Muffin - 1997 Jeep Wrangler(TJ)

Muffin is a '97 TJ, I have owned since December of '99. My TJ is what JP Magazine once called "the most limp-wristed Jeep made," it's a 2.5l 4 cylinder, 3 speed automatic transmission (30RH), air conditioning, stock axles, Dana 35 rear, low pinion Dana 30 front, with abysmally high 3.73:1 gears. Modest mods include: lunch box Lock Right locker in the rear, Daystar "hockey puck" spring spacer lift, worn out Rancho 5000 shocks, ARB Safari Snorkel, Parts Store 16" electric radiator fan, 32x11.50R15 generic Tire Store ATs mounted on some aluminum AR-172 clone wheels. She was a DD/weekend warrior through most of college, got parked for a while in grad school, started driving it again off-and-on after getting a "real job." Then we moved to OH for 3 years, and the Jeep got left in my parent's barn in AR. We moved back home a year ago this month, I've recently got the Jeep going again, licensed, insured, and a whole pile of maintenance and upgrade parts collected in the garage. Muffin and I have been through a lot together, and I'm am pleased as punch to be getting to give her the attention she deserves. Muffin lived for almost 4 years parked under my parent's barn, giant metal roof, but still exposed to elements on all sides.

All kinds of critters had been living in her, the rear window zipper was damaged long ago, and held in with zip-ties, it's not like soft top Jeeps are air tight to begin with, but there wasn't much keeping things out of Muffin. There was fur, bird poop, feathers, and about 1/8" of dust on everything, inside and out. Oh, and wasps, a lot of wasps.

I managed to remove 3 or 4 active wasp nests without getting stung, and countless dirt dobber nests. The dirt dobbers built nests EVERYWHERE. I spent several hours cleaning the Jeep, pulled the spark plugs, and used an old trick my grandpa taught me. I poured about 4 oz. of Rislone into each of the cylinders and let it soak the top of the pistons and rings while I was cleaning, changing oil, filters, etc. The engine hadn't been cranked in nearly 4 years, stuck rings probably weren't a real concern, but it was cheap insurance. There was about 1/4 tank of 4 year old E10 gas in the fuel tank, I added 5 gallons of fresh ethanol free gas to the tank, and a full bottle of Marvel Mystery Oil. After fluids, filters, cleaning, and fresh gas, I pulled the fuel pump relay and whirled the engine over via the starter with the spark plugs still removed in order to clear the Rislone from the cylinders. I should note that I had to remove the cover off of the steering column and remove about 5 lbs of dirt dobber nests before I could physically turn the key in the ignition. After blowing the Rislone out of the cylinders my little jump box was done, so I got the jumper cables out. After putting the spark plugs back in it was time for the moment of truth. Video of the first start. https://www.youtube.com/embed/WQ_PSz6pT9o Quite the smoke show between the leaking exhaust manifold, and the Rislone/motor oil I spilled. I did a happy dance and cheered. Muffin lives! I drove her out of the barn for the first time in years!

I proceeded to drive Muffin around the pasture, "blew the cobs out" as my grandpa would say, as best I could in the pasture. Then gave her a very much needed bath, inside and out. An entire bottle of Simple Green and 1/2 a roll of blue shop towels were used and it was still pretty gross inside. She sparkled when wet though. The picture is a bit deceiving she doesn't look quite that great in person.

At this point I had made an inventory of what was still needed to get her road worthy, and parked her again for a few weeks while we got insurance, assessment, and registration taken care of. I ordered a bunch of maintenance parts and fluids, a new soft top, steering upgrades, and a few other odds and ends.

Cool, this is right up my alley!! Good luck and cant wait for progress.

In reply to Fobroader:

Thanks! My Jeep disease had been in remission for quite some time, but I've had a sever flare up again, even bought an '01 Limited XJ for SWMBO, so we're now a 2 Jeep household.

