Furious E's First Sort of a Build Thread: XJ Cherokee Edition

Some time back around July I started getting serious about searching for a 4x4 of some flavor to get me to work in the winter, maybe do a bit of wheelin' in, and generally keep miles off of the Camaro. I came pretty close to buying an FJ80 Land Cruiser, but changed my mind last minute because I couldn't stand the thought of an automatic. Then I started searching lightly for XJs, but then, finding clean 5 speed examples scarce, quickly convinced myself I wanted to finance a TJ. But ultimately, when a clean looking 2 door 5 speed Cherokee appeared on the local CL one Friday afternoon asking $1200, I couldn't resist a look.

The ad mentioned the radio didn't work, the headliner was sagging, and the brakes were totally kaput. A cursory inspection revealed that the brake lines were rusted, as was a large portion of the drivers side floor board, which the seller was unaware of. Using the rust as a bargaining tool I got him down to $725 and left it at that until the next morning (Saturday.) On Monday we did the title transfer and by the following Sunday I finally got it home, with a truck borrowed from my parents and a uHaul trailer.

Finally the admiral of my own 2 car fleet! As a brief aside, the Tundra tow rig seen above went on to fail PA state inspection the very next day due to rust perforations in the frame. The dealership had undercoated the fame as part of the rust recall a couple years back, so my dad was able to argue (at my urging) that they had not properly prepped it before spraying and the dealership had it repaired on their dime. Scary though, knowing I was towing 5k or so with 2 holes in the frame! Check your tow rig, THROUGHLY, because it was not easily visible.

Moar pics:

Saggy headliner.

Old school Alpine headunit.

Possibly the worst instrument ever, but only 138k on the 4.0!

This was back around the first weekend in August when I first got the XJ home. I've since been spending my time working on it in the time I have available, rather than writing about it, so this thread will be lagging my progress quite a bit for now. Also, fair warning, this is my first time doing a build thread (if you wanna call it that) and my photo documentation of the process was, at times, lacking.

The plans are to fix what immediately needs to be fixed first, then once it's on the road and through inspection plan a few upgrades from there, maybe some audio, a small lift and 30" tires, bumpers/armor, CB,???. This Jeep will be as low buck as possible and has to remain somewhat practical, as it may end up taking up a significant portion of my dd milage, but will be built for the kind of redneck hooliganism all of my past cars have precluded me from. We'll see where it ends up I guess!

Rancho's Shocktober promotion is going on now. Should be able to grab their lift and some rs9000xl adjustable shocks for well under a grand, and they'll send you a $500 Visa card that will cover tires.

That's the largest fuel gauge I've ever seen.

Let me recommend this:

http://www.rustysoffroad.com/jeep-suspension/jeep-suspension-lift-kits/xj-cherokee-84-01-jeep-suspension-lift-kits/rustys-xj-cherokee-budget-boost-spacer-add-a-leaf.html

Very affordable and retains very good flexibility (contrary to what add-a-leaves are known for).

I used this then added the LCA's and extended rear shackles over time and MAN was that thing flexy!

In reply to bgkast:

Yes it is. Why Chrysler found that to be more important than a tachometer is beyond me. Notice also that the temp gauge, volt meter and such have been replaced by idiot lights. Nice.

There were apparently 3 different clusters available on the pre-97 XJs, this being the lowest spec one, the next tier up replacing idiot lights with actual gauges, and the top-of-the-line model moving the fuel gauge to one of the smaller cutouts and putting a tach in its place. As I understand it, I need to swap all the sending units to be able to upgrade to the top level cluster. I'll either do that or just stick a big ol' Autometer tach on top of the dash for full redneck effect.

In reply to Swank Force One:

That's good to know, I snagged the Koni's on my Camaro on sale last year which basically paid for the springs. "Well under a grand" still sounds like more than I was hoping to pay for a lift, so I might just be looking at shocks from Rancho.

