Brad Gross's '89 Jeep Wrangler

As I got more and more extreme I soon found out that the carb. on that 258 / 4.2L I-6 was the pits. It was time for fuel injection. I had Vern at JFI (Plano, TX) put on the JFI fuel injection kit. Now the motor purrs no matter what angle I'm on...and it's 50-state legal, too! While at Vern's I decided that a 2" body lift would be nice, plus it would allow me to run larger tires.

Well I soon found the limit of my 31" tires, so I decided to go with some 33x12.50 BFG M/T's. I went with some black Rockcrawler "Steel is Real" wheels and mounted them right up. I wheeled like that for awhile, went up to Colorado and tackled some extreme trails. Lance Gilbert from 4Wheel Parts Wholesalers (Ft. Worth store), my dad (trailname "VideoDad") and I did the Holy Cross Trail. It was great!

The day after that I went over to Camp Jeep and ran Pucker Canyon with Joe Schaeff from Stage West and some great local wheelers. Out of the 2,500 vehicles registered at Camp Jeep only two other vehicles plus mine signed up for this extreme run. I was disappointed by the lack of hardcore rigs / drivers at Camp Jeep. But we had a blast, regardless. We had one of the trail leaders (Scott) roll onto his side in his CJ-5, but he was able to drive out. It was pretty hairy! I had a really close roll-over on Pucker Canyon, hence the name of my Jeep: PUCKER.

Back home in Texas I really noticed that the springs were sagging. The rear springs were actually inverted, so it was ime for that big lift. I went with the Trailmaster 3" lift springs, Pro-Comp shocks and Currie shackles - using the Boomerang shackles in the rear.

Now that I had the lift, I ran into another problem...really bad driveshaft angle! I thought about going with the Slip Yoke Eliminator (SYE) kit that some of my buddies had done, but I also wanted a super low-range as well. I decided on the Atlas II 4.3:1 low-range transfer case with the twin-stick shifters. It was an easy bolt-in, I measured the driveshaft lengths and had The Off-Road Shop in Dallas fab me a rear C/V shaft along with cutting down my front HD shaft.

PUCKER was ready to roll! That low-range is incredible! My crawl ratio in low-range in first gear with the 4.56 diffs is right at 75:1, which is perfect for the terrain I frequent.

I make quite a few trips to Clayton, OK, Hot Springs, AR, a local area called 360 and I try to do a long-haul trip at least once a year. During a trip to Clayton during Spring of '99 I grenaded the rear ARB, along with damaging the pinion gear. As a temporary fix I went back with new 4.56's and a Detroit Locker in the rear. A few weeks later the front ARB blew as well, so, again, as a temporary fix I went with the Detroit Locker.

I knew that it was just temporary, especially with the addition of 36x12.50 Super Swamper TSL's. I broke quite a few axleshafts, as well as front axle U-joints. Enough was enough and I wanted BEEF. After doing some research I decided to have Tom Ellistion at Sunray Engineering (Weatherford, TX) do the build-up on PUCKER. I dropped the Jeep off at Tom's in February and picked it up right before I left for a 3-week journey in the Utah wilderness mecca...MOAB!

Here's what I went with:
Front Axle Assembly: 9" Ford nodular housing/Dana 60 hybrid, 35-spline throughout, Dana 60 inner axles shafts, Dana 70 outers. 4.88 ring and pinion with a Detroit Locker, and Warn premium 1 ton hubs. Stopping chores are handled by '80 K5 Blazer disks. The tie-rod has been moved to the back of the front-diff (rear steering) to keep it out of harm's way.

Rear Axle Assembly: 9" Ford nodular housing, 35 spline Moser axleshafts, 4.88 ring and pinion with a Detroit Locker. Stopping duties handled by '79 Lincoln Mark V disk brakes. The driveshaft is connected to a 1350 steel pinion yoke.

While Tom was building the axles I decided that I wanted more lift, so I went with a SOA set-up. To limit axle-wrap I had a custom link / ladder bar that attaches to the rear axle and a crossmember that is incorporated into the transfer-case skidplate, which works very well! Flex is very good. On a 20 degree ramp I score a 1,200. I could probably get a little more with some tweaking, but PUCKER performs quite well.

Since I had beefed axles and more clearance, I decided it was time to step-up to the last stage of modification (well, for now anyway). I went with 15x10 steel Rockcrawlers and had Tom weld beadlocks on them. Tires are 38.5x14.50 TSL-SX's. With this much tire the front axle had to be relocated 1.5" forward to allow for fender clearance. The additional wheelbase is great, especially during those wheelies!

Well, back to the trip about Moab that I built my Jeep for. It was great! It was my first time there. I spent three weeks there and ran the last week with the Easter Jeep Safari. I ran some great trails and got the Jeep into some interesting positions on The Escalator on Hell's Revenge. Our group is going back next year, for sure.

That's about it for now. Thanks for reading this far.

To see more photos of PUCKER, click here