Trey H

So...I guess it was like a month ago that I got my 1999 Jeep Cherokee 4.0L Sport. Its my first car, and my goal is to make it trail worthy while keeping it practical for the city roads. I bought I completely stock except for a pioneer headunit. It's got 155,000 miles and runs great. There really isn't anything left that I have to do to it mechanically, after the few things I did to it its a solid running Jeep. Mostly the only things I have to do are cosmetic things, which shouldn't be too hard (hopefully). So....heres the things that I want to do to it :

Things I've Done
Removed sun reflectors
Removed side-steps
Painted bumpers and trim
New battery
New brakes
Muffler

Things I Want
Subwoofers
Mids and Highs
Amps
Headunit
Rims (either new black rims or I'll paint my own)
Small lift kit : two - three inches
Upgrade the electrical system
Front window tint (back windows came tinted)
Bigger tires (not sure what size yet, whatever budget allows)
Foglights
Paint the underside
Kayak rack

I'm in no rush to speed through this build, so I'll be taking my time to make the money and spend it on stuff. Feel free to follow along, I'll try to post pictures on all the stuff I do to it. I might change my mind and add things that I haven't planned on getting so far, and if you have any suggestions on things to do, please post them.


Here are some pictures



^First day having the Jeep, I just took it in to the shop to get a battery and brakes. Besides those two minor setbacks everything else on the car works great and as it should.



^Last time having sun reflectors and side steps, I don't need them and don't like them so I took them off later that day. I also gave it a wash and a wax. Its starting to look really good I think!



^You can see I've taken off the sun reflectors and side steps. Today I detailed the inside and got it looking practically looking brand new (no lie). Interior is in perfect condition except for the headunit mount, but I will be replacing the headunit and mount later so thats no problem. Once I got finished with the inside I taped everything up and painted the bumpers and trim all black as they had gotten very faded.

Trey H

Its been a while and I haven't updated so here I go. Since my first post I've painted the underside, gotten subs, and bought amplifiers (still waiting for them to come in through UPS).


^After paint


^My subs...It was raining and I was in a bad mood so I just ripped the box open so I could get a picture of them and go back inside


^Painted the underside black

BOOMroasted

whoa subs huge

jusper88

Looking good so far! You have a PM!

IZAREBL

god starting jeep! how much did you get her for? and hoe much where those subs?

Angry-cop

nice work

Trey H

I bought the Jeep for $2600 and immediately spent $400 on brakes and rotors. The subs are factory refurbished Kicker L5's, I bought the two L5's and the box for $410 all together and I just got my two amplifiers to power them today and I payed $250 for the pair.

I'll be installing the subs and amps and running the wires this weekend so I'll be sure to post pics. I also traded my headunit with my dad. I had a Pioneer super-tuner but it didn't have a input for my iPod so I knew it wouldn't work with my system. My dad had a Sony Xplod with a input for me to plug my iPod in with so I traded mine for his since he only listens to the radio and CD's and I listen to the radio and my iPod.

Trey H

Three more pictures...


^The original box that my subs came in had a crack in it so the guys from HiFi sent me a new one. No damage to it and it came in very quickly and I didn't have to pay a thing for it I got my subs switched out from the old box to the new box.



^My amplifiers came in today. They are Crunch Powerone P1 2000.1 's. RMS rating is 1000 Watts by one channel at one OHM. I'm going to run each subwoofer in parallel to a final impedance of 1 OHM, and their RMS is 750 watts so 1000 watts each is a little bit overpowered but overpowering actually works pretty good.

Now all I need is to go out and buy some fuses and then I'll be ready to hook everything up. I want to get it running by this weekend so I definitely have my work cut out for me. I might even get some 0 gauge and rewire my electrical system if I get bored...who knows

Trey H

I have my subwoofers working and running. The first thing I had to do was rewire the the speaker wire inside the box. The company I bought from had each subs wired to four ohms but I changed up the wiring and turned it down to one ohm each, and they are both powered by their own separate amp pushing 1000 watts at 1 ohm.


Then I took out both front seats and started removing the little door panel things so I could run my wires. Each amp gets a 4 gauge wire, and are daisy-chained to a single RCA cable. Remote turn on wires are spliced together at the amps, and they each get their own bass control remote that will be located beside the seat.


Amps wired up pushing the subs! Everything works good so now its time to get to hiding wires! I already have the RCA and bass remote wires hid through the door panels, and I am waiting until I get a whole drilled to fit my power wires to hide the power and remote turn on wires.



And then just a random cool picture...of three awesome cars...Jeep, Mustang, and Challenger, now thats a good combination!

