Ascent Overland

After all the messed up rust that was found in the old calipers and the sheer amount of wear and tear on the old units I decided to upgrade with some remanufactured power stops brake kits. Now, I first made the mistake of going the eBay route which I believe to be identical or close to the quality of these, but the customer service was horrible. No videos, instructions or anything at all, but it all boiled down to me sending an entirely functional kit back over a single clip as they refused to help me or even take the time to answer a phone call. Crazy... there’s a very specific break in process for these brakes, so when you upgrade, be sure to go through the process correctly to get the best outcome. Enjoy your upgraded stopping power!

The cost of the aftermarket CV’s was higher than I wanted to invest at this stage with the total project build goal of less than 12k including all of the gear I decided to rebuild the joints. It’s surprisingly straight forward with a bit of patience and mine were in basically perfect condition with the exception of new grease and removing some debris. Most of these jeep parts are actually well built and will easily outlast the vehicle itself. For example, you’ll notice I left the rust on the cast iron parts for now. My plan is to sand blast the entire under carriage in one shot to get rid of the all that Ohio

You honestly never have any idea what you’re going to run into with restoring a vehicle to not only be roadworthy, but to be capable and dependable as an off-road, cross country vehicle.

After tackling a big project, I find it very rewarding to get a few small wins. So, I ordered the cabin filter and went ahead and installed a carbon filter upgrade. For some reason Jeep didn’t think it would be super great to put a cabin filter on anything less than the Overland edition for this year model. An easy upgrade and I’ll feel much better knowing I’m not sucking down loads of dust on some of the dirt roads I plan on exploring with this amazing rig.