So here's where I start my newest project. It's an 1989 Cherokee, completely stock other than a cheap Sony CD deck in it. I'm calling it "The Dirty Bastard" lol.
I picked it up last week for $200. Overall it's in decent shape, some spots of the frame still have factory paint, it needs a bit of body work, nothing major. The biggest thing is it needs an alternator because one of the last owners thought the way to tighten the belt was to turn the alternator itself, so they took a hammer to it trying to turn it. Obviously it didn't turn it and just smashed a hole through it.

For now, it's going to be strictly off-road use only but I'm not going to destroy/mangle it too bad incase I ever want to put it on the road again. And most importantly, this is going to be an extreme budget build, so I'll being doing all of the work myself or at least as much as I can. I wont be going out and buying big expensive kits or anything like that for it either.

Here's a list of plans for it:
- Tear the carpet up and spray the floor with bed-liner.
- Bigger tires. I'm gonna put 31"s on it for now and maybe 33"s a little bit down the road.
- A bastard pack lift, it is the Dirty Bastard after all.
- Muffler, it's pretty well screwed so I have an old Cherry Bomb muffler I might throw on, I might have a magnaflow kickin around and if I do then I'll put that on instead.
- Paint, I'm thinking either a gun-metal gray or dark blue. Will most likely use spray bombs.
- Front and rear bumpers are coming off and will be left off until I fab some news ones up.
- Building new alternator brackets so I can move the alternator from underneath to up top to avoid caked on mud and stuff like that.
- Making my doors removable.
- Cold air intake and then eventually a homemade snorkel.
- Sometime down the road I'm going to put 4.10 gears in it.
- The chrome grill is getting replaces/painted black, I don't like chrome lol.
- Fenders trimmed.
- Rocker sills cut out and replaced with sliders.

She's just gonna be a mud and trail buggy for me, I don't like rock climbing and stuff like that. So hopefully this is the start of pretty decent Cherokee, my Dirty Bastard lol

That's pretty much all of the plans I have for it right now but I'd love to hear some suggestions and cool ideas as well.

 

Not bad, good deal for the price looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

 

Thanks man, I'm pretty stoked to really start workin on the fun stuff.

A couple minor updates I did today, it's terrible weather so I couldn't do much. I removed the gray dash trim and scuffed it up with sandpaper and then painted it with black rocker guard. Then I took a razor blade and cut off the padding on the steering wheel, just the padding that is on the 3 spokes. As you can see in the pictures there's still some residue from the adhesive that I'll have to remove. Also there's a picture of a set of 31"s I picked up the other day, they're not brand new or anything, but they'll do just fine for now and I only paid $20 for them lol.

 

Where you live, is it legal to not have fender flares?

 

I think by law, if my tires stick out a certain amount of inches I have to have fender flares but it's not something the cops would pull me over for, if I was getting it inspected I'd have though. I'm going to make some fender flares for it once I trim the fenders anyway.

 

Really rainy weather today so I didn't get a whole lot done. The Reese hitch on the back was rusted to hell and hanging and pulling the bumper down so I removed them both. Also started tearing out the interior today and it's a good thing I did, it was absolutely soaked underneath, no holes only some surface rust so I caught it just in time. Gonna finish tearing it all out tomorrow and prepping it for bed-liner.

 

Nice start man, you say budget build now but that's exactly what I said.... now I have one tons in my garage waiting to get put in

 

No it'll end up a budget build no matter what, I'm really cheap and hate spending money lol, plus spending a tonne of money isn't really an option even if I need it. She's slowly coming along, hopefully this Saturday I'll get my 31"s put on.

 

haha moving quickly. Just what everyone loves! Not to bad of a deal either...
Seems like you got a game plan going for yourself as well! Can't wait for the updates!

 

Where i live they cant stick out farther than half of the tire, so i pulled mine off....sounds good on the custom flare thing though

 

hay how much you want for the front stock fender.

 

I have to move as quick as I can, I get way too impatient, I just want it all done right away lol.

Yea here it's a matter or inches but I've seen some really cool homemade fender flares on here that look better than the factory ones so that's what I'll be doing.

 

CHeck out odgreenon35s's build, IIRC he used garden border to do his; cheap, easy, and looks sick as hell lol

 

Thats the thread that made me want decide to make my own actually lol. I was surprised at how good they turned out. I like them a lot.

 

Lol me too, the only reason im not puttin them on myself is that i dont have a big enough backspacing to get pulled over haha