Christmas came early for me as my wife and I decided to open our gifts early with my old man since he got to visit us. Love my old man to death.

Some of the goodies to come!

Gauges!







'KUSTOM' is there for my personal touch.. my name is Kevin. In fact, when I get my Jeep painted, I am updating the badges with bolder and more block style lettering for 'Cherokee' and under it will say 'Kustom Laredo'.

Also have a 15" electric fan and switch to wire up and replace my stock mech fan. Also the new t-stat a lot of people are interested in seeing work lol (OEM replacement possibility). L.E.D.s will go behind the gauges (bright white) with red ones going below the Shifters (trans/tcase).

I am extremely excited. I also got some new side markers (not OEM design) that I will get pics of tomorrow.

Btw, the gauges from of Azzy Design Works, their Carbon Fiber styles. Bryan is an awesome dude to work with and got EXACTLY what I wanted customized and was quick to get it made and sent out the door. I extremely recommend his services for a custom touch and will very likely be ordering from him again. His included sticker will definitely be going on my Heep.

 

Finally got the new thermostat housing drilled/tapped for the thermo-switch for the e-fan!







Ignore my long nails... I have just been busy... and maybe a tad lazy with the busy.

Wiring harness is almost done as well. I'll be doing a how-to. Stay tuned!

I also got the gauge faces and bezel in, as well as the L.E.D.s. I just need to open it back up and fix one L.E.D. (installed backwards) and one gauge that I slightly lifted up so you can see where the split is to go over the needle (entirely my fault). Pics once fixed!

 

DUDE! Just spent about 45 Min from Page one to 7! Lol Great job on everything man. I was surprised to learn thru my reading that you were only 17 when you started the thread. You write very well! I am 33, (About to be 34 next month) and just picked up my second XJ. First was a white 97 and I loved it to death. Death, literally was what took it away from me. It was parked on the street one night (Never parked it there) and about 2 AM BAMN! Lady was doing 55 in a residential and smacked into the back of it. My wifes Jeep Liberty was parked in front of it about 2 feet away. XJ hit her's and threw it a car length and a half away from where it was parked. I was devastated. It was the first vehicle I had ever paid off and then totaled. Bent the frame/Unibody.
Well, life happens, but now I just picked up a 92 Laredo 5 speed with 228K on the I6.
I have another XJ in mind that is in much nicer condition being a 2001 with all the power creature comforts as well. That's down the road, and I'm going to do my best to tidy this one up for now. I have two daughters, 10 and 12, that will learn to drive in this bad boy, and I'll be surfing the forum for just about everything. I believe myself to be pretty savvy when it comes to working on vehicles, but I gotta say there are part names and odds n ends I have read in your posts that baffle me lol.
I'm starting on Shocks then break pads, then I would like to tackle the I6. Looks like it's seeping just about every where oil and other liquid can seep from, and it's burning a little oil (small amount of blue smoke). Gotta compression test it and diagnose the probs.
Sorry for ranting!
Just want to say thanks for keeping up on all of your work. People like you make it that much easier on people like me.
That, and it's cool as hell to see the story of a Jeep rising from the ashes of old age and poor PO's.

LG~

 

Lol thanks man! I like to think I've evolved a bit from my first days of Cherokee ownership. Lord knows I've learned TONS from this forum, let alone my own research and trial and error. I've got a lot more pics to load up too!

Sorry to hear about the Jeep. That would have hurt me in a spot not to be hurt. It sucks when something important to you gets demolished by the ignorance of others. I'd have been pissed. Good luck on your new rig though! Like you said, these XJ's are like a Phoenix: get an old one beat to hell and make a new one rise from the ashes.

Edit: btw, as far as your oil burning (not leaking), when you get the seeps fixed try a can of Restore oil additive. Comes in a silver can. Now, I've never been for snake oils, but I and many others have had some good success with this stuff. Worth a shot! Also run a 10w40 in it. I've found the 40 weight makes things happier in an older 4.0.

 

I will use both of those ideas my friend! Thanks again, and I look forward to more of your story!

 

As promised, more pictures and updates which, once again, are insanely over-due.