So I got Muffin road legal, and gave it a Seafoam treatment before driving it from my folk's to our house not quite 30 miles away. While it's never been powerful I kind of thought the throttle response was WAY worse than I remembered. I did a little investigating, and did I mention that dirt dobbers had made nests EVERYWHERE? I pulled the cap off of the snorkel and found it was almost completely plugged.

Snorkel cleaned out, Seafoam done, power steering topped of, the steering box is leaking, they all do eventually, SWMBO and I hit the road.

I drove Muffin and she followed. It is sooooo sssllllooooowwwwww. I had almost forgotten, you can't jump out into traffic, you must time pulling out of a driveway literally blocks down the road. Additionally what I remembered as a minor exhaust manifold leak, was now a pretty sever leak and loud. They all leak eventually, in fact I've had the head off of Muffin in the past to replace a broken manifold stud.

On top of coping with the super slow acceleration, general lack of power, and exhaust noise/smell I was reminded how uncomfortably warm the floor boards get. My carpet was removed and lost to who knows where over a decade ago. Even with A/C your feet stay pretty uncomfortable when your floor board is north of 130 degrees. If you're wearing shorts you know when your calf rubs up against the transmission tunnel.

 Additionally I noticed the needle on the temperature gauge was creeping dangerously close to the red. It never actually overheated, I turned my heater on to help prevent it. The steering was more like herding the Jeep down the road, sawing back an forth on the wheel to keep it between the lines. I knew one of the anti-sway bar links was broken so this wasn't much of a surprise. Maybe 9 months or so before parking the Jeep I had all of the wheels balanced, and the alignment spot on, I had been battling the dreaded Death Wobble and thought I had it under control. It decided to come back and pretty severely on its drive home. All more things added to the list. Eventually we made it home and with no major issues.

I'll be watching this one, I would love to pick up an older Jeep to play around with! Can't wait to see where you go with this one...

Once I got it home, I continued to clean, while cleaning the driver side dash I noticed something in the vent, so I pulled the vent out. Sure enough, another one.


I know I still haven't found them all yet.

My first order of business was to figure out why it was running hot. I've got an aftermarket electric fan, no shroud, it's just flush mounted to the radiator, but it had never been an issue before. The electric fan has an adjustable thermostat and relay powering it. I adjusted the thermostat as low as it would go but made no difference. The radiator was replaced around '03-ish, as were the hoses, and thermostat, I didn't suspect those.

The original radiator split a plastic tank and caused me to have a really bad day. I replaced it with an all metal radiator and it had been great for years. I decided to flush/clean the coolant system. In the mean time I ordered a new water pump, and a slightly cooler thermostat. When I drained the coolant it was nasty, and a little on the thick side. I used a bottle of Zerex cleaner, followed the directions verbatim, I don't know if it actually did anything that plain old water wouldn't do. I noticed a few flakes of stuff got flushed out, but comparing the inside of the radiator before and after using the Zerex I can't tell a difference, same amount of scale build up as before.

Good news is that after flushing the coolant system the engine is no longer running hot, and I'm now debating whether or not to even bother with the thermostat and water pump.

I mentioned earlier that I had a broken anti-sway bar link. This was a fairly common problem for me, I seemed to break them every 18 months or so. I have a mild lift, and the stock links are at their limit. I never had an issue finding a stock replacement for free, and had built my own anti-sway bar disconnects for the stock links with some TSC hardware, so I was okay to just keep replacing the broken ones with others I knew would eventually break too. I actually found a spare stock link in the Jeep when cleaning up, I guess I had picked it up somewhere to fix the broken one, I don't remember when or where I got it. This thing:

Is supposed to be attach to that rusty looking ball on the anti-sway bar.

Instead of putting another link on I knew would fail again, I bought a pair of JKS quick disconnect links. WAY more beef than the stock links, and adjustable.

I set them approximately 1.75" longer than the stock ones.

While I was dealing with the anti-sway bar I decided that the bushings were ready to go too.

Energy Suspension has a cheap greasable bushing for the TJs.

