Supercharged JK Part 1

When it comes to trail rigs, there's a couple different schools of thought. Some people consider it to be a very individualistic sport because you could be rocking a classic icon of the industry like your Jeep or maybe a classic truck like this scout that reminds people of trucks they used to own. You can build a custom too buggy or maybe put together a rating that costs almost six figures to get on the trail or you can spend next

to no money at all and still go wheeling. It's that diverse. But the other school of thought is that at the heart, these rigs are all the same, pull the body off any one of these trucks and you're going to find the same basic package engine, usually V8 transmission transport case and two solid axles usually pulled from a one ton truck.

The problem is that little similar package can sometimes get you in trouble

as off roaders. We've had the Jeep JK available to us for a couple of years now and guys have been buying them left, right and center and cutting them up for some serious wheeling.

And that's where the problem begins. When you're always building from the same basic platform,

these trucks start to look pretty similar hemi

under the hood because more power is needed aftermarket transfer case for lower gearing. And of course, Dana sixties, front and rear

to handle 40 inch or taller tires.

Very cool, very capable,

but they're all the same.

So that got us thinking what if we got our hands on our own, Jeep JK

and build it completely different than all the other cookie cutter Jks we've seen on the trail. Still very hardcore, still very trail worthy, but 100% original and it all starts

under the hood.

There is no question that Jeep Jks are underpowered from the factory dyno

tests on Jeeps with 35 inch tall tires and the stock V6 usually give us results of about 100 rear wheel horsepower. And that's why guys stuff Hammy

under the hood to boost that power up. The downfall is a good 50 state legal Jeep Hammy

swap. It's going to cost you almost $20,000. So we're going to leave our V6 under the hood and modify it

using a rip modifications, super

assembly. It comes with everything we need to force induct our small little V6 engine. It has an intercooler that mount in front of the radiator to give us a cool dense charge of air and therefore more power. Now how much more power rip has tested this Jeep with a super charger installed and 35 inch tall tires. They come out with 230 rear wheel foot pounds of torque and 220 rear wheel horsepower. Now that is almost as much power as sticking a hemi

under the hood.

The first step is to remove the upper intake plenum. In order to replace the factory injectors with new ones supplied in the kit,

these new injectors will deliver more fuel to compensate for the boosted air charge.

The upper heater hose needs to be modified once the intake is back on.

In order to clear the supercharger bracket,

the serpentine belt is removed

and the super charger bracket is mounted to the front of the engine.

Additional supports are added one in the rear

and one across the front.

The water pump pulley is re installed and the serp belt run

plastic grill on a Jeep

something's wrong with that.

The rip system uses an air to air intercooler that mounts in front of the radiator assembly.

When air is compressed by a super charger, it's increased in temperature.

Now, this temperature increase can cause power loss.

But by adding an inter

cooler to the system,

the incoming air is cooled before entering the motor

powder coated piping and silicon junctions move the charged air from the supercharger

through the intercooler and then into the intake

using the supplied hoses will tap into the main vacuum line and hook it up to the bypass valve.

We'll also attach the crank case breather tube from the passenger side valve cover to the top of the air filter

and then install it on the supercharger.

And the Jeep's computer is flashed with a new tune from the handheld tuner included in the kit.

Now, there's a couple of features to this supercharger kit that make it very unique. First of all, the supercharger itself is 100% stand alone, it doesn't have an oil supply coming from the motor. So inside the gearbox that comes shipped with a synthetic lubricant in place. One thing you will need to do is remove the plug and install the vent cap onto the top of it or you run the chance of damaging the supercharger. Now there benefit to this kit is the fact that we can go back to a factory set up any time we want just by reinstalling the stock belt. That means if anything happens to our supercharger kit and right on the trail, we just disconnect the serpentine belt and replace the factory one, this map sensor that ships with our package measures whether the engine is being boosted or not and adjust the fuel curve and timing curve accordingly. That means that we can go back to

stock tune, whether we're on the trail or if we have to possibly pass some emissions tests in the future. Now, if you do a lot of water crossings in your jeep, an open air filter like this can be a concern. But the nice thing is, is rip, is designing a box that will replace this air filter and we work with aftermarket snorkels that you can mount onto the side of the JK. That'll get your air intake up and out of the way of the fender in case you need to cross some water

up next. A new gear reduction box for the JK that will have you speaking in tongues.

