It is currently Sat Apr 20, 2024 12:17 am

All times are UTC - 5 hours [ DST ]




Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 1 post ] 
Author Message
 Post subject: Been Lurking on Here for a While... KJ Owner from NY!
PostPosted: Tue Nov 01, 2016 2:25 pm 
Offline
LOST Newbie

Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2016 7:12 pm
Posts: 4
Hello everyone,

My name is Brian and I am the second owner of my 2004 Jeep Liberty KJ Sport. When I got the car a year ago it was a hand me down with 65,000 miles on it. Since then I've put 25,000 miles on it driving all over God's creation. As a lot of you may know, the KJ has a nasty reputation as being a car for soccer moms. I decided that wasn't going to be the reputation for my jeep. I've always been interested in technology and engineering so I figured this was my chance to explore all the routes I could ever want on a car that I could call my own. It started with the absolute garbage stock stereo system that was in the car. I fixed that with a new head unit, two 10 inch sub-woofers, new dash speakers, and new door speakers. I had an awesome experience whenever I listened to music from that point on. After that I decided to do what everyone says is a good first mod and replace the air intake. I know there are a lot of mixed feelings about this but I didn't know what I was doing and it was fun. After a while of driving the car like this I developed an itch for speed. A couple of friends of mine started driving things like the Subaru WRX and Volkswagen GTI. Sitting in the passenger seats of these cars made me want something that could leave me pinned to the seat too. The first real step towards this feeling was to send my throttle body out to get CNC machined out. After this I swapped my rear and front gear ratios to 4.10, leaving the tires at their stock size. After doing this I decided I needed to get my PCM programmed to really take advantage of the airflow being delivered to the motor. I sent the PCM away to B&G performance to get tuned. The day I sent it away I made a big decision that changed everything with my vehicle - for better or worse is up to you but I know my opinion on the matter. I called up B&G and told them instead of advancing the timing like normal people do to make more power I wanted them to retard the timing a few degrees. I needed them to do this so I could enact my grand scheme of running nitrous oxide on my motor. I bought a wet kit, set it up on my vehicle, swapped out my spark plugs, and filled up the bottle. As a precaution I decided I needed to swap out my pistons (3.7 has ring position issues). I read up on taking apart and rebuilding my 3.7L motor and set out to do it. I had new pistons, bearings, gaskets, seals, and rings to install. I brought the car over to a friend's college (he's studying automotive technology) and we pulled the engine. We took everything apart and had it back together in a couple days. After I could verify my rebuild/build was working to spec it was time to try out the nitrous. I had the kit jetted to spray a 50 HP shot of nitrous right into the throttle body. The day I hit that button was the day I was finally happy with my car. The comments I get on my crazy creation are overwhelmingly positive to my surprise. A lot of people respect my sleeper liberty and all its quirks. Since then I've installed an 800 watt power inverter in the back of the car and a roof basket to carry all the cargo normal people put in the back. Unfortunately because of the power inverter, nitrous bottle, and sub-woofer box I have no room back there. I have had an awesome experience with my car over my past year of ownership and despite all the jeep reliability jokes the only thing that's gone wrong has been a radiator leak. I patiently await the day I have to replace my transmission which is a hilariously stock 42RLE living behind a nitrous oxide boosted V6. If there's one thing I took away from this whole project is that no matter what car you own there is always a way to have a ton of fun in it.

Thanks for reading,
Brian

_________________
Image
~~~~~~~~~~
04 KJ Sport:
~~~~~~~~~~

K&N FPIK, Fastman Throttle Body, 4.10 Gears, B&G PCM Tune, Hyperutetic Pistons, 50 HP Wet Shot, Lots O Fun!
~~~~~~~~~~
Click For Full Size Picture!
~~~~~~~~~~


Top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 1 post ] 

All times are UTC - 5 hours [ DST ]


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 19 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group. Color scheme by ColorizeIt!
Logo by pixeldecals.com