While I had the anti-sway bar off it got cleaned up and a coat of paint too, Rust-Oleum hammered finish.

I squirted some Lucas Red 'N Tacky in all the grease zerks, and called the ant-sway bar repair/upgrade done. Huge improvement in the "herding" feeling of the steering, which should be expected going from basically not having an anti-sway bar to new bushings and beefy links.

nice work so far, following

I like this thread, consider me subscribed

Thanks, y'all, I hope I can live up to everyone's expectations.

• Lee

I had the steering mostly under control, Death Wobble still occasionally present, but significantly improved (I've got more up my sleeve for that) and I wasn't worried about it over heating anymore, so I wanted to work on some "creature comforts." Jeeps aren't known for creature comforts, but even mine was lacking in areas most other mall crawlers aren't, plus SWMBO didn't want to ride in it.

At this point it was fairly clean, though still has some stains in the neoprene seat covers. Any tips for removing stains from neoprene? I had driven it around town some, but it sounded like a tractor with the exhaust leak, the top was beyond needing replaced, and July in Arkansas with 130°+ floor boards was less than fun. I already had the new top patiently waiting to be installed, but before I did that I wanted to do something about the interior. Having driven it for so long with no carpet the floors were fairly beat up. Even though the TJ tub is galvanized I actually had a couple of rust spots, specifically in front of the gas peddle where my right heel rests while driving, and behind the passenger rear seat, I assume from people getting in and out there the most.

I decided I was going to go ahead and put bed liner in the tub of my Jeep. Bed liner would make the interior look 10x better, cut down on NVH, and hopefully help with those egg frying floor boards. I did a lot of research, and decided even with me doing all of the labor to remove the interior it was still more than I wanted to pay any of the "pros" to do, so I set my sights on the DIY bed liner market.

In preparation for lining my tub there were A LOT of other things that needed to be addressed, in addition to the rust spots. You see some years ago there was a teenaged version of Lee, and he seemed to be more concerned that his Jeep be a rolling jukebox than just about anything else. That makes sense right, 1,000s of dollars worth of car audio stuff in a soft top Jeep?

Well even though this dumb teenager had money for car audio stuff he didn't see the point in spending any on an alarm system, even living in a college town, and with friends that had their systems jacked. Instead this teenager decided to mount his amplifiers under the rear seat, secured by their mounting flanges with sheet metal screws directly to the floor. Then he cover the top of those screws/flanges with 1/4" plate secured with 1/2" carriage bolts through the floor. If someone wanted to take those amplifiers they were going to have to work for it. It's okay to drill 1/2" wallered out holes directly through your floor right? Sigh, present Lee is quite often at odds with things past Lee did. So the rear floor of Muffin looked like this, holes everywhere.

Big 1000W amp for the subs between the 2 rows of 3 big holes, and a smaller 300W (maybe?) amp for the components between the other 2 pair of holes. Up close of past Lee's nonsense. There were a few versions of "Muffin the Rolling Jukebox" prior to the carriage bolts and armor plating being installed, so there are plenty of other little holes from sheet metal screws and other amps in the floor too.

I'm laughing at young Lee. I like that you have to fix your own previous owner screw ups. Makes me giggle.
I think I mostly want one of these so I can mess about with it mechanically. I will enjoy living vicariously through old Lee.

In reply to mazdeuce:

Another real issue is that present Lee often isn't all that worried about what kind of mess he's creating for future Lee.

• Lee

Since I had all of these holes to plug I figured, "hey what's a few more little holes?" I never liked these tie-downs, I have zero recollection of ever using them for their intended purpose. I have more memories of them being in the way of various cargo, preventing me from laying things flat in the bed, and things catching on them as I attempted to slide them in and out of the bed. So I drilled out the rivets and removed every one of the little devils.

Then things started to get a little more serious.

A real bucket seat and all eleventy billion holes prepped for patching.

