First thing before you question why do something like this, first thing I am incredibly dumb and make very bad life choices and terrible with money. Second, I currently own 3 Jeeps; 2 XJs (had 4 at one time at one point) and a TJ. The other 2 are for normal Jeep things so I won't be missing out on real Jeep Life things.

Last summer I got hooked on drag racing with my 16 Mustang I own, but there was always this feeling in the back of my head that if I crash this and ruin it, I am SOL. Insurance would not cover it, warranty work would be denied, all sorts of stuff. It is my nice car with 30K miles and I do not want to ruin it just yet. So I went looking for something where the body is cheap and easily replaceable, ideally a Fox Body to LS swap. Well I came across this ad for a 2000 Jeep Cherokee that was already LS swapped and ran and drove like a bat out of hell for a great price in Cincinnati and I jumped on it. The PO was a real cool dude and showed me time slips where as is, it was faster than I have ever been in the Mustang. So now this is going to be my drag race car.






The specs on it when I picked it up. It is a 2000 Cherokee Classic, nothing special. It had a stock 6.0 LQ9 with a 4L65E with NP241 with no front drive shaft. Ford 8.8 with a 3.73 rear end, so another good step in the right direction. So with all that said there was some negatives that need to be addressed. It did have some rust on the floor boards, passenger side had a hole above an exhaust leak so that was fun and some on the rockers, but nothing on the frame rails or any where else. Even though it was a non-Jeep drivetrain, it certainly did leak every where like a Jeep. Engine, transmission, transfercase, and diff all leaked. Shockingly the Jeep power steering did not. The rear springs were no longer smiling but frowning from all the extra torque and rear struts are blown. And had a big freaking hole in the hood.








I drove it around as is a little bit as is and had some fun, did a toy run that me and 3 buddies set up in early December (something like 250 toys brought in for our small local community!) and was a really chilly ride since I had to have the window down with the hole above the exhaust. But every Christmas season, our plant shuts down for around 2 weeks with free PTO so that was the time to get on some of this stuff. I started first with the rust in the floor boards. At the time I only thought it was the passenger side, but as I pulled the carpet completely out I saw the driver side also needed that so I got on that side too. I was glad to see the inside of the frame rails were clean after removing the frame rails. Made a seat crossmemer from some material I cut from the roof of a parts XJ, actually bought a new piece for the driver side since I got rid of the parts Jeep when I got to that side. Instead of the proer way of putting the floor boards in by welding them in I used pop-rivots and body sealer. Wish I could have welded in, but all I have acess to is a flux core welder that at its coldest setting burnt through the metal. Used that cold compound galvanizing stuff and put some rubberized coating on top of that. First time ever doing floor board replacements and was not as bad as I thought.







Our winter break ended and had to get back to work so could only do so much between too busy and it being winter (though this year there was a lot of warm days). So at this point I was building towards a class that wants essentially full interior so I got brand new carpet. I could not put it in since I had some water getting in somewhere and did not want to put the new carpet in because of that, turned out it was the window seal was bad. Had the window replaced which was cracked anyways. Got the carpet trimmed and put it in, easy peasy. I also completely removed the HVAC box because race car!




So that is what I have been doing to get the body ready. I will still need to get a roll cage soon so I am activly looking into that.

 

Now for the good stuff, how to make it faster. The closer goal was 10.00 index with a Turbo and would love to get to 8.50 index which will be a while. I plan on blowing up A LOT of motors for awhile, but I want the drive train to be solid. However with this whole pandemic going on I am putting the turbo charging on hold since that will be an expensive part of this and need to be tight with money just in case. So for this year just NA with an aggresive cam I have lying around and basic bolt ons a d hopefuly getting low 12s, maybe 11s. But I did try some stuff before this hit like trying to mock up twin GT3582s. So I have not gotten too far because of this.

I started by taking the front clip off so I could start mocking things up and get the motor pulled to re-seal. I actually have the 6.0 for sale since I have what is a free running 5.3 sitting in my garage. But I did not realize how little room these engine bays have. I bought a ebay special to mock up and had no luck figuring out how to get 2 in there with a radiator and intercooler.






