After many years and miles in my (mostly) Blue 1998 Jeep Cherokee, I admitted to myself that that build didn’t achieve the goals I set years ago. The intention was to be a hybrid between a trail rig and an adventure travel vehicle. I ended up with a machine with lousy road manners, making it exhausting to drive. In early 2024 I decided it’s time to retire the old girl from long distance travel and assign it to trail rig duty.
I couldn’t stay away from XJ Cherokees and bought another that you’ve probably seen here before. I struck a deal with my friend Nick and bought his 1999 XJ. This Jeep was his trail rig and travel vehicle. I knew going in that it had been sitting in his yard neglected for a few years and that it was more of a trail rig than I really wanted. That’s ok though because I was familiar with the Jeep and considered it a good candidate for adventure travel. Nick took the cash I handed him and emptied his piggy bank for a Lexus GX that I’m sure will be featured here eventually.
The new Jeep was truck bedliner black when Nick bought it. We overhauled the suspension and steering during his ownership. Below is a photo I took on the last camp trip these Jeeps would take together.
I had a rough plan before taking ownership, but the first order of business was to remove the “lunar lander” roof rack. We called it that because it sat so high off the roof, you could step off it and land on the moon.
With the lunar lander out of the way, I got the Jeep in the shop to start inspecting it and soon removed the 1 remaining “Ah Real Monsters!” light from the front bumper. After a mechanical inspection and note taking, I rolled it outside and did a lousy job of pressure washing it. I never knew the underside of the hood and firewall were blue until this day. The engine bay had been coated in moon dust for as long as I could remember.
After an engine tune up and oil change, I set out to lower the ride height with the end goal of reducing from 33×10.50 to 31×10.50s tires for better road manners. The jeep was equipped with Rubicon Express 3.5” front coil springs, Old Man Emu CS033RB leaf springs, Rubicon Express shackles, and Old Man Emu shocks. RE springs are known for being taller than advertised and this setup was no exception. I settled on reinstalling the 3” Rough Country coil springs the Jeep had on it when Nick bought it, and installing stock length shackles on the OME leaf springs, resulting in the ride height shown below. I also replaced the tubular heim joint front upper control arms with stock units and adjusted the lower control arms to dial in the caster.
That white grease for polyurethane bushings is miserable stuff to work with.
Initial inspection and test drives confirmed that the motor mounts were in rough shape, especially the drivers side.
Out with the old, in with the new.
As soon as I thought the motor mount swap was going too easy, the captive stud on the passenger’s side mount started free spinning when I was tightening the nut on the new mount. After an hour of struggling and impact wrenching, I opted for the nuclear option. Air hammer chisel tip the nut in half. Fortunately, a local parts house had a mount in stock and this 2nd new mount went in without issue. The transmission mount was also replaced.
With reduced chances of the engine falling out, the next order of business became replacing the heavy duty heim joint steering, front brakes, and unit bearings. The goal for this build is touring and camping, I prefer tie rod ends over heim joints for this use case. The Cavfab steering kit uses 5/8th inch hardware at the pitman arm and knuckles, meaning that replacing the steering also meant replacing the pitman and knuckles.
This was a long day of wrenching, but everything went pretty smooth. The only close call was me almost dropping the old solid steel tie rod on my shins. This would have undoubtably turned me into Cotton Hill. Fortunately, we replaced the ball joints on this Jeep before I bought it, one less thing to do now.
The final results of the front-end transformation:
The bones of my prey:
I was finally able to drive it to town for its first “real” test drive and grab some lunch:
I felt that the successful test drive would be a good stopping point for part 1. Stay tuned for more info on this build and the places I’ll take it!
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