While we're on the subject, lets talk lifts for a minute, since I'm pretty much clueless on the subject. I'm thinking something in the neighborhood of 2", since 1) I don't want to get into SYEs, transfer case drops, ect and the associated cost and 2) I want to preserve ride and road manners as much as possible. I drove a TJ this summer with what I think was a Rough Country lift of about 4.5" and thought it rode like crap, but that's the only lifted vehicle I've ever driven so I have zero frame of reference. I also know Rough Country's reputation isn't the best.

My initial thought was to do some form of bastard pack in the rear and V8 ZJ springs in the front, possibly with an additional poly spacer to even things out with the rear. Cost for this option should be under $100 I think (not including shocks of course.)

The Rusty's kit that ebonyandivory posted certainly looks attractive for the price. I've been a bit wary of the "budget boost" type kits, mostly because of what you mentioned about the add a leafs killing the ride and flexibility, but after hearing your opinion on it I'm certainly interested.

Swank, what kit do you have on your wife's XJ again? I would be very interested to hear how it compares in terms on ride and handling to your red XJ (which was on stock suspension, correct?) I'm seeing a 2.5" Rancho kit for $500, but can't tell if that includes shocks or not. If not, that's more than I'm willing to spend (this thing will be super GRM budget, for the most part.) Is there a particular kit from them that you would recommend?

Finally, at 2-2.5" of lift, what sort of supporting mods am I looking at? SYE/T-case drop should not be required, correct? What about an adjustable track bar? I thought I had heard the stock one is OK until you get over 3", but I also see one's marketed for 1.5-2" lifts.

That kit I recommended because I've used it twice and there was honestly NO decrease in flexibility.

The rocks I've scaled were a solid testament not to mention seat of the pants feedback.

There's a RR Xing near me that used to toss my XJ's side to side even with that add-a-leaf. Of course I ditched the sway bars long before that.

Do NOT be wary of that Rustys kit, I assure you!

3" and above needs an adjustable trac-bar and I liked the "bent" LCA from Rustys because the flex better but also to eliminate any death wobble.

There's no need for the SYE and really anything else with a 2-2.5" lift.

In reply to ebonyandivory:

Thanks for the info! The Rusty's kit is definitely looking like the most attractive option at this point.

The plan is going to be to get it on the road first and assess the condition of everything before doing anything with the suspension. I have yet to actually drive the Jeep, aside from pulling off of the trailer and into the garage, but I'm hopeful I'll be at that stage next weekend. Just have to wire a new plug onto the fuel pump (more on this later) and put the tank back on.

The biggest issue I ever had with my three XJs were the rear shocks. Specifically their upper mounts.

Everything else was easy.

The rears were also the issue on my old Cherokee as well. I wonder what an add-a-leaf would have done to help it out... I'm done buying autozone grade bs for my vehicles that never seems to last more than 2 yrs. there's a ton of great Jeep forums to learn from so do a bit of homework and maybe complete in stages...

So, on with the next (short) installment...

I dropped the truck and trailer off as quickly as I possibly could, anxious to get back home and start tearing the interior apart (and at the same time apprehensive at what I may find beneath the carpet.)

Starting in the hatch area I removed the spare, jack, rear seat, and unscrewed the trim across the hatch opening and pulled the carpet back. Time to assess the damage in the hatch area...

A few small spots, but not too bad actually. We'll see how much they open up with the wire wheel...

Front seats were out next.

Then consol, carpet, and most of the other crap. The seat belts proved to be a real PITA and quickly renewed my hatred of all things torx. I applied as much force as I felt was prudent, however I couldn't get a single one to budge. At this point, I decided it was more than I felt like berkeleying with at the moment and left well enough alone for the time being. I was more interested in making an assessment of the rust damage at the moment anyways...

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Passenger side. Note the broken stud for the passenger seat mount that I neglected to mention above. Crap!

