My 1999 Vehicross, "Silvia", progress thread

[Marlin]

I love being a pack rat sometimes with car parts lol. I had a 91' Suburban parts truck awhile back and I grabbed this neat little light assembly from under the hood:



!

I hate you!!!!! I scoured over dozens of old F100s, old Cherokees, and burbs for one of those!! I have been searching for ever a year at the yards. They are always gone, or busted. I will have one
I want to replace the bulb with an LED cluster. That way if I leave it on, no worries.
Good find man.

[RamAirZ]

Thanks man. I'm planning on putting an LED cluster bulb in there as well. Put my new 8500K H4's in today, got to use them on the way home from work, man do they light the road up good!

[RamAirZ]

Well this weekend I decided to start tearing Silvia apart to replace the Upper/Lower Ball Joints, install my low-profile droop snubbers, Mecatech CV boots, greasable sway bar bushings and also installed my aluminum gauge trim panel to make my stock gauges match my new ones in the dash.



Pulled off the entire spindle to make getting to everything easy





Check out those NASTY!!! CV boots lol, talk about torn.





I cleaned out all of the old grease and got the shaft ready for the new boots (didn't even have to remove the shaft!, gotta love the cone tool)





New boot on with shaft still in the truck



Got everything back together with the new joints (with an upper ball joint flip) and snubber, now she's ready to go!











Truck is a little muddy from playing on a trail near my house. She's all buttoned up now and ready to go now. Took her out for a quick romp earlier and all sounds/feels good. I need to put the sway bar bushings on today, it got late last night finishing everything else (had to wait until wife and kids were asleep to get work done uninterrupted lol)

[BigMeatVX]

I love being a pack rat sometimes with car parts lol. I had a 91' Suburban parts truck awhile back and I grabbed this neat little light assembly from under the hood:



It has an on/off switch and a retractable cord. Well I was thinking about mounting it under the hood but couldn't find a real good place for it, then I got a bright idea, I'll mount it in the rear cargo area, above the drivers side cubby hole. It'll be tucked up out of the way, can turn the light on when needed at night, and the cord is SUPER long and I can run it all the way to the engine bay with plenty of slack to use it as a flashlight if needed or just have it hanging from the hood. Probably be a few days before I actually mount it up but thought I'd post my find!

I have the same light! They work awesome....
You left out the BEST part tho....not only do they have a long retractable cord, buit also the base of the light is MAGNETIC allowing it to stick to various places while useing the light...like the hood, shouldn't have to have it"hanging there"?

[RamAirZ]

Mine isn't magnetic That's probably why I didn't mention it lol,. is there a magnet stuck to the back of the light? I have some "residue" that looks like it could be glue from something that used to be on the back of the light. I got jipped! oh well, I'll just buy a stick on magnet lol

[BigMeatVX]

Hmmm I ASSumed they all were magnetic...

Mine has a circular magnet epoxyed (I guess) into the reccessed area on the underside of the light.... It seems to be a fairly strong magnet.

Nice addition for sure...

[RamAirZ]

Ya I think mine must have came off at some point or someone took it off, I can see where it was. I'll just buy one, good tip though thanks!

[RamAirZ]

Well decided to go exploring today and found a few mud holes, nothing really to "climb" on except this hill lol. The one pic with the right rear tire stuffing, I tripped on a root so it's a little tilted haha. I kept it just because it showed the rear tire.













And all the ruts are mine lol, I played in it for a bit, stupid cladding catches most of the mud haha

[Marlin]

Looks a lot like Ocala scrub brush.

[RamAirZ]

Ya it's Florida crap is what it is lol. Still had some fun just driving around but not a whole lot to play on, just mud pits every so often

[JAMAS]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Retra...Q5fAccessories

http://www.latemodelrestoration.com/item/CTP-15702A

http://www.pfyc.com/pc/GN3007/GPLIGH...ood+Light.html

http://www.justforjeeps.com/underhoodlight.html

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...d=400123311391

light bulb replacement
http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-b...specs%2F67.htm

[RamAirZ]

For a second I was like SPAM?

[JAMAS]

ha.....just trying to work the google on the internet machine.

[RamAirZ]

lol ya I gotcha. I opened it and was like, should I click these then saw the "underhoodlight" part in one of the links and knew what it was

[RamAirZ]

I went with my buddy Chase and his friend William today and found a nice little spot. But MAN getting up this one hill was a PITA! The ground was like powder. I got stuck once up to the door and backed out after a little digging and got a run at it and almost made it to a "hard" patch on the left with a little trail but Williams Jeep got stuck and I had to stop. I made it further than he did on his first try with lockers lol. I wanna go back again and try it soon and see if I can make it all the way up, we had to both be winched up the hill it was THAT bad lol. My buddy Chase has some awesome pics of my truck but these are what I got for now:

My riding buddy:








Beautiful spring water running through this creek. Both of these hills were pretty damn steep, especially for Florida!


Airing the Jeep down some more


Hooking the winch up




My 2nd run at it got pretty far up without digging in (mud tires and sand=suck)


Going through some tight trails, scratched the **** out of my truck and have an inside full of leaves and twigs from crap coming through the sunroof lol






Chase has some sweet pics of me coming up the hill the 2nd time and going through this tight area with the side of my truck basically on a wall. Hopefully he sends me the pics soon. The only part that made me sad today (don't care about scratches or the CV's making noise), the stupid silver receiver trim on my hitch came off I liked that lol. The Jeep guy was impressed with the VX today, especially after making it up that hill the 2nd time. We plan on going back again and trying to make it without a winch lol. Your feet sunk just walking through the crap. He is actually a "nice" Jeep owner, not one of the douchebags. He invited me to come with him to some other places around here and might get some free parts to do a solid axle conversion up front from him too lol, if I decide to do that instead of getting new CV's and dropping the diff.