Looking at the DIY options, U-Pol Raptor (OK, so the category has it’s issues with straight names, as shown by names like Lizard Skin and Dead Liner.) got the draw. 

Based on a couple of installs documented in some of the builders’ forums this stuff out of the UK has:

• Reasonable cost,
• Easy (enough) to apply,
• Extreme durability, and
• Great appearance

U-Pol Raptor is available as a tintable base to make it any color, but basic black is the color of choice for the WTF-J.  Surprisingly, the material is packaged in the UK and then shipped here for distribution.  The other surprise is that some of their kits include the Schutz type spray gun, but others don’t.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to figure out the difference in the part numbers.  (Update: Even buying the gun separately on E-Bay, the deal from R.W. Mallon on material was still the lowest cost option.) 

Normally, one kit (4*1L) would be enough to line a Jeep tub, but as the WTF-J has the longer CJ-8 wheelbase, the decision was to go with two kits and any extra will line the rear wheel wells and rocker guards.

So, time to clean out the tub.  In this pic, the cage and bed rails are out along with the tailgate, ammo can console,  and rear body mount.

This was a great opportunity to “fix” the rivets on the tailgate before covering them with the bed liner compound. The issue is that the tailgate design requires the back side of the pop rivet to be exposed along the hinge (Below).

The fix is to use a hammer and dolly to peen the backside of the rivet.

Dramatically cleans up the appearance.

Other (planned) quick fixes included:

• Shorten the “keeper” on the spare tire capture nut
• Relocate the  seat belt anchors
• Remove the bikini Velcro from the top of the roll bar
• Mod the tube doors to keep the door straps from falling off
• Painting bolts and a variety of small parts
• Relocate center exhaust hanger
• May have to  fix some wiring and wire management issues under the dash.

Once the seats and trans cover come out it will be time for rough sanding, power washing, and primer.

More to come…

Taped & Masked

Primed

First Coat

2nd Coat

Here are the quick fix items…

Clean up some under dash wiring and fab a relay block (Time to activate the cruise control that exists within the Drive by Wire ECM)

Rubberized coating on the safety harness anchors (Quiet down the rattling), same deal for the base of the Hi Lift.

The open air WTF-J is tough on black oxide finished hardware.  Made up a painting jig out of a scrap 2×4 and problem solved.  Added a “collar” to the restraining strap post on the tube door

Fabbed a bezel for the Atlas T/C shifter boot.  Bolt heads easily cut through rubber material with or without washers.

And now all the kings horses and all the king’s men will spend the weekend putting the WTF-J back together again.

…except at highway speeds (>50 MPH) at which point the top oscillates at random rates and acts like a spastic sub-woofer.   The guess is that the rise between the top of the windshield and the rollbar and the concave shape of the top act like a foil to create a low pressure area that sucks up the top at speed.  Once in the "UP" position, concave becomes convex, the top loses lift and is blown down forcibly by the rushing air. 

At speed, the noise of the top rendered radio useless, but the good news based on NHTSA logic is that it also obviated cell phone usage.  Despite the safety benefit, the noise precipitated a quest to fix it.

1. Velcro
   
   Plan “A” was to add industrial strength Velcro to the top of the B-Pillar roll-bar.  The idea was to have tension across the entire width of the top and thus stop-the-flop.  No joy!
   
   
2. Middle Belt
   
   Added 6 ballistic cloth "belt loops" down the center and then ran a 1" belting strip that could be tightened front-to-back between a footman loop on the windshield frame and the rollbar.  Much better, but to the question; are we there yet?  Nope!
    
    
3. Batten
    
   Had a spare piece of 1/4”
   rod and wondered what would happen if it were threaded through the loops to act as a stiffener, or in sailing terms, a batten.  Voila, the noise vanished.  (OK, it didn’t go away entirely, but it was w-a-a-y better.)  The batten worked OK when simply passed through the "belt loops," but the addition of a fixed bracket to the windshield frame and threading the batten to screw into it made it even better.  Success!

