Now that it was time to begin the installation of the electronics and wiring, we needed to have a good plan to ensure proper and reliable operation.  I also have an aversion to exposed wires and like equipment to look more like factory issue rather than added on. A couple of days were spent mocking up communication equipment and house battery and battery management gear until we got it to all located properly.  One key rule we wanted to follow is that the Jeeps wiring, and electronic systems needed to stay as intact as possible.  All aftermarket equipment needed to be installed as a stand-alone system that could easily be disconnected should something go wonky on a trip leaving the Jeep in factory and hopefully operational condition.  The decision was made that all external and equipment mounted in the cockpit would be controlled via a Switch Pros control unit mounted on the driver’s A pillar.  All the gear in the house area behind the front seats would be run from a house battery through a RedArc battery management system. Now it was time to tear apart the Jeep, all interior and exterior trims, molding and panels were removed to allow access for routing of wires and antenna cables.  The next few days were spent running cables all over the Jeep leaving plenty of length to trim and make final connections after the trim was reinstalled and equipment mounted. Aside from properly routing wires to protect them from damage, choice and quality of terminations play a huge role in providing a reliable electrical system. Off road vehicles are subject to lots of vibration, moisture, heat, and abrasion that can cause shorts, breaks and intermittent connections that can be a pain to track down. Our primary connectors are Deutsch automotive style weatherproof connectors, when those do not make sense, we use pre soldered heat shrink connectors.  Larger cables get heavy duty crimp fittings with heat shrink applied afterward. Having the correct crimping and connector tools makes all the difference.

Switch Pro Controller:

The primary controller for the cockpit and exterior electrical is the Switch Pros system, we have this on our Ram truck, and it is amazing to use and simple to install.  For Eeyore the controller operates driving, rock, and chase lights.  Also serves as the master switch for comms on the interior.  The system is fully programable and can be remote controlled from tablet or cell phone.

House Battery System The heart of the house power system is a 100ah lifepo4 battery mounted under a cabinet behind the driver’s seat. #6 ga wire provides power from the engine battery and is protected by a 50-amp circuit barrier under the hood which also allows easy disconnection from the Jeep’s electrical system. A dedicated ground also runs to the main battery. Charging functions are handled by the Red Arc manager 30 which allows charging from the alternator, solar, or shore power. We get full 30-amp charge at idle, full charge is obtained in a couple of hours.  The house battery feeds into the Red Arc Redvision system that provides remote control of all houses electrical functions and under awning lighting from either the remote display panel or from the tablet in the cockpit.  With the limited space in a Wrangler, we chose to build a custom mount for the control unit that mounts to the ARB fridge so that it can be used while in the kitchen. Since we travel and camp in well below freezing temperatures, we can run into issues with charging the lithium battery so we installed a heated pad under the battery that will activate at 34 degrees when the master switch is on so that the battery temp remains warm enough to allow charging. Ventilation of the electrical cabinet is provided by a computer fan on a snap thermostat. Finally, a 1000 watt inverter is provided for charging laptops or camera batteries.

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As usual we have been busy doing things out of order, Tent and other roof top accessories installed prior to installing the new suspension. Driving Eeyore in his factor livery became an unnerving experience at best. In addition, it seemed that we were dragging his behind down the road, not a good look for a Jeep. We had originally thought about a 2” lift to keep the build drivable under all conditions.  The current handling and stance convinced us to seek out a 3” lift, question was which one.  We ended up with a short list of three systems: AEV, Clayton, or Tera Flex.  Watched a lot of reviews, probably the best apples to apples comparison was from Brad at Trail Recon.  We ultimately went with a 3” Tera Flex Outback kit with adjustable Alpine control arms.  A set of Falcon 3.3 adjustable shocks and steering stabilizer, Steer Smarts Yeti track bars rounded out the package. The instructions provided with the Tera Flex and Falcon goodies were super clear and easy to follow Installation of the entire kit was very straight forward even in a one car garage. The engineer in me took plenty of stock measurements and angles for front end, driveshafts, and diffs. Liberal use of lasers and measuring tools got everything lined up properly where it should be, and the alignment was withing specs.  We did decide to install SS extended brake lines, spring retainers and replace the tie rod ends with factory parts. With everything double checked and torqued to specs, we temporarily bolted the factory wheels and tires back on so we could complete the comparison measurements as our new ones had not yet arrived.  We fully expected to get 3” or a bit more of height gain due to 100k miles and some sag on the old parts, what we got was 5-1/2” of gain. A bit of investigation revealed that the previous owner had replaced the springs with shorter ones, probably from a sport. We can only assume that this was to make it easier to get in and out of combined with the running boards in place of sliders, who does that? Probably the only Rubicon in history to have a lowering kit. lol.  That also explains the poor handling and sagging rear end with the roof mods added.  The suspension works fantastically, the adjustable shocks were well worth the super expensive cost, not getting beat up all day on the highway or trail – priceless.  Two things we will change down the road.  Would like a touch higher spring rate for the rear due to the weight on extended trips, might consider a set of airbags, some more research needed here.  The second thing will be the steering, will be adding heavy duty ball joints, tie rods & ends and most likely a better steering box and brace.  Works ok now, but a weak link on the undercarriage.

