Jeep Cherokee Forum - 2000 XJ Overland Build

How it currently sits:

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.che...4afb1b54c8.jpg

OK so here goes...I bought this jeep in 2013 from a craigslist ad:
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I had owned a 96 XJ previously but it was stock and I didn't know much about all the research that would go into modifying anything. The 2000 XJ I purchased was on a 4.5" Rubicon Express short arm lift kit with rear shackles. From a distance this jeep was perfect. Already lifted, had a roof rack, trimmed fenders, and it just looked awesome. Little did I know that it would take me about 3 years of restoration to get it into a usable state! It had rusted floor boards that weren't disclosed, sagging roof liner that was temporarily sprayed to stick when I test drove it, a tack-welded SODA can covering an exhaust leak (like wtf??), a CRACKED front coil spring (wasn't seen until it was replaced because it was on the bottom), temporary AC charge to hide the fact that it had a leaking evap behind the dash, completely destroyed shocks, ball joints, wheel bearings, brakes, all 4 tires were dry rotted...the list actually goes on :cry::cry::cry:. Some of this is because I didn't know what to look for when buying a jeep, and the other piece is that the previous owner is a true POS (karma is a B!!!).

So let's get to the build already. Over the last 3.5 years of ownership, 3 of those years were me restoring this jeep. I didn't know a lot so I started simple. The sagging roof was one of the first things I fixed. I completely removed all the trim and pulled the headliner. After realizing that it was more of an arts and craft project to buy fabric and glue, I decided to use Herculiner and just paint it directly to the fiberglass after I removed all the glue. The end product was great and 3 years later it has held up perfectly. I decided to go this route because I am an avid mountain biker and figured I might as well make the headliner not something that will get snagged and rip again. The only downside is scraping your knuckles on this stuff!

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The next thing I decided to go after was the rotted floorboards. Because the carpet needed to be thrown out anyways, I pulled it up to see what damage was really under there. Once I realized I had a leak and saw the holes from underneath the jeep, I wasn't really going to be surprised by what I saw. Oh but I was..

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I don't have many photos of this, but the floors were so bad that you could easily stomp your foot through if you wanted. I took it to a local shop and had them weld the floors up for me. They did an awful job and I ended up resealing the underneath myself with POR 15 and a water sealant.

Because of my anxiety already developing from owning a rusting jeep, I decided that I wanted to waterproof my floors, while simultaneously trying to quiet the cabin from as much road noise as this box on wheels will allow. I went with a Dynamat alternative known as Fat Mat for my sound insulation and Herculiner as my water proof paint.

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The basic process is to completely remove your interior, which is actually easier than it sounds, vacuum everything perfectly, and then use a metal cleaner to completely remove all grease, carpet fibers, etc that has been under there for the last 15 or so years. This process took me a few days (literally) because I knew without the proper adhesion I would be redoing this again in the near future. I don't remember exactly which cleaner I used but I believe it was some type of fast evaporating Mineral cleaner that you can get at home depot.

The next step is to start laying out your floor coverage. Fat Mat comes in a rolled up cylindrical tube so it's kind of a PITA at first. I ended up cutting a lot of 2'x2' squares to get started. You'll notice that from the factory there is some sound deadening material already. I chose not to remove this as I read it was a very time consuming and pointless activity. I simply etched the surface of the existing sound deadening since it had a metallic finish for the new stuff to stick to more easily. I also decided to cover the entire floor. A lot of places have mixed reviews on whether it truly makes a difference but since I had so much of this fat mat I figured why not. Besides, the other purpose was to waterproof my floor so I didn't want any gaps.

Fat Mat has a metallic layer on top. After talking with the company, they said a light sanding of this surface would not make a difference. I did this because the Herculiner calls for an etched surface in order to properly adhere to it. You'll see in some of my photos above that the surface seems dull and that is because I had already started sanding it. I used the Brillo Pad-type sand paper that came with the Herculiner kit and went to town sanding everything I could get my hands on. Then I followed the easy instructions and started rolling the Herculiner down.

