xj No. 2

k5-1402

k5-1402

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2005
Location
Burlington
Well, my old John Deer green xj has finally had about all the body can take. It was origianlly the 30xj that was raffled here and i bought it from Ratlabguy. It is an 89 wagoneer limited that I have taken everywhere from Mountain City to Coal Creek to Harlan to Golden Mountain. I thrashed it everywhere and then rolled it at uwharrie of all places. We rolled it back over and I drove it out, but have decided its time to build another xj. I am going to use many of the parts I put on the old xj and the entire drivetrain as my new xj is just a body. It is a 1990 cherokee with a mostly straight body and thats about it. This will be a relatively slow build as I will only have time to work on it about every two weeks but will update it as i make progress.

Here are a few pics to get started.
 
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My old Jeep when I first started wheeling it in 2008
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I originally bought the gray Jeep in the background above as a possible candidate for my new xj, but once i washed some of the mud off of it, I quickly realized it was too beat up and rusted. So I decided to use it for parts as it had a 6 inch lift on it and an almost new set of mud tires. It also has a factory D44 rear as it is an 87 wagoneer limited.

I found a 1990 cherokee
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body which was fairly straight,for a trail rig, with all its pieces, minus a drivetrain which i got from spraypaintman.(Thankyou Noah!) The grill, hood and other misc. body parts are in the back.
 
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i decided the first order of busines was getting the suspension and axles out of the 87 wagoneer, so I pulled it in yesterday to start.
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I forgot to get pics of it while underneath it, but i found several rust holes in the floor, one of them about four inches around. Anyway, it took about 5 hours for me and my buddy Ron,(whose shop its in), to get everything out. It should have been relatively simple, but every bolt was as stuck as it could get. One of the leave spring bolts on the back had to have a dump truck impact wrench to get it off and even then it was till partially stuck. I also realized that it was a pieced together lift made of a skyjacker 4.5 inch lift with other blocks and spacers added. The result was a broken shock and mount and brake lines strethed so far I dont know how they didnt snap in half.

Anyway, we finally got the lift and axles out then drug the body out of the shop. I was originally going to put this lift on the new body, and was planning on putting in a SYE and getting new drive shafts,but after looking at it i dont know. The springs and coils are right to do a 4.5, but at least two shocks would have to be replaced. I dont have the money to buy a new 6 inch lift and dont know if the expense of putting a 4.5 on would be worth stepping up from the 3 inch lift i already had on the old jeep. The suspension and tire combo on the old jeep was working great, I was just hoping to go to a larger tire eventually. Oh well, things to think about.

It was pretty late by the time we got the axles out and the jeep out of the garage so this is it for now. Here are a couple pics of the suspension with axles outside, sorry for the poor quality.
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Thanks! I only go to uwharrie two or three times a year but the paint usually catches people's attention. I think the new body will also be john deer green.
 
Well, last weekend i finally got to work on the Jeep some more. I decided to use the 4.5 inch lift off the parts Jeep. Though it's older it's in better shape than the three inch lift that was on the green Jeep.
1st order of business was just getting both Jeeps in the shop.
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I decided to leave the Jeep on the trailer while putting on the suspension and axles. I had it well secured with straps and on jack stands and the trailer was still connected to the truck.
Ron is much faster at this than I am, so I. Got the gray Jeep ready while he started tearing down the green Jeep.

First was raising and securing the back.
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The body was originally going to be scrapped so all the control arms and shackles were cut for removing the suspension and axles so I had to remove those first.

A pic of one of the cut shackles.
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Had to work on the leaf spring clamps also. Seems the tabs were bent the wrong way making the clamps loose.

Clamps the wrong way.
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Next was putting the leaf springs on which should have been easy. However, the nut on the inside of the chassis that the front shackle bolts to was bent at a 45 degree angle and broke off when we tried to straighten it. Had to cut a hole in the back side of the chassis and weld the nut back in.
Didn't get pictures of the nut but here are the springs finally in.

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Started on the front next which fought back just as much as the rear, just didn't have to do any welding on the front. Finally got the front on with the tires and decided to call it a night around midnight.
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As seen above I also had a couple more friends, John and Allen come by to help tear apart the green Jeep. They really helped this project move a lot faster.
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And here is the front axle in the gray Jeep.
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Sunday morning got up and took the gray Jeep and pressure washed it. Not a detail job but made it much easier to work on.

While I was washing it. Ron pulled the engine, transmission and transfer case out of the green Jeep.
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So after dragging the green Jeep out. We rolled the gray one in and started putting the engine and transmission in. We put in a different transfer case back in. Same kind, an np 242, but this one has a sye already installed. Got those all in but the previous owner had welded in three inch blocks on the chassis to drop down the cross member. I don't like this so I am going to have to grind them off and hope I can still bolt the crossmember to the chassis. However I was out of time so we put the hood on and rolled it back out of the shop.
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