Wheels and Tires: Tire selection can be a hot topic, everyone has their favorites, ours is BFG.  Have been running them on off road rigs for years. As this Jeep will be seeing some remote and difficult trails, we would like to run the KM3 mud terrain for its off-road performance.  However old age and a wee bit of common sense won the battle, and we went with the tried-and-true KO2 all-terrain. Since we love to explore all over and a lot of our trips are long distances, that means plenty of highway miles, with a good portion of them in winter conditions. The

KO2 offers a quiet ride, much longer tread life, and has the 3PMSF rating which many states will let you bypass chain up areas with 4-wheel drive. We opted for the heavy weight E rated tires for the extra plys in the sidewall and better stability on the road.  Airing down to 18psi works well for most off-road situations, down to around 10psi in soft sand.  For wheels we wanted something a bit different than mainstream. We ended up selecting Dirty Life Mesa wheels in matt black. The only issue we do not love about the wheels is that the valve stem hole is not recessed far enough for my liking. We wanted to keep the TPMS and found it very difficult to find shorty valve stems with TPMS sensors We finally found parts from two different manufactures that we could modify to work together, now we have a ¾” stem which works great and does not stick out waiting to get removed by a passing obstacle.

Gears and axles:

With larger tires and Eeyore playing the part of pack mule he had become somewhat lethargic in the performance department, not that he had an abundance of power to start with.  Unfortunately, Randy’s ring and pinion, our long-time favorite gear shop had closed. Finding a good gear shop was harder than we had thought. We have been doing business with Northridge 4X4 in Silverdale for a while but had not thought of having work done there. Turns out they have a capable shop and good pricing. We had planned on Yukon gears, but they convinced us to use gears from 10 factory with a 4:88 ratio, great quality and a much better warranty at no extra cost. While we were there, we had them replace all seals, wheel bearings at all four corners. We appreciate the work Northridge did, as it is one of only two things, we will not do ourselves on this project. The other will come later at the end of the project.

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The choice of Roof rack was a big concern for us, we wanted a clean look and as low profile as we could get.  It also seemed like most rack manufacturers really want to avoid listing any real weight capacities, especially off-road dynamic loads.  If they do, they are far too low to be of any use.  We really do not like the exoskeleton look of the Gobi and similar racks, especially since we were wanting to be able to use a Sunrider replacement for our Freedom panels to have some open top ability.  This also meant the rack had to be short enough to allow for the Sunrider to fold back.  We really liked the look and quality of the Rhino Pioneer Platform but were not impressed with the Backbone mounting system and lack of engineering / posted weight capacities.  After lots of research we discovered that Maximus-3 produced their own mounting system for the Pioneer Rack, this system still requires multiple holes through the Jeep roof but fastens directly to the roll cage and does not require a separate support down to the tub at the back windows like the Backbone system.  As a bonus the mounts are inboard a few inches from the edge and less visible with a much lower profile.  (Warning – the low profile does create RTT mounting issues especially when combined with the Pioneer platform slats running the length of the rack rather than crosswise, more about that later).  The best part is the rack system has a rated load capacity of 300 lbs dynamic (on or off road) and 900 pounds static.  Installation is not hard, just more of a pucker factor of measuring correctly and not drilling eight holes through your roof in the wrong place.  The directions could have been a bit better and there was a misprint on one of the dimensions, fortunately it was printed correctly in two other locations and double checking avoided a miss drilled hole.  The finished install met all of our expectations for looks and feels very solid. The rack with mounts weighed in at just over 65lbs and sits down very close to the roof with no noticeable additional noise when driving.