Don't say my grandma

heard they doing

this.

All right.

Did you get that?

I did. Actually, I'm still rolling

today in extreme. We've got a brand new 2010 Jeep JK in the shop that will build up to be a hardcore trail rig at

the same time doing everything out of the box. Now, we've already taken care of some horsepower under the hood by installing a super charger on our little V6. And thanks to the engineers at Chrysler, we can get some low gearing without replacing the transfer case,

believe it or not. JK Jeeps with automatic transmissions have basically an empty housing bolted onto the back of the transmission.

There you go. A whole lot of nothing. That's right. And inside that housing, there's a small spud shaft that connects the transmission back to the transfer case and the whole package is just along for the ride in the Jeep. Now we can take advantage of that and the guys at advance adapters really did their homework. On this one, we'll replace that entire housing with this new 100% aftermarket unit that's called the Ruba Crawler. Now, this is a 2.72 to 1 additional gear reduction that's gonna go between the transmission

and the transfer case. Now, that's gonna give us almost a 5 to 1 at our front and rear axles without having to change the transfer case or the drive lines in the Jeep. Now, it's controlled by a set of shifters that will replace the factory shifter up in the Jeep and the best part is is advanced adapters, has done all the electronics work that needs to be done in order for the Jeep to understand what's happening when you put it in that extra low range gear. And all we have to do now

is pull this in place

with the Jeep up in the air. We're going to deal with the exhaust and we're going to replace it from front to back to help it flow a little bit better to compensate for the air that we're forcing into that engine with the supercharger. Now, it starts at the engine with a set of rip modification long tube headers. Now, these include two new catalytic converters that will bolt into the stock location

right underneath our Jeep JK and then we'll finish it off with a Magna flow cat back exhaust system. Now, this is a full stainless system that includes their flow through fully polished muffler and finished it off with a double walled stainless steel tip.

Now, before any of this new exhaust can go in

the old stuff, it's got to come out

start the engine with the long tube header

and a long tube design will help improve exhaust savaging

and help the Jeep's engine work more efficiently.

The magna flow cat back kit increases the exhaust pipe diameter to help assist in that flow,

but it won't limit any back pressure in the system.

Running stock axles in this JK was definitely not an option. And this time we went with something completely different. Now, we've had every single flavor of axle inside these four walls at extreme, but these are like none other. These are kind of a hybrid axle. They're from a company called Atomic Axle and they're built by overkill engineering. Basically, they use a Ford nine inch center section. They use two CV joints, one up at the center section and one down by the wheel with a short shaft in between. What that does is it raises the center section of the axle to give you more ground clearance. Now, this set is specifically designed to bolt into a Jeep JK and it came with all the brackets

need to slip it underneath the truck. Uh The benefit of these, believe it or not in fully built form, they weigh less than a completely tricked out Dana 60. They have more ground clearance than a Dana 60 running a similar size tire. As a matter of fact, you throw a set of 42 inch tires on a Dana 6037 inch tires on these. You'll fit over more obstacles.

Welcome back to Xtreme 4x4 where we're tearing into our brand new 2010. Jeep JK.

How new? Well, there's less than 500 miles on the odometer of this. Be,

that's why we're tearing it down.

We're gonna take it easy.

