U-joints are simply awesome! Why? They allow rotational forces to be transmitted around corners. U-joints, Rezeppa-joints, Double Cardan-joints, and CV-joints all allow your driveshafts and axleshafts to spin and your tires to turn. Sounds technical, huh? Not really. It’s actually pretty simple, but if a U-joint or driveshaft is unhappy so is your Jeep. And without addressing the problem you soon will be too! We recently lifted our blue and grey ’01 WJ Laredo with a 6-inch Clayton Off Road long-arm suspension and as a result had to play the game of adjusting pinion angles, driveshaft style, and length in an attempt to make a much taller and more capable off-road vehicle drive down the road without sounding like a DC-3 fighting for altitude.

Nobody knows it all. If you’ve got a Jeep, then you’ve probably asked several of these questions at one point in time. How are we so sure? ’Cause we’ve answered them a whole mess of times. Are we complaining? Heck no—everybody has to start somewhere. The more time we’re asked questions like these, the more new Jeepers are entering the fray. So, happily, here are the answers to the top 30 tech questions we’re asked on a daily basis.

Formula 409 Interior?
I could swear that in a previous issue (1 to 2 years ago?) Editor Hazel said the best way to clean old vinyl Jeep seats was with Formula 409.

Hey everyone, it’s me, Randy. I’m here today to show you another way to get power into your doors and a different way to turn on your dome light. I don’t know why they call it a dome light, I mean it isn’t dome-shaped, it sure doesn’t light up a dome, so what’s the big idea? I mean, even in old cars when the light was a simple round disc, it really couldn’t be called a dome. A flying saucer, maybe, but a dome? Or even a plate, I mean those old dome lights look more like the bottom of a plate than they do a dome. Last time I looked a dome was supposed to look like a cut-off ball. I don’t know, but enough about domes, let’s get on to the real show.

Safety: It’s important. In a removable-top vehicle like a CJ or Wrangler, a stout roll- cage is one of the first modifications you should make. Why? Well it’s pretty easy to catastrophically roll even a stock Jeep on-road. And the stakes are raised off-road. Unfortunately, severe injury or death are both common outcomes to severe rolls. Once you have decided to add a rollcage to your toy, the next questions are where do I get a cage, who should I get to install it, and how much is it gonna cost? Well, as usual, in Jeep modification-land that is not always a straightforward or easy answer. But we have your back having dedicated our meager lives to learning how to build Jeeps, screwing up, cutting them apart and rebuilding them.

You might not realize it, but quite a few of the things that eventually become tech articles in these pages start with bench racing sessions with our friends. Normally we try to stay away from custom machining and new parts when we are trying this stuff out and just assemble it with junkyard parts to try to test the theory before we print it. In this case, we had heard from several sources that by taking a combination of 3⁄4-ton Ford, 1⁄2-ton Ford or Chevy, and 1⁄2-ton Dodge parts, it was possible to put together a dual-piston-caliper big-brake upgrade on the cheap.

The staff of Jp has written hundreds of stories on all sorts of topics that are still equally relevant. And almost all of them are uploaded here on our web site, jpmagazine.com. Want proof? Look below where we’ve compiled links to 23 stories from the past covering junkyard engines worth swapping in your Jeep; junkyard axles and where to find them, how wide they are, and what you need to install them; ideal junkyard transmissions; and junkyard T-case rebuild tips, where to find them, what vehicles they originally came in, and what’s worth your time and what’s not. We'll be adding more stories over time so check back often!

Yeah, everybody has a junkyard tale to tell. Maybe you found that killer little shifter knob. Or maybe you stumbled across an ultra-rare hubcap they only made in the 13th month of 1963. Or a Ford GP somebody threw out as scrap. But how many of you have seen guys slugging it out MMA-style over a car part? Or have used old junkyard jalopies for wrenching practice? Or fought snakes and werewolves and dragons to get a trim piece? We have. We’re sure some of you have, too. Here are a couple of stories from our junkyard-frequenting staffers. It’s our Jp magazine version of Penthouse forum. If you’ve got a tall wrecking yard tale to tell, feel free to share it with us by writing christian.hazel@jpmagazine.com with “Self-service Story” in the subject line, or hit us up on our web forum at jpmagazine.com.

