96 Cherocar DD Rebuild!
 

Well, I've finally returned to cherokee fourm, with another 2 door cherokee! , My old red one... then which got painted to Black/silver, was getting just that. old. 400,000kms, frame was rotting out, and burned over half a gallon of oil on any long drive I took it on.

(Old Cherokee, 93 sport that served me well for 4 years)
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(How the new owner has it looking)
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So, I sold it to a close friend of mine who would take the time to build it into something crazy.

Then I decided I was going to start allll over again.

"But why? you had a nice jeep to begin with! why'd you sell it you could have easily swapped in another engine!" you might say.

Yes, I could have... But the build never really went where I wanted it to. Sure, it had a decent 3" lift. did it flex good? Not really, did it ride nice? not one bit. Was the jeep comfy to take on long trips? hell no.

Plus I had to make due with what I could on a highschool budget, I wanted a ARB bumper, but had to settle for a knock off, which i never really was quite happy about. the rockers were all banged up, the uni-frame was starting to get bad, plus I had stripped out most of the moldy carpet and interior, so it was like rolling down a hill in a garbage can.

So, after a year of looking I thought I had found "the one". a 1996 Cherokee, with 200,000kms (low in my book) It looked clean, had some dents here and there plus the seller said it was a rust free alberta jeep! being 5 speed and having factory LSD was a bonus aswell.

So naturally after looking it over and seeing a nice clean frame, nice floors ... that were covered in dust and mud, and LOTS of black paint, I figured "gee this is in really nice shape! I'll buy it!" I tryed to haggle with the seller, but.. since i had at first offered my truck in trade, but ended up selling it... he wasnt too pleased with me showing up to his door with cash. (Dunno how someone could be)

He wanted $3,000 for the jeep... exactly what I had sold my truck for, but I needed $200 for the drive to it, and back. He had said someone offered him $2300 for it and that he was going to take that before I offered him the truck. So I said "ok fine, I'll give you the $2,300 cash right now"

Boy did I get a suprise... "No I wanted your truck and you sold it out from under me. so the only way I'm selling this jeep now is if you pay me the full asking price." which needless to say shocked me. I tryed haggling with him, saying he was being unfair which he replied that I was unfair for selling my truck. (I did kind of need the money at the time.) So I looked at the jeep again and said t'heck with it, its in nice shape and inspected for two years, I'll give him his money, this might be my last chance to find a 2 door in this nice of shape.

So, we exchanged money for title and away I drove off into the sunset, which turned into a long dark, foggy, rainy night.

Next day rolled around, and I was excited to get to work on detailing my fine green machine. So, I started taking all the junk out of the rear hatch area, and once clean I noticed a hold in the carpet.... with sunlight poking through. "Oh its just a drain plug popped out" I wished. so I went ahead and pulled up the rear carpet, and the floor I found, err lack of was not amusing. But this was a alberta jeep?! how could if have rust?! and it JUST passed a saftey inspection last month!

So, Immediately I tried to call the guy I bought it off of. no awnser, I texted him, no awnser... found him on facebook and messaged him nothing. I then came to the sad reality that we live in a world today where people cant be honest and screw people over to get more than what something is really worth.

With some investigation, I found out by calling the service station that did the inspection, never inspected the jeep, and he would never have let it pass in its current state. BUT the guy I had bought it off of did work for him (he was terminated from that job the next day) He had stolen the inspection sticker and paper work and filled it out plus forged his bosses' signature.

I was pretty bummed, I was out $3,000 for a jeep with no floors, I couldn't get my money back, and my current daily a 80's BMW E30 was starting to weep from lack of maintenance.

So, with some phone calls to some close friends we set out to fix my mistake. we scavenged every metal place we could for scrap metal since I didnt have any money to buy new metal, but alot of the metal working places will throw out new metal just because they messed up on a cut.

So with the jeep loaded to the bump-stops with scrap metal we hauled it all to my buddys garage where it stayed tucked in for over a month. We first started by assessing the damage, at first it just looked like the rear over the frame rails, but by the time we were through picking at it with hammers, the entire rear floor was pretty much gone from behind the front seats right to the rear bumper.

Lots and lots of cutting, bending, tapping, forming, cursing, and very VERY late nights we patched him together piece by piece like Frankenstein taking this poor neglected jeep that was purley just bought to beat in the woods and turning him back into a respectable road going machine. and thus with the ammount of pieces we put into him I've named him "Patches"

Thats my little story on acquiring patches and getting him OK enough to drive.

What do I have planned for him? Well....
I allready have acquired:
A Rubicon Express 3.5" Superflex lift
Cobra CB setup with a 4" whip
Rogue Lighting LED headlights
Some Nomad 15 x 9" wheels with faux beadlock styling.
Cree round LED Flood lights for the front bumper
And Cree LED spot lights which I plan on recessing into the rear bumper.