   
   

The hypothesis is that the batten both stiffens the top and, by adding a rib, eliminates the concave curve causing lift and the convex bubble that made the thump.  I also think that the batten effectively splits the top into two sections that each have less force and may be within the range of all three countermeasures and act (oscillate) somewhat independently and thus often cancel each other out.

Whatever the reason, it works!

I flipped a note to Bestop, because it would be easy and cheap to fold/sew a batten pocket into the top during construction and provide a low cost product update/upgrade.

When the girls were younger and we lived in Michigan, we landed on multi-purpose sport racks to haul bikes up to Mackinac Island in the summer and skis in the winter.  The first rack (c. 1990) was a real inexpensive Bic (Yes, the same Bic that got famous with ballpoint pens!) that was OK for skis but a bit flimsy for bikes.  With the Bic rack it always seemed like we were one curve or one stop away from dumping everything.  Version 2.0 (c. 1993) was a slick Yakima cross-bar and track system that tied into the luggage rack on the ZJ we had at the time. 

The ZJ is long gone, but the rack endured.  Even though the Yakima rack was very stable and relatively easy to load/unload, getting the bikes on/off the roof of an SUV without scratching paint or getting “painted” with grease, mud, and on the return trips from Mackinac Island, horseshit was a challenge.  Having spent all of the time/effort to convert the coil spring suspension to the Airock system suggested that the Jeep formerly known as WTF-J was already too tall and the last thing it needed was an additional 3-4 feet of height.

I played around with Visio and came up with a plan for using the tracks from the Yakima rack to work as a receiver hitch style rack.

The heavy gauge steel frame was overkill, but it used leftover material from the trailer build.  In this picture you can see the raw steel from the first “test fitting.”  Plan “A” was to have the bikes facing opposite directions to balance the load and minimize the rear overhang, but it turned out that the handlebars actually fit tighter when the bikes were facing the same direction.  Plan “B” had the bikes facing the other direction, but having a rear “facing” kickstand is a real advantage during the loading/unloading process.

More overkill with the gussets on the cross as they are 1/4” steel, but it was the only flat strip scrap I had left in the pile.

  As this was a custom part, I could “nest” the bikes tightly and trim the length of the tail piece to minimize the rear overhang.  During the test fitting process the rear projection was cut by ~6” from the paper plan. 

In the base of the receiver you can see the locking pin.  That hole was a critical dimension as the goal is to have a tight fit to minimize slop in the connection and the corresponding noise.

Once the dimensions were set and the frame was welded, time for paint.  In this picture you can see the critical alignment of the holes for the two tracks.  Yakima slides the heads of carriage bolts through the T-slots in the bottom of their extruded aluminum tracks to secure them to the rack frame.  A lot of the techniques for precision drilling learned (the hard way) in fabbing the trailer came in handy here!

In this picture you can see the rack completely assembled.   You also get a preview of the polished out tub.  A couple of days with a buffing wheel and some compound really made a difference on the body.  (More to come!)

To test the rack, we loaded the bikes and headed off to Milford (~20 min drive) and biked over to Loveland for lunch. (~18 mi round trip.)   Other than the suspension’s active compensation seeming a bit busier than normal, you’d hardly know they were back there. 

Considering that the Yakima parts are ~15 yrs old, it looks pretty good.  (The only parts purchased in this project were 10 stainless carriage bolts, as even the paint was a leftover.)

Day #2 was warm and sunny day and perfect for the test.  The WTF-J was full of its vital fluids and the day also provided a perfect opportunity to clean the garage floor that had become a collection of hazardous waste from filling the differentials, power steering, oil, transmission fluid, and coolant.  

The worst spillage was due to a challenging power steering leak resulting from a defective O-Ring seal at the pump.  Pulling the fitting dumped about a pint of (awful smelling) P/S fluid and replacing it was no picnic either, since the only access was from underneath where there was no escape from the effects.  The leaking fluid also made it tough to get a grip on wrenches and the stuff would run down your arm into your shirt and drip into your hair.  Eventually it all goes back together, but the floor was pretty disgusting, so it was time for a shower and power washing the work area.

