A couple months ago I got the Expo bug. I started gathering parts and rolling ideas around in my head on how I want to build my next XJ. You see the one I have now is only 2wd. It has 288K miles on it, AC doesn't work, heater doesn't work, drivers door is held closed with a bungee cord and a click strap, cruise control has never worked, and there is a big hole in the dash where some jack hole decided he wanted my stereo more than I did. With all that said the rig does have some nice parts. It has Mastercraft suspension seats, a ~4" lift with Bilstein 7100 reservoir shocks, 33" tires, and the rear axle has been re-geared with an ARB installed.
So I have some nice parts to transfer over to a new one whenever that happens.
Since it hasn't happened yet I will do a little work to this one and be content enjoying what I have.
Probably the best thing I have ever bought for my rig is my trusty old 2001 42QT ARB fridge. Only bad part is it kinda sucks a bit o juice. ~5A while running. I had a G34 yellow top Optima that I had wired into the vehicle charging system and it wouldn't quite go all day (on a hot summer day). So I bought 2 18W solar panels. Now I could go about a day and a half to two days. It was better but I wanted to be able to run the fridge indefinitely on just battery ad solar. So after killing the Yellow top I replaced it with a G31 blue top. Then I found this site while looking for info on a better solar set up. I think it was on magentawave's thread that I found a link to HandyBob's Blog. Oh boy. Everything someone might want to know about RV boondock living off of solar. Just the info I was looking for. I ended up going quite a bit overboard but at least I won't ever have to worry about dead batteries again. I won't rehash what I've done in this thread but if you are interested you can see my set up here. I will probably redo the layout at some point to clean it up and make it look pretty but the system has been up and running for 2 weeks now with the fridge plugged in the whole time. But enough about the solar.
Two days ago I bought a rack for the top. I went with the KargoMaster Bushman series 52"x74". It covers the entire top of the Jeep. There is plenty of room for the rear door to open fully and I now have something to tie a tarp to for shade. I'm debating right now on hard mounting the panels to the top of the rack and removing the rear bars so I can slide stuff under them. Or to just tie them down like cargo in the rack and deploy them when I reach my camp spot. I'm leaning toward hard mounting. I'm open to ideas for this.
Other things I would like to build for it are a drawer box for the rear similar to what uber did for his XJ but maybe a little longer since I don't have the rear seat in the Jeep anymore. I would also like to finish the platform that sits where the rear seat used to. I'm going to work on that this weekend.
Next weekend I will be taking it up to Loon Lake for 2-3 days for the Cantina For The 'Con benefit. Should be a good little shake down run to see what I need to change and make sure it all works like I want it to in the sticks.
I'll try to post up some pics of it tomorrow.
That's all for now.
So I have some nice parts to transfer over to a new one whenever that happens.
Since it hasn't happened yet I will do a little work to this one and be content enjoying what I have.
Probably the best thing I have ever bought for my rig is my trusty old 2001 42QT ARB fridge. Only bad part is it kinda sucks a bit o juice. ~5A while running. I had a G34 yellow top Optima that I had wired into the vehicle charging system and it wouldn't quite go all day (on a hot summer day). So I bought 2 18W solar panels. Now I could go about a day and a half to two days. It was better but I wanted to be able to run the fridge indefinitely on just battery ad solar. So after killing the Yellow top I replaced it with a G31 blue top. Then I found this site while looking for info on a better solar set up. I think it was on magentawave's thread that I found a link to HandyBob's Blog. Oh boy. Everything someone might want to know about RV boondock living off of solar. Just the info I was looking for. I ended up going quite a bit overboard but at least I won't ever have to worry about dead batteries again. I won't rehash what I've done in this thread but if you are interested you can see my set up here. I will probably redo the layout at some point to clean it up and make it look pretty but the system has been up and running for 2 weeks now with the fridge plugged in the whole time. But enough about the solar.
Two days ago I bought a rack for the top. I went with the KargoMaster Bushman series 52"x74". It covers the entire top of the Jeep. There is plenty of room for the rear door to open fully and I now have something to tie a tarp to for shade. I'm debating right now on hard mounting the panels to the top of the rack and removing the rear bars so I can slide stuff under them. Or to just tie them down like cargo in the rack and deploy them when I reach my camp spot. I'm leaning toward hard mounting. I'm open to ideas for this.
Other things I would like to build for it are a drawer box for the rear similar to what uber did for his XJ but maybe a little longer since I don't have the rear seat in the Jeep anymore. I would also like to finish the platform that sits where the rear seat used to. I'm going to work on that this weekend.
Next weekend I will be taking it up to Loon Lake for 2-3 days for the Cantina For The 'Con benefit. Should be a good little shake down run to see what I need to change and make sure it all works like I want it to in the sticks.
I'll try to post up some pics of it tomorrow.
That's all for now.
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