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I will admit that this stuff smells like lung cancer. I ended up buying a basic air mask from home depot immediately because it was that strong. And yes, I was doing this literally in a parking lot in the most open space possible and it didn't make a difference. In fact, my car smelled like tar for a good couple of days. Side note for those interested, my car has 100% zero odor now and you'd never know it was in there. After a couple of weeks in the summer, I started to realize that the transmission tunnel heat and the pressure of my feet was making the fat mat slightly move under my gas and brake pedals. This isn't much of a surprise in hindsight. I decided to throw some rubber floor mats and the problem was solved (dispersion of pressure maybe?).

Not long after that I realized that the summer time heat and the hot XJ weren't going to get along. Road noise was considerably louder without the carpet and for my purposes it wasn't road worthy. I don't care how many people say having carpet is stupid, I prefer to have a comfortable ride as much as possible. Unless your jeep is a true trail rig, my opinion is don't remove your carpet. I decided to purchase a complete front and rear carpet kit for the interior.
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This job took my father and I about 2 full days of maneuvering, cutting, more cutting, cursing, walking away, and finishing it a week later. I'm not sure if the company sent me the carpet for the older XJs or what, but this was quite literally the most annoying thing I've had to do. The end product did turn out pretty great. As you can see, I am bouncing around in my build thread a little bit. I now have the black and gray interior which is why I went with the black carpet. The two end pieces of the dash will be replaced when the AC is fixed. At this point, I now have fat mat, herculiner, and carpet with the additional mass backing for sound dampening. Everything I have done, the carpet made the most improvement over sound inside the cabin.

Somewhere along the line I realized that my rain rails were rusting really bad. I decided to clean this up by sanding the rails and then laying out pinstripes down the roof for my paint. This job turned out fantastic. I laid down tape for the area I wanted to paint, added newspaper on top to prevent and overspray, and then taped down the newspaper.

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Since I like to duplicate my efforts so much apparently, I then decided (about 12 months later) that I liked the no fuss coating that herculiner created, but I didn't like the rubber particles that were contained in the paint. I wanted to go with a Line-x exterior but it was really expensive (like 50% of the cost of the jeep). After much research I ended up going with Monstaliner (I believe magnetpaints is a vendor on here). I did this because since I am not a master painter, nor a person with a paint booth or any painting experience other than house walls, but I could use a roller :icon_cool::icon_cool::icon_cool:. I ordered the paint and went to work on prepping my jeep while it was shipping. I had to completely hand sand the exterior, remove my fender flares, remove all Jeep decals, all of the lower body rubber moulding, bondo my driver's door from a minor dent, etc. Fast foward about 2 days and I was now done with all of the taping of window trim, door trim, headlights, tail lights, and so forth. This is crucial because monstaliner is pretty hard to get off once it touches something you don't want painted.
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This was a lot of work but I am definitely glad I did it. Not long after that, I realized that there seemed to be hard particles that had formed in the paint (see passenger's side close-up picture). I contacted magnet paints and discussed the issue with them. They sent me a complete 2 new gallons with all new prep materials for free! Now granted I wasn't happy I would have to completely repaint my jeep, but it was still worth it. I now have 4 coats of magnet paint on the jeep which in my opinion was necessary to completely hide the underlying green paint. If you have something more drastic like white to black I would recommend doing this as well (2 kits worth of paint basically).