The Mustang is my sisters, its a 99 V6 with dual flowmasters so it sounds like a V8, I have the 99 Cherokee inline 6, and the 1970 Challenger is my dads and it has a 383 Magnum and its the coolest of all three!

bigvig

Nice Jeep.....and Dodge. The Ford however.....I wouldnt let park in my driveway. ESPECIALLY a Mustang, but thats just me. lol

Seriously though, nice score on the XJ and welcome to the club. Looking great so far and reminds me of when I bought mine.

Trey H

Well I know its been a really long time, but I completely forgot I had a build log on here so I never though to update here. I'm just going to copy and paste all the main posts from a different forum where I had a build log to save some time.



This is the final product. All wires have been hidden, plastic interior pieces are back in place, as are the seats. Everything works great. Next step : new component speakers and amp!



Sony CDX GT-650 ui came in.

And my mounting bracket and factory harnesses.


From old to new





Sound is a lot better with the new headunit and my speakers get a lot more power, I am very satisfied with the headunit. I haven't finished tweaking the settings yet so I haven't gotten best SQ yet.

Sorry about the bad quality pictures, they were taken with my cell phone and it was dark outside



I got my Polk DXI650's a couple days ago but forgot to post about them, and I can put pictures of them up if anyone wants them. I should have them installed sometime this week depending on weather. Its been over 100 degrees the last 4 days and I WILL NOT install them if its that hot. The only good time to install them really would be in the morning, its pretty nice feeling then, but I have work then. Even at night its 90 degrees at dark, and I don't want to be working in the dark :/ Anyway, back on subject, the speakers are 6.5 inch, which is larger than stock so I will have to do small modifications, nothing big though so it shouldn't be a problem. They also came with some pretty cool black grills that I want to put over top of them, but I'm worried if they might be too small to cover up the holes in the soundbar from the stock grills. If they don't fit I want to paint my stock grills black or charcoal or something cool like that.



My latest small addition was LEDs to my gauge cluster. I didn't get to take any pictures of the gauges with the LEDs because my camera doesn't show the red light very well, which I guess is because my camera can't pick up the LED wavelength or something, but I'm not really sure. But anyway, for anyone with an XJ that wants to know how I did it, all you have to do is order 5 #74 LED bulbs in any color that you want, take the gauge cluster out, and put the LEDs in the place of the old lights. I got my bulbs from http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-b...%2F74-xHP.html . I know that that is the size bulb you need for a 99 XJ, and I would assume its the same for an 00-01 as well, but I'm not sure so check before you buy your bulbs. I got mine in red but you can get them in other colors there if you want a different color.

These are the only pictures I got from the install

Old lights on the left (blue is because of the filter type thing on them, dunno why that was there), holders in the middle, LEDs on the right.

The 5 brown caps are what you have to twist out to get to the lights, then just pull the old lights out and replace them with a LED, and then put the cap and light back in



So while I'm saving money for future upgrades and things, I did a cheap little upgrade. I spray painted my speaker grills from the stock white color to charcoal grey. I used like a 1/4 can of dark grey bumper coater that I had sitting around so it was pretty much free. The speaker grills now match perfectly with my interior and contrast with the headliner and I think they look great! I like them, but tell me what you think!





bought my lift kit...3" rough country with full spring packs


my rear springs in today. front springs, shocks, and steering stabilizers and other misc pieces are coming in tomorrow! Also I'm going out to look at a set of 4 31x10.50 tires and wheels a guy on craigslist is selling tomorrow.





I got all the other parts for my lift kit in today, as well as my run of 0 gauge for when I do my big three upgrade under the hood.


Today I finally got to go look at the tires that were for sale. Originally I was supposed to go look at them on like Wednesday or Thursday, but the seller had to work overtime, so I went over there today. I had originally thought that they were going to be on stock rims from an old Jeep Wranger, but they are on some aftermarket rims. I They are pretty dirty, and I'll have to use a lot of acid to clean them up. I'm not sure if I'm going to put the rims I have on my cherokee right now on these tires, or if I'll keep the rims that came with the tires on. I forgot what brand the tires were, but there not a really popular brand. They have a lot of tread left, but two of the wheels are cupped pretty badly. Thats not a huge deal to me though, I'll just have to think of a way to make them wear more evenly. He listed them for $400, but I got him down to $300 and bought them.

I took a picture of them, but you can't see much because of shadows, and there sitting in the garage at the place I work at right now so I can't get a better picture than this, but o well.




