[moggie99]

Copied from another forum I use, this is the "story" of my 1996 ZJ 4L laredo here in Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates:

Cut and paste from another forum:

Sept 07 2011:

This was a bit of an impulse buy but it came from a friend, at a very attractive price, and was impossible to resist. It's done over 200,000km but seems to be in reasonably good condition mechanically and is practically rust free due to the climate here (see the shot of the wheel).

It's a "Laredo" spec and has most of the available options fitted - towing pack, Up Country suspension, skid plates etc. - basically everything that was available, with the exception of leather seats.

It came with a cracked radiator (see photo) but I picked up a new one at my local American parts shop - then took it back next day as they'd given me one for a V8 instead of the 6 cylinder engine. I have also treated it to a new pair of headlights (not yet fitted) because both of those on the car were shot - one had a corroded reflector and the other had melted when the bulb fell out! Hence the slightly "empty" look of the front end.

There's a package of bits on the way to me now - balljoints, CV boots, taigate gas struts, droplink bushes etc - so that I can give it a bit of a going over. Watch this space..............







It needs new front CV boots. It seems odd that a "live axle" setup has CV joints - I guess I'll have to get used to 4x4 technology - but it's actually a pretty clever setup.


This front anti-roll bar droplink is missing its bolt.


The radiator had this crack in the side tank

This is the new (wrong) one - not bad at about £90 including the transmission cooler


This is the right hand headlight - the American style bulb holder had fallen out and melted the bowl. The other headlight was a European type (H4 bulb) which had lost the silvering from the reflector. New glass headlights will be fitted this weekend.



I'm planning to fit the replacement radiator and headlights on thursday evening or failing that saturday. The other "goodies" should arrive in the post next week. I find it's often easier to buy small/light parts over the internet from the USA than try to explain complicated stuff in pidgin English to the local parts store chappie. However, postage costs would have doubled the cost of the radiator so big stuff will continue to be purchased locally. That said, I now have an electronic copy of the Jeep parts manual so can print out the page, complete with part numbers, and take that in with me.

I'm looking forward to getting really stuck into this.....

Oh yes - and the driver's seat isn't properly bolted in either, and had been driven like that for some time!

Sept 11 2001:

Well the radiator is in (along with a new pressure cap) and so are the headlights. The new lights are infinitely better than the old ones - especially the yellow plastic American one (which isn't meant to be yellow, but that's the effect of the sun out here). The lights need adjusting but that will have to wait until tonight.

I'm going to be sorting out fluids etc this week - I already have a new oil filter, 6 litres of synthetic oil, but need to get fresh oil for the transfer case and differentials plus some of the special (Chrysler/Jeep only) automatic transmission fluid. The air filter and ancilliary drive belt are done already (easy to do when the radiator was out!).

Some "drivetrain" work is next - front CV boots and several anti-roll bar drop links for a start.

Sept 12 2011:

Changed a number of blown lightbulbs
Adjusted headlights
Reattached torn seat mounting (heavy duty washer was used to spread the load where the mounting bolt had torn through the frame)
Degreased engine, engine bay, transmission and axles using STP degreaser and a jetwash. It still needs to be done again!

My box of bits has arrived from America so I now have CV boots, balljoints etc for dealing with the front end.

The engine bay is stained from being sprayed with rusty from the radiator leak - clearly there was no anti-freeze in there for some time!

[moggie99]

Sept 18 2011:

Unfortunately, having had to work over part of the weekend, I am not quite as far along as I'd hoped. Still, one major job has been done - CV boots.

The offending items looked like this. You can see that the torn one was full of dirt which I washed out using carb cleaner before regreasing.:



I like the clever design that allows the brake caliper AND disc to be removed without having to remove the caliper carrier:


The workshop manual talks about dismantling the front hub and bearings, balljoints and so on and I did some of that before realising that there was an easier way. The hub is held in with 3 bolts and if you remove them you can slide out the hub, brake dustshield, CV joint and half-shaft as one unit.



Then the old boot can be removed, grease cleaned out, new grease pushed in and a new boot fitted.



I then found that the boot-securing band fouled the axle, so it had to be removed and a heavy duty cable tie was fitted AFTER the shaft was back in.


The missing ARB droplink bolt was replaced, along with new bushes (they need to be removed, though, to fit a couple of washers). Steering and front end control are dramatically improved!


