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.

During the construction phase, the  Optima was installed and kept on a trickle charge while powering the radio and the occasional test start-up.  One day I hit the starter and had the unmistakable sound of a dead battery.  Evidently failing to reconnect the charger while leaving something on overnight is a bad thing.  No big deal, as the charger would bring it back to life.  Wrong! 

Tried to recharge it 2-3 times and the BatteryMinder would flip into protection mode after about 20-30 min.  Off the charger, the battery would quickly fall back to ~5v.  The high priced Optima was dead!

Having read about Optimas pre-mature failures I was concerned that I had a real expensive paperweight.  The good news is that the Internet is a wonderful place and found that if you discharge an AGM (Absorbed Glass Mat) battery too far, “intelligent” chargers will not be able to deal with them, but if you add a regular battery in parallel, it will trick the charger into doing its job. 

Sure enough, the addition of the battery from the pickup worked and the Optima was back in business.  (You wonder how many AGM batteries have been scrapped because the owner didn’t find the parallel battery ploy?)

BTW, the BatteryMinder in the picture is probably the ideal charger for the WTF-J.  It will act as a trickle charger to keep the battery topped off all winter, has a setting to refresh (desulfate) AGM batteries, and provides a quick(er) boost charge when needed.  The high tech charger developed a problem after ~1yr of use in the garage.  When I made a warranty inquiry, the company’s customer service operation had me send the defective unit and they returned a new charger .  No hassles whatsoever.  

Life is good when you have power!

…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.)

ID	Description
1.	Instrument Panel – Ver 2.0 Fix turn signal LEDs hidden by radio faceplate when it tilts during operation Fix monolithic faceplate that requires the whole dash to gain access to any of the connectors Fix defective Cruise Control switch logic Swap Speedo / Tach positions (Done) Validate SES indicator operation Add filter module for RFID key system (Done) Gang “ad hoc” relays on left side (Done) Clean-up power distribution and segment connections Powder Coat Dash Panel Not really the IP, but add cup holders to console (Done)
2.	Convert former A/C Compressor to OBA Turns out that when the suspension is really workin’ it has a prodigious appetite for air.  The Viair is rated for a 100% duty cycle and can keep up without any problems, but it’s noisy.  Yeah, yeah, I know the whole damn thing is noisy, but the electric compressor is bad noise.
3.	Muffler – Ver 2.0 : Speaking of noise, find a quieter muffler to fit in the same envelope as the current Magnaflow  (Done)
4.	Engineer New (longer) Pitman Arm Decrease Steering Radius Increase Steering Effort It will be a challenge to work out the interference issues
5.	Paint Center “Console” (Ammo Cans)  Body Misc. Chassis Components
6.	Spray-On Bed Liner for Tub Interior ($???) (Done)
7.	ScanGauge II  (Done) Reads the ECM to provide any four functions from list including: Maximum Speed Average Speed Maximum Coolant Temperature Maximum RPM Driving Time Driving Distance Fuel Used Trip Fuel Economy Distance to Empty Time to Empty Fuel to Empty Fuel Economy Fuel Rate Battery Voltage Coolant Temperature Intake Air Temperature Transmission Temp Engine Speed (RPM) Vehicle speed (MPH) Manifold Pressure Engine Load Throttle Position Ignition Timing Open/Closed Loop Can also serve as a scan tool to: Read/Clear Trouble Codes Reads conditions that set the Trouble Code Turn off the "Check Engine" light Tell you when vehicle is "Ready" to pass OBDII testing Make and store up to 10 rewritable special codes to send to the vehicle computer
8.	Rocker Guards with Step (Done)
9.	Finalize rear speaker installation (Done)
10.	Clean-up connections at Fuel Tank (Done)
11.	Install IKEA interior LEDs (Done)
12.	Figure out why the driving lights don’t work They did before I installed the brake lines. Doh!
13.	Re-plumb vacuum line for heater/thermostat
14.	Front Inner Fenders (Half Done – ECM/Driver’s side complete)
15.	Front half of roll cage Cannot start until after Ver 2.0 Dash

Here’s the view back into Ohio

These pictures taken from the trip inspired me to get a cheap buffer from HF to do something about the mill finish on the body of the Jeep formerly known as WTF-J.  