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And the driver's side

Honestly, it was only about as bad as I expected, which was surprising since I was sure it would end up being worse (so I guess it was actually better than expected? Now I'm confused...) Of course, it would all open up a bit more after some meticulous prodding with a screw driver.

The only real concern I had were the areas on the trans tunnel. Having never really delved into body work or rust repair previously, I wasn't sure how well I would be able to form patch panels to the curvature using the crude methods I had in mind. But I'll save that for the next installment, when things get marginally less boring.

iirc xj's and mj's get the cowl drains clog which then leaks into the driver/passenger floor so check the drains

In reply to Furious_E:

Wife has the Rancho 2.5" with Rancho RS9000XL shocks. I have it set a little stiff but on full soft it's downright plush. Overall i much prefer it to stock.

Didnt require any other supporting mods like SYE. I did add a Rubicon Express adjustable track bar rather than taking the cheap route and just relocating the attachment point.

I found a source for the lift for about $425 when i bought it, sold the AAL setup, replaced with full replacement leaf pack, bought the shocks for $75 each through Advance Auto coupon code abuse, then used my $500 gift card from Rancho to rehab the entire steering setup, replacing remaining bushings, replace rear shackles, and put the balance towards tires.

Ended up paying under well under $1500 out of pocket to end up with a brand new truck underneath.

If i was looking to do a lift that small again, i'd do exactly the same thing again.

Well, its taken two installments so far to make it through my first day of Cherokee ownership. I guess I'm better at actually wrenching than I am at documenting my work.

The following weekend I took Friday off to give myself a solid three days of nothing but Cherokee, knowing 4 out of my next 5 weekends were booked solid. We pick up on Thursday evening, when I got home from work and immediately set about dropping the gas tank, because welding and fire and explosions and all that good stuff. The funky bolts holding the tank straps on were rusted to hell and put up quite the fight. I quickly got to the point of 'berkeley it' and broke out the grinder to cut the tank straps, because they were easier to access than the bolts themselves. Glad I cut the straps instead, because as it turns out the bolts themselves are apparently rather precious. I ended up using rust dissolver to reclaim the old ones before reinstalling the tank. The lines from the filler neck are also a bit of a bitch to get at. It ended up taking a couple hours to drop the tank, at which point I was tired and hungry and ready for a beer, so that was as far as I made it that night.

My picture taking got a bit spotty along the way, and this is one of the steps I have no pics of. So in lieu of pics of actual work, here's my 9 month old Australian Shepherd/Lab mix Bear checking out his new ride (I've been jokingly referring to the XJ as 'Bear's car'). Bear goes to my parents for dog sitting every day while I'm at work, so he rides in the car with me quite a bit. I think this will suit him much better than my Camaro, although my mom at one time, Back in the Day, ferried about an entire litter of German Shorthair puppies and their mother in an MG Midget so what do I know. He insists on standing on the passenger seat, which results in him constantly bonking his nose on the windshield, and as a result lots of dirty noseprints. Should be fun to bring him along on my future excursions as well.

So the next morning I was up bright and early, eager to start cutting away the cancer. Like a highly trained surgeon, I tried my best to minimize the collateral damage and perform a minimally invasive surgery, carefully marking lines around only the rust inflicted portions of the sheet metal after thoroughly hitting them with a wire wheel on the grinder. As I may have mentioned previously, this is my first attempt at automotive bodywork and welding (well, outside of building tubeframe SAE cars in college I guess), so some of my decision making was perhaps a bit misguided at times. This was one of those times, as I was left with some irregularly shaped holes to fill that I later wished would have been rectangular. Wasn't too bad, just could have been a bit easier cutting the patch panels to shape and possibly could have saved me a bit of welding in spots as well. I ended up with a couple of smallish holes in the cargo area, one small hole under the rear seat, medium sized holes under the passenger and drivers seats, two small holes and one large one in the passenger foot well, and one big mother berkeleyer in the driver's foot well. Cleaned the rust up a bit better with the wire wheel, vacuumed things out, wiped with acetone, and applied primer to the areas that would later be covered. Again, the photo documentation was somewhat lacking.

