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What are your actual plans for the truck. I know what you mentioned as far as the 4.5 inch lift kit. Do you want to keep it to be driven regularly on the road, or just as a strictly off road vehicle for mudding, etc.
Since you mentioned that you do have some auto body experience and your brother still works at a shop, see if they may let you do some work on it on a saturday for a reduced rate if you do it yourselves.
Before you throw the lift kit on it, get the rust fixed and whatever else (tune-up, steering components, etc.) needs to be done. When you lift a truck, it will amplify any existing problems.
solid advice and couldn’t agree more. Rust was first on the agenda for us. Actual plans for it is to just off road it and play with it with the occasional road trip to wherever we may hit a trail. Upgrade list as of now is lift, tires, wench bumper and wench, gears, lockers, im sure upgraded axles wouldn’t be a bad idea lol. Originally Posted by Red1992XJ
If the rust is confined to the floor pans, get repo ones and save it. Most XJ's you find out there now will have some rust on floors. If the rockers, unibody, door bottoms, etc. are all solid you should keep it.What are your actual plans for the truck. I know what you mentioned as far as the 4.5 inch lift kit. Do you want to keep it to be driven regularly on the road, or just as a strictly off road vehicle for mudding, etc.
Since you mentioned that you do have some auto body experience and your brother still works at a shop, see if they may let you do some work on it on a saturday for a reduced rate if you do it yourselves.
Before you throw the lift kit on it, get the rust fixed and whatever else (tune-up, steering components, etc.) needs to be done. When you lift a truck, it will amplify any existing problems.
Senior Member
It sounds like you have a pretty good plan for what you want to do with the truck. If I may suggest, think about everything you want to do with the truck and sit down and write a budget / cost list. Figure out how much you want to spend on the truck, before you get halfway through and sink more than you want to into it. If you add a lift to it, you will then add larger tires, if you add larger tires, you will probably want to regear it. If you are going to regear it, you may want to add a new limited slip or locker while you have it open. It can snowball. When I sat down to plan out mine, I figured a budget of $3000, and after adding up the parts cost of my mods, I got to almost $6000.
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I sometimes have a hard time not thinking big and tend to forget that we want to get in this thing relatively quick and have fun with it without spending a ton on it immediately. So I we may do a simple 3” lift and tires for now to get us on the trails and have some fun with it. I feel as though that doesn’t commit us to bigger upgrades like gears and lickers immediately like it would if we done 4.5” lift and 33”s or 35”s.Originally Posted by Red1992XJ
It sounds like you have a pretty good plan for what you want to do with the truck. If I may suggest, think about everything you want to do with the truck and sit down and write a budget / cost list. Figure out how much you want to spend on the truck, before you get halfway through and sink more than you want to into it. If you add a lift to it, you will then add larger tires, if you add larger tires, you will probably want to regear it. If you are going to regear it, you may want to add a new limited slip or locker while you have it open. It can snowball. When I sat down to plan out mine, I figured a budget of $3000, and after adding up the parts cost of my mods, I got to almost $6000.
Senior Member
Since it is an auto trans, it would have the 3.55 gears from the factory if my memory serves me correct. 3.55 gears with 31 inch tires would work ok for awhile. If you do eventually plan on going to 33 or 35, you will want to regear then to a 4.56, maybe even a little more with the 35s. If I may suggest, don't do any fender trimming unless absolutely necessary. With a Jeep that is as rust free as yours, it would be a shame to trim fenders just to clear tires.
Got a chunk of the passenger floor out today. I’m working graveyards at the moment so its a couple hours a day then off to work but I also got the fenders and grille out just to get a closer look at things and to continue cleaning out any leaves and junk that have collected over the years that hold water and inevitably cause rust. She’s cleaning up good, uniframe is solid and looking good as well as rockers.
We will see how well they fit but I found both driver and passenger side floor pans for $215 shipped coming from classic 2 current fabrications ebay store.