No, Thank You!
I want to say thank you guys for the assistance you gave me when I was deployed in Iraq in 2008-2009. My YJ is coming along nicely and is almost done. I went with the axles out of a four-banger YJ to get the 4.10 gears. My family picked them up while I was overseas. The axles are out of an ’89 and not a ’95 as we talked about via email. I am setting money aside for JK Dana 44 axles. I purchased a set of 33-inch General Grabbers AT2 tires and have a 5-inch suspension on the Jeep. I have to finish the brakes, attach the Smittybilt 10,000lb winch, and put the slip yoke eliminator in it.

Let’s face it: The “total driving experience” is one of the best parts of owning an old beater Jeep. Old Jeeps weren’t designed to place you in a warm, comfortable cocoon that isolates you from offending road noises in order to deposit you safe and refreshed at your destination. Instead, they are transportation in its purest form: brakes that take a couple of pumps to always keep you on your game, a clutch that eventually develops your left leg into that of a linebacker’s, and steering that has to be constantly manhandled like the valve on a giant water main. Maybe we’re just getting old and lazy, but that last part gets old pretty quickly and leaves us wishing for at least one creature comfort from the modern transportation age: power steering.

When Trasborg came to me and asked for help with fixing the turn signals on Jp magazine’s ’01 Wrangler, I thought he was just lazy. I mean, how many articles have I done on turn signals in Jeeps? As an editor he should have read all of them before they got printed (it is kinda part of his job—well, maybe it’s his whole job). So, I didn’t know if he just didn’t bother reading them in the first place, or if he was just too lazy to dig out the stories and look them up himself. But I like helping people, and I like writing for this magazine, so instead of telling him to get his lazy butt off the couch, I agreed.

Back in my college days I used to have a real problem. Not with the Dean’s daughter or with my GPA. I was hooked on junkyards. For some reason, whenever I got the chance I’d hit the self-serve junkyards, pay my $1 entry, and wander the aisles of cars and trucks. To me, it was better entertainment than any movie or playing golf.

Last month we outlined a bunch of $3,000 buildups for ’97-’06 Wrangler TJs (3-Day TJ for $3K) and promised to follow up with similar treatments for JK and YJ Wranglers, XJ Cherokees, and maybe even CJs. We cover only bolt-on parts and modifications you could do yourself at home in three days or less. Well, we’re making good on our promise—although we kinda cheated a little here by using a ’07 Rubicon with factory 4.10 gears and lockers front and rear. We’ll include some other options for non-Rubicon owners just to keep things fair.

Nirvana, Heaven, Valhalla, Disneyland, Wally World! Regardless of your beliefs or faith (or lack thereof), there is a place filled with wonder, excitement, new beginnings, re-birth, dirt, grease, and oil—and it’s probably just down the road! Sounds lovely doesn’t it? Well, we think so. And as the saying goes, “If we are wrong we don’t want to be right.” The truth is that going to the junkyard to scavenge someone else’s used parts is a great way to save a few bucks and end up building the Jeep of your dreams for literally pennies on the dollar compared with buying brand new parts. And although the junkyard can be a place of wonder that is a pleasure to visit, it can also be a nightmare of wasted money and time if you don’t know what you are doing. We here at Jp have spent more than our fair share getting down-and-dirty in junkyards across the country. Here are a few tips, tricks, and how-tos for the junkyard newbie as well as the experienced parts picker.

We embarked upon our ’98 Cherokee project during a time of astronomically high gas prices. Our goal initially was to build it to go off-road while not losing any on-road commuter-type mileage. We’ve stayed pretty close to the original plan, but over the last year or so we’ve been underwhelmed by the performance we were seeing.

In the story “Jeep Fire Prevention” (Oct. ’07), we showed you how to wire relays into your ’99-and-up TJ heater system to help combat the melted switches and wires that can be caused by a worn or dying blower motor. As part of our swapping and wiring, we put a cheapo parts store blower motor in the Jeep and figured we’d be good to go. We got about 7 years and 120,000 miles out of our factory blower motor, but the replacement only lasted 2 years and about 20,000 miles before we were having problems again.