This is cool! I'm not a Jeep guy at all, but I like that you have an "underdog" Jeep that you're still putting blood, sweat, and tears into. Plus the old Lee/new Lee aspect is awesome. . I gotta ask, though, where did the name Muffin come from? I've been trying to figure it out...

In reply to sethmeister4:

Thanks! I didn't name Muffin, she was named by a good friend of mine (ex wife of one of my best friends). I used to go to Rocktoberfest at Byrd's Adventure Center in Cass, AR every year. It's a big off road park, and Rocktoberfest is a big event for fellow 4x4 and offroad enthusiast, competition, trail rides, entertainment, awesome raffle (I won a set of MRW beadlocks one year), camping, etc.

Said best friend, his (then) fiancé and I would go down to Rocktoberfest together most years, but usually as spectators. I got to be co-driver in competition a couple of years, but mostly we were on foot or bumming rides with others while there.

Finally I got up the gumption to take my own Jeep, the 3 of us piled in, all of our camping gear in and on the Jeep. On the ride down my friends were giving me a hard time, I basically had a Barbie Jeep compared to 90% of the other 4x4s that typically frequent Rocktoberfest, and they let me know it. Friend's ex asked me if my Jeep had a name? "Uhhh, no." She then asked if it was a boy Jeep or girl Jeep? With out hesitation I thought of how temperamental it was at times, all the money it had cost me, and said, "oh, it's a girl for sure." She pondered it a while, and said that, "Muffin sounded like a good name, Lee's little Muffin." I wasn't having any of it, and was a little annoyed that she was making fun of my Jeep while riding to the event in it, with me. Then my friend/her future husband started in, "Lee's little red Muffin, Lee's little red muff..." Yeah you can see where this is going. I fought it, but of course by the time we had camp set up all of our friends were joining in on the fun at my expense, Muffin this, Muffin that, and they knew that it was getting to me. Who needs enemies with friends like that huh?

Over the course of the weekend the name stuck, but I turned it around, and got them all to shut up when I started calling the Jeep Muffin. I decided to beat them at their own game, and embraced "Muffin."

So basically long story short, my Jeep is named Muffin because my friends are all shiny happy people.

• Lee

So I went to work plugging up all of the little holes. Giggity. SWMBO (who just so happens to be the greatest girl ever, no idea what she's doing with me) got me the most awesomest gift ever for Christmas last year, a Miller 211 MVP Autoset mig welder. I bought a Miller Digital Elite hood and have been putting it to work as often as I can, it's pretty much one of the coolest things ever. So the little holes were all cake.

The bigger holes were going to be a bit more of a challenge, they were all around 5/8" in diameter and some of the oblong ones were closer to 3/4" at their widest. I needed some patches. I got my hole saw kit out, and eyeballed different sized saws until I found one that looked about right.

I then proceeded to make a bunch of little medallions out of 16 gauge scrap I had laying around.

I was actually pretty pleased with how well they worked.

I had no delusions about my possible skills and ability to attempt to match the ribs of the bed and make it look as though no hole was ever there. I'm my own worst critic, but I did manage to convince myself, "it's a Jeep it's not supposed to be pretty," and knowing this was all going to be covered with textured bed liner helped too. Past Lee's Swiss Cheese Jeep tub was finally plugged up, and welds ground smooth, enough.

Hey, I think those welded up holes look pretty dang good.

Nice buddy!!! I love a good Jeep project, they are a pile of money, time, sweat, tears, happiness, disappointment, elation, blood, knuckle skin but when you are out on the trails balancing on 3 wheels on a boulder.....its worth everything!!

P.S. Nice work on the welded holes...I've been bugging SWMBO for years that my tool collection is incomplete without a welder.

Thanks y'all, I'm not a weldor, I've had a few classes, worked in a shop for a few years with some fellas that were absolute artists at laying beads. I know the concepts and practices fairly well, the execution however, is often very lacking. I can stick two pieces of metal together with little fear of the weld failing, it just isn't always going to be pretty.  

