Well my 89 XJ had these cracks in it and im wondering how bad this really is? These look alot worse in person. What should I do about these cracks?

 

Sand them down to bare metal and repaint

 

It's a 25 year old Jeep.
Focus on keeping it running.

 

Looks to me like it was wrecked bad earlier in its life and they just slapped on lots of Bondo to fix it. Now the body filler is cracking and lifting from the sheet metal. If you really want it to look good it will have to be all ground off and redone or replace the old damaged metal, OR just drive it.

 

That my friend is a poor body repair.I work in a bodyshop and repairs like this are not uncommon to see. best thing to do is grind it out and start over. Thats the plastic body filler cracking and moisture gets behind there and loosens it all up. The first pic though Looks different. But the last few yea alot of body filler If i were you id drive it. unless you wanna do some "mud" work.

 

It runs fine. I dont DD it. Just a toy. I figured if I had the time and got bored why not fix it?

I thought that too, but I used a magnet and determined it was metal. Also the paint and "Limited" stripe is original. Its the unibody cracking from 25 years of use. I just wanted to know if I should be worried about it.

The cracks are alot bigger, and longer in person. I guess Ill just ignore it.

It doesnt have a title, and so im kinda trying to think of a excuse to use it as MJ parts but I kinda like this old thing.

I just thought it was odd. Never seen this happen before.

 

Just because you run a magnet over it and it stick doesn't mean that it isn't body filler. You can actually see all the body filler. If it was the metal was cracked like that you would have some major damage and dent. Metal won't crack like that without major stress or damage. I bet if you pry a little at the cracks you will see that it was body filler and chunks of it will fall off.

 

Sure can and it isn't there from the factory. From an "is it ok to drive?" perspective, the damage we can see is harmless.