About 7 years ago a friend asked if I could replace the engine in his Jeep. Two years go by (with the Jeep sitting in my yard) and he decides he no longer wants to do the project and do I want it instead. Long story short, I said yes, found a replacement engine, did the swap, and I drove it about 50k miles. Turned out the replacement engine had a lot more miles on it than I was originally told and it just plain wore out with the typical loss of oil pressure at idle (cam bearings). We figure that engine had right around 300k on it.

Late last summer I decided to do another engine swap, another friend of mine had a low mileage '94 Grand with an electrical problem that he sold to me for $50.00. I kept my intake, coil packs, etc., and used an inexpensive tube header to match the head and then fabbed the downpipe.

During one of my junkyard excursions, I found an '01 Limited so I grabbed the leather seats, fog light switch panel, and wood grain center section (didn't really care for the door panels). These also had seat heaters, so I grabbed the wiring harness and switches too.


The last thing I did was install some head rests in the back seat. I cut the mounts from my old seats and used matching leather head rests from an unknown aged Grand.


A few more odds and ends to button up and it'll be back on the road.

 

nice deal!!!

 

That's a really nice interior. I have been all over the pick a parts looking for Cherokee stuff and never came across a leather interior. I would guess those probably get set aside and don't go into the general yard.

 

My favorite junk yard is one that does not buy insurance cars, they only get private owner vehicles. What this means is those cars in the yard are older, you'll never see anything newer than 10 years old. Because of this, I see many XJ Jeeps there. I bet if I were to go there today there'd be at least a half dozen, and it's not a big yard. Last time I was there I found two XJ Jeeps with leather interiors.

I was lucky though to find one that not only had leather, but leather in my color and in nice condition. Where I was not lucky was I could not get the bolts out on the driver's seat, so I asked one of the guys in the yard if he could remove it for me. What does he do? First thing is he takes a big honking wire cutter and snips all the wires in the harness so he can put a battery directly to the seat wiring to move it forward to give him more room at the rusted bolt. After he got the seat out, I had to remove/retrieve all the wiring, splice it all back together, and then install in my car. Luckily, the heating elements inside the seat were intact.

I have two kids still at home and it really bothered me there are no head rests in the back seat. I used the experience of others who have also installed head rests, modified their procedures a bit, and came up with this. I think it looks factory and only cost about $20.00.