Hey there. New to the forum, new to the 99 Sport I just recently purchased. Question about the U-Haul 2” hitch installed. Its rusted. Badly. So I removed it last night because my plan is to install a new one. The three drivers side bolts came out. The passenger side bolts not so much. Broke the heads off all three. I have yet to pull the rear bumper so I can’t really see what’s going on inside the uniframe. Research has me confused. Will I be up against nuts welded to the frame? Or is there a nut strip in there? I also read that it could be a nut strip riveted to the frame? I have yet to unbolt the exhaust hanger, or the other bolt for the fuel tank skid. At this point I’m afraid to keep snapping hardware and want to get that bumper off so I can look down inside there. Please tell me I’m not screwed by breaking off those three hitch bolts?

 

It's a nut strip and can be easily replaced. Life will be much better should you remove the rear bumper to get in there though.

 

Yep, need to get that removed. Just wondering if I'll be able to get the old one out since the threaded section of the broken bolts are still lodged in the nuts. That access hole looks about large enough for just the nut strips to slide through. Hopefully there's not too much bolt thread sticking up past the nuts.

 

I got that bumper off and the old nut strips removed, although I did have to cut and fold back the passenger side access hole a bit to get the threaded bolt sticking out of the nut out of there. No big deal. New strips and hitch are on order.

 

I have a new set of rear nut strips from JCROffroad... I'll sell them to you cheap. Give me a reason to clear them out of my basement. PM me.

 

Is there a stock size for the existing nut strips ? Mine have never been used that I know of but I want to run a bolt in there to see what kind of shape they are in without a cross threaded bolt.

 

^
M12x1.75
If a bolt has never been installed the nut should be tapped through before use. Otherwise a good cross thread is just as good if not better than a lock washer.

 

Cliffy, I don't know about the '96 and older but the '97 and younger only have the passenger side nut strip installed if the cherokee was not shipped with the factory hitch.

 

Nice call on the tap.

 

I will be under there tomorrow to install a new exhaust so I was hoping to see if these are usable at the same time, thanks for the pointer.

 

If you need new nut strips I thought $35/free shipping from Amazon was a good deal. Search for Crown p/n 52001174K. I also replaced the old rusted out hitch with Curt p/n 13160. The hardware that came with this worked very well with the Crown nut strips. Lastly, since I was experiencing hard starts and had the bumper, hitch and metal skid pulled down, I bit the bullet and replaced the fuel pump with a Bosch unit. I shouldn't have to touch any of this stuff again, but just in case I do it should be much easier since I anti-seized the crap out of everything!

 

my 2000 cherokee only had a passenger side nut strip..

 

Yup its used to hold the exhaust hanger.

 

exactly