I am just learning fabrication, and I am sure with more skills and better tools I could do twins with an intercooler and good sized radiator, but I am not there yet. So plan now is to source a Borgwarner S480 and have the exhaust come out the passenger side bumper, because race car! I do want to go alternator only and any of the off the shelf brackets will not work with how tight the frame rail is so I drew up a quick design.





I got a TH400 core from my boss and had it built by a local rebuilder with some early parts and new clutches and I got a reverse manual valve body with trans brake installed too. I also got with it a Hughes 9.5" Pro SSX converter. Because it was a Corvette trans, I had to get a slip yoke and got a Sonnet unit that uses a 1350 U-joint. I will be using a TCI outlaw shifter. Made a mount for it, had to do some trimming of the center console, but I plan on making switch panel to cover the hole. I got all this well before the pandemic when I did not have to watch my spending.








For the rear suspension and diff I am going to go with a 3.31 rear ratio and put for 9" axles in so no issues of axles shearing off. I powder coated some CTS-V calipers for a co-worker in exchange for welding the 9" bearing housings on and a new spring perch on since I will be going spring under to lower it. I will be using Moser 35 spine axles with a full spool. With that I got a set of Cal-Tracs and Calvert split leaf mono springs to replace the old sagging springs. I am waiting to get the trans in first so I can make the new trans crossmember and get the drive line angle set properly. But since I wont be waiting on doing a major engine build soon, I am hoping to jump on this next.





I am still up in the air for the front suspension. This I think will be the biggest obstacal of the whole build. Obviously getting this thing as low as possible is best for this application but I can only go so far. To start with I am designing some new control arm brackets to weld to a 2wd beam. This will keep the control arm geometry the same while lowering it 3”. The next issue is clearence to the oil pan. Right now the oil pan os around 3” to the axle beam so I will need to clearence the center of the tube. But after all that I would only be able to lower 3”






I have been looking online at pictures of other ways to look into. I wanted to measure a set of chevy 1500 knuckles see if they would fit and use drop spindles. Another thing I was also thinking is a Fox Body K member is roughly the right width and is an idea. But I do not know. For now I am just going to get new control arms, bushings, and ball joints and send it as is since I wont be putting serious power down yet.

As far as steering goes I want to get a manual steering box, but not sure if I want to use XJ or WJ steering. They are both probably not great for high speed stability, but the WJ looks like it might be better.

But for now these are just rambling thoughts, now that winter is gone, I can get back to work on this and get it race ready soon when all the tracks open back up from the country wide quarantine.

 

Hell yeah dude

 

Welcome to Cherokee Forum

I hope this build keeps your interest and you keep us updated with new posts and pics. I love stuff like this I would love to see it progress and get faster and better

 

Thanks! While things all around are at standstill, I am planning the next steps to getting it track ready, and brushing up with the tig welder, especially aluminum. Next weekend pending weather is okay, I will pull the motor, regasket it and get some LS7 lifters, better springs and a high volume/pressure oil pump.

With all of that out I am going to sand down and re-paint the engine bay. I did work do a little on harness cleanup and moving the fuse block previously. I made a 2 pc pop out panel with metal sourced from an old busted dryer I have yet to take out of my basement.







I kind of stopped there for now to work on pulling the motor. The engine harness is tied in well with the main harness it seems so I am going to work on seperating them. Really I am going to end up with some kind of aftermarket stand alone ECU and harness so I can re-use it and other parts removed from this to LS swap my other blue Cherokee which will be 4wd and all the good stuff. All I would need to do is buy the mounts and drive shafts. So that would be sweet.

I think for fueling I will be using an Aeromotive inline A1000 and buy a brand new older steel XJ tank and weld a sump on the bottom. I want to do Drag Week and need to save all the space in the back that I can. The stock tank will allow me to use the factory filler neck and no need to use up space for a cell in the back.

 

Got the motor pulled today. Not too difficult since I had most of the stuff already out anyways. I was even able to lift the whole assembly over the front bumper without re positioning or getting a second set of hands to lift it iver by hand.







