Jack and Laura called me about replacing the heater blend doors in thier 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee. This is a common problem with 1999-2004 Grand Cherokees, enough so that Jeep issues a technical service bulletin (TSB #24-001-04). The doors are turned by a motor attached to the bottom of the door at the end of a hinge shaft. The motor stops turning when there is enough resistance from the door stopping against its housing. This puts stress on the shaft/door junction and over time strips the shaft so that it spins almost independently of the door. They took it to the local dealer and were quoted around $1000 to fix the problem. I did it for much less.

I will show you some of the major steps involved in this repair. It is not an easy task wich requires the removal of the entire dash and HVAC unit.

	Here is the dash with the instrument panel, center console, and lower dash panel removed.
	You can already start to see how involved this repair is. That is why the dealer gets around $1000 to fix it. I contine to take the dash apart so I can get to the HVAC unit. Here is the dash out of the Jeep.
	And from the other side
	Here is the HVAC unit on the floor of my shop. The doors that are broken are inside there.
	And finally the doors come out. You can see where they are broken. The shaft spins freely without lifting thr doors.
	The new sub assemblies that I installed have stop tabs on them so this does not happen again.

I started on the front bumper for my ZJ today. When I bought the Jeep it did not have a front bumper on it. With the lift and tires a stock bumper would look stupid anyway. I dont have any other projects going on at the moment so I needed something to do.

I looked around at the aftermarket bumpers that are available for the ZJ but everything looked like it stuck out too far infront. I have a bunch of 1/8" plate laying around so I started to build.

	First step: Find a lot of cardboard and tape and start cutting.
	That took a while to get everything cut and fit the way I wanted it. It has a very small over hang in the front. I am not going to be putting a winch on this thing so it works for me.
	Step two: Trace the cardboard onto the 1/8" plate. (if you need pics the you should not try this at home) Then plasma cut the pieces. If you dont have a plasma cutter go buy one.
	Step three: Assemble all the pieces. Thats as far as I got today. It still needs a lot of work. I will update this as I make progress.
	Its all done now. I am happy with the way it turned out. I made a couple minor changes thanks to the guys at Jeepforum.com. The front corners of the bumper have been cut at an angle. It makes it look much cleaner and more pleasing to the eye.
	I painted it Rustoleum flat black. It looks great and is perfect for what I need. It was alot of work but in the end it was all worth it. I may add fog light to it as well.