Lessons learned on this trip included:

• Steering improvements are making a big difference in the feel of the Jeep formerly known as WTF-J.  Since making the steering box adjustment you can comfortably go ~10mph faster on narrow two lanes and passing is nowhere the same adventure.
• During the winter I’ll look at changing to a longer pitman. While 1-ton D60’s are required by nature to steer like a truck, it feels like the steering radius is suffering from a too short arm due to interference with the tie-rod.  It’s working great, but…
• The bikini top is a great invention, but in its natural state it literally flops in the breeze as you hit 35 mph and creates kind of a sub-woofer that increases in amplitude (intensity) and frequency as you accelerate.   Took a page from the longer safari-style tops and created a center strap out of ballistic webbing between the windshield header and the roll bar that tightens the top and damps the oscillation to ~60 mph.    At anything sub-Interstate speeds, it’s 1000% better!
• The power to weight ratio of the cammed 6.0L is such that a r-e-a-l light touch on the throttle is all that’s needed to hit max-legal speeds.  It’s actually hard to keep such a light touch on a high CG vehicle that while lots better than a typical CJ/TJ has a fair degree of bucking and tossing. This puts a real priority on fixing the cruise control this winter!

The first “real” road trip for the Jeep formerly known as WTF-J was to the Brown County Fair also known as “The  Little State Fair” about 30 mi southeast of Cincinnati.  (“Real” means – Destination >= Journey)  It was a perfect evening and our friends from the neighborhood invited us to join the ~80K attendees who view the exhibits and attend the demolition derby that is included in the $7 price of admission.  The only downer was that Significant Other chose to ride with our friends as the Jeep formerly known as WTF-J  was deemed a bit too primitive.

The Fair is really a neat affair and in an election year finds over half the visitors were running for some sort of office or supporting their favorite candidate/proposition with a t-shirt.   If the Fair weren’t so authentic, you could easily mistake it for a caricature of rural America.

It was fun seeing the pursuit of perfection in bunnies, lambs, and hogs.  I also learned a lot about the trees and crops in the region and was surprised to see how the State also supported the wine producers.  Next year’s “Must See BCF” includes the beef tenderloin sandwiches at the Brown County Beef Producers tent and the Potato Chip “flower” (i.e. What happens when you spiral slice a raw potato and deep fry it?) booth; both were perfect examples of transforming Fair to Outstanding!

Other than eating and visiting displays, I also validated the wow-factor of the Jeep formerly known as WTF-J as the loud exhaust resonated literally and figuratively with the younger set along with some of the cartoonish dimensions.  It was a hit.  From a tech perspective I learned:

• Headlamp aim is w-a-a-a-a-a-y off.  The lamps seep to point straight down and effectively illuminate the first 30-50.’  Somehow I lost the power to the auxiliary lights, so they were no help. 
• Steering is still a bit vague with ~2-3” of slack in the wheel.  The perception is exacerbated by the steering wheel being off by ~45°   (This also inhibits proper cancellation of the turn signals.)
  • The slop ended up being a simple fix by adjusting a top screw on the steering box and centering the steering wheel was only a bit more complicated
• There is some wander in the rear suspension
  • Turns out it was due to incorrect bolt size in the shock mounts allowing minor disruptions in the rear track.  Changing from 7/16” hardware to the correct metric bolts eliminated the slop and made for a much more solid feel.
• Heater blows cold air.   I’m guessing that there is insufficient vacuum in the connection I chose to drive the flow control valve.  The seat heaters do work and will get us through the Fall.
• Need to rewire Cruise Control circuit.  The installed switch logic is simply wrong.  It should be an easy fix, but my Ver 1.0 dashboard design makes it hard to perform these kinds of mods without taking down the whole dash.  (Arghhhh!)  This too will be added to the Winter “to-do” list.
• While not a luxury vehicle by any stretch of the imagination, the Jeep formerly known as WTF-J needs a cup holder or two.  There is no place that securely holds either full or empty drinks.  Big mistake!
• The torque convertor clutch (“TCC”) was engaging very early and had a tendency to stick (Stay in gear) when rolling into a stop.  This was a new symptom that appeared shortly after replacing the VSS reluctor ring.
  • Based on the trouble codes from the scan tool, it looked like an electrical problem or a faulty TCC solenoid.  While doing the reluctor ring fix, I also addressed a Transfer Case (“TC”) shifter cable routing issue and I had inadvertently pinched the cable loom connecting the transmission controls to the powertrain control module.  Fortunately, it was a simple fix, but it took a day’s worth of teardown and reinstallation to get to it. (Doh!)

