jeepin.jason

Definitely not my favorite Jeep to come out of SEMA, nor the most noteworthy, but I felt this little rig should at least get a mention since it will be joining its other Jeep bretheren on dealer lots soon. The kinda sad part is that to look like this, they put a 2.5” lift on it (on a JK, that’ll fit you 35’s)...

Specs after the jump.

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Jeep’s other hot JK Wrangler being show at SEMA is this slick silver Unlimited sporting a 3.0L Bluetec diesel powerplant. Check it out!

Jeep® Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon

• Builders: Jeep Truck Engineering-Design Aid Build Shops


• 3.0L Common Rail Diesel


• 230 horsepower and 390 lbs-ft. of torque at @ 2,800 rpm

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Hot off the press at Chryler’s media-only blog, we bring you the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon King SEMA vehicle. Here’s what they had to say:

“Basically, the vehicle is stripped of everything you don’t need. It’s stripped down for rock crawling. They even took the radio out,” said Mark Allen, senior manager of Jeep Truck Design Studio.

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Thanks to car guru Jalopnik, we’ve got an advanced look and info on a pair of highly customized JK Wranglers set to debut at SEMA next week.

Posted to his flickr acount, Jalopnik shows off about 8 photos of a silver Rubicon Unlimited sporting a CRD powerplant and custom hood, bumpers, paint, and interior trim. Check out more info on this one-of-a-kind Unlimited in Jalopnik’s blog entry. You can see more pics of it here.

The second JK is a blaze-orange 2-dr Rubicon with trimmed fenders and grille, the same heat-reduction hood as on the CRD Unlimited, Jeep bead-locked rims, and massive BFG Krawler tires. Unfortunately we’re not given any more info on the orange rig other than what you can discern from the photos. And speaking of the photos, you can see more of them here.

These two rigs appear to be the result of the combined efforts of Jeep’s own Skunkwerks and AEV Converisons.

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Is the infamous Dana35 finally dead? Looks like it. Despite the fact that initial press releases stated that a completely revised (30-spline, non-c-clip) Dana35 would be the standard rear axle on non-Rubicon 2-dr JK Wranglers, Jeep engineers at a recent info session at Michigan Tech stated that the Dana35 rear axle had been discontinued and that all JK Wranglers would come equipped with the also-revised Dana44 axle. Jeep.com’s 2007 Wrangler section seems to confirm this by listing only the next-gen Dana44 as the rear axle for all JK Wranglers.

The funny thing is, at least at the time of writing this, even though the next-gen D44 is the only one in the list of rear axles on the online spec page, it’s marked as ‘Not Avaiable’ for non-Rubicon 2-dr Wranglers. Considering the Chrysler Group’s recent history of having incorrect, incomplete, or contradictory specs listed on their websites, this really shouldn’t be all that surprising though…

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Cummins Inc. announced in a press release today that they will be starting a new line of light-duty diesel engines. The new engines wil be produced in their Columbus, IN, plant and preperation for the new line is planned to start mid next year with production starting by 2010.

The press release states that DaimlerChrylser will be the main customer for the new line of engines, which will be intended for vehicles with a GVWR “below 8,500 pounds”. That’s not being very specific though since the only Dodge vehicles with a GVWR over 8,500 pounds are the Ram 2500/3500 Heavy-Duty trucks and the Dodge Sprinter (which apparently already has a 2.7L CDI turbodiesel motor available).

Considering that DCX is putting their new Mercedes-sourced 3.0L BLUETEC CRD motors into the 2007 Jeep Grand Cheroke and 2007 Jeep Commander it seems unlikely to me that these vehicles would get the light-duty Cummins after only 3 years with the Benz motor, but the US-spec 2.8L CRD Jeep Liberty was only produced for 2 years, so anything can happen I guess.

The 2007 Jeep Wrangler JK has an at-best GVWR of only about 5,340 pounds for a Rubicon Unlimited (DCX hasn’t explicitly stated the GVWR of the new JK Wranglers yet), which is fairly light compared to the 6,400# GVWR of the Commander, the 6,700# GVWR of the Durnago/Aspen, and the 6,800# GVWR of the Ram 1500. So as much as I, and probably you, and tons of other Jeep fans, would love to see a diesel Wrangler, I think we’ll only see the light-duty Cummins motors in the Ram 1500 and the Durango/Aspen. I sure hope I’m wrong though.

You can read the complete Cummins press release here.

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TeraFlex has released their new product guide (pdf link) for the new 2007 Jeep JK Wranglers. The guide shows off their new suspension kits which range from 2.5 – 6”, swaybar disconnects, single and dual-rate S/T swaybar systems, control arms, trackbars, wheel spacers and adapters, front/rear bumpers, and rocker guards. It also mentions a gas tank skid plate and CB antenna mount as products that are “Coming Soon”.

The pics in the guide are relatively low quality but the photo showing the 6” lift ‘looks’ real, even though the color of the Jeep is oviously photoshopped (along with the colors of most of the other JK images from Tera – their JK Unlimited is white, they just photoshop the images to change the color).

While Tera isn’t the first company to market with suspension components and bumpers for the new JK Wrangler, they are the first to release info on rocker guards and it looks like they’re currently offering the largest selection of suspension components and overall products for the JK by a single company.

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