Confessions: Jeep Hoarding
Cappa, we love hoarders like you. You make parts available to people like me. Looking at your axles in the Aug. ’11 issue in your back yard, how does one know when an axlehousing is too rusty to do its job, either as part of a collection or on a vehicle?
Jim Leister
Via email

Finally! I got to go to something cool where there were hot chicks, great Jeeps, and people wearing shiny shoes. I even got invited to a couple of parties that I don’t remember all that well (the details are a little fuzzy), got to shoot a Tommy gun on full-auto, and basically just had a good time out in Las Vegas, Nevada, without waking up in the middle of the desert with my pants missing.

It all started with a phone call from Editor Hazel.

The debate over coil-sprung suspension and tried-and-true leaf springs is fueled by much enthusiast passion. The Jp staff is questioned about it all the time, but despite conflicting opinions, there is never really a clear winner. With so many variables to consider, personal preference and vehicle usage almost always complicates the matter.

The JK Wranglers are great. Add some coil spacers and a few other trinkets and you can be tearing up the trail with 35s in less than a day. Jp’s ’07 two-door Rubicon is a perfect example. Our 80,000-mile JK is typical of most new Wranglers you’ll encounter on the trail. Instead of whiz-bang long-arms, coilovers, or other crazy stuff, we cobbled together a simple lift that works extremely well and rides like a cloud. By saving on suspension parts, we could focus our budget on more-necessary components like an aftermarket front axlehousing, better rocker armor, a good winch, beadlocks, and stuff of that nature. But even though the JK suspension and underpinnings are good, they’re far from perfect.

Have you ever had one of those projects that just seems to hit a wall at every corner? That’s how we feel about this axle swap. We’ve been working on it a long time, off and on, but we were shocked to see that we ran the first installment in Jp magazine over three years ago (“Fullwidth,” May ’09). We had always planned it as a multi-part story and we started off by making a case for swapping the stock Dana 60 front and Dana 70 rear axle under our ’68 M-715 for a more modern pair of 1-ton axles. In that first story we assembled a lot of the parts we were going to need and figured out how to get where we wanted to be. But there are always a lot of things to consider, especially when mixing and matching parts between the aftermarket and the junkyard.

Nothing sucks worse than heading out with a group of friends, packed with camping essentials for a weekend getaway, only to discover that your engine caught an illness along the way and is in need of diagnosis. Aside from being the guy who halts the group from the trailhead, you now have to unpack the tools and get your hands dirty. No vehicle is immune to this scenario, and despite ample preparedness, even the most accomplished mechanic can find himself searching for answers. For this story, we consulted the professionals at Overkill Jeep Fabrication in Campbell, California, to extract years of knowledge from shop owner Jeff Arabia. Follow along as we highlight some of the most common issues associated with Jeep vehicles and suggest ways to identify and resolve them.

A V-8, multi-link coil suspension, leather interior, and four-wheel drive! Kinda sounds like a custom-built Jeep doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. So why have so many been saving up their change for a V-8 swap, four-link conversion, and fancy seating when it all came as factory-issue in the ’99-’04 WJ Grand Cherokee? Well, honestly we’re not sure.

It’s the question we get asked more than any other: “What’s the biggest tire I can fit on my Jeep?” Whether it’s a bone-stock YJ with sagged springs or an XJ with 14 inches of lift, Jeep guys wanna cram as big a tire under the fenders as possible. That’s why almost every year we’ve written a “What Hits, What Fits” guide outlining the biggest tire you can fit on virtually any Jeep with virtually any lift—just like the excerpt we’ve printed here. The only problem is that there are only so many ways to write the same old story…over…and over…and over. But thanks to this new-fangled Internet thing, we don’t really have to. Our Internet slaves have uploaded our most recent guide (“What Hits, What Fits,” Mar. ’11) on our website at jpmagazine.com and it’s only a couple of mouse-clicks away. If you’re not so good with search engines, punch in jpmagazine.com/techarticles/wheels/154_1103_what_hits_what_fits/index.html to go directly to the story, or scan the fancy QR code thingy with your smart phone.