Originally Posted by N2L

Well after owning the Cherokee for about 2 years I've finally started a build thread.

I bought this Cherokee in August of 2010 from the original owner with 123k miles. Its an AW4 4.0L HO Cherokee SE. Couldn't have asked for a better place to start from.

Here she is the day I got her:


Here in Virginia we have to deal with "State Safety Inspections" that can be a real pain. My first state inspection came shortly after purchasing the XJ, and I found out quickly I had some work to do. I decided while I was fixing a lot of the inspection issues, I might as well make some improvements!

I purchased a complete 3" lift kit from Rusty's Offroad. I also snagged a set of 4 Jeep 5 spoke alloys, and some 30" Firestone Destination A/Ts. I'm not normally an AT type of guy, but I paid 250 for everything once it was all mounted and balanced. Here she is after the lift:

Here is the kit:


After I got to this point I went on a 6 month deployment. When I got home to the Jeep the radiator blew out on me, the paint had been pretty badly sunburnt, and there was enough surface rust on the roof & hood to warrant a coat of rusto! Here she is after I popped in a new rad, primered her up, and rehab'd the tails:


The primer got a little boring, and I'm not a fan of the shiny silver finish on those alloys so I grabbed a few cans of VHT Epoxy Paint in Satin Black. Sadly I don't have any daylight shots when she was at this stage for some reason:


I started to get real sick of these A/Ts, and I figured if I'm going to get new tires they might as well be bigger! Now, I'm not about to try to jam a set of 33s onto a 3" lift, so I grabbed some lift shackles, spacers, extended brake lines, and UCAs/LCAs from Rusty's once more. This was an eventful lift because of the LCAs, but I got it done with a little help from my new angle grinder. I work all day so pretty much every picture I get to take is at night... All the same here is a shot from right after the completion of the jump to 4.5":


I had some rear axle problems, so I decided to grab a new Chrysler 8.25 from a 2000. Picked it up for 50 bucks, and swapped in a set of disc brakes off of a 96 Grand Cherokee. Here is the new axle all put together ready to go in:



That about brings this up to speed. I've got another cruise coming up in about a week, but when I get back she is getting some more love. I've got the gears (4.56s) already, and an Advance Adapters Slip Yoke Eliminator. So when I get back I'll be installing those parts, and some other goodies. I'm not sure if I'm going to jump up to a 6" kit yet or not so most everything else is to be determined.

Hope you guys like what I've done so far. If you're in the Norfolk/Tidewater area give me a shout. I'll be back around in November, and ready for some good winter wheeling!



is it me or is that pier 11-12 at Norfolk naval base??
Thanks for reading.