I also redid my headlights with the upgraded wiring harness, clear euro headlights, and brighter bulbs, along with repainting my headlight surroundings and entire grill prior to exterior paint. Some might want to know why I'm doing "superficial" upgrades to my jeep and where is the overland build. Well, this is my complete build and I wanted to restore the jeep. So be patient.
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Swapped out NP 242 with 231 T-case, SYE kit, and all new Boostwerks linkages:
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Put in new Tom Woods front and rear drive shafts:
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Bought new 33x12.50r15 Goodyear Duratrac's which are GREAT. A note on these, they say 33 but they measure 33.1" at 33 PSI, so they are slightly exaggerating by my books:
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Installed a new complete exhaust system (thank you rock auto for the great deal). I don't have many pictures of this install but I did it in my parking lot without even putting the jeep on jack stands. Took me about 6 hours. I mostly did this because what was on there was too loud and on the highway it droned like an MF'er.
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Now comes to part of the build which has been a test of my patience and desire to build an overland rig on an XJ platform. I decided to use my roof rack as my main overland accessory instead of doing the whole roof top tent system. I went this route since I already had the roof rack, didn't want to spend $1500 on a roof rack that would make my COG even worse, and for other reasons that you'll see below. I stripped the paint completely by hand using airplane paint remover, had a local welder put in a basket to the cage since it didn't have one for some reason, and welded in some brackets to have my ARB awning. I also ordered some JCR roof rack brackets, cut to size, and welded to track to ensure it was properly mounted. Then I had 4 HELLA light tabs mounted to the front and rain wires inside to a 4 panel switch. Last step was painting.
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I also mentioned I'm an avid mountain biker so check out what I had custom fabbed for me :-). These are truck bed fork mounts that you can buy at any bike store. I then bought a Thule adapter for bikes with thru axles. This gave me another 3-4" of clearance from the any of the bike components touching the rear tail gate. When strapped down there is no lateral movement because it rests against the rear tire as well! SAWEEEET.
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One of the other reasons I went with the roof rack build is because as you can see from my new tags "BGOUTJP", I wanted this thing to be a true bug out jeep. Having to store a RTT somewhere inside my house and mount it when I went camping defeated that purpose, not to mention my condo complex's garage is only 7' which I'm rapidly approaching. That being said, I also have the ARB tent attachment that stays in my jeep at all times in case zombies come.
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The driver's side of the rack is being completed right now. I have another ARB awning and ARB mosquito net getting welded up. These awnings are incredibly durable and can be deployed with tent attachment in less than 5 minutes easily. I also have the Road Shower 3 on pre-order which will be welded between the roof rack and the new awning on the driver's side. A lot of true overlanders will hate on my high water storage option, but the XJ has limited interior room for things like this. With an ARB fridge, onboard air system, and storage platform going in the interior next, I wanted to keep as much outside the jeep as possible. Pix to come on this!

Oh, I can't forget about the suspension. I mentioned the jeep came with a pristine suspension upgrade already right? (SARCASM). I picked up a 3 link setup by Rock Krawler from my buddy XJWonders. I had all of the joints and bushings rebuilt and had Rock Krawler commissioned to build me the frame brackets. Big kudos to them since they haven't produced this kit since like 2009 I believe? So they literally had this made for me. It is being installed this weekend and I'll have some flexy pictures up within the next week or so. In the interim, here is a hilarious picture of my sway bar end links that are being replaced by JKS quicker disconnects:
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Snorkel upgrade for 500 WHP gain. These are the Chinese knock-offs that work great. Big pain to install though especially since I didn't have a factory airbox to begin with.
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Smittybilt Awning for extra shade. Things to note with this are that if you have a low rear tire carrier, your awning will be just as low--if not lower. It is a less thick quality compared to ARB, but the price point is awesome for this bugger. It's fast and easy to deploy as well and provides shade in a different direction than my other awnings.
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Trailer light attachment for those jeeps that didn't come with factory harness. Bought this from amazon for like $20ish bucks I believe. Is super easy to install and literally plugs right in to existing port behind plastic interior panel (in the event I ever do a trailer build :tt2:)
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4.88 race car gears for obvious reasons:
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G2 diff covers front and rear. These have increased volume for more oil and cooling as well as protection on the trail. I painted mine black and the paint adheres very well.
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