Hole under the driver's seat, prepped for welding:

Saturday, I woke up and headed straight to Harbor Freight to pick up one of the $99 special flux core welders and appropriate accoutrements. It's actually not a bad little machine for the price, doesn't make the prettiest welds (though the operator may be more responsible than the welder for that) but it can stick two pieces of metal together reasonably well. I immediately threw away the wire that came in it and loaded her with some Lincoln .030 flux core from Home Depot. Most of my prior welding experience was with TIG, which i was actually halfway decent at for a while, but it had been forever since I had done any sort of MIG, and had never before welded with fluxcore. I did OK picking it up on the fly though, aside from certain areas that now contain about a metric berkeley ton of filler wire as a result of chasing holes. Wasn't always pretty either, but berkeley it its a Jeep.

The patch panels (well, most of them) were cut from a piece of heavy gauge, painted, kinda rusty sheetmetal that my landlord left in the basement. Evidently it was used to mark a cantaloupe stand in a previous in its previous life, as the word 'lopes' written across it would seem to imply, but the price was right (free.) I worked from the cargo area to the passenger side to the driver's side, cutting and welding one patch at a time. Heavy craft paper was used to mark the shapes. Some of my handywork below (please excuse the crappy, boogery welds.)

Cargo area:

Under the passenger seat:

Beneath the driver's seat:

Passenger foot well:

This picture highlights another critical component of the process: Yuengling. My biggest complaint about the welder is the terrible duty cycle, which lead to the unintended consequence of consuming beer at a high rate during the many short breaks. Do a weld, drink some beer, wait, drink some more beer, weld... Next thing you know you're drinking at a rate of 3 beers an hour. Oh well, welding is more fun drunk anyways.

Driver's side foot well:

I ran out of lopes sign at this point and ended up paying TSC's exorbitant price for a 2x2 foot piece of 16 gauge for the sake of expediency. Initially I tried to make this whole panel as one continuous panel, but beating the metal over my concrete steps with a claw hammer, as I had done to form other curves, proved insufficient as a means of forming the compound bends along the trans tunnel. I ended up cutting the patch into 5 or 6 pieces along the trans tunnel, which fit together well enough. berkeley it, its a Jeep.

This occupied the entirety of Saturday and Sunday, and the manic fits of cutting, grinding, fitting, bending, tacking, and (finally) welding spilled into the evenings spilled into my evenings the next week. I think I tallied over 50 hours of work on it throughout the course of the weekend and following week, including runs for supplies and such. I probably could have cut my time in half had I not seam welded all the panels, but oh well. Good practice if nothing else.

That's all for now, tune in next time to watch me not spray bedliner on my hootus!

I've done a terrible job updating this build thread, which was already lagging way behind my actual progress at the time of my last post, so I'm just going to get things back up to speed in one fell swoop here.

So after the floor patches were welded in, I hit the welds with a flap wheel to smooth them out then slathered some of that seam sealer stuff all over them, since I don't entirely trust my welds to be water tight.

Then it was time for bedliner prep. Took a few evenings to get everything masked to my satisfaction. The original plan called for roll on bedliner, so most of the upper trim pieces had been left in place, but GRM tallied me into a spray in Raptor liner kit so I made damn sure to have these well covered. I had a hell of a time trying to get the seat belts out, thinking they must have been rusted solidly in place, so I took the lazy route and just masked them too. I would later find out a torch would have done the job, as some sort of thread locker on the bolts was the real issue. Anyways, it ended up turning out very well and I have to say Raptor Liner is an excellent product, perfect texture for what I wanted and has held up well so far.

