As the title states, I am indeed a new member from the land of road salt and corruption, and I have just bought myself my first XJ for $500.

Now I haven't quite taken delivery of it yet (hence the outdated pictures), but I do know it very well. Basically, my good friend was given it for free by his aunt after it had sat in a garage for 10 years. We basically threw a gas tank, fuel pump, and tires at it, then he proceeded to drive it nearly 20,000 miles with minimal maintenance.

It's a '91 with about 261,000 miles on it, a and a Jasper manufactured 4.0 with less than 50k on it. The reason he's selling it to me so cheap is because we've been trading junk since high school, and I did most of the work to it for him.

This thing's pretty rusty, though not quite dangerous yet (The unibody rail/suspension mounts still seem solid) so I'm going to be doing quite a bit of fabrication work. My eventual goal with this Jeep is to turn it into my new storm chase vehicle/winter beater (and maybe eventually my daily driver), as my current '01 S10 Blazer chase vehicle is just way too nice to ruin with hail (I swear to god, this thing is the cleanest S10 Blazer in the state of Illinois).


Anyways, this thing is going to need some floor work, rockers (I'll probably do the 2x6 square tube rockers), as well as a patch on the drivers rear lower quarter (The passenger quarter seems to have been replaced early in this trucks life). After all that, I'll be giving it a cheap paint job just so it's all one color (I used to be a body guy). I don't plan on lifting it any time soon as this thing drives pretty nice on the highway, and I want to keep it that way.

 

Greetings and welcome to the forum. Make sure that jeeps front end is working properly before you get caught up in anything too serious. It would be one hell of a story to outrun a tornado while dealing with deathwobble

 

Way ahead of you there, my quasi chase partner has this lifted 318 powered '98 XJ, and that damn thing is miserable on the highway.


I'm going to try to keep this thing as stock as possible, I may try to squeeze some 31's under there though.


Funny enough, I actually used to own a '97 4.0 powered ZJ in the same color.