There was a grease nipple under all this - so that was cleaned up and the joint regreased, along with about 5 or 6 others


Just about ready for the roadworthiness test now.

[moggie99]

Oct 01 2011:

I did a bit more work on this today and made some progress in some areas, less in others.

On the negative side, I took out the heater controls to find out why the temp control goes round and round without coming up against the stops. The answer was: it's buggered. The temp control is via a rotary potentiometer and that had collapsed and was (I think) telling the heater to go full hot and recirculate all the time. So a "new" one is one the way - but until then, the system is still broken (hence the lack of progress).

On the plus side, this may explain why the heater matrix has been bypassed - when the control unit has been replaced, I'll reconnect the matrix and try it out.

Also on the plus side, I bought an overhead console with trip computer from Ebay USA for 1cent, plus postage. That still made it cheap and even better, most of the wiring is in place already in for the trip computer - because the engine management system and CANBUS process and output all the required data. I had to run 3 wires from the existing "vehicle information centre" and splice the lights into the existing loom.

I now have 4 overhead map/dome lights (instead of 2), somewhere to store sunglasses, a trip computer which gives fuel consumption, journey time, distance to empty, elapsed time and a compass! When I install the outside air temp sensor (on order at $16) I will also have the most useful info of all.

I've taken pictures but it's too late to put them up now.

I think I have a solution to my front doors failing to unlock on the central locking. It appears to be some sort of fault inside the combined latch/central locking mechanism. I could spend forever trying to fix it or spend a fortune on new latches but instead I bought a AED45 retro-fit central locking kit from the local Lulu supermarket and I should be able to use two of the four solenoids from that to operate the mechanical latches.

Oct 02 2011:

Here is a pic of the heater controls showing the potentiometer that broke, messing up the temp control (yellow arrow) and the lever that snapped and obviously caused some problem but I don't know what (pink arrow). I tried fixing both but no joy so a replacement heater control box is on the way.



This is the roof console - I know that it's grey and does not match the caramac-coloured headliner, but the headliner will need to be recovered soon so either the console will be changed to match the headliner or vice versa.


This is the interior part way through fiddling with the heater and doing the wiring for the trip computer. It's not as bad as it looks, honest.

[moggie99]

Oct 05 2011:

I forgot to put up a picture of the new headlights, so when I also replaced the missing foglight last night I decided to kill two birds with one stone.



I also changed the distributor cap, rotor arm and spark plugs but forgot to buy new leads so will try to do that tomorrow. I also cleaned the idle air valve - these get gunked up and cause erratic idling and as you can see, it was gunked up! It's nice and clean now, though (although I forgot to take a photo of that).


Most of the bulbs in the Vehicle Information Centre had blown - so I replaced these. This, though, is the most useless thing that you can imagine because it just lights up to show you which wheels have "drive". Sounds good until you think that the two options are 1) permanent 4 wheel drive and 2) Neutral. However, I think that if it was in Neutral, I might be able to tell WITHOUT the aid of the VIC!


To be fair, it does also tell me if I'm in Low ratio.


Oct 08 2011:

Yesterday the Jeep got new plug leads, along with the last of the six new copper core spark plugs, and the idle seems to be smoother now. I couldn't change that last plug until I had new leads handy as the old lead was falling apart.

I had hoped to do an oil change on both differentials today as well as changing both rear ARB droplinks (precautionary move) but as usual, my plans were slightly altered by events. I did manage to change the front differential oil and unfortunately found quite a lot of metal particles in there. I have no idea how old the oil is but it did look suspiciously like ATF in there rather than gear oil (red rather than gold coloured).

I carefully drained all the oil and used a can of carb cleaner to get it really clean inside. The gear faces on the diff and pinion look OK so hopefully it's just very old oil - or at worst, the axle shaft bearings as they are relatively easy to replace. I have put new oil of the correct grade in there and will check it in a few thousand km to see what's what. Changing the rear becomes a priority now!

Whilst under the car I found water dripping on my head and it looks like the water pump has sprung a leak. That's a bit of a nuisance because it would have been really easy to replace whilst the radiator was out (and in hindsight I should have done that as a precautionary measure). On the plus side, as an eternal pessimist, I had already ordered a new pump and it should be here tomorrow or the next day.

