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Let me start off by saying I am open to any criticism, opinions, suggestions or help in general. Id love anything y'all offer me! But Im new to the forums and my first jeep aswell. I am not mechanically inclined in the slightest nor do I know very much about vehicles in general so bear with me. Bought it back in august for $2900. This is how it looked when I got it, mostly stock aside from some parts on the underside. Owner before me spent his entire ownership (like 6 months) of the car fixing it up and not driving it. Had pretty low mileage when I got it too, 150K. Tires were bald but they were mismatched anyway so it didn't matter. When I got it I didn't really think Id get into the thing as much as I did. Plus being in high school I didn't (and still don't) really have the budget for serious stuff like that.
Was driving around stock for a while and ended up hitting a pothole hard as hell, broke my bump stop which seemed like an easy and cheap fix. But upon further inspection my front diff, spindles and a load of other **** were in need of replacing. Dad and I looked at it and determind that if I had even braked too hard i could have ripped pieces out of place. There was so much rust on it which was surprising for not having been driven north of Tennessee. Expensive fix unfortunately, ran us about $3200.
At least after all the replacements and fixes Im safe to drive in it again. After this I started looking into the wheeling side of jeeps and boy I fell down a rabbit hole.
After that fix, my dad didn't want me getting a whole lot of stuff for this thing. Which is understandable as this was mean to be a starter vehicle. I wanted a little more though. Working minimum wage and going to school stretched my money fairly thin between gas and insurance. So most of the soon to come mods were gonna be mostly easy cosmetic mods. Roof racks, paint, etc.
First thing i ended up getting for the jeep was a roof rack, the problem was that zj came with no luggage rack assembly so I had to find one of those. Didn't seem like too hard of a task but most of the junkyards around me, either didn't have the part, or it was broken and not worth it. Four calls and several searches later I found one and picked it up. After attaching it I bought a relatively cheap rack online. 5 1/2 foot rack sits pretty as anything on my roof. Also took my side cladding off just to see how it looked. I did end up liking it, minus the little black stud it held on by. Nothing I could really do about that though.
Up next on the shopping list was a spacer kit. I ended up getting rough country 1 1/2" spacers. Mostly bought these because I wanted to squeeze 31's underneath her without a lift. Since then I've changed my mind but don't really regret buying them. I like the wider stance it gives it. Looks a lot more aggressive along with a few of the other things I ended up doing. Didn't put thread lock on it the first time (BIG MISTAKE).
This was how she sat after we finished putting the spacers on, thought it was a nice and relatively inexpensive addition.
The paint isn't in so bad shape, the first thing is dealing with the flacking, the sooner, the better, simply sand it out and it will stop, they you'll have months before it start gain. The plastic can be restored to black with a heatgun (the cheap way) or refurbishing paint for car's plastic.
IMHO you should change the zip ties to metal hose clamps, you can screw those and close it with a padlock, mostly because if you hit someone... well, a flying shovel is not something the insurance will cover, you know?
The ZJ is a sturdy car, IDK about the engine, in Europe those had a different one, but the rims and tires always looked too small for it to me.
Did end up taking it out to a bit of land my family owns and tearing it up some. Messed up my alignment out here but it was good fun. Don't have a whole lot of pictures from that day because it was pouring rain for the majority of it. The other zj in the photo has a 3 1/2" Rough Country with 32's so it held up much better than mine. And as for the Buick in the picture, you'd be surprised at how well at handled out there. We did end up leaving tat day with a break. The silver zj hit a tree and dented the hell outta its passenger side rear quarter panel. Lost the door handle on it too but it wasn't anything too major.
Tires are much smaller than Id like them to be right now, running 29's. They're street tires too so that makes them look worse. as for the paint I'm not sure what Ill do in the long run, not too much chipping going on. I guess only time will tell. But the cladding on the side will probably get a good spray down with bed-liner as I like the way that looks and it has a fairly good reputation.
Next on the agenda was trimming the bumper, I personally thought that the factory look was too fat and bulky. So I took a trip down to Walmart and bought an exacto knife. Since the bumper is so thin it took me all of 20 minutes to trace my cutting line and cut it out.
This was also done in preparation for bigger tires (that I ended up changing my mind on)
Still like the look and it gives me a little more clearance for offroading.
Next on the to-do list was to fix this door hinge, we had fixed it one time before but it seems that it broke again. When the door is pushed open it falls down a bit resulting in me having to lift the door up and then push it closed. I'm still unsure as to how to fix this as it just keeps doing it. If anyone has any suggestions you should throw them my way.
It seems to have something to do with the rings around the pin but I haven't seen any information on them??
Up next was the zj version of the angry eyes mod, was way excited to do this just because I love the aggressive look on my jeep. Instead of the electrical tape however I opted for matte black spray paint.
Ended up giving it the spray at like 12 at night, so I could see the effect better.
Overall though I was happy with the way it turned out, unfortunately I did stain the paint a tad with mud because it hadn't fully dried when I got some on thee headlights.
Started to hear a loud thud-thud noise while I was driving. Was worried it had something to do with my alignment or maybe something I had unknowingly broken doing all the dumb **** I do. Needless to say I was both relieved and terrified to find out that I had nnot broken a thing. It was instead 3 out of 4 spacers coming loose (remember I didn't use thread-lock when we originally put them on). Needless to say I immediately went down to the hardware store and picked up a thing of it.
(spacers are red and so good looking, shame you cant see them)
The whole ordeal took about an hour and a half and $8 for the thread-lock. (Craps expensive as heck)
08-17-2018, 12:05 AM
"Beep" the 97 Jeep Grand Cherokee Build(SLOW)