Hootus protection suit:

Results (note my ridiculous rigging of the rear seat belts):

While I had the interior mostly disassembled I figured it was a good time to do the headliner. I had some nice black faux suade headliner material leftover from my e36 that I never got around to using, but I decided that just didn't fit the Jeep's personality. I ended up buying 3 yards of buffalo plaid fleece from eBay for about $12. Thanks to my friend Andrew (who will almost surely never see this thread) for being the much needed extra set of hands. I would have had a hell of a time doing this job myself.

Let it dry for a day or two then put it back in the car.

After this, it was time to get the interior back together and make the brakes functional again. I ended up replacing all of the hard lines with pre-flared line and both calipers in the front. Pads, rotors, shoes and drums all looked OK so I left well enough alone there. Drove it around the yard a few times to convince myself the work was satisfactory then have her a good wash. Finally ready to hit the road!

Registered, insured, and legally driving, with new wiper blades to boot, it took all of about a mile to throw a CEL. Scan tool revealed the rear O2 sensor was bad. I later discovered this was because of a clip attached to the plug that I had detached from one of the removed sections of floor pan, which allowed the sensor wire to hang down and catch on the u joint at the rear of the T case. Sheared the sensor clean in half! Oops.

So replacing an O2 sensor should be easy right? Nope, not in this case. When I went to remove it from the cat, I ended up torquing the bung right out of the sheetmetal rather than removing the sensor from the bung. So I picked up a new weld in bung from Advance the next day, welded it in with the cat in place (super awkward/uncomfortable position to weld in), and screwed the sensor in only to find my "direct fit" Denso O2 sensor did not match the plug on the chassis harness. You gotta be berkeleying kidding me! Some research on the internet and a call to Advance revealed that the wrong sensor somehow ended up in the box, so I exchanged it the next day and all was right in the world. No more CEL.

At this point I had been driving the Jeep to work daily and had enough of the blown out crappy stock speakers that could not be turned up to an audible volume without distorting like hell. While drinking at my buddies place one night I remembered he had a couple of subwoofers and an amp that had been left in his garage when he bought the house and offered him $50 for the amp and one sub, which he accepted. Bought some Kicker KSC 6.5" coaxials on sale and an amp install kit, which I probably way overpaid for, at Best Buy and installed them last Saturday. Now we're rockin!

So that's pretty much where I'm at now. Next on the agenda is dealing with the clutch hydraulics and hatch struts. The clutch pedal pretty much has to be fully on the floor to disengage and the tranny always grinds going into reverse. Guess I'll try bleeding first before I go throwing parts at it. The hatch refuses to stay up on its own which has been driving me totally nuts getting the dog in and out, but I've been waiting to find out what else I may need from rockauto before ordering them, since they have them at half the price they're available locally and I always try to combine orders to save on shipping. After that, maybe an H4 headlight upgrade and a new track bar, since I'm getting what I'll call a "pre-death wobble" from time to time. Lift plans are probably going to wait until spring, as I want to turn my attention to the Camaro over the winter.

I should add also that I'm really enjoying this thing as a semi daily, clutch issue aside. I like the trucky-ness of it in a package that's tidy enough to be easily maneuverable and feel normal sized, yet the wheelbase is still long enough that it doesn't do the obnoxious fore-aft pitching over bumps that a Wrangler does. Its fun being able to just nail the potholes and bumps with no E36 M3s given that i would be swerving around in the Camaro.

The 4.0 has a lazy, torquey feel to it but can actually giddy up and go when asked. It's not been a problem at all passing the big rigs I get stuck behind on my country two lane commute to work. The best part is I'm actually getting slightly better milage than my Camaro, about 22-23 mpg in mixed country road driving. Can't wait to see what it does on an all highway trip.

The highlight of the experience so far actually occurred earlier today. Drove up to the mountains with my gf and dog to bounce along the forest service roads and look for mud puddles and other interesting things. Found a decent sized puddle that I quickly found out was WAY deeper than I thought, water was up to the grill and quickly started coming inside. Tried to keep up momentum in two wheel, but was quickly stuck. No problem, threw it in 4wd and drove right out! Surprisingly, the gf was genuinely impressed and very happy to learn the floor had drain plugs. I need to do more of this!

