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I bought a Jeep.

1999 Cherokee Sport with 223,000 miles on it. It drives like it has a marble in the middle and smells like a nuclear Starbucks exploded in it. There is grime and crap everywhere and serious mess. It is a bit rough running but you can tell there is something there worth saving.

My wife got the new 4Runner and in order to keep monthly expenditure down I decided to get a very used car. I used to work on cars all the time when I was younger growing up in a racing family it was part of life. I grew out of it and have enjoyed years of owning new vehicles that didn't need anything other than oil and tires.

I decided on the Cherokee after stumbling onto this forum and seeing all the killer things done to them. I like the fact I can work on it in the driveway and it is a nice simple truck. None of this would be as easy if there wasn't all this great information available on this site. Thanks for all the time you guys take to answer questions.

So here we go.

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Under the hood this thing was a mess. Valve cover leak. Power steering leak. Oil sensor leak. All in all it took a day at the mechanics shop to plug them all. I would have done it myself but it was a chance to have a real mechanic look it over and change ALL the fluids. Expensive but necessary and kept my driveway clean.

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Headlights were beat so time to change them.

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This thing was gross inside. I ended up using mineral spirits to clean all the plastic panels and such inside. I took everything apart and cleaned it as best I could before putting it back together. I don't mind dust and dirt but nasty food grease and spills are too much. The PO must have dumped a full bucket of starbucks coffee on the carpet and seats...

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Killed my steam cleaner trying to get the mess out. Ended up using the power washer and shop vac on it.

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The seats wouldn't come clean with upholstery cleaner so I ended up using the power washer and simple green on them. They are clean now.

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Fixing the suspension.

I had pretty bad leaf sag and the front end felt like a baby buggy so time for some parts. I started with Quadratec HD Leafs and bushings. The Crown parts do not look that great I hope they hold up.

Dreaded bushing press. Thanks to some searching I found exactly what I wanted to know and this was a breeze except for the 90 degree heat and sun. I took some shots before I got grease everywhere.

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Bushings in

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WD-40 and a breaker bar.



This is some engineers idea of a joke. If I ever meet him I will run him down. Jiggling a full leaf by yourself is no fun.




The worst part was getting the shackles loose. The bolt was frozen in the sleeve. If I did it again I would just buy new ones.

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Nose down... you can see the lift i got from the Crown HD springs. And now the rear of the vehicle feels solid. Much better than before. However the nose down makes it steer even worse than before. It will be a week before I have time to fix the front suspension.

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Time for some stereo work. I bought a cheap Clarion head and some 6.5 Rockford Fosgates on sale off amazon. I will have to do something for the doors.

Clarion in the dash. All Flash media no cd or anything mechanical to break. I got the adapter installed easily and soldered the wiring harness ahead of time. Bolt in snap in replacements. Except for a short in the drivers door went flawless. I still have door lock issues os the driver door harness will need to be removed and fixed.



I installed the Rockford Fosgate 6.5s in the rear with no issues. Basically I trimmed the holes with right hand tin snips and screwed them in. Old covers even fit. I might add some dampening later as they are a bit boomy.

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I just happen to have a CNC machine and I decided to use it to make the door baffles. Since it is a Jeep I really don't care what it looks like as long as it is solid and sounds better than it did.

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