 The good great news was that the Jeep formerly known as WTF-J actually performed well and there was no need for the roadside assistance provisions of the insurance coverage. 

Next time it’s Citius, Altius, Fortius!

  and had it powder coated here in Cincy.  The roll cage is about 1" taller than I had planned, but it just fits under the garage door with the AiRock suspension at full drop.  (Thank heaven for air suspensions!)

If you look carefully, you’ll also see the bikini top over the passenger compartment. (More on the top later…)

I lost my phone in Phoenix last week and replaced it with a new HP iPaq 910.  It took the picture in the garage and this video that shows the radio and the push button start.

[QUICKTIME "http://www.hachiya.us/Jeep/Images/video_01.3gp" 176 144]

Phil also fixed the steering and upper control arm issues, so the front end is looking pretty good.

Though fun while it lasted, you can understand the State’s reluctance to being unwittingly conscripted into displaying the autre entendre of WTF-J. 

Surrendering the offending registration materials at the BMV, the clerk asked; "What does WTFJ mean to you?"  A quick feint and the answer "My daughter suggested that someone at the State probably wondered WTF I was thinking when requesting that plate?" got a chuckle from the counter staff.

So, "WTFJ" is dead, long live "Jeepish"  At least as long as the Duke says "It’s Okay!"

Ohio has a nifty Web based process for reserving vanity plates, but requires an existing registration/tag number.  New registrations use a PDF based form, but require an in-person visit.  While you can’t complete the registration, you can check to see whether the personalized plate is available, and "WTF J" came up a winner.

Bright and early on Monday morning, with completed form in hand and a blank check, I headed down to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles ("BMV") office.  The clerk checked on their official computers and sho’ nuff, the WTF-J will be officially known by the State as "WTF J" (No dashes are available on Ohio license plates.)  Five minutes and $93.75 later later I have the magic paper.  Woo Hoo!  (Note: The Ohio BMV continues to impress.  Every single interaction has been pleasant, efficient, and anything but bureaucratic.  Wish I understood why they get it and the US Postal Service counter staff doesn’t) 

One problem is that all of the instructions are to put the temporary tag in the back window.  Ummm, the WTF-J doesn’t have one, but that’s a secondary issue at best.

Made a couple of laps around the sub-division to make sure that everything was working.  (OK, I’ll admit it; the route of the maiden voyage kept me within walking distance of the trailer that was hooked to the pickup in case the WTF-J developed the automotive equivalent of stage fright.)  It was all good, so the time came to venture out to get in on some of that $3.55/gal. gas. 

Safely made it back to the subdivision, but stopping at a friend’s house set off an alarm at the home front when my wife came home and the WTF-J was inexplicably MIA.  The absence prompted her to call my mobile to confirm that I wasn’t broken down on the side of the road. 

Beyond the contribution to global warming, one other byproduct of all the driving around included the GPS and the compass in the mirror finishing their calibration routines, so the WTF-J now knows where it’s at and has a good sense of direction.  (We should all be so fortunate.)  I also realized that big tires, big horsepower and a fairly short wheelbase is r-e-a-l sensitive to tire pressure and wheel alignment!

One of my daughters suggests that the WTF-J is like a new child in our household; if that’s true, then today is similar to that day when your youngest child takes their first steps, but given the paper from the State, let’s call it Graduation Day.