Dayum! life in the salt belt is tough! See them all day long in the Upull yards in "new" condition!

 

Boy you are not kidding.
I Just picked this up last year.
Factory tow hitch with the factory trailer harness and since I was there took the tail light harness too.



Had a little rust.



So I refreshed it a bit. Poured some Evapo-Rust in the tubes and then hit inside them with some
Eastwood Internal Frame Coating. Wire brushed the other parts and hit it with some POR 15.


Sad thing is I might not use it. I grabbed it cause it was there but I don't tow.
If it doesn't play nice with my rear tow hooks and gas tank skid I won't use it.
Won't know for sure till I try to put it on.

 

@Ralph77 - I'm surprised to see the towing specs in both French and English. We get that on pretty much everything in Canada but I don't see why it would be on a vehicle sold in the US. I can see that some people might like to have the specs in Metric as well as Imperial but that's probably not too many.

 

Never even noticed that. LOL.
IIRC it came off a 2WD '00. In a boneyard in CT.
Maybe it was a Canadian vehicle?
I would not know how tell except don't Canadian ones have DRL's?
Module or something over by the firewall on the passenger side?
Wasn't paying enough attention to the Jeep to notice if one was there or not.
Oh and a remembered another reason I might not use it.
In my quest for LED's in my '00 I ran across threads where guys were having problems.
Like brake light staying on and such I think.
One of the things that might have been causing this was the trailer hitch harness.
So if I have that problem not going to use it.
I care more about the LED's, rear tow hooks, and gas tank skid then I do about a trailer hitch.
Thinking I find the right person might be able to make some money if I sell it. LOL.

 

I just went and looked at an old pic of mine and sure enough, it had the same English/French sticker. Mine didn't come from the factory with the towing package, but it was dealer installed back in 2001.

 

The build sheets aren't consistent from year to year but they usually say something like "Built for the Canadian Market" and sometimes even identify the Zone. I have ones that say Ontario Zone 21 and Quebec Zone 22 for example. I imagine US and other market Jeeps probably have something similar. I don't know specifically what the differences are for ours but they would likely include metric gauges, decals in metric, DRL modules & wiring, etc. I read that all Canadian Jeeps came with a block heater. I don't know what years that would apply to or if it's even true but I have never bought a Jeep (8) that didn't have one.

I'm not sure when DRL's were first used but my '88 MJ & '89 XJ don't have them and my '03 TJ & '04 LJ do.

 

Interesting. Almost everything we buy in Canada has labels in both French and English. With paint for example, the joke is that at least we know what side to pour from! In other words, don't mess up the English side.

 

I’ll post some pics tomorrow, I’ve gutted underside from rear doos back. Starting needle scaling and wire wheeling in morning, then using POR 15 on it. Considering going with a Rockhard bumper. They wrap rear quarters and hitch is built in. Attaches by both nut strips and bumper mounts as well.
This is just a stock photo of bumper

 

Metric gauges. I should have thought of that.
I was crawling around the interior too cause it was Camel and looking for some usable parts.
I would like to think that I would have noticed if the cluster was in metric but......... LOL.

 

Check your grounds, don't look at it unscrew it and inspect it.

Can't stress enough, CHECK YOUR GROUNDS! Hopefully this solves some of it problems...


When they said check your grounds I didn't take them serious enough.... I'm learning a lot through overconfidence. You'd think with how OCD I am that I would've replaced these but I just didn't know any better. Now I've gone a little to far lol, I watched a video on how ground wires work and every single one of my grounds are now touching bare metal. I stripped the paint on every ground in the engine bay, added the wire with a bolt and then put dielectric grease over it so it doesn't rust.

Hopefully, that wasn't stupid and just enough overdone XD.

 

Well this my blank canvass start. Not as much progress as I would have liked, because spent most of morning plowing the 7” of snow I was gifted last night

 

Ha ha, thanks man. I'm on the mend now. Today I got out there and wired in the relay I'm about to use for my horn rocker switch. Side note, what a PITA relays are anyways. This Ebay special I got is a clear case relay, which I have never seen before.

I'll get out there tomorrow and make all the connections for the switch. I did notice that one of my horns was leaking water when I extracted it for trouble shooting, which has me concerned and thinking of alternate locations for that horn.

 

ZJ tie rod 👍

 

Speaking of ground wire connections.

Over the last couple of months, I have had a random p0740 code come up. I could make a 250 trip and not have a light and then it might come on every time you turn the key to "on". I refreshed my grounds, "scrunched" the wires going to the PCM and it would clear up......coincidence maybe or not.
So then this last week, I made a 120 mile trip and the light comes on, checked it and it was the p0740 code. I monitor my rpms and can usually tell if I am have torque converter lockup problems. (I run the same highway speed mostly and watch for what rpms I am turning all the time). This time, the rpms were higher then normal....so when I came to stop at a light, I would clear the code with my phone (BT connection). It would stay off until I shut it down and restarted. So I started clearing the code before I shut it down and would check for the check engine light before I actually started it, just turning the key to on.
Yep, as soon as I turned the key to on/accessory, the light would be there.
You would think the failure would be electrical, as the torque converter/engine was even moving and the code was generated. So I checked the grounds again and found them good and then for good measure checked the gray connector by the firewall and transmission fill tube. All looked good, except for the connectors look to have oxidation on the contacts. I got a pick and scratched/cleaned them up and connected them back up.

I have not had a check engine light since doing this and not had any indication the torque converter is not locking up.

Moral of the story is it is still the grounds that need to be maintained, and to keep the grounds good we have to make sure our connectors are not restricting the path to the ground!

 

Well, the rocker switch/horn relay install is finished. After some careful diagnosis I determined my "low" horn on the driver's side was too waterlogged to continue it's fight against all the puddles I like to run through. I'll have to buy another one.

At the risk of posing a stupid question before I Google it, has anyone made a horn for off road use and/or waterproof? Thinking off the top of my head that marine horns probably need waterproofing?