Not one of the better days! The rear anti-roll bar droplinks didn't get done, either!

My replacement heater control panel is winging its way across the Atlantic at the moment and I also won a climate control panel on ebay for 1 Cent - I'm hoping to be able to convert my standard aircon into a partial climate control system - at least with automatic temperature control if not with automatic air distribution.

[moggie99]

Oct 09 2011:

A box of bits (including water pump) arrived today. One other item in there was the ambient air temperature sensor that is used by the VIC and trip computer. Slotted straight in and worked perfectly - showing 34C at about 6.30pm.

When I get a towbar fitted, I'm tempted to make up one of these external wheel carriers as the boot loses a lot of space to the spare. It would be removable and I'd only use it when I really needed the boot space but it's quite a neat idea - although I'd have it sitting lower down so that it didn't obscure too much of the rear window. The photos are from http://www.jeepforum.com/forum

[moggie99]

Oct 11 2011:

I had a first proper look at the heater control panel that I bought and discovered that it's a slightly different design. The electrical connectors are the same but the construction of the box is different and so are the vacuum connectors. I'll have to spend a bit of time working it all out or try to get the correct one.

Oct 15 2011:

I had a slightly frustrating day yesterday.

I had a water leak from around the area of the water pump and so I got hold of a new pump, thermostat and gaskets and fitted them to the car. The old ones were, it has to be said, about as bad as I can ever remember seeing.




The thermostat housing was badly corroded, too.


I cleaned up all the rust, goo, knackered gaskets etc and it all went together well. However, whilst the pump and stat appear to be water tight I am still getting a drip from the bottom, front corner of the block by the bottom of the timing chain cover. So I'll going to have to pull that cover off to see where the water is coming from.




From what I can see there are no obvious weak spots there (such as core plugs) so there is a chance that there is some sort of breach in the water jacket that will have to be dealt with. Hopefully it will be fixable.......perhaps with some sealant or Chemical Metal or JB Weld.

This is the sensor for the outside air temperature - it's hidden by the grille when that's in place.

[moggie99]

Oct 14 2011:

A bit more progress.

I finally managed to remove the crank pulley/harmonic damper which REALLY put up a fight despite using the right type of puller. A ten minute job turned into 1 1/2 hours! This gives me a better view of the area and I can see that it looks like water is seeping out of one or two of the bolt holes at the top of the timing cover, diverted down the side of the cover by accumulated grease and grime and then dripping off the bottom of the block. Judging from the staining, it's been doing this for a while. The area under the pump now looks dry, because I cleaned up the grot and the water is now running down the front of the cover.

I ran out of time to remove the cover and as I have to help a friend with a job on her Chevy Astro van tomorrow evening, I may not get to look at this again until wednesday. In the meantime, the very dirty cover has been sprayed with degreaser and will be cleaned up properly before removal.

I'm expecting to find that someone has used over-long bolts and/or over-tightened them and broken through to the water jacket. I'm hoping that some sealer will fix it up. I'll also check out the timing chain whilst in there and swap that if necessary.

Oct 19 2011:

I think I've got to the bottom of it now - or should I say the top?

The water appeared to be coming from behind the timing cover or at least from the area around the join of the two so I pulled the cover off but could find no sign of a leak. What I did find was that the chain guide/tensioner had broken and had dropped into the bottom of the cover yet had somehow managed to avoid getting caught up in the chain and doing some damage (although I'm sure that it would just have been a matter of time). For reference the second shot shows where it should be fitted.




So, add new "tensioner/guide" to the shopping list.

Then, whilst cleaning off the old gaskets, I found the actual cause of the leak - a pinhole in the (rusty) heater return pipe that attaches to the water pump. I'd refitted the old pipe to the new pump - mistakenly, as it turns out! Somehow, the water had been tracking down the side of the pump unseen, only coming into view lower down. So, remove the pump and add "heater return pipe" to the list.



Whilst at it, I thought I'd play safe and do some more future proofing. I've no idea how old the hoses are so "bottom radiator hose" joined the list. Then I thought I'd see if my favourite parts shop could provide a new "thermostat housing/water outlet" so that went on the list too, along with the requisite gaskets.