Sunrider Top: The Bestop Sunrider was one of the most anticipated mods we wanted long before buying Eeyore.  Installation was very easy, and the top worked seamlessly with the newly added roof rack .It was so easy to flip it back at a traffic light to get that awesome let the sun shine in experience of a Jeep.  What came next was completely unexpected. Once we added a roof top tent and awning the road and wind noise above 25 miles per hour became horrible, wind whistle reached a high pitch scream that would guarantee no deer would cross in front of us. Immediately we started a series of experimentation shoving whatever we could find into cracks and gaps between the top/rack/tent/awning to see if we could make it quieter or at least change the pitch.  Turns out that the wind was splitting under and over the rack creating a giant version of the old blade of grass whistle.  A pool noodle shoved in the gap between the tent and rack made all the difference in the world, so we fabricated a sheet metal spoiler to redirect the air.  The whistle was now all but gone, but we now had a horrible drumming of the fabric top due to turbulence of the air hitting the front of the tent causing a violent flapping.  All further attempts of hot head liners, sound matting in the Jeep interior still resulted in not being able to have a conversation at highway speeds.  Long distance travel is a primary use of this rig, so we reluctantly removed the top and replaced the freedom panels also with sound mat and headliner.  What a difference now we can listen to the radios and have a conversation, loved the Sunrider but we realized that having a quiet Jeep for long trips trumps having the open-air experience many times over.  In addition, most of our off-road travel is far too dusty to keep the top open and we ended up using it less than we thought.  Now it sits in storage while we decide if there is any possibility of putting it back on.

Awning:

We have a ARB standard roll up awning on our WJ, and have found that the combination of time required for setup/takedown and the limited coverage resulted in us only using it on rare occasions. For this reason, we wanted a 270 awning to provide coverage at the side and the rear where our kitchen resides. Ultra-fast deployment and storage was primary attribute, provisions for sidewalls, and no guy lines/poles to deal with. After seeing the Bush Company 270XT awning from South Africa on the Fire to Fork YouTube channel it jumped to the top of the list, seeing the company owner stand on top of the awning arms with no poles sealed the deal for us. We absolutely love the awning and use it on almost every trip as it is so fast.  Not having poles and guy ropes is amazing the high purchase price was soon forgotten and the fantastic customer service another bonus. Weighing in at a hefty 60 pound it is a beast, we offset the RTT to one side by a few inches and it seems to balance nicely together. Since the awning does not use poles, there is a lot of force transferred back to the rack at the hinge point, so you will need to make sure the rack is braced and mounted to something solid.  We added an extra cross bar to the rack which stiffened it up nicely and had no issues so far.  Still waiting on the side wall kits to become available in the US, would like to get at least two panels to close off the area around the kitchen in bad weather.  For now, we have some lightweight nylon tarps with Velcro that sort of work.

Roof Top Tent We spent a considerable amount of time researching roof top tents for this project, to date we have not landed on the perfect tent for us.  As a stop gap measure, we selected the 23 Zero Walkabout 62 soft shell. This tent checks many of the boxes on our wish list.  (Lightweight, compact footprint, covered entrance and fully enclosed awning).  What it does not check off is speed of set up and tear down.  Now that we have used it for over a year, The amount of fussing around to set it up and put it away is becoming a major frustration (imagine that) but still no other tent style offers a side entry with easy to setup annex with floor and no poles. The I Kamper mini is a bit narrow, and the annex is obnoxious and does not have a floor.  The 23 Zero Armadillo is similar and offers a width to match the one we have now. Just need to wait and see if they will release an annex to match what is on the Walkabout.  The current tent does weigh in at just under 120 lbs. which is Wrangler friendly, and the addition of a self-inflating mattress has made a huge difference in comfort,

and using an air pump we can suck it flat leaving lots of space in the tent for bedding without having to sit on it to fold it shut.  Since we do not always travel with the RTT and the Jeep will not fit in the garage for service with tent mounted we needed a way to speed up and simplify removal and installation in a safe manner.  Bring on my inner engineer and fabricator.  Searching for quick release mounts that were solid, easy to use and low profile did not turn up much that met my standards.  I did find that GoFast campers had designed a slick mount for their ultra-light tent.  A couple of emails later I got GoFast to ship me two sets of their quick release mounts and a set of matching tent rails which we swapped out the 23 Zero rails for.  Now we can mount the tent on either the JK or WJ with no tools.  To make installation a bit safer we designed a break apart crane that mounts to either Jeep and has quick straps to lift the tent off and place on the other Jeep or onto the ground.  The entire process takes under five minutes, no tools and no manual lifting.  Finally we built a set of quick install carry handles that fit into the tent rails to allow us to carry the tent to a storage area without out risk of dropping it on someone’s foot.