I've got a good bit, but I'll start with the e-fan conversion I decided to do. I wanted to eliminate the stock belt-driven viscous clutch fan to free up some power, increase mileage, improve warm-up times, and improve throttle response. Excepting the mileage part because I haven't been able to properly calculate any change, I have accomplished all other tasks with this mod and am very pleased.

As has been mentioned in many other threads, quality is key. Don't by a $5 12" fan and then get butthurt when it doesn't do a damn bit of good. I spent about $50 on a lifetime warranty 15" fan from a known retailer on e-bay (gasp!). The fan pulls about 2300 cfm, which combined with my stock e-fan (app. 2,000 cfm) gives me a whopping 4,300 cfm of airflow. I will be converting my stock '91 e-fan to a later 97+ S-blade e-fan which has about 300-400 more cfm.

Enough of me running my face. PICS!

First off, I had to modify the housing (which there are pics of above). I used a BMW 4-seasons switch that cuts on at about 197* and then off at 185* if I recall. It worked out to be perfect (except that it has a wierd jank metric thread).







Then came removing the fan itself. Big space (or so you'd think...)



*Note: the room between the engine and where the fan sits is narrow. Most people (rightly so) just cut off the mech fan bearing and 'nub' to make plenty of room (which I will probably do one day). For now, I wanted redundancy in case I needed to convert back in a pinch. That made installation and e-fan positioning... interesting to say the least.

 

My first attempts were around the idea of using the stock fan shroud to make everything look all nice, pretty, and somewhat stock. This... uh... didn't quite work out. I know some other folks have made it work. I had a herp-derp moment and completely butchered my fan shroud and just couldn't make it work. Not to mention that even with the fan mounted in the shroud in a somewhat successful manner, it simply sat too close to the pulley for my comforts.

 

After admitting defeat and downing some cold ones in despair, I had an idea as I sat upon the toilet one morning. I thought to myself "I have a dremel... I have a jigsaw.... I can make my own shroud! This should be easy!"



In all seriousness, it wasn't crazy hard. Just took a bit longer than I imagined. And the saying holds true... "Measure once, cut twice!". Err wait... is it the other away around?

Anyways, I picked up a piece of sheet metal from Tractor Supply and got to work making all of my BEAUTIFUL sharpie lines for cutting and started going at it one bit at a time!











The clearance is much better. The only 'tight' spot is are the edge of the pulley and the edge of the 'nub' on the back of my e-fan. However, I have newer engine mounts installed (otherwise I would have never gone with this) plus a similar age trans mount installed. I think we'll be good to go!

More pics later!

 

Where was I? Oh yeah!

The new shroud required a good bit of go measure, cut/grind a little, go measure, cut/grind a little, and continue. This is also galvanized steel sheet. I'll be painting it black eventually to make it a little more stock looking. You'll also notice that the open shroud pic has these hash marks around the hole that I cut out. Those hash marks represent the outside edge of the fan. The blade is of course smaller than this edge by about 3/4" with another 1/4" gap used for the 'ring' that connects the fan blades. I cut inside this 1" buffer so that in any situation the fan tries to move forward, the shroud will protect the radiator from being all chopped up. I iz smart!

Anyways, more pics!

The pic below is of my first attempt for a top fan brace. Sheet metal isn't super rigid and flexes, and the weight of the e-fan (and since the human hand can't coordinate cuts to be perfectly straight and on the dot) caused the center of the fan/shroud to not sit firmly against the rad cross member flush. As you can see, my first attempt was a fail.



To cool off from my failure, I made the main portion of my wiring harness. All color coded with 10 AWG wire for fan power and 12 AWG for relay signal wire. Measured to the dot, loomed, and zip-tied for that oh so good feeling.



Then I went back to my upper fan brace. This is aluminum bar by the way. I then remembered the old saying: K.I.S.S. "Keep It Simple Stupid!"

A quick measurement and two bends on each side, and I had a more flush looking brace that holds the fan and shroud center firmly against the cross member.

 

Now I could finish wiring up the e-fan. I tapped into the fuel pump wire before the resistor for my 12v signal source since this only supplies power when the key is in the on position (which is what I wanted). So the power to the fan is supplied directly from the battery to the relay, to the fan, then grounded on a cross member bolt. The relay wiring goes from the fuel pump ballast resistor 12v wire, to the thermoswitch, to the relay, and then grounds on the same bolt. All connections (or 90% of them) are soldered, all are shrink wrapped, color coded, and loomed.











