Interview Josh Pocket Change LJ

(laughing) So yeah, so I loaded all this on the Gooseneck and everything, I strapped tires down and I drive the Jeep, it was six and a half hours one way. And my dad sees like, "Yeah, it's gonna take you a solid six and a half." I was like, "Nah, I can make it faster than that." You know, so I pull up and I get there. And I look at the time and I'm like, "Ha!" And of course I'm looking at my phone which automatically updates via satellite, right?

So I call my dad and I'm like, "I told you I'd make it faster than that. I made it in five hours." He said, "You went through a time change, didn't you?" - I was just gonna say, you went through a time change, didn't you? - Right? I had no idea. I show up and I drop the Jeep off. And again, me and Jim was talked for several hours, hours and minutes. And so we agreed that this was the timeframe, this is when we were gonna have it done. This is another thing. So he did the Artec truss, both front and back

and did the whole axle swap and everything like that. The four and a half inch X Factor rock crawler long arm suspension with the coil over fronts,

which was a nightmare in itself because one of my stipulations to Chambliss was that I wanted the center of gravity as low as possible. I didn't want to monster truck cheap. So I had to get taller towers from Artec

to weld to the frame so the coilovers would sit higher in the motor bay and lower the overall height of the vehicle. - So let me jump in here. You're giving us a lot of information and I've got several questions along the way that,

I'm curious now you've got this LJ and I know I'm gonna say JL because I keep getting those things. I know the difference, I just keep saying it wrong. So you correct me if you hear me say JL. I mean, I read it as LJ in your message here and I still was thinking it was a JL. At any rate, I mean, by the way, I love TJs. And if anybody out there doesn't know, that's what an LJ is, is a lengthened TJ. And you can correct me on that. I think that's really the only difference is one is a little longer than the other. So this LJ that you got, was it a sport? Was it an X? Was it a Rubicon? What did you start with?

- No, it was just a bare bones sport. - So you were dealing with a 44 in back and probably a Dana 30 upfront, probably a low pinion Dana 30 upfront and whatever the stock gears were. So did you try wheeling this thing at all before you went into the build process?

- I did not.

- No, it's fine. I mean, you can do what you wanna do, but this sets it up for the people. You got a stock LJ and you said, I'm gonna buy a bunch of shit and get it put on there. - Well, I had a vision in my head and when I called Campbell's, I said, I wanted to look exactly how yours looked. - Okay, so he had one and it was set up. You basically were getting your setup the same way he had his.

- At first.
Infinity vault.

But anyway, yeah, so I dropped it off to him and he did the suspension and the axle swap.

It was in the middle of COVID. So it was, COVID wasn't like full fledged. It had died off a little bit, but then it came back. I don't know if you remember that or not, but it kind of flared back up. So it kind of, companies were still battling

distribution and shipping. - Actually, I'm surprised you got the parts you did get.

- Right, yeah. Well, it took RockCrawler, projected build on the lift was I think four weeks and it ended up taking them a month and a half. So it was only two weeks over schedule. So wasn't bad. Yeah, they did a tremendous job. And I actually got to speak and talk with Jeremy Purik at RockCrawler and he's real cool dude.

But anyway, I went to go pick up the Jeep. This is after axles and everything like that. And I was just, I was running out of time. I wanted to get it done by a certain day. And at this time I had no idea that RockCrawler had invited me to Jeep invasion.

And so when I go to pick up the Jeep, I showed up and I was kind of, I'm not gonna say I was in the best of moods. I was kind of upset because it was, it had taken a lot longer. I dropped it off the day before Thanksgiving,

20, 2023 or yeah, the day before Thanksgiving, 2022.

And I was supposed to pick it up either at the end of December, right after Christmas or the first of the year. I ended up picking it up in March.