I took the tires off and was happy to find that overall they were pretty rust free. What you see on the face was ver minimal cosmetic rust. In fact I spent more time getting rid of dirt than I did rust. In the end it turned out well.

 

Waiting on rims and tires to go on.





I decided to go with black center caps and they were $12 a piece. Needless to say they came out looking good.

 

I decided to go with a set of 30x9.5xR15 BFG A/T KOs for my choice of tire. The 9.5" allowed me to use the stock rims and have no rub.

 

I think it looks good on it.

 

Next I finally got around to putting my new exhaust on. This kit was a bolt on which made it fairly easy in comparison. However getting my old cat off, took some excessive hits with a BFH so I could keep the studs on the pipe. But I ended up having to cut one off so I just put new ones in.

 

As you can see from my last post, a new exhaust isn't the only thing I've been up to. Before I put it in I wanted to remove every bit of rust from this jeep. There was some minor cancer on the rear quarter panels that did require some grinding and sanding to eliminate. I started there and then proceeded to do the entire underside.

 

I did front and rear and even most of the transmission tunnel.

 

I came across only one bad ujoint. I am glad I caught it as the ujoint was bad, straps were worn out and the yoke was broken. It was just waiting to explode.

 

After all of this I was waiting for some money to get it smogged and its plates. For $100 I picked up an overhead console, dash trim, full set of gauges, a tire, heater controls and some other minor things. This gave me time to fix an issue with the steering column, get wipers working, heater core cleaned out further.

 

This overhead console was from a 91 xj and didn't have a harness or bracket. I went to the junkyard once again and found the connector I needed and bracket for $10 and got to work. I also had left over fabric from redoing my 2000xj headliner.

The first thing I did was to recover the console, which was easy and it didn't take long. I removed the keyless entry circuit board and covered that hole as mine is all manual doors and windows. I then set out to make a wiring harness for it and get it in.

 

Using just the factory dome light wires and my connector I used a wiring diagram to sort out what needed to go where. I had a box of wires from an old engine harness that I used to get the right length and gauge of wire so I set out to make a harness. I got it nicely soldered and heat shrink insulation on and wrapped it with electrical tape.

 

I went with a bracket from a ZJ that had a similar console. I still had to modify it a bit to fit the XJ, but for about $10 it was pretty reasonable. I did that and got my console in. I also picked up a set of visors from a 2000 xj since the '89 visors were too long to accommodate a console. I found that I only had to drill a hole for each of the visor clips and one for the overhead console as the '91 and older apparently never had the option.

I did manage to come across an xj console recently that had a bracket in the front. I didnt have that either, but I used a long wood screw. It was a good 2 1/2 inches long and it did the job nicely.

 

I took the time to replace my dummy gauges with the full set that I got for $10-$20 and put in the dash trim and a new radio. I picked up the iPod control radio by Sony for $80.

 

I finally got it registered and on the road. Unfortunately as soon as I filled it up with gas, it started to dump fuel out of the tank due to a shot o ring and there was a hole on the fuel pump assembly the the previous owner used puddy to fix. So I ended up having to order an entire fuel pump assembly to fix that. In the meantime I pumped out the excess fuel and ran on a half tank for a week and it didn't leak or have excessive fumes to worry about.

 

I was driving home a week ago and I had the fuse blow for the radio. Come to find out my entire circuit was grounded. As I traced wires back, the entire harness to include the battery cables were grounded. I found numerous problems with worn or missing insulation, but I did take the time to completely redo the wiring harness, hoses for the vents behind the dash, replace a leaking clutch master cylinder and more. Busy week!