Miscellaneous:

To finish off the roof modifications we added a Seaview cable gland to the roof (what’s a few more holes .. lol) This allows us to run cabling for lights and antenna up to the roof cleanly and with no leaks. The nice feature is we can easily add additional wires at any time.  We were careful to find a double layer section of roof so that the wires are hidden on the interior side.

We seem to end up on a lot of trails with heavy dust or poor visibility, so we added KC highlights chase bar (built by Feniex who makes emergency vehicle lighting) to the rear of the roof rack. We wired the bar for brake & running lights, backup, solid amber, and alternating amber.  The bar is fantastic, and very slim.  The only issue with it is it is super bright, too bright for the brake/running lights at night on the highway in my opinion even though it is SAE approved. As such we currently have it wired with a kill switch so we can turn off that portion of the bar for night use on the highway. Yet have not found a way to dim the lights as they are controlled by a low voltage control unit.  Will likely pull it apart one day and see what makes it tick.

The last item we added is a WeBoost antenna that folds down between awning and tent when not needed. The jury is still out on if the WeBoost makes any real difference, more testing is needed.

The total combined weight of the roof mods is right at 250lbs and seems to be quite stable while travelling on or off-road.  Not a rock crawler, but still very capable of difficult trails.

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Tire Carrier:

Knowing that we would be adding a bunch of weight to the Eeyore’s tailgate it was important to switch away from the factory tire mount to a proper tire carrier.  The specifications were relatively simple; had to carry a decent amount of weight, allow the tailgate and carrier to open in a single one-handed operation, and have space to mount extra goodies.  Terra Flex, AEV and Maximus-3 were quickly placed on the short list, and we elected to go with the Maximus-3 unit due to the unique adjustable mechanism that allowed both the tailgate and tire mount to operate on separate hinges yet operate with the factory latch.  The mount proved to be very well built and installed easily (after we figured out which way was up the hard way) Directions were clear and the packaging was good and none of the parts were damaged during shipping, however they did assemble some of the bolts thru their mounting locations rather than a separate bag allowing some hardware to vibrate apart and somehow fall out of a tiny crack in the box.  Maximus-3 customer support did express ship replacements out right away.

Along with the tire carrier we purchased a metal mast that allowed mounting of the third eye brake light above the larger tire and also a antenna mount for a CB antenna. This is a poor location for an antenna on a Jeep due to ground plane issues and a lot of gear nearby.  Finally got decent results from a four-foot Firestick with top loading coils to get above the RTT.  Not as flexible as a metal whip, but as CB is mostly a tertiary communication means in our vehicles, so we can live with it.

Maximus-3 had some add on brackets for the tire carrier for gas cans, jacks, etc.  but nothing that I was sold on either aesthetically or engineering wise.  We elected to fabricate a rack for our Traction boards from steel tube and Maxtax mounting pins to carry the boards in a vertical configuration.  Room was left on the backside to add a NATO fuel can mount when we find one that we like.  (Spoiler – we plan on installing a long-range fuel tank under the Jeep eventually to lose the gas can.  Will switch out the mount to a propane tank at that time)

there was a conflict in the directions but measuring twice (well 36 times in my case due to an engineering background…) did the job without any unneeded ventilation holes in the roof.

Rock Rails:

Eeyore’s previous owners had removed the factory rock rails that come with the 10x Rubicon models and installed plastic running board steps in their place.  Fortunately, they kept the rails tucked away in storage and provided them with the sale.  I placed them back on the Jeep for now, with the expectation that after a lift Michelle would probably appreciate a set of Rockslide Engineering retracting steps.  Otherwise, we will likely fabricate something custom as the factory rail and mounting is not well engineered for as heavy as it is.

Rock Lights

Although we don’t typically need rock lights for their advertised purpose, we do find ourselves in the backcountry searching for epic camp in the dark and would like to avoid stepping out into a deep puddle. It would also be nice to have some ambient camp lighting .. We selected the KC Cyclone lights and added yellow filters with the anticipation that they might keep bugs at bay in camp as we do not need super bright lights on the trail.  We purchased a set of six lights and installed them at the rear near the bumper and at each end of the rock rails, this provides a nice light pattern around the jeep in camp but leaves the front end a bit dark for trail work, so may add a pair somewhere up front later. The yellow lenses do cut the overall light a bit more than expected and if trail use was primary, we would switch back to white.  The lights are controlled from the switch pro controller and can be turned on/off or dimmed from the cell phone while in camp for the ultimate of laziness.