More in hope than expectation, I set off to the shop this evening and..................they had it all in stock! The purchase prices are about the same as I would pay over the internet from the USA but I saved the shipping costs and got it immediately. RESULT!

I'm in a good mood tonight and aim to start putting it back together tomorrow.

[moggie99]

Oct 21 2011:

Well it's all back together and everything appears to be good. It's still just got plain water in there at the moment but that will be drained tomorrow and a proper anti-freeze solution put in instead.

I have now replaced all of the cooling system apart from the top radiator hose, heater hoses and heater matrix. They can wait for a while!

Oct 23 2011:

Well, I've used it for two days and nothing has fallen off yet.................

I bought some new side lights and indicators to brighten up the front. the old ones were yellowed, stained and cracked. The new ones were an absolute bargain from www.rockauto.com and have freshened up the front end noticeably. The orange section is just a reflector and the wrap-round lower section is the indicator, with orange bulbs fitted.




Here's how it was


The interior got a bit of a clean, too, although the worn-through leather on the steering wheel lets it down. It's on the "to do" list........

[moggie99]

Nov 19 2011:



These are the aftermarket door solenoids that I used to fix my central locking. I bought a kit of 4 from my local supermarket for AED 45 ($11), it came complete with all wiring but no instructions other than the worst wiring diagram ever seen. Unfortunately, it wasn't the straight swap that I was expecting............

The kit I got has 2-wire solenoids and uses one wire as the power and the other as the earth (ground) and the kit's control unit reverses the polarity to switch them from "open" to "close". Unfortunately the factory setup looked the same (2 wires) but isn't. It's really a 3-wire solenoid because although the factory fit ones have two wires, they also earth through the door, making them really a 3-wire unit. One wire receives the "open" signal and the other receives the "close" signal.

This meant that I had to use the kit's control unit, mounted in the driver's door, to switch the polarity and that made the wiring much harder to figure out. I even had to run cables all the way through the doors and under the dash to operate the front passenger door (also faulty). It works, though, and makes a nice, reassuring "clunk" when operated.

It would have been easier to buy a factory replacement unit but they are nearly $160 each and I needed 2 - plus I was already in possession of my $11 set and was damned if I was going to be beaten by this!

A 3-wire solenoid would be a direct fit with no messing about. There was just enough space to squeeze it into a hollow are of the door car. I was worried that if I pit it inside the door it would foul on the window regulator as it went up and down. I used existing holes for mounting, sacrificing one of the anti-rattle clips on the rod to provide one of the holes but the other was already a "spare" hole.

I repaired the broken door cars (more later) and have also recovered the sunvisors which had perished to the point that the cloth was in tatters - just like those on an old, sun damaged, mk1 800. Photos to follow.

The viscous coupling in the Quadratrac transfer case has failed, meaning that there is too much torque going to the front wheels, causing premature tyre wear. It's a known weak spot, costs AED5000 ($1200) for the parts locally or $450 plus shipping from the USA. However, the problem should be fixed next week by a local specialist who will fit a Selectrac part-time 4WD transfer box which should be a lot more robust and will cost me a hell of a lot less. He should also be fitting a towbar at the same time.

Normally, I would have bought the bits and done the job myself but my working are doesn't really suit that sort of job and it's a heavy piece of kit and I'm supposed to stay away from heavy weights after my heart problems last year!

[moggie99]

Something I forgot to mention before is the indicators (turn signals). You may recall that I replaced the original amber ones with clear ones bought from www.rockauto.com for about $8 each but they were slightly different fron the originals because they had two holes for fitting bulbs rather than the original's single hole. The original bulb holder fits the hole on the front but the one on the side was smaller. I didn't have any spare bulb holders so opened the hole out and squeezed in a larger, orange bulb and then used silicon sealant to hold it in place. Once the wiring was spliced into the original loom I had twice as much light from the indicator. Not the prettiest job behind the scenes, but it looks OK from outside!





Yesterday I fitted polyurethane bushes to the anti-roll bar/sway bar/stabiliser bar (what you call it depends upon where you come from!). The difference is HUGE and the Jeep rocks and rolls a lot less in corners than it used to. The bushes were part of a kit from Prothane and I now have to find the time to fit the remainder of the kit to the control arms and track bars. There will be some loss of ride confort on the road but I think that's a fair trade off for more secure handling. Whilst talking of suspension, it's oof to Mehran's place on saturday to have new shocks fitted all round and (hopefully) get lifted by about 2". then it will be time for some bigger tyres, followed by something else and something else and something else...........hobbies can be expensive!