The connector for the 12v signal source is redundant so I can reconnect the stock connector in the case of a short or issue. I did NOT cut the wire itself. Redundancy is good.

 

The final e-fan install pics!





Works like a charm with no engine contact so far even for a brief WOT sprint. At idle, cuts on at about the 210 mark on the gauge, runs for about 3 minutes, then cuts off when the needle is about 3/32" inch from the 210 mark. AWESOME! I am estimating start-up amp draw to be 21 amps, and running amp draw to be about 15 amps. Very pleased!!

More to come later!

 

More, as promised. Remember those gauge faces? I installed them, and another big plus for Azzy Designs. Those folks are great, and I am actually working with them now for some more custom stuff.

Anyways, ya'll know the drill.

The first thing to come off is the bezel of course. It just holds in with 4 screws and clips. Notice the bottom pic of the radio. The idiot who owned this Jeep before me installed it (if you can call it that; more on that later) inside the bezel itself. He dremeled out some of the lower material of the hole for the radio and mounted the radio metal box frame thing in the bezel. So anytime you pull the bezel, the radio would pull out with it. I also was having cutting of music when I hit bumps or wiggled the stereo (AGAIN, more on that later ).





Back to the gauges, pull the cluster out and put it on a workspace (kitchen table; ask wife's permission). Remove glass and gauge bezel.





Then, CAREFULLY remove the gauge screws one at a time and slip on the faces using some double sided tape on various spots of the face (Azzy provides some of this. I used a little extra). Careful with the needles!



Read on for more!

 

Install the rest of the faces and carefully move the needles back to their approximate last locations. Put the stock gauge bezel back over the gauges. Now, I ordered an aftermarket bezel to go over this bezel with double sided tape. It fits almost to a T... except for the little notches for the glass/plastic. Without notches, the plastic will push down on the bezel at the top and make it lift up. No good. A quick dremel second later, and VIOLA!





Install back into the beast and BAM! Automatic sexiness and about a 30 horsepower gain to the wheels*!!!!

*verified via the Super Butt Dyno. Don't judge me.





Complimentary night shot!

 

Those with keen eyes will look at my night shot of the gauges and say, "Hey! Wait a minute... WAIT A MINUTE! 1991Jeep_Man (Kevin), those don't look like any stock lights!"

Very correct. I replaced the gauge lights, turn signal indicator lights, and the shifter/t-case shifter lights with LED bulbs. The shifter lights are red, dash lights white. You pay for quality. I ordered from a guy on e-bay. They've been fantastic thus far.



Also, on a completely side note: I finally decided to be somewhat smart (look at me ma!) and trace the wires on this totally redundant switch I had in my dash beside the defrost switch. I even (being an idiot of youth and experience) made a thread about it (or something related to it; God knows most of my first posts were ignorant and needy): https://www.cherokeeforum.com/f2/make-look-good-43420/

Seriously, side note. A lot of my first posts on this forum were NEEDY. Like, I was pathetic. Embarrassing.

Anyways, I traced the switch while I had the dash apart.



It was basically another hack/half-*** job the PO did with this Jeep. It was a cheap harness for some fog lights that he removed by left the junk-*** wiring. Seriously, there were positive cables that, had the switch been on, could have made contact and shorted out. No fuse, just wires. Fire hazard much? Here's one bundle of crap wire (and no, that isn't a fuse holder; it has been jumped):



I fixed all of the junk (including soldering a split main wire that tied into the main power lead to the battery that he spliced into). Good Lord. I re-used the switch for MY fog lights with PROPER harness so that I didn't have to reach under the dash anymore to my switch that didn't even have a light. Eventually I am replacing this crap switch with a Jeep factory Power/Comfort switch to make it look more OEM.

 

A quick warning to my CF friends. For God's sake, don't do what I did and buy cheap locking lug nuts. Junk. Almost (pretty much did) cause me heluva issues. Even my previously sold '12 Optima's STOCK locking lugs were FUBAR after the first tightening from the dealer.