Fenders

Contrary to most folks who drive and modify Wranglers we had planned on leaving the stock plastic fenders in place and not opt for aftermarket narrow fenders for tight trails.  That was however before we drove Eeyore with some nice new 35” tires that slung mud and various cow byproduct found on the trail all over the exterior and sometimes interior of the Jeep.  An immediate quest for the opposite of narrow fenders was started.  It soon became apparent that wider fenders were the unicorn of aftermarket Jeep parts. A very small selection of fenders was quickly narrowed (no pun intended) down to two. Warrior products manufactured in Oregon (US made), and Black Mountain by Collins Brothers Jeep in Texas (Manufactured overseas).. We went with the Black Mountain fenders as they were aluminum and much lighter than the Warrior fenders, we also scored a super good price as a result of an advertisement error that Black Mtn still graciously honored.  The fenders were a pain to install as most are, we opted to replace the troublesome rubber well nuts with SS Rivnuts to make the fenders more removable for service. Even though somewhat a lightweight build, once installed they are very sturdy and work well. They do not hang down as far as the stock, so we have added some custom fabricated mud flap mounts for the rear that allow the flap to be removed if desired.  The fenders perfectly cover the 35X12.5 tires and along with the mudflaps keep the local law enforcement officers and anyone behind us happy.  Soon to be added will be some front mudflaps to further reduce the amount of mud flung up on the doors.

Inner Fenders Now that we have installed the flat top aluminum fenders the factory inner fenders that had been hacked up to clear the new Falcon shocks look terrible.  After looking at a few inner fenders we selected the JCR aluminum inner fenders as they fit in and around the Falcon shocks nicely. In addition, they mounted independent from the outer fenders so we could easily remove them front ones for better access to the engine bay for service and repairs.  The fenders installed easily with only minimal fuss getting my large hands into some tight places.  The only poorly designed part of the fenders is the small end caps that cover the open area of the fender by the firewall. They fasten with self-tapping screws and do not really seal off the area and have some annoying squeaks.  Some slight bending of the tabs has removed the squeaks, and eventually I will design and fabricate something that fits properly and removed for cleaning. Even with this design flaw, we would still purchase and install them again.

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– Maximus-3:
– Winch mount with trim plates and centering plate for the fairlead.
– Classic hoop bull bar
– Tow loops (which also double as secondary recover points, factory hooks also remain)
– Brackets; aux lights, sand flag, and stealth license plate mount.

– Warn: 10k Zeon winch (avoided the platinum due to no manual clutch, and too many electronic components) also the US made warn winches have a superior
method of attaching the winch line to the drum than the imports I have seen (including the VR Warns) also added the factor 55 ultra-hook which is overkill
but has that coolness factor. One issue we found with the Warn synthetic rope is they have made their thimble just a bit wider than normal so it will not fit into the
factor 55 hook (they want you to use their epic hook) a few whacks with a 5lb hammer and it slid right in though, Warn if your listening, not cool!

– KC Lights:
– Pro 6 LED driving lights mounted on bumper (wish the bull bar was a bit more forward to protect them better from damage)
– Gravity Pro LED headlights (so far best improvement to the JK, stock headlights were absolutely scary bad, dangerous on wet nights. Still getting used to the cut off
Optics on the new lights, sharp edge to the lighting pattern, but what does get lit is like daylight. going to adjust up a bit more and check to make sure we are not
blinding oncoming traffic.)
– LED fog lights

– Under the Sun Inserts: we got the faded gray US flag insert for the grill, looks way better than the stock radiator showing, so far no issues with heat, will have to see how
it plays out this summer.

– Daystar: Had issue with hood flutter when driving, added Daystar replacement rubber straps to the stock hood latches. Defiantly no hood flutter now but takes super
powers to fasten them down. been on a while and still that way. if they do not stretch soon, we will look for a better option.

Weight: We removed 8 lbs. of steel, plastic, and old lights, then added 136 lbs. of goodies for a total weight increase of 128 lbs.

Results: 9/10 – Really happy with the way it looks and the way everything works, feels very solid. If you are not doing the tow loop option, all the parts played together nicely with just a bit of trimming for the winch fairlead. Had some issues with Maximus-3, missing part of order, a couple of tight tolerances, and the tow loops not working with bull bar, (not really their fault that we wanted it all, but would have been nice to know in advance) they did come through with some good customer service and sent out missing parts promptly. With the winch in place, it is very difficult to remove or install the grill, to remove the winch you must remove the whole bumper due to the size of the winch. We shortened the locating pins on the bottom of the grill and can now just squeeze it in.

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