Since I had some of past Lee's mistakes patched up well enough, it was time to continue disassembling Muffin. I had friends that had their Jeep's tubs lined professionally that regretted not removing their roll cage before hand. I read a lot on line about folks claiming it wasn't worth the effort, unless your pulling the cage anyway don't bother, etc. I really didn't want to half ass this. I have no intentions of Muffin and I ever parting ways, and I couldn't fathom the days it would take me to tape off the roll cage to the point that I would be satisfied. So I decided everyone saying not to pull the cage were lazy and doing a half ass job, to paraphrase Homer Simpson, I intended to use my whole ass.

Jeep TJs are put together predominantly with varying sizes and styles of Torx fasteners. If you own a T15, T30, and T40 Torx bit you can just about disassemble the whole thing. I loathe Torx bolts. Things started out great, no trouble to speak of while removing all of the Torx bolts for the front seats, rear seat brackets, seat belt brackets, and even most of the roll cage. I had decent success sticking the Torx socket in the head of the bolt, giving it a solid whack with my bigger rubber mallet to make sure it was seated into the bolt well, through the paint on the bolt, then I put my long handled ratchet on the socket and apply slow steady pressure until the bolt breaks free.

I made it through about a 1/3 of the roll cage bolts until it happened, you know, either the socket was a little crooked, the bolt was a little weaker, or I was just having too much good luck. The socket suddenly turned freely in the Torx bolt and the bolt no longer had a Torx head, it was now a stripped out bastard head bolt. (Un)fortunately I've waged this war enough that I know most stripped bolts weakness, weld a nut to it.

Shortly after having to remove the stripped bolt I discovered that the roll cage has a pair of safety/tamper proof Torx bolts on each of the B pillars securing it to the sides of tub. These style Torx bolts have a little nipple sticking up in the middle preventing a regular Torx bit from fitting in it. You've got to have Torx bits with a hole in the center to fit over the nipple.

Wouldn't you know it, the biggest safety/tamepr proof Torx bit I own is a T20, of course that wasn't going to do me any good. I know you can often take a punch and hammer, and knock the nipple off of the tamper proof Torx bolts so a regular Torx socket will fit, but since I had already decided there was no way I was putting Torx fasteners back into the cage, I hit the tops of them with a flap wheel, and treated them just like I did the stripped bolt earlier. Weld a nut to the head and remove with impact gun. Take that you stupid Torx bolt!

The roll cage was finally free and there was much rejoicing!

I pulled the remaining drain plugs from the floor boards, got some more Simple Green and the garden hose, and then went to work cleaning up all of my grinding dust and the remaining 15 years worth of dirt that was hiding behind all of the brackets I had removed.

LMAO....

I loathe the Torx bolts....Ive had a Cherokee and a JK and I still don't know what fascist masochist ever decided that a Torx bolt belongs on a Jeep

I love how TJ's look without cages.

Nice project. Keep it coming, muffin man.

This thread makes me smile. Don't get bedliner on your hootus while you're putting it on your Muffin.

EastCoastMojo wrote: This thread makes me smile. Don't get bedliner on your hootus while you're putting it on your Muffin.

Hootus was safe thankfully, I even told SWMBO the hootus story while getting a very unpleasant denatured alcohol sponge bath on other extremities. I commented to her, "at least I didn't get any on my hootus, she said "huh?" laughed, and then I had to explain.

I haven't got to that part yet, but a little foreshadowing, don't apply bed liner in a shorts and tee shirt.

• Lee

I mentioned 130°+ floor board temperatures earlier, just in case anyone thought I was exaggerating. This was mid June, after sitting outside for a few hours, most surface temps were the same as ambient temps.

After allowing the Jeep to idle in the drive way for approximately 30 minutes.

That'll make your feet sweat. Since I had the top and roll cage removed, I was forced to clean the garage out enough that Muffin could reside there for a while. Unbeknownst to me at the time she would live topless in the garage for several weeks.