PEAK PUTTERS

Let's get this party started



As the title states, we are looking at a 2024 JL Unlimited Rubicon X with the Recon package. That's a mouthful, and what it boils down to is this: a Rubicon with pretty much every available factory option plus dual-pane front door glass; additional NVH foam in the windshield frame; Gorilla glass; a factory suspension lift, 315/70r17 KO2's, bigger brakes, thicker front axle tubes, iron knuckles, and 4.56 gears. Of course you get the standard Rubicon fare such as the 4:1 transfercase, electronic disconnecting front sway bar, and front/rear electric locking differentials. The 2024 model year brought us power seats and an upgraded infotainment arrangement along with a full-floating M220 rear axle. Bottom line, it's a fairly nice Jeep right out of the gate with some impressive hardware, at least on paper:



To get the build kicked off in a big way, I installt some floor liners and door sill guards:





Once I recovered from that mad thrash, I added hood struts because a prop rod is simply barbaric:





Next up was installing my well-used receiver recovery shackle:



Feeling like I'd been in a car wreck from all of the strenuous labor thus far, I took a break from the difficult installs and instead removed stuff like the front bumper wings and spare tire:





Wait... removed the spare tire? What on earth? Well you see, recent OE has proven the detriment to having too much weight on board, and while the debate about a full-size spare is as lively as ever, my personal decision is to forego this luxury in hopes of reaping the benefits elsewhere. I called on my friends at Teraflex for their ridiculously simple, elegant, and lightweight solution which is actually plastic, as compared to most others being steel or aluminum:





There are more weight-saving plans in the future, but for now we've managed to loose over 150lbs from the entire outfit and I'm happy with the start we've taken

Part of my decision to ditch the spare was based on the rolling stock I had in mind, as having a full-size spare in the 39" flavor isn't exactly what the MOPAR guys had in mind, even when designing the tailgate reinforcement bracket this outfit boasted from the factory. In order to allow the aforementioned 39's to move about, some additional altitude was necessary in order to create space between the axle pads and the bumpstops... For this, and in what turnt out to be stark contrast to my weight saving goals, I went with a Rock Krawler 3.5" Adventure X series suspension and Bilstein 5100 shocks. I've never run Rock Krawler stuff before, and while I cannot say they are breaking any ground with design or engineering, they are most assuredly making up for it with brute strength. All of their suspension links are 100% solid stock, compared to virtually all other manufacturers using some version of tubing. These things are heavy:



Anyhoodles, the suspension install went off without a hitch:













A couple of secret squirrel tricks out back for you JL platform guys with decent extended length rear shocks, having learnt the hard way from our 2018 JLU-R... The rear locker wiring harness isn't quite as long as it should be, even when you undo the harness clips from the chassis. What this forces you to do is also remove the harness clip on the axle, which leaves it without any strain relief and that's no beuno. So I make a quick extension for the strain relief harness clip:



Similarly, the rear swaybar motion ratio is such that during full droop, the swaybar will swing too far down/back and contact the shock body. To help prevent this, I add a second hole to the sway bar link bracket on the axle, roughly 1" up from the OEM mounting hole. There is a ton of meat on this bracket and I honestly don't know why the OEM hole location is so low on the bracket, but this is an easy fix regardless:



I also procured a double cardan 1350 series front driveshaft and new front output yoke for the transfer case, but I want to get a few road miles on the Jeep and see how the caster situation plays out before installing it, as the 2024 JL's deleted the factory Front Axle Disconnect (FAD) so the front driveshaft spins all the time. What this translates to is a very delicate balance between caster and pinion axle when you replace the very forgiving factory Rzeppa CV joint

With the suspension buttoned up, I stole the 39's from the LJ (don't worry, there are plans in place for adequate replacements on that front ), cinched them onto the JL, and backed it out of the shop:

Up next was a winch. Since I'm chronically lazy, I didn't feel like fabricating my own winch cradle this time and instead added one to the cart for an early Christmas present to myself For the winch itself, I went with another Badland ZXR 12k unit from the local Harbor Freight. I've had incredibly good luck with these winches on the last several builds, and believe me they have all seen plenty of use





While I had the bumper off, I wanted to swap out the OEM white LED fog lights for some amber ones. Sadly, regardless of what the manufacturer of these amber LED's says, the bracket kit they provided does not, in any way/shape/form, fit the JL bumper









Time for some arts and crafts The first step was to deconstruct the provided bracketry and get down to the bare light housing so I could make something mydamnself:







Not the prettiest things out there, but perfectly serviceable and luckily for me, completely hidden





And here is the payoff (amber fogs only, headlights turnt off):

Onboard air was next up on the docket, and after waffling back and forth on several mounting options, I ended up going for what seemed like the best compromise of simplicity in fabrication, wiring, and plumbing. A quick mockup confirmed viable fitment:



After staring at things for an inordinate amount of time, I realized the firewall flange wasn't exactly flat with rest of the world and would complicate my originally simplistic mounting bracket. Oh well, it was still fun using my press brake:





Several more rounds of mockup ensued, and after lots of carving and other general tom foolery, the baseplate was complete:





Sadly my phone died while I was working up the other end of the mounting bracket, which involved a whole lot more press brake, mockups, and at least one adult beverage break Here is all painted up and ready to install:



With the lion's share of that piece of the puzzle handlet, it was time to address the literal other end of things; the cargo area. I followed my typical recipe with a plywood subfloor, to which I anchored my fridge slide and Milwaukee Packout baseplate repurposed from the Donkey buildout:







Next was some mounting brackets for my patented Harbor Freight cargo basket, again repurposed directly from the Donkey. After pulling the plastic cladding off the rollcage to reveal the hidden mounting points, I started with some 3D CAD design work:





After more fun and games with my press brake, we ended up with these:



And here is the full-blown WABDR loadout:



One thing I paid particular attention to this time was to leave access to the little compartment that houses the OEM scissor jack and lug wrench. As it turns out these are incredibly proficient little jacks and I wanted to make sure I could utilize it rather than having to haul around a heavy bottle jack:

People often axe me: "T-dub, why do your builds always take so damn long?"

The simple truth is, I have a crippling combination of Type II Chronic Laziness combined with LETOCD, otherwise known as Left Eye Twitch OCD. It never fails; when I'm making good progress on something, I either get pulled by the tractor beam of the couch or something ends up bothering me so much that I have to address it instead of what I should be focused on... Such was the case on two separate occasions this weekend

First of all, when I removed the bumper wings on the OEM steel front bumper, it left the back side of the fog lights completely exposed. In my head, that's just not the best thing for them in the rain/mud/muck. So, I spent (wasted??) some time carving out a couple of splash shields for them from some cheap mud guards I had on the shelf:







The second infraction came when I couldn't sleep after fabricating the rollcage mounting brackets for the cargo basket. They just looked like big, dumb pieces of bent sheetmetal... My initial thought was to add speed holes or maybe carve out the center section a little, but either of those would arguably make it weaker laterally Instead, I whipped out a couple of doubler plates and painted them white so they stand out and add a little something to keep that pesky left eye at bay:







So yeah, dumb stuff like that is why my projects always seem to take forever

Finished up the wiring and plumbing for the OBA. In contrast to what I've done multiple times in the past, I kept things simple and local this time, using a stand-alone rocker switch and locating the air chuck under the hood. What I've come to learn is, particularly in the summer, I like to pop the hood to give the ARB some clean and cooler air, so why not just have the entire system under there and not have to jump back and forth inside/out to press buttons and hook things up :



With that chore czeked off the list, I spent some time fabricating a little bracket to hold my handheld GMRS radio. I really like having it up above the mirror as it's easy to reach, can be heard in most all scenarios, and it's out of the way of everything else:













I've always been a fan of amber dust lights. Having gone through a few iterations on various rigs over the years, I've always been envious of the JK / JL guys running hard tops and using the KC Cyclone lights on the rear glass hinge covers. Now it's my turn











For anyone looking to do simular, in all of my research I really couldn't find much concrete information on what hardware people used to actually mount the light to the hinge cover. Granted it's not exactly rocket surgery, but here is what I used if you happen to be making a trip to the hardware store. The picture below shows the order of events, with my little pry tool representing the hinge cover (note the black washer is part of the KC Cyclone kit):



* 1/4-20 x 3/4" long pan head cap screw
* 3/16" flat washer (this is key because even though it's 3/16", the 1/4" cap screw fits through it and the outer diameter is an absolutely perfect fit inside the light housing)
* 1/4" body washer
* 1/4-20 flange nut

Of simular vagueness was information on routing the wiring for these little gems. Some folks poo-poo the idea of letting the wires simply clamp between the sealing surfaces of the glass, but it seems like the best compromise of solutions to me so that's what I did. Here you can see the wires routed in the vicinity of the factory wiring for the defroster and rear wiper motor:



I added some split loom harness to finish it up, and routed the wiring behind the sound deadening panels down to the passenger-rear corner of the Jeep terminating with a female DT connector which will allow for easy disconnection when it's time to pull the hard top:





Next steps will be to run wiring from the factory aux switch connection point underhood to this rear corner, but there are a couple of other wiring considerations that I need to cipher on that may end up being run concurrently

Dust lights? What's next, angry grill?

So how are the KC lights so follow? Any hot spot/focal point?

Roman wrote:So how are the KC lights so follow? Any hot spot/focal point?

That's actually exactly why I'm excited to finally be running them... my last two setups with dust lights utilized low wattage amber LED fog lights that were just a little too aggressive and caused some angst from those following me, at least until it got really dusty (or snowy ) and then they were actually the right answer. Regardless, these little KC's are a much more muted light output and serve this purpose perfectly in my experience. Plus these are mounted up much higher than either of my previous attempts, keeping them further from your natural site line.

As for the angry grill, you'll just have to wait and see