chrisl757

Hi all,
2001XJ, 270k miles. I have been doing a pretty good job maintaining it over the years. Took it in for vehicle inspection yesterday and they saw rust and floor rot on the driver side and above one of the wheel wells. The rest of the jeep looks good. He quoted me 1250 to fix it.

This is an honest shop, and they've been doing work for me for years on all the stuff that I didn't want to tackle or couldn't. I know the owner pretty well and so he would not rip me off.

My plan was to keep this Jeep going until my son turns 16 in 2.5 years. But the reality is sinking in: At 270k miles, I am going to see more and more of these failures. The head needs to be replaced (I have the cracked 0331 head) and the rear end needs to be replaced for a worn ring/pinion. I can do the head and the rear end myself, but that is why I'm asking you all:

Is it worth it to keep this going? I'm not so sure I want to keep spending my free weekends keeping this up. Leasing a brand new Jeep runs around 200/month and I don't have anything to worry about.

On the other hand, my son loves this jeep, and it is great for moving surfboards back and forth to the beach (don't have to worry about a new Jeep getting dinged up).

Any thoughts on this?

Bmoney

You may be able to save a pile of labor cost by pulling out the seats, seatbelts, spare tire mount, bottom trim, console, and carpet yourself.

Drive it to the shop for welding with all that out and only reinstall the drivers seat and seatbelt.

zr2toxj

I spent money on a mig welder, floorpans, and seat brackets and did it myself. It's not hard to do and actually was fun to do.

Cane

x2 but you gotta keep in mind not everyone has access to a garage. i'm lucky that my dad has a barn that I can use to weld, but without having access to that i'm screwed because I live in an appartment complex where you can't even do a brake job without someone complaining.

about that price quoted, it seems right. the shop i used to go to quoted me around 1000$, but having had other jobs done there I'd expect to pay 2-300$ more because of some unexpected stuff. that's when I decided to spend about 800 on welding equipment so I can do it myself and then have a welder for other jobs in the future.

robertj

It wouldn't be worth it to pay to have it done, but like others have said it would be well worth it to do it yourself. If this is going to be for your son, think of it as a good father/son project. If you can replace a head and rear end, you can weld floor pans.

chrisl757

These are all great ideas that I didn't think of.

I do not have a garage, but I do have a big driveway and plenty of room (although it might be cold, but I'll deal with it).

I am not a pro, but I have rebuilt the front end on this Jeep twice and have done a lot of other basics on the 3 xj's I've had (brakes, power steering, radiators, heater core, evap, water pumps, etc.)

I haven't done any welding since junior high school (30 years ago). I looked up a Mig welder for pricing. I don't know what to look for exactly, but I found this:


Is that all I need? Or do I need something better?

I have an angle grinder and some experience with that.

I'm just wondering if I'm biting off more than I could chew?

robertj

Angle grinder and a welder is all you basically need other than hand tools. I use a cheaper welder than that for sheet metal and get through it fine. I'm not going to win any awards, but welds on the floors don't have to be pretty.

PatHenry

If it's just a small part of the floor pan, is it possible to just patch it up with some sheet metal to get it past inspection? If you live where you're running surf boards to the beach you may not have the kind of overwhelming rust that we get in the snowy north.

The area over the wheel well may be something you can bondo.

I know very little about welding, but it seems like the floor pans would be on the easier side of the spectrum since they're generally flat-ish and accessible. As I understand it if you're not concerned about how it looks and it's not an odd angle or tight space then that's not beyond the capabilities of an amateur.
Please keep us posted though, I'm on the fence about getting a welder and learning how to use it, so if it goes well for you it might push me enough to drop the hammer.

Cherokoolguy

I did this on my xj too. I cleaned it up to the point where i could take a patch and rivet it down and seal it. No welding and that was 1.5 years ago. It's holding up great.

PatHenry

You wouldn't even have to use rivets, just drill a few holes in the edges of the new metal that are around the rusted out part and use some bolts from the hardware store. Obviously you'd want to make sure that you have some sealant around the drill holes.

The shop doing the state inspection should be able to tell you if that's acceptable or not.

chrisl757

I got under and took some pics. This is the only area of rust I see from below. It doesn't look like much, although there is likely a lot more to see when I pull the carpet. I am wondering if I need to order new floor pans or if I could go with just some sheet metal patching?

I appreciate all the great advice so far because this may be easier than I thought.

00t444e

Why go through all that trouble, just take everything out and sit on a 5 gal bucket.

PatHenry

You certainly could order new floor pans (Quadratec sells them) and if your floor is -REALLY- bad, that's probably what you'd want to do. A good piece of sheet metal should be fine. Your local hardware store should have a variety of gauges and sizes.

I'd double check that patching will pass your state inspection. If it won't, then you have to do what you have to do.

That looks like something that you could patch. But you're right, you won't really know until you've pulled the carpet and cleared out the rotted metal.

EEVEE

i pulled all my stuff out then ground down the pans myself and i highly suggest buying new floorpans and sheetmetal instead of cutting them out of a junkyard jeep, Be mindful of the spot welds they will break you after a while then with your metal take it to a shop mine was 170 bucks tho took months to finish.......

chrisl757

Hi All,
My son and I pulled the carpet up and he took pics. See below. I have to say that I think it looks not too bad because there is almost no rust past the seat bracket. Please note that I just rolled the carpet up over the center console (didn't want to pull the entire carpet since the only rust is on the driver front side). I didn't see any serious rust climbing up the panel to the tranny tunnel.

I am curious what others think. It looks like there is a big piece of rubber tape or something on the floor panel so I wonder if it came like that from the factory?

The big problem I see is that the padding under the carpet is basically a sponge. I haven't driven this Jeep in 3 days and the padding is totally soaked. There must be at least 2 cups of water just sitting in the floor pan. This water is clear too--weird.

I am trying to figure out where all this water came from.

I am beginning to think maybe my son and I could tackle this job. I think the first thing I need to do is get rid of that padding. From there, I don't know how best to go about this.

Thank you to all for any ideas.