Now, we've already shown you guys the atomic axles that we plan to install underneath our 2010 Jeep JK and we explained that they use a Ford nine inch third member to get the power from the engine down to the wheels and we have everything we need to build those Ford nine inch drop outs right here from Randy's ring opinion. Now, some of the stuff you've seen us use before like this big bearing nodular iron housing that is cast with extra webbing for added strength, whether you're dealing with high horsepower or

off road applications. Now, the ring and pin is a 486 to 1 ratio and we expect this ratio to match specifically the 37 inch tall tires we're going to install on this truck to trick the computer makes it think it's riding on a set of stock size wheels and tires billet 6061 aluminum pinion support and one of their forged yokes will hook the drive shaft up to our ring gear set

this item right here. We have never used before. This is brand new. This is a Randy's

RP

zip locker. It's a 100% mechanical locker that is brand new for the Yukon family of products. And the nice thing is by getting everything in one spot. We're guaranteed that everything's gonna work together thanks to one of their master overhaul kits. Now, a lot of guys often ask why we jump down and choose the Ford nine inch drop out when we're building axles for off road. Well, the answer is right at the snout of the pin to the Ford nine inch pinion, unlike most pinions

has more than just the two bearings behind the head. It has a third bearing that mounts on the front. Now, what that does is it prevents what's called deflection. When you put your drive line under a lot of load, the ring and pinion can actually pull themselves apart just because of the design of the gear set. Now, what that can do can actually weaken the load on the teeth and cause them to break the third bearing on the front of the pinion actually stops that from happening. The only other axle to have that third bearing is the corporate 14 bolt.

Yeah,

the rotational load on the pin can be set up on a bench with P

support mattered and advice.

New 263 thread locker is specifically designed to be used in areas where a high chance of oil contact with the threads is possible

just like these ring gear bolts.

Another benefit of the Ford nine inch is the ease of assembly

to locate the differential in the housing. We do not use chimps. It has threaded adjusters on either side.

The only shims in the entire axle assembly are found under the P

support used to fine tune the gear tooth contact

with the center sections installed. We can go ahead and finish assembling the internals of our axle by removing the steel plate on the back of the housing

that'll give us access for both the CV S, the short axle shaft as well as the stub shaft that goes out the rear spindle. Now, the CV S that are used in this axle, I'm sure some of you are questioning their strength because they're not very commonly found in the off road aftermarket. Well, they do live a life that's very abusive in off road every day. See, these are Porsche 930 CV S and they're very popular in the sand car market where they're installed for the axle shafts coming out of the mid engine, trans axles on the independent rear suspension

and those cars have huge horsepower, see giant jumps and usually land on the rear wheels under full throttle conditions. And in those cases, the CV S do just fine. So in a set of axles like this with a 37 inch tall tire. Some light wheeling should be no problem at all.

The

the benefits of the atomic axle is you gain ground clearance where it counts right around the pumpkin, a conventional axle. The center section is hanging down below the center line of the two with the atomics. It's up and out of the way.

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with the rear axle completely buttoned up. We can now turn our attention towards the front axle. Now, this assembly here gives the term hybrid axle a whole new meaning still uses the Ford nine inch center section as well as two CV S to connect it to the tire and wheel. The only difference is, is the axle shaft is a little bit shorter. It has a small stub shaft

at the end that connects to an eared axle shaft to eventually connect to the outer spindle shaft. At the end of the housing, there is a three inch tube with a bearing inside of it and that three inch axle tube, you have to think of it just like a conventional axle tube on a regular axle. That is what we're going to attach our steering components to, to convert this axle over to a steering axle,

one of the biggest benefits to using the atomic series of axles has to do with ground clearance. You see this type of axle assembly with 37 inch tall tire gives us the same amount of ground clearance as running a 42 inch tall tire on a standard Dana 60. Now, because we're running that smaller wheel and tire package means we can step down in our knuckle size. So we're going to install

Grane high clearance chrome Molly Dana 44 both Inner seas and Knuckles and the Dana 44 knuckle gives us just as much strength as what we're gonna need for the 37 inch tire as well. It has a keyed in high steer arm up top to lock everything in place by running the smaller size knuckle and inner seat. It's gonna save us a bunch of weight but definitely be able to handle the abuse.

Mhm.

So that's all we have planned for the drive train on this truck. We got more power underneath the hood. Thanks to the super charger, more gearing, thanks to our Rubi Crawler and a set of one of a kind killer axles. Now, the next time the trucks in the shop, Chris will hang the axles with all new suspension, uh, bumpers, roll cage and some lizard skin for sound deadening

that and more

next time on

34 by four.

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