My M.U.L.E.

[winchy_woman]

Hey everyone! I thought I'd share some progress my husband and I have made on my '14 Limited. I named it M.U.L.E. from an old video game I played as a kid; it stands for Multiple Use Labor Element. It's the family car, the camping car, the haul-all-the-crap car... Plus you know, mules.

Anyway, here she is right when we bought her:

At about 6 months old there was some pretty bad hail damage done and she spent about 5 months in the shop (mostly because those guys didn't know diddly about painting a metallic color... Whatever)

Then I quickly discovered that curbs aren't very friendly to the fancy 20" wheels that the limiteds come with. Nice yellow spare...

Took her to Moab, UT and did a few little trails. It was this trip that made me decide to start changing things.

First to go were the running boards. I scraped everything on those. Next I studied my butt off and got my ham radio license, so it was time to install a mobile radio:

Lots of velcro thanks to some forum help got my radio nice and snug under the driver seat.

Ran the antenna wire through the big grommet near my pedals and installed next to the hood. The wires ran along the side of the car under the plastic.

Right now I just got WHEELS! Konig six shooter 17x8" wheels polished with gun metal accents. They get wrapped in BFGoodrich 275 All-Terrains on Tuesday.

They were being phased out so I got a good deal. A few blemishes here and there but nothing worse than the rock rash I already put on the 20" stock ones. I'll update with some new pics when the tires get installed, in the mean time here's what she looks like right now:

Future plans include some rock sliders/different running boards. Gobi Rack. Pelfreybilt front bumper. Thinking about sticking with a gunmetal powder coating color on all the things, just to be a bit softer than black. Some sort of lift. Maybe a rear bumper someday, but we'll stick with that for now!

 

[winchy_woman]

Wheels and tires done! Had some rubbing so we cut off some fender liner and took the mud flaps off.

 

[Saxainpdx]

I named it M.U.L.E. from an old video game I played as a kid; it stands for Multiple Use Labor Element.

Looks nice! but crap! Now the theme song is stuck in my head. Used to play on my Commodore 64 and 128, and in a C64 emulator. This web version wasn't bad, but haven't looked at it in awhile. Time for a game I guess. Great name!

Planet M.U.L.E.

 

[T4RZAN]

Looking awesome! Excited to see what the pelfrey bumper looks like on this. I don't think I've seen one on a Limited!

 

[LandCruiser]

I didn't even have to look at your license plate to know you're from Colorado when you said bad hail.

 

[winchy_woman]

Resized images.

Thanks guys! I still have rubbing in reverse, we're gonna work on that some more. I think it's because the Limited bumper is so much larger.

 

[clweathers]

That does it for me, my running boards have got to go now. :biggrin1:

 

[winchy_woman]

OMGOMGOMG

 

[jawkdna]

What bumper is that!?!? I need it!

 

[winchy_woman]

What bumper is that!?!? I need it!

Pelfreybilt

Got it for cheaper from a friend who decided to take a different path.

Edit: forgot a letter

 

[samobius]

Adding a pic of the Yaesu remote mount faceplate since the transceiver is kind of boring

The Larsen dual band antenna. Not sure if I'm crazy about this mount. It's a PL-259 drilled out to hold an NMO fixture. 1.1 SWR though so it's hard to complain about that. (and probably the reason I haven't touched it)

 

[TheDozer]

OMGOMGOMG

Can't wait to see the pics of it installed. :naughty::naughty::naughty::naughty::naughty:

 

[samobius]

Given that the M.U.L.E. is our family car and we travel a lot in the winter, I'm going to donate the winch off my Jeep to the cause.

Now I need to find out what people are doing for winch controls...

 

[winchy_woman]

Bumper is coming along. Painted it black for now, we may try to match the blizzard pearl in the spring. We'll see! It's not finished yet, we still need to figure out some winch issues, raise it up a bit more, see if we can drill holes for the parking sensors, etc. But I thought I'd show a progress pic!

 

[samobius]

The winch solenoid box won't fit on top of the winch because the AC lines run right across that area. We're going to relocate the box under the hood.

The handle for the clutch release also interferes, so we'll need to figure out a solution there; either seeing if we can rotate it, or bend it down a little.

The latest idea is to do a gunmetal gray wrap on the bumper, nose piece, fender flairs, side skirt rear bumper and maybe spoiler just to tie everything together. But we'll probably leave the colors as is for a few months while we recuperate financially.

 

[bane]

A 5th Gen in OG Ivan "The Ironman" Stewart race colors would be glorious. You have an opportunity here. I'm just saying.

edit: apparently that was a 2wd Ford Ranger with a 4Runner body that Stewart would drive for pre-running.

 

[winchy_woman]

I want to relocate the windshield washer fluid tub and lines, any good kits out there?

 

[samobius]

Finally got the winch finished up. I had to fab a bracket to relocate the solenoid box. Relocating the solenoid box meant lengthening the cables to the winch.

To fill the fog light holes, we've decided on Rigid fog lights. Still trying to decide on light bars.

 

[winchy_woman]

We got the winch finished, grill put on, lights installed and wired... A few tweaks left but it's functional!

 

[Ray Dunakin]

Looks great! Beautiful photo, too.