaired AJ in action.

It's awesome.

Can you.

We're back on Xtreme 4x4 with a new day allowing us time to assess yesterday's carnage

broke a leaf spring

and uh, twisted the brake lines.

We had some problems on a J's Maiden voyage and that should be expected considering we didn't really test anything before we put it on the trail. But thank goodness for the guys from Impacts four wheel drive and the Carolina Rock shop who helped me haul this thing off the mountain when the alternator went out and it spit the cert belt. It gave me no water pump, no power steering and it was quite the ride down the hill. But we got a new alternator from the power store this morning and we're gonna top up the fluids and we should be a good for another day. But this isn't the only truck that had trouble on the trail.

Some of the U

bolts are stripped that go around our axle. So we're gonna have to weld the bolts to the nuts. So they don't fall out because we don't have any nuts to replace it

with repairs made and confidence high.

All right, let's go.

We trailed up for another crack at Tellico.

Just a few minutes up the trail. I knew this was gonna be a J's Day with no surf belt to drive the water pump. Yesterday,

the only noticeable issue was a little valve tick. Certainly not enough to hold this monster back.

Skyjacker suspension, not only allowed the AJ increased ground clearance to fit the 37 inch pro

cx terrain tires. It also allowed the jeep's axles more articulation. Thanks to the rock ready double flex, he joints

on each end of the

lower two is the name of the trail, but it's, everyone knows it is the Rock Garden. This is probably the hardest trail out here

just because you have kind of a

combination of

all the loose rocks down there and then the big rocks, I mean, this rock that we're sitting on right here actually used to sit sideways

across the trail right here for you guys at home. On the difficulty level. What do you think? This is the Rock Garden?

They rate them here from 1 to 5 and this is definitely a five, a five.

That's just what

you

all right,

drop

out.

R

we got hung up a couple of times. But, you know, we'll just go back and we may have to change some stuff underneath and,

but I think for its first trip up some serious rocks, it didn't do too bad.

I just need better spotters

some more, some more, some more, some more

right there. And I cut this way

coming up.

Easy, easy, easy. There you go.

Give it some more,

easy, easy, easy.

That's far enough.

Ok.

Now, gas, gas, gas, go, go on, go.

Come on.

Good job.

I was a little nervous because I knew it wasn't. I, I, they like you just tell, they said you're in the wrong spot, wrong spots when it went, kept going up

and kept going up.

I was a little nervous. I won't lie.

My niece felt like Elvis.

I was kinda like this.

Oh, yeah. Baby.

The same part of lower. I was no. Walk in the park for the CJ.

Ah,

stupid.

Mainly because you need a third leg to operate the clutch. Wait a second. I was doing just fine.

You

even had a little fan club gathered when

keep it all the way this way,

here

you go.

Got

you.

It sheared off all the bolts

but the square drive shaft still held.

You should be proud of those drive shafts. The reality is I'm proud of both these Jeeps

AJ for as little a time we had to build this rig and the CJ falling just 75 yards short from the top.

The spring over lip rocks

that

rock extreme travel shops perform well under all sorts of train

and those revolver shackles. Amazing.

I think the next swap is an automatic transmission from a junkyard for 25 bucks because it's cheap

on the J Jeep.

Everybody. We're back at extreme and we're just checking out some of our killer photos that we got while we were in Tellico

with the Jeeps back in the shop. We can just sort of relax, reflect on the trail ride. You know, we met a lot of great guys we had a lot of fun, but unfortunately, we spent a little bit more time fixing the Jeeps than we planned right here. We had a little

uh, transmission cooler leak, so we had to reroute our lines. You know, we just bypassed the cooler to get away from a bad fitting. Uh, we're gonna keep an eye on the transmission temperature gauge. So we didn't bake the tranny, put the jeep back on the trail, but it didn't matter because it wasn't on there for long.

This is only like two miles later.

This time, the alternator pulley stripped loose on the shaft and we couldn't tighten the nut. So we thought we'd weld the alternator pulley back on the shaft at least salvage the day.

Obviously, those welds aren't gonna hold it

and they didn't hold it either.

So we basically kicked back eight lunch

and then me and a couple other guys limped D AJ off the trail by making serpentine belts out of duct tape and pieces of scrap belt while Jessi and everyone else got to have fun for the afternoon up on slick rock. Yeah, we went for

and I ended up breaking some of my own parts. So now the big thing is to fix what we have to fix.

We had originally put the battery box underneath of the dash,

but with all the alternator problems that we had, we had to move it out onto the firewall for easier access and there, it will stay.

And the other thing that put this Jeep on the sidelines was the fuel line.

We'd originally mounted the fuel lines to the top side of this frame rail, but that proved to be too close to that exhaust pipe. And that caused the fuel to overheat and percolate for a trail fix. We just relocated them to the outside of this body mount. Now for a permanent repair, we'll make a permanent mount for the fuel lines on the outside of all the body mounts on this side of the jeep.

And then when that's finished, we'll wrap all of that with this cool tube that we got from design engineering

that you keep the fuel at the right temperature and eliminate any percolation problems. CJ wasn't free from carnage either.

Our custom built square drive shafts held up but were spit out after U joint failure. It's an easy fix. All we gotta do is cut this off

weld on a brand new yolk and then we had to go in, drill out the bolts and then we're gonna put in the Spicer style type of U joint straps.

Another problem I had to deal with was the clutch. The rubber hose trail fix was definitely temporary because it didn't last long and it still broke. So we got this new clutch linkage kit from quadra

to replace the pedal linkage

and the clutch fork linkage with the hind joint units.

We're also gonna drill a hole through this bracket, knock off the bushing supports and put a threaded rod in.

So it all moves as one solid piece, eliminating the rubber and plastic parts that broke.

Although the ultimate fix for that CJ would be to swap in an automatic transmission.

But Jessi and I are gonna have to argue about that later because we don't quite see eye to eye on that particular project. I think if you get a manual, you should stick with the manual, but it's good text. So we'll see.

And we really wanna thank everyone who came out on our real true trail run. First one for Xtreme 4x4. You know, these guys worked tired, helped us out a lot and we had a great time and so did they. Yeah. And thanks to Rick Webster from four by four review.com, he took all of these beautiful photos for us, wouldn't have been able to do it without

you.

And I think, you know, even though we bolted that AJ together in five shows. Well, I mean, 5.5 and it had its issues in the first day.

You know, it really showed its true colors in the end as a hard working, real great trail truck and for CJ for as little money as we put into it and as well as it performed, I was even in

with it. So for all of you guys thought it would suck. I think that just proved you wrong.

Yeah, I know that that truck would have made it to the top. A lower two if we hadn't had that yoke break on the drive shop. I know it too.

And there it is the end at Crawford's campground. Great place to stay when you're at Tellico

Plains.

We'll see you next time, everybody.