And probably buy some recovery gear, just in case.

This is cool. I particularly like the suede headliner.Edit, meant to say flannel, but its fleece, so I'm doubly wrong. Anywho, cool ride.

In reply to wheelsmithy:

Thank you.

The headliner is actually fleece, I was gonna use a black suade material I had laying around but thought this fit the personality of the trucklet a little better. Also, I'm just now realizing I accidentally posted that same pic twice. Doh!

So the Cherokee went in for inspection this morning (been driving it uninspected for the past month) and failed. Needs:

-Wheel cylinders for the rear drums leaking fluid (guess I'm about to learn about drum brakes)

-Windshield washer pump (knew it wasn't working, didn't know it could fail for this)

-Pre cat 02 sensor (wasn't throwing a code last week)

-Cat rusted through (can't say I'm terribly surprised after welding in the 02 bung but didn't think it was rusted THROUGH anywhere)

So it looks like Rockauto is going to be receiving an order today...

Drums, remove both drums, then do one side, then the other, use the currently complete side for reference.

Kenny_McCormic wrote: Drums, remove both drums, then do one side, then the other, use the currently complete side for reference.

Good advice, did the same thing the first time I cleaned a motorcycle carb. I actually watched a how to video over my lunch (right after posting this) and it looks like the wheel cylinders can be replaced without digging too far into things, so that's good news.

Been quite a while since I've updated this thread, so I thought I'd get things up to speed with one big, ugly, pictureless post before big things start happening (hopefully) this weekend. Little bit of foreshadowing for you there .

So looks like we left off with the Jeep failing inspection. Wheel cylinders and washer pump were a cinch to replace. Finally did the hatch struts at this time as well, and I think the wiper blades too maybe.

The cat being "rusted through" was a bit of a misnomer, more like my weld around the newly installed 02 bung was slightly leaking because I attempted to weld it while the cat was still mounted on the car and had difficulty accessing part of the joint. Ended up removing the cat and exhaust in an attempt to complete a more proper fix, however the two ended up getting basically destroyed in the process of beating them apart from each other and the rest of the car. Just as well I guess, as I think I would have been replacing them in a year or so anyways.

So the XJ got a new direct fit replacement cat and a Dynomax cat back (silly cheap at $90 from Summit Racing with the $20 coupon I had .) The Jeep now has a nice, throaty rumble that's just loud enough to make its presence known, but not enough to be obnoxious. The butt dyno registered marginal gains which are probably entirely attributable to the placebo effect (4.0s are notoriously unresponsive to most mods, apparently), but for $90 I'd call it worthwhile.

Replaced the front 02 and had the CEL off for about a day before the Jeep started throwing codes for the rear 02 again. Did some more berkeleyery with the wiring, got the CEL off and passed inspection, and it's been good ever since.

Bought a cheap old CB off of eBay some time over the winter and installed that with a 4' Firestik antenna mounted above the passenger side tail light. Seems to work well enough and with all the truck traffic in my area can actually be pretty entertaining sometimes. Apparently exit 77 is where you can find the lot lizards lol.

Painted the bumpers and flares in Rust-O bed liner a few weeks ago. HUGE aesthetic improvement over the previous sun-faded black look. Still have to do the grill one of these weekends.

Far less successful was my attempt at polishing the paint. Having never used polishing compound before, my hope was that I could get some of the badly oxidized spots out of the paint, or at least significntly lessen the severity. I picked up a few different grades of Meguires polish at the Spring Carlisle car show that were recommended by the Meguire's lady on hand there and a HF DA polisher. Spent a few hours doing a really thorough wash job, then clay barring the paint before getting after it with the compound. Started out working under a tree for shade, but couldn't see E36 M3 so I moved into the sunlight. Big mistake. The polish quickly baked itself onto the paint to the point where no amount of work with the polisher seemed to be getting it off. I gave up after a few minutes before I did any further damage, and now I'm still left with big cloudy spots of polishing compound on my hood. Once I've got my own garage again in a few months, where I can set up a well lit work space out of the direct heat of the sun, I'm planning to correct that.

