Hey everyone I've been curious lately as to how strong our unibodys really are? Let me first start by saying that I absolutely love my xj! It has done everything that I have wanted from it and more. But here lately I've been hearing horror stories about broken unibodys. I've heard that once the unibody is broke that the jeep is pretty much junk and there's really no repairing it. Not sure if there's much truth to that or not but I hope not. I'm about to dump about $2,000 into mine and I want to make sure that this vehicle will hold up or am I better of getting a wrangler?

 

Plate the unibody..and you should be good to go.

 

It'll fold like a taco

 

It's uni-frame, not uni-body.

 

If running heavy axles, wheeling hard, and you want it to last, plate the rails and do a full Jeepspeed style cage

Oh and never take the doors off, it will fold in half

 

Rust and wrecks is what really kills them.Things like frame stiffeners and a cage will stiffen it up a lot.If its a daily driver i would do just the frame stiffeners and maybe run just a roll bar not a full cage.

 

Will it still fold in half if you only take the two front doors off but leave the back two on? And I was going to plate it but I heard someone on this forum say that welding it will decrease it's strength significantly.

 

With only the front doors off, it'll only fold a quarter not entirely lol

 

they're joking about the doors

and yes there is a right way and a wrong way to plate and weld to the uniframe
but if you've got half a brain you should be able to figure it out. basically, dont burn through it, fully welding to it isn't necessary, and dont try to use 1/4" or anything ridiculous. 1/8 or 3/16 is fine

here's a helpful link for "proper" uniframe welding.
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/9750902-post14.html

run a track bar brace

 

Thanks for the nice link! I'm relatively new to welding and plan on doing this in the future.

[/hijack]

 

If you wheel hard it'll tear or tweak the body Espically if you don't have any thing to stiffen it.

 

The mid frame stiffeners are the best bet if you're only going to get one set, right? How much does that kit usually add weight-wise?

 

rufftuff? T&T? a decent amount. the 3/16 is pretty heavy.
HDO uses 10ga and is much lighter. I'd say both the HDO mids weigh the same or even less than just one of the Ruffstuffs. but they aren't strong enough to stand constant rock bashing

yes mids are most important. if you're running 35's and wheeling often I'd say fronts are just as important, along with a good track bar brace (ask me how I know that you need a brace )

 

Good to know. Yeah I imagine the steering on large tires takes a lot of torque into the front end. I will probably never need those, as I don't plan on ever going over 31s. Even that is going to take time as I need to get a 8.25 on the back of mine.

 

definitely put some sort of plate on the middles anyway. I dented mine up just going through some easy trails when I was on 33's
frame plates are a huge pain to fit once you dent your frame

and I'd still recommend an aftermarket track bar brace and double shear track bar if you plan on doing any offroading. your jeep will thank you later