I stayed back for a half an hour after work to clean up my wheels a little bit. They were pretty filthy and looked like they had never been cleaned. Degreaser wouldn't even touch anything on the rim, so I had to get everything off with acid. I forgot to get a before picture, so ya'll can't compare now vs then, but I know how dirty they were and this is a huge improvement. I'm still not completely satisfied with their finish seeing as I only spent 30 minutes on them. I'll probably work a little bit more on them tomorrow and get them looking as good as I can.

I know this is another bad picture of them, but its the only one I got. It was getting late and the lighting was terrible


I'm installing my lift kit next week and then I'll be able to put these on.



Well I put my car in the shop today so that I can install the lift kit and I will be working on it whenever I have a little spare time.


Then I went back over my wheels a second time


and this is how they turned out


Then I rolled the wheels over to the cherokee to get a rough idea of what it will look like.


I really like how the wheels turned out. I think they look great and I decided I'm not going to paint them black. I might still paint my stock eccos black and just have them laying around if I want to throw them on to give it a changed look later on, but the new wheels and tires are what I'll be putting on first.
Tell me what yall think about it



I cant use these rims anymore because they don't have enough backspacing. But thats fine though because I just put my stock rims back on and they work and look fine. I will end up painting my stock rims black though.

And my lift kit is finished.

Before

After

That picture was from when I had the new rims on it, but I took them off and put the old stock eccos on. I didn't get a picture of it though, but they look good.

And sorry about the terrible quality pictures. I had to take them with my cell phone. Once I clean it up I'll take some nicer pics with my actual camera.



I got a bunch of stuff for my car for Christmas, but forgot to post about it. My lift kit which I already have installed was my early Christmas present, but I got that installed before Christmas and there are already pics of it on this thread. I also got a Kicker ZX350.4, then some 8 gauge wire, 4 channel rcas, and 14 gauge speaker wire for the amp. I also got 0 gauge to do the big 3.


Everything together


17 feet of cadence 1/0 gauge


my 8 gauge power/ground wire + Monster 14 gauge speaker wire + Stinger 4 channel RCA's + fuses and other misc parts




My ZX350.4


I take my behind the wheel test on Thursday and if I pass it then I'll be able to get my drivers license and start driving that same day! I'm hoping to get my amp wired and mounted by then, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it done in time due to school and work, but its no big deal if I can't do it in time. I'm in no rush so I'll just do it whenever I have spare time.



I just noticed today that I didn't have any recent pictures of my jeep with the Eccos on it, and I only had one picture of the Jeep since its lift, so I went out and took a few pictures. These are as it sits right now. Quality isn't the best because I'm using my old camera in here...and I don't have any idea whats going on with the time stamping.














^^^
Right now the main thing cosmetic on the outside that needs work is the passenger side rust issue. The biggest problem is the passenger rocker panel. You can see that there is a huge rust spot in the far left side of the rocker panel, and recently the rust gave way and now I'm left with a big hole there. I'm gonna have to order a new rocker panel, cuz theres no way to repair that, and then instead of painting it red to match it I'm going to bedline it and bedline the driver side rocker as well. I have no idea when that will happen since I don't really have a schedule for this build...stuff gets done when I have free time and am in the mood to get it done. I'm also going to take the side moldings off of both sides, and will probably bedline up to the bend in the metal where the moldings used to cover. Again, I have no idea when this will happen but its something that I would like to do. There is also another spot of rust right about the rear passenger wheel, its not as easy to spot but its definatly there. I have no idea how I'm going to fix that without having to paint a huge section of the Jeep. Right now getting that fixed and painting everything red to match is just way to expensive, so I have no plans to fix that just yet. I was originally thinking of maybe bedlining that section too, but then I thought that that may look a little too aggressive and offroadish, so I've kind of strayed away from that idea. So.....idk what to do about that......

Anyway, if you have any feedback, comments, suggestions or questions please post them up!



I got a flowmaster 40 delta flow today and a 3.5" stainless steel tip put on the XJ today. Its raining a little bit right now but I'll try and get a video of it some other day

Trey H

I forgot to copy+paste one last thing from my other build log, so here it is

I didn't have anything planned today so I figured I'd take my side moldings off. Here are a few pics

This was what I started with


This was what it looks like under the molding


And heres how it turned out


Unfortunately, I didn't get to get it completely finished because a circuit blew causing all the lights and outlets to not work anymore, and the door to the electrical room was locked since it was a weekend so I couldn't go and reset the circuit breaker. So right now it looks really nice from far away, but when you get up close there is still a little bit of glue left on.



So...thats all the work I've done on it in the last 8 months all summarized into two posts... If you have any feedback, questions, or suggestions please post in here!