So that pretty much brings us up to current, mostly just small few hours here and there type projects because I've mostly just been driving it. I've done about 12-13k miles since getting it on the road and the ol' XJ continues to grow on me, probably my second favorite car I've owned next to my E36. Parts are cheap, it's easy to work on, gets 21-23 mpg regardless of how or where I drive it, goes through anything I've thrown at it (including my unplowed gravel driveway with over 2 feet of virgin snow), perfect size for me, and it's even fun to drive in it's own sloppy, truck-like way. This is one I'm going to be hanging on to for a while .

Well this weekend began my piecemeal lift install and suspension refresh, or rather the cheap Jeep gets not so cheap. In a classic case of project creep, what was originally intended to be a simple and cheap bastard pack/V8 ZJ coil lift has turned into a near full on replacement of the suspension and steering. The Jeep has always had a bit of a shimmy in its steering when you hit a bump just right and I've been wanting to correct that before it turns into all out death wobble. The leaf springs are also completely inverted and the shocks are basically worthless. So I figured why not lift it and upgrade while I replace

Parts list (as best I can remember off the top of my head) is as follows: -Rusty's 3" HD coils -OME CS033RB leaf springs -JK Rubicon take off shocks -Iron Rock double shear track bar -Iron Rock adjustable lower control arms -V8 ZJ tie rod upgrade (new Moog components) -New axle side upper control arm bushings -Moog leaf spring bushings -YJ brake lines -Monroe steering damper -Dana Spider ball joints (maybe)

Still need some new front end links (ditching the rear sway), thinking I'm going to DIY some quick disconnects once I get everything together. I'm also hoping to avoid needing an SYE, hopefully some degree shims and a t case drop will suffice.

After PB Blasting the ever loving E36 M3 out of every nut and bolt in the suspension all week, work began Saturday morning on the front end. And damned if that was one of the most strenuous and frustrating days of wrenching I've ever had . Just one of those times where nothing went my way, and every last nut and bolt was a massive struggle in spite of the liberal doses of PB Blaster. I'm willing to bet pretty much none of the fasteners involved had been apart since new, and 20 years is an awful long time to get friendly with mating parts. Unfortunately I was too busing straining and swearing to take too many pics.

Worst parts thus far were the chassis side lower control arm bolts, upper control arm bushing removal/install, and some of the tie rod nuts. Had to run over to a buddy's place and borrow his Sawzall for the CA bolts and burned through several blades just on the driver's side. The UCA bushing was a known trouble spot and lived up to its reputation. Air hammer got it out eventually and the BFH proved more effective than the ball joint press at reinstalling it. The air hammer was again required to nibble down some of the tie rod nuts to the point they wanted to come off. BADLY rusted, to say the least. A very sketchy ratchet strap rig was also required to maneuver the axle into position to bolt the control arms back up, that I really should have taken a picture of in hind sight.

By the end of the weekend, I had spent a total of probably 14 hours (including a couple of parts runs for fasteners and such) and felt that I had little to show for it. As it sits right now, the driver's side front corner is basically back together,the track bar bracket is installed, the steering linkage is totally apart, and I still need to install the passenger side LCA, UCA bushing, and spring.

Here's how it sits for now:

More to come soon.

Rusty Jeep suspension and bushing overhaul has the potential to cause PTSD.

Progress looks good, please report back on the Rubicon shocks, I went Sahara or Sport, I think they're a little soft. I've read that the Rubicons can be pretty stiff, but think I'd prefer them.

I lost my good 15mm impact socket inside Moby's driver side "frame" rail from when I removed the upper control arm bolt. I'm still bitter about that, and am often tempted to cut a hole, and get a strong magnet to fish it out.