Soooo... about January I started thinking about wanting a 4wd vehicle. I currently own a Lexus IS300 as my daily driver, and love the car, but something is missing. I can't ALWAYS get where I want to go, and that can be a problem. Plus, my car is at around 130k miles (which is really nothing on the 2jz, similiar to the 4.0 I6) but I wanted something else.

My initial thought was I'd sell the lexus private party, then use the cash as a down payment on a new JK or F150. Well, car payments suck, and since I don't have one, I wanted to keep it that way. So then I start looking at older wranglers, cj5's, cj7's, etc. I was looking at those mainly because I miss the "summer car" fun that I had with a previous 94 mustang cobra I've owned. Well, I didnt want to spend 4-5k on a 2nd car, so I kept looking, and kept running into the good 'ol cherokee. I've always been a fan of these things, and my dad's had one since 94. He started with a 94 I6 zj, sold that and bought a 99 4.7 WJ after he wore that one out. He still has the WJ, although now it was passed down to my little sister as her first vehicle. Anyway, I've always loved the cherokee's, and while I was used to grands, I just loved the boxy body style that the XJ always kept around.

So, now lets go to about a month ago. I've given up on the idea of selling my IS300 and buying a new vehicle because I don't like car payments, or debt at all for that matter, and end up looking for an XJ. After a few sales either werent what I thought, or were sold out from under me, I stumbled upon a 98 cherokee sport with 167k miles on it. The seller said the A/C didnt work, passenger window didnt work, and front speakers dont work. I end up buying it for 1600 bucks, got the A/C working with a simple fuse, and havent touched the other "problems" yet, but those will be sorted out eventually.

Here's the new to me "hero" pretty much as I got it:










As you can see, it has very faded flares, and faded/fubared side molding.


First thing I did was rip off the molding and paint the rockers, lower doors, fender flaires, bumpers, grille, headlight bezels, tailgate handle and other black thing on tail gate, rear quarter panels, and the antenna with bed liner.












Tax time rolls around, and uncle Sam took out way too large of a loan to not be paying interest on, so I got that **** back STAT and bought a lift, wheels, and tires. I feel bad for that UPS guy, but even after breaking his back he was able to lug my RC 4.5X lift, cragar soft 8's, and hankook MT's to my door. Here's a shot of the boxes and a couple tires, then the wheels set up next to the jeep in "test mode":

 

The wheels are 15x8 cragar soft 8's... I know they're overplayed, but I freaking love them. They just make my weiner hard, so I had to roll with it. They're wrapped in 32x11.5x15 Hankook DynaPro MT RT03's. They look great, have an aggressive tread pattern and had great reviews, so I went with them.


Well, once the lift came in I took the jeep over to a buddy of mines parents house who have an out building with a lift and about every tool you could imagine, and began work. The front was a beeeotch to get apart... actually, the whole damn thing was a PITA to take apart. I had to torch a couple bolts, cut bolts, pound bolts out, etc. But I finally got the front in (with a ton of help from a good buddy of mine... thanks Kyle)





















Getting the rear leafs off was a pain... of course. That sleeve seized on both forward leaf bolts/mounts:

 

Looks good, It looks like you might need to rebuild the drivers seat, but all in all I would say you got a solid vehicle.

 

All 4 shock bolts broke, so to the air hammer I went. And thanks to searching I found a nice "easy" way to get new nuts/bolts up in the now vacant bolt holes. Thank god for mini access panels. Forget about pulling carpet and cutting through your floor to get behind those things. A little tape and a couple crescent wrenches worked great.


So after all of presidents day weekend, and every night after work through Thursday of this past week, I finally got it together with the help of my good buddy Kyle. That dude is awesome btw, I can't give him enough props for the help. I'll be buying his beers for a long time now, but this is how it turned out:

























The immediate future holds a rooftop basket, new bumpers, and fixing the window/speakers. Past that... who knows. I've already spent far too much on this thing as it is, but I guess that's how it goes when you have toys.

 

Looking good man.

 

loving the fish. good looking build so far

 

lmfao i get the same feeling when i see nice wheels. nice build man this was the original setup i was gonna go for until i decided to go smaller...whats next on the list??

 

Looks nice, keep it clean and don't chop it all up.

 

Looks good, I'm subscribed

 

Nice rog bro.

 

Looks awesome!

 

Went wheelin...


Jeep made some friends:





Gonna pull off the bumper caps and trim them up a bit. Front rubs pretty hard at flex.

 

you haven't spent nothing yet man...good looking rig though and is that a Porch thats parked next to in the garage those belong in front of the house lol