Once I got it all down I was able to easily seperate the transmission and transfer case which will be rebuilt and used on either my blue XJ or green TJ that will be paired with a 5.3. That Jeep will be a more normal Jeep, not a racecar.






I also did a little bit of engine cleanup sonce it was warm enough to pullout the pressure washer. And started working on the harness again. Got the engine harness seperated and going to have the chassis harness tucked away. The leg that goes from the driver side to passenger side will be rerouted under the dash since it only goes to the fuse block that WAS on that side but is now under the dash. The leg that goes to the headlights and front stuff will be routed through the fender.





Anyone know what this plug is? It was not plugged into anything but was in the middle area along firewall.




Anyways tomorrow hopefuly I can make it out to my local junkyard and get a set of WJ knuckles, would also be nice to find a manual steering box for this but not likely. If anyone has a spare manual steering box, hit me up. Might start sanding some rust down in the engine bay prepped for paint. Just going to be a rattle can flat black. Not show car quality, just clean and uniform. Got some ideas on prettying up the engine too. I powdercoat at home as a hobby so EVERYTHING that is metal and can fit in my Craisglist kitchen oven gets powdercoated.

 

Not for sure but always guessed that is part of the interior dash harness. One of the two engine bay harnesses, the one that has 2 connectors on the ECM, fuel injector connectors, O2 sensor connectors, etc, connects to that.

 

It was one of the engine harness connectors. Looked at my blue XJ and it went to various connectors by the oil filter housing area.

Anyways I did make it to the junk yard and got some WJ knuckles. Was hoping to get more but there was only one XJ and A LOT of ZJs and WJs. This was also my first trip to the jumkyard with power tools, and wow what a difference! Been using hand tools for years now and so glad I got me quite a few Milwaukees from the profit of a parts Jeep I parted out. Tomorrow I am going to sand blast them at work and a set of 15+ Mustang GT 4 piston calipers I had lying around that I will adapt to the WJ knuckle.





They will for sure get powdercoated, knuckles just gloss black, but not sure on the calipers. I want red, but I have done 2 types of red. First picture is a set oh 15+ GT350 calipers I am putting on the Mustang that I did base metallic silver with red top coat. Second is some I did for my co-workers 1200hp CTS-V that is only a red top coat over a sand blasted finish.





Got more of the harness cleaned of useless wires and got the whole thing out so I can re-route it to all under the dash, which means taking it out again. Luckily this time it will be warm out and not snowing like most of the time I have been working on this.

 

Didn’t get much done this past week. Spent most of it cleaning up the garage and clearing out an old project that was not making any progress. The cleanout was not exactly for this Jeep build, it was because I had to park the Mustang at a wierd angle to open the door and I was backing out and did not pay attention and smacked the mirror right off. The mess this stagnant project and the mirror just did it in so I cleared out and made some work shop space which will really help move this project along and get me to LS swapping my blue XJ and I do not have to park weird! Still got some cleaning to do but its enough to start working with. Also got a new Lincoln gas mig that does not burn through sheet metal like my crappy flux core welder does. I just need to get a subpanel in the garage so I stop tripping breakers.




I got the dash completely out and now working on routing the chassis wire harness. I will probably drill a hole through the fire wall where the windshield wiper motor is and route that cable from the inside instead. De-pinned a lot of no longer used circuits from the under driver dash plug. I just took the wire with terminals out of the plug and will re-use them for other things like trans-brake, maybe nitrous if I get a little too ambitious. Going to leave the cut leads from the fuse block side to add other accessories.




Now that its getting consistantly warmer, things are going to hopefuly move along better. And some states starting to open back upand businesses operating should hopefuly mean work starts picking back up and I wont have to watch what I am spending as strictly as I am now. Thankfuly my work is considered essential but business has dropped significantly since the material handling industry is affected by all other industries. I have the funds to finish this with a 1000whp motor, built axle and all, but probably best save it for now just in case. So getting this thing back to driveable is the goal.