Let the testing begin!  The day before, the engine temp climbed to well over 220° and stayed there; now it spikes at 190°, the fan turns on, the temp drops to ~170°, and the fan cycles off.  The P/S leak may have succumbed to the new O-Ring, but got the last laugh as a mildly overfilled the reservoir blew out the plastic bellows vent ($4 part) that sits on the top.  

The garage was looking good and the floor had dried from the pressure wash so it was time to put the WTF-J up for the night.  Made it to within 4′ from the parking spot when a loud "Pfhhhht" emanated from underneath the car and then smoke filled the garage. 

The WTF-J was doing its best Exxon Valdez imitation; a red (transmission fluid) oil spill had erupted under under the car and more of it was dripping off the frame and headers.  What a mess!  The smoke was coming from the fluid that had sprayed on the headers and the exhaust pipe.  There was also a mini flash fire that melted one of the suspension air lines that produced the "Pfhhhht" noise.   

Turns out that the culprit was a temporary transmission cooling line that popped off about 20-sec. before the engine was due to be shut off.  The temporary line was actually nothing more than a 6-8" section of hose that was slipped over the barbed fittings on the inlet/outlet of the transmission cooling lines and had been installed on a cold day so it was pretty stiff.  (The lesson learned was that the warmer weather and the hot transmission fluid significantly softened, i.e. loosened the hose.) 

The above picture shows the freshly replaced hose and you can’t help but notice rosy glow and shiny surfaces.  This time, the hoses went on completely and there are now hose clamps preventing Valdez Redux.  The irony was that right after cleaning the floor the first time, I updated the "To-Do" list on the whiteboard: Item #3 was "Install Trans Cooling Lines"

After spreading enough Oil Dry (Kitty Litter!) to blot up the mess, it was time for some Budweiser Therapy.  Getting some perspective helped and it was still early enough to refill the trans. (It took 3 qts. to get the dipstick back to full!) and back the WTF-J out (with the newly installed line!)  to re-wash the garage floor. 

The next day, it was a pretty smokey 10-20 minutes of run time as the remaining trans fluid burned off the headers and exhaust tubing, but all’s well that ends well.  Fortunately no animals were harmed in the filming of this episode.

The workaround is separate reflectors or reflector tape, but that didn’t work for me. 

One day while surfing the Web, I came across a guy selling flanges that incorporated the reflectors, and I was hooked.  A couple of emails and they were on the way.

It was a pretty easy switch.  (When you’re building a Jeep, you gotta love standards!)

So now I’m (kinda) legal.   (Psst.  Look at the white box on the right next to the rear tire; that’s the muffler, so we’re one step closer to sounding legal.)

At first it looked like they would make a perfect center console, but the space between the back of the transmission hump and the transition to the rear deck was a bit too short.  Tried a couple of other places, but WTF-J gravity kept pulling them to the center console location. 

By cutting a wedge out of the front corner, the can would fit on the floor and as ammo cans are designed to be stacked, the height of two cans made a perfect location for a center console armrest.

Bolting the bottom can to the floor was no big deal and neither was bolting the top can to the bottom lid.  The problem with the "design" was that accessing the bottom can turned into a two-handed operation; the lid was soooo top heavy that as soon as it went over-center it would keep going into a less than graceful back flip.  The solution came from a couple of old gas struts that were salvaged from an old workbench.

By brazing a bracket into the lid, I could use the strut to limit the travel of the lid to 90° and hold it open while also stabilizing its lateral motion.  (I’m guessing that ammo can’s engineers probably didn’t anticipate this application in their hinge design.)  Testing the "system" with one strut suggested that one would provide more than enough lift, so the logical conclusion was to put one in each can.

At a later date, I might make some kind of cushion, but for the time being it works real well.  So it’s time to add one more item to the To Be Painted list, but once again it show the wisdom of listening to She Who Must Be Obeyed.

