'94 Jeep Cherokee XJ: Bulk update

Looks great, Rich!
I wish I had time to work on mine but it is more of a workhorse than a cruiser, mainly hauling around timber and plasterboard for the house project. I'm sure the diesel is a ticking timebomb but for now it keeps trucking along.

I love the daylighters but I was impressed with the performance of the LED light. Mine has two big rectangular lights on the bull bar and four on the roofrack. To be honest, though, when you switch them on you can hardly see the difference on the road!

Love the way the dog's going, "All clear left."

A place I used to refuel my RR on LPG was a garage that converted.

With the Jeep, they reckoned it was tuned about right when they could stand a pound coin on the rocker box.

Nothing too exciting to update with, other than I made it taller. Rear springs were very tired as noted before and I got a set of rears for £150 brand new locally, except I was told they were 'Heavy Duty', which in my mind is like 1" max, for towing, ect. NO NO NO, they are about 3 or 4 inches taller. So that forced my hand and I replaced the fronts with +3" ones. Well, I say I replaced, despite being a mechanic I paid the garage next door to do them because I couldn't be bothered to spend another day rolling around under it making things fit like I had to on the Landrover

Let's have an update of sorts. Seeing as it's been forever. Here it is doing things at Christmas. Used it as a tree hauler and also pulled a chap's transit out of the mud at the tree farm. Because you would, wouldn't you, flex your 4X4 muscles..



Now, because of the suspension lift, the rear prop suffers a little. It's a slip-yoke design and it pulls too far out of the gearbox at extreme angles. the front is a double-cardon joint so that's fine. The options are to fit an SLE (£££££), get a longer prop (Also ££££), get a special conversion kit that uses a front prop from a TD model (Somewhat ££), or fit transmission crossmember droppers, which are about 37p. Seeing as I am not actually going to Moab and wheelin' hard I opted to drop the trans-crossmember and see if it helped with my speed-shimmy and odd resonance noise that occurred intermittently coming off throttle at motorway speed.
Invariably, it did fix that. So that was a win.



The biggest issue I found people bleating about (that is an actual issue not internet hear-say IMO) is stressing the exhaust, namely the collector at the manifold, as the system is pretty rigidly hung. I fitted a flexi and a brace before the flexi to take any stress out of the exhaust system.





Next, I took off the KC clones. I wasn't 100% sure on them at the time, and as time passed I liked them less and less. I had holes in the bumper, short of either putting rubber bungs in them or welding them up and repainting it (not gonna happen, I want the chrome ones) I thought I'd fit something a bit more OE.
Microlines. I will recolour the covers black with a Jeep and AMC logo at some point.



Then I had to take all this off..



To get down here to change..





The Compressor bearing and drive plate. Spring finger had snapped (Worst supervillan name ever) and sounded like death. Still, cost £3 for a bearing and £70 for a complete compressor to rob the parts from and refurbish the pulley and drive plate to swap straight over.



Then it snowed. Obligatory snow pics.













Checked the torque converter bolts were still tight. These have a habit of working lose on these, I have checked them all previously due to them working loose and causing the flexplate to rattle in P or N. Worrying really.



In the meantime, a friend of mine who owns one had the dreaded brake piston heat-seize, where the brakes drag on the hotter they get until the pads go on fire. Common issue caused by the caliper pistons being made of a type of phenolic plastic (yes, really) which over time absorbs moisture and brake fluid and they are also easily damaged by techs carelessly fitting brake pads, and this speeds the process, eventually making them swell and stick. He limped the car to a pub car park and by the time I had got there to help the wheel span freely (typical of this fault) so we whipped the caliper off and he limped the last mile home with 3 brakes with me a front-guard. Not ideal but hey. He's since renewed the pads, discs, calipers (with stainless pistons) and hoses so no more brake issues for him.



Did some miles..



Drove it about a bit, as you do, for some nice photos..
EDITED: Forgot I managed to snag some stainless tail lamps 'guards' (for want of a better word)
Normally not a fan of tat like that but it adds a sprinkle more bling to match to grille so I had to have them. I actually had a black set to go on for when it had the A bar, but I never got round to fitting them.









And I've just pulled this beggar out again as it was running slowly. (noticed the A/C was taking a while to cool down) Cleaned and sorted the brushes (they ran off the bottom of the commutator and bottomed out on the armature so weren't really contacting) and have noticed the radiator is weeping again. Never a dull moment That's it for now

Wow, been a while. It got all dressed up to go to Goodwood Retro Rides Weekender this year, but I am rubbish at taking photos so some are mine, some I've shamefully stolen.













A few people really quickly got the silly county reference. I won't spoil it, you can have a guess.

I should really have done this before I did that, because it limited how I could do the graphics, but I don't always work smart. I started to remove the side cladding today. Was never really sold on it, and it's a 90's model thing so it's going. need to get the glue off now with a toffee wheel.









I also fitted one of the superb badges Mystery Machine made me to lose the Clive Sutton badge.



And I had had enough of the fally-downy typical yank car headliner so out it came-



Few coats of fibreglass resin to make sure it was smooth and strong (it's a horrid fibreboard thing)



Then primed lightly, and on to this:







Back in-



Looks better in real life than it does there. Sadly the FB resin has carried on curing despite leaving ages for it to set and caused a kind of cracked effect but it actually looks fine still. I can pull it back out and recoat it if needs be later on. Main thing is it looks much better and the cloth isn't all hanging off. result.

x2

My roof is the same. Lacquer peel everywhere.

I've still got a hankering for an Epsom green/dark silver lace job though.

Let us know soon, please.

waiting with bated breath....

Love these jeeps, can’t believe I’d not seen this thread before.

The roof lining, you could potentially glue some acoustic cloth to it? Should looks smart

rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F184159204788

Love all the American touches