I plan to acquire in the near future:
A Ebay snorkel
rear bronco II tire carrier setup
ARB front bumper with Warn M8500 winch
Lokka Rear locker
And the typical power goodies.

So, the overall idea which Patches, is to have a comfortable Daily driver that I can do weekend wheeling with but also not have to worry about taking it on long drives, or dare I say expeditions? My true dream is to set patches up so that I can do a journey across the states with him. but thats only a dream... for now.

I've categorized the pictures below so you dont have to try to read around the pictures, plus it keeps everything neat and tidy.

(Main pictures of Patches from day 1 to today)
kijiji Ad picture
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(Floor Repair) :
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Sorry the seller was such a loser, I know how that feels..

Very nice color though, it's coming along nicely. If he was that much of a neglecting jerkoff it may be due for fluids and a tune up

Sorry to hear the issues, but it doesn't seem like you looked it over thoroughly. And you caved in to his price when he was going to take 700 less. Sounds fishy to me. He got you good man. But nonethe less glad to have another member and you vhave a great vision!

You made the right move with your phone call and he earned the bad karma.

Glad things worked out for you and take your time with your restoration.

Seems like you did your noggin' pokin'. Just got beat is all. It's happened to everyone. You still have a Jeep and a nice lesson learned: If it's new parts and he's still selling, why? "Why's this black paint here on a 20-year old Jeep?" If the little hairs on your neck stand up, walk away.

I'm curious about that factory LS diff now... yay or nay?

Thanks for the replys guys, I know I should have looked the jeep over better, but I let my excitement get the best of me because 2 doors are like hens teeth around here.

As for the factory LSD question, I honestly havent been able to get it working right, it may be down on friction modifier or something. It will lock up when stomping on it from a dead stop, but as for flexing the jeep out or trying to get sideways it unloads and wont stay locked.

and good news, within the next day or two we start on my lift kit! I started getting deathwobble cause the factory trac-bar is shot. so I decided no time like the present!

And within the next week or two I'll be putting on my new 15 x 9 nomad rims. Though, new tires will have to wait :(

Looking good. How long did it take just for the welding?

it took a little under a month picking at it every night. the most time consuming thing was making all the patches and forming them to the old body metal, and then layering them ontop of eachother for added strength


Also a preveiw of the rims I'm getting next week, they came on a parts XJ I bought with only 90,000kms. (56,000 miles)

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I loaned them to a friend for the time being, but once he gets back from his current haul he's gunna mount his tires onto his old rims and give me mine back

Sorry to hear about the seller being a sketchy asshole, I know that all too well. My floor wasn't rotted out, but I got a boat load of things to fix that the PO screwed up with. Glad to see that you have good friends to help you out and so you can get your jeep built!

Sure way to tell if LSD is raise rear, trans in N and spin one tire by hand. If it's LSD, tires will spin the same direction.

Both do spin the same direction, but on wet roads or gravel it just seems to spin one, the other side hardly kicks in. I'll be changing the diff fluid soon and adding new friction modifier, so mabey that will help


Also, does anyone know where to get stock length tubular upper control arms? I'd like to upgrade to something more flexy later down the road, but I wanna stick at 3.5" of lift.

Not much done today besides cleaning out the junk from the interior and I finally had my exhaust patched back up. Running around open header was fun... but the massive headache said it had to be fixed. lmao

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The PO must have crushed the pipe on a rock and broke the flanges, so he used random bolts to bolt it back up and welded the pipe right to the header... some people shouldn't be allowed to work on vehicles.

Patches finally got his name decal!

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And in other news, I went adventuring out the local JY today and found a 94 Cherokee country! with -everything- in it. power windows, locks, mirrors, Power leather seats, full sound system with the soundbar in the rear, woodgrain dash bezel, full gauge package and cruise!

PLus its the same green as mine! I quickly grabbed anything I could afford of it, which wasnt much given I only had $30 on me. So I grabbed the gauge cluster (Which was only 1,000kms shy of mine) the woodgrain bezel, and the factory cup holder (the good one) I will be going back to get the hatch off it since mine is black, and mabey some other doo-dads

Spent a hour today installing it all.

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Before (not the best pic but you get the idea)
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it is MUCH more pleasant to drive in now, just more appealing to the eyes. plus its nice knowing what the ol 4.0L is running at. I still have to pick up new sending units for the temp and oil pressure gauges.

Also I went to take that whacky shift knob off, and I found out why it was there in the first place.
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So it looks like I'll be welding a bolt to the top of the shifter so I can screw on a factory looking one.

Nice finds at the junkyard.

Not much to report with patches so far, Had him out on a little memorial run yesterday. Worked good all day besides the plug wires getting wet and causing a misfire all day, or any time i went through a puddle.

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Lift kit install will hopefully be starting tonight.