This view gives you some sense of the problem, but doesn’t include the front driveshaft nor does it show the transmission (To the left in this view) nor the transfer case and the skid pan so you don’t really get the big picture.  Suffice it to say that it’s tight!

The master fabricator in me said; "let’s build a crossover pipe."  Sounded like a good plan, since OTC crossovers are very expensive and custom crossovers are almost a religious experience (i.e. OMFG) in terms of pricing.  I watched enough Monster Garage and American Chopper episodes to convince myself that fabricating an exhaust was e-a-s-y.   I ordered some U-Bends, a 2.5" header connector kit, an O2 bung, and a 2.5"-3" transition pipe from Speedway Motors and we were off to the races.  (Speedway is a great place for good prices on racing parts.) 

The exhaust would also provide an opportunity to learn a new welding process with Silicon Bronze filler. Sili-Bronze has a much lower melting point and in the TIG process is more like brazing.  The advantage is that with less heat, there is a significantly lower  likelihood of warping and burn through.  The golden color of the weldment is also pretty neat.

Fast forward about four days of trial and error fabrication and voila!

I added the reference points to explain what I learned in the fabrication process.

"A" & "H" are fixed points on the engine and by fixed, even the orientation of the three holes on the flanges are "non negotiable."  Pipe "B" was the first piece.  It has a subtle bend that is needed to clear the bottom of the engine on the driver’s side.   Once that orientation is established, I could tack weld it to flange "A"  The next step was to cut the radius "D" and then use "B" to establish the depth of the crossover.  It’s a bit of a three-dimensional puzzle, as "D" needs to be properly oriented front-to-back, up-down, and with the correct yaw angle (i.e. maintain the horizontal pitch of the cross pipe.)   For the moment, the plan was to leave "E" open and use it as buffer to deal with any misalignment coming  from the right side.

This brings us to "F."  (The "F" in OMFG!)   The challenge here was the same three dimensional puzzle as "D" with the added complexity of joining up with the down pipe from "H."  The strategy with "F" was to take a radius and cope out the short end so that it would mate to the back (outside radius) of "I"  Then trace the cut-out on "I."   As it was curve on curve, I was well beyond my comfort zone. 

The uncomfortable truth was that the combination of the radii and the (minimal) ability to accurately cope the tubes necessitated some saddle plates to fill in the gaps between the two. (See the "inside" shot to the  right.)
	The outside joint served as a perfect location for the wide-band 02 sensor bung when it comes time to hot-rod the WTF-J at a later date.
So, time to fix flange "H" and the transition piece "G"  (If you look at the inside of the picture on the right, you can see the wedge shaped piece that is used to adjust (tune) the orientation and the length of the down-pipe.  (The length is a critical dimension for connection "E")  Even the clocking of the flange is critical, as the bolt hole need to line up and leave some slack for installing the completed assembly.

Once the right side was tack welded, a test fitting provided the good news that there would be no need for a transition pipe at "E," and the vertical, horizontal, and yaw  differences could be accommodated by creative cutting, grinding and welding.   Time to go through (yet) another cycle of taking parts off, cutting, grinding, tack welding, and re-hanging.   Joint "E" also has a major impact on the direction of "I," so one fortuitous by-product of being "real close" is that "I" actually runs parallel to the frame toward the back.  (Yippee!)

The end result was a crossover while not perfectly straight, is real close.   The bad news is that as a completed assembly the flanges need to be re-clocked slightly (~.25") in order to align all six bolt holes.    (Refrain: Time to go through (yet) another cycle of taking parts off, cutting, grinding, tack welding, and re-hanging. )   

Whew, that was hard.  The good news is that it’s done and the rest of the exhaust system is much easier to work with has m-u-c-h wider tolerances (i.e. room for my lack of skills.)

PS…

If you were wondering about the different color of pipe, the dark pipe sections  are part of the header kit, while the lighter pipes are from the U-Bends.  Also, the downward bend tacked onto the back of "I"  is a simple "tail pipe" that will serve until the rest of the exhaust is assembled.