[moggie99]

Full set of polybushes:




New towbar with removable hitch.


One bonus - whilst the Jeep was at the workshop having the new transfer box and towbar fitted, they resprayed my rear pillar vents without me even asking. A nice freebie that tidied up some scruffy, flaky paintwork.

[moggie99]

Now lifted and fitted with heavy duty shocks. Combined with the polybushes in the anti-roll bars (sway bars for those from the wrong side of the Atlantic), the effect on the handling is amazing. I'll find out soon enough how it goes on sand.

I'm just about where I want to be with the Jeep now. The list of improvements is really down to 3 or 4:

Slightly bigger tyres
Dodge Neon injectors
Lightbar on the roof - under construction now.

Repairs/renovations still needed:
Headlining replacement/recover
Small paint chips and fading
Brake fluid change
Engine bay tidy up

I'm getting there.....

[moggie99]

Front and rear polybushes fitted to the ARBs:



Heavy duty front and rear shocks:



2" lift (on top of the 1" lift done by Jeep when it was built)


How it was:


Very pleased with the results - on and off-road

[moggie99]

Time for some more updates:

14th December 2011:

A couple of hours of dune bashing after work - very pleasant.




I got sick of the inside filling up with sand, so whilst doing a couple of other jobs, I set to and made a DIY cabin filter. The material used is a synthetic wadding/padding used in clothes making and was a handily sized offcut that Mrs M had handy. I have seen people do this using the filter from a cooker hood but I reckon that it would block up with the sand we have here. The photos aren't great - the job was done after sunset, using electric light and taking pics with a mobile phone.

First I removed the wiper arms and scuttle panel. For all 800 owners, it's worth noting that the scuttle panel is rot-proof plastic, not badly painted steel! You can then see the pathetic grille used by Jeep - it wouldn't stop anything smaller than a marble.



With the grille removed, you can see the sand inside the plenum. It was about 2mm thick and was easily picked up by the blower. I had to remove all this, of course.



The wadding was roughly trimmed and fixed in place on the grille with cable ties before refitting the grille to the bulkhead. Scuttle and wipers back on and we're good to go.


It certainly seems to work well enough.

Other jobs done recently are fitting upgraded injectors (supposedly better power and economy although I've not really seen any difference), doing a better wiring job on the roof lights as well as fitting better lights and fitting a better stereo than the rubbish JVC unit that was in there. I've still got to finish off fitting those suspension bushes........

[moggie99]

Jan 30th 2012:

few more updates:

I managed to get most of the front polybushes fitted last weekend - a bit of a job as you have to drill out the old rubber bushes and reuse the metal sleeves (that means burning out the remaining bits of rubber with a blowtorch!). Still, job done and the front end feels more secure now, and is quieter than with the old, worn out bushes. Of course, there's something else now - a worn balljoint on the track bar (which controls the axle's left/right movement) so that's another trip to the parts shop to come later. Whilst I had the front end in bits, I fitted new brake discs and pads and these make a significant difference - I think that the old pads may have been a bit glazed.




On the last off-road trip I managed to hit a rock and damage the rim of one of the alloy wheels. I didn't see this until I was doing the bushes, so happy co-incidence there! Ironically, the damage wasn't done whilst really off-road but whilst driving down a gatch track which had a few random lumps of limestone scattered around.


Being an alloy wheel I'm not comfortable with the idea of bashing it back into shape, so I took the opportunity to buy a good second hand set of 4 of these "GT" alloys from a Jeep owner here and that means that I'll swap my tyres over and use on of the original Jeep alloys as the spare. The picture isn't mine, it's just to show the type of wheel. By the way, I now have wider tyres - 255/70 x 15" Cooper Cobra GTs - which I got from Al Jameel tyres in Saniya. The price seemed good and I feel a lot happier on tyres that DON'T have cracked sidewalls!

However, I've now found a worn balljoint in the front trackbar so that will need to be changed. I've no idea how old the one on there is but a replacement was only AED140 ($37)from Al Ahlia in Sanayia and fitting it is easy enough. The old balljoint really looked ready to fail at any time.