Also consider relocating speakers to an overhead sound bar, or kick panels in driver and passenger footwells.
My 1996 has grills and a wire harness for dash speakers. If you put 6x9 under seats, the dash locations would be perfect for tweeters.

 

Your only real obstacle when switching doors either way is the location of the door latch. In either case, relocating the door striker is the answer.

 

Aren't original and update hinges quite different? I remember something from the doorless mod thread.

 

Absolutely... sorry, I was more referring to the non-removable differences. The hinges can be swapped from door to door to make them compatible cross-generation, but the latch mechanism inside the door is at a different physical location on the 97+ doors.



Grey door is 96 down, white door is 97 up

 

Ahhh. The body lines seem rather different

 

Nah.... optical illusion because of the metallic vs. gloss paint and the angle of the camera. The body lines are exactly the same believe or not. The stamping of the steel for the door mechanism is a little different,

Here's what you have to do according to JPMag's writeup on it...
"One of the most noticeable differences between the early and the late doors is first the shape, and second the location of the striker which holds the doors closed. Whatever Jeep you pull the doors from, also get the striker and the striker bolts. We then removed the old striker, measured to locate the new one, and drilled two new holes. The new striker partially covers the original hole, so we didn't even bother welding it closed." - http://www.fourwheeler.com/how-to/bo...j-door-upgade/

I'm hoping to do this to mine eventually. My arms are really long, so when I reach through the open window at a drive through, it's a little bit of a contortionist act to reach through with the fixed a-window in place. Honestly though, if I could figure out a way to just fit the full-size window guts in there and get rid of the a-window then I would do that... but the amount of work and cost probably wouldn't benefit me much over just getting a set of new doors... especially since I'm wanting those mirrors anyway.

 

The mirrors will bolt right on

 

Yeah, I was more talking about overall cost... cheaper to get the doors with the mirros already on them than it would be to switch out windows, tracks, motors, wiring, and then buy the mirrors on top of all that.

 

Yea, I've done it this way and I don't recommend gut swapping. It worked out fine and everything works, but if i were to do it again, I'd probably try to figure out how to get the old door panel to fit onto the new door instead. Plus, you have to use internal sheet metal from new doors, so you have to buy those anyways.

 

do the brakes from a (97+) dana 35 fit on a (97+) C8.25 axle?

 

If your going to go throught the trouble of swapping brakes from a dana 35 to a 8.25 you might as well do a zj disk brake swap since to 75% the same process and you'll get better brake set up. There is a few write ups on doing the swap for the 8.25 on here.

 

I don't have a way to swap out the coil brackets for leaf brackets. I don't weld or have access to a welder.

 

Search it. If you have a jack, jack stands, and hand tools thats all you need to do the disk swap. Im not talking about the whole axle just the brakes.

 

Welding? Coils? Leafs? Those have nothing to do with brakes. You unbolt the drum backing plate, then put a new one on (from a ZJ or KJ) with a caliper and rotor.

 

Oh yeah.... totally not even worth it.