Captain 041
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- Northern Illinois
Well, here I am, sitting in bed, dirt under my fingernails, wallet empty, but excited about the progress I've made on my jeep in the last couple winter months. So to justify my bad financial decisions, I decided to make a build thread.
Couple years out of high school I bought a bone stock 1998 jeep cherokee sport, 4wd, 4.0 auto. Being young, i bought it with some borrowed cash from my dad. His one condition was I couldn't turn a bolt on it until its paid off. Unfortunately this means that I didn't take a single picture of it for the year I drove it. Some minor maintenance items were attended to(ac compressor, couple lines, and a window switch) but the 4.0 with 150k miles ticked like a clock. The second tax reruns hit nearly a year after purchase, the big boy checks started getting written. First purchase was a 4.5 inch rough country long arm lift. The installation was smooth, considering it was on the floor in my garage.
After rolling around on the tiny 29 inch doughnuts, I beefed up to some mickey thompson deegan 38s in 32*11.5*15 and some black steel wheels. I wheeled it in that condition at cliffs insane terrain and loved my rig.
post cliffs damage included bent tie-rod, ripped off front flares and some minor pannel damage.
misc mods around that time were affordable offroad front prerunner bumper, neat-O headliner, generic kenwood head unit, cobra wx at 75 cb radio, jcr cb antenna mount, boostworks shift linkage, and the super top secret turn signal delete with flush mount lights!
after driving the jeep for a year since the initial install, I decided to gut out some of the rough country parts and switched over to the Iro rock link.
If you've made it this far congratulations! Soon after the rock link, i purchased some napier precision products v2 flat flares that included cutouts for cut and fold. After some crafty bodywork by yours truly, the fender looked great!
around this time, I started chasing the magical cooling dragon, and purchased a high grade chinesum ebay 3 core radiator with a couple fans strapped to it.
Couple of offroad trips later, and I really drove it as a daily for nearly 6 months.
Around this time, my high-school best friend bought a couple clapped mjs and we spent alot of time getting that crap running. Summer of 2018 was spent driving the xj 7 hours north into Michigan to go stay with family and enjoy the July summer off lake Michigan, with my jeep of course! We hit a couple cool spots and definitely got outlr fill fo beautiful forest trails.
in the last couple winter months, I've built a new diy whinch bumper, frame stiffened the whole jeep, topped that new bumper off with a smittybuilt 10k whinch, and a smittybuilt xrc tire carrier with some bells and whistles. Christmas 2018 came with a gift to myself! Two new corbeau baja rs stats with brackets! General other mods include tenfactory outer axle tube seals, front Spartan locker, currie Jonny joint uca bushing. Late December brought on a fun purchase. Mishimoto full aluminum radiator, with dirtbound offroads 3 fan shroud, some generic fans and a mishimoto fan controller topped off the engine compartment. In the last couple weeks leading up to winterfest 2019 I've rebuilt the brakes, got a full size spare bolted to the ass and shes ready to party! Tested everything out earlier today and it feels great.
Hopefully I can continue to keep my thread updated and mabey even do a in depth install or review.... The world may never know.
Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
Couple years out of high school I bought a bone stock 1998 jeep cherokee sport, 4wd, 4.0 auto. Being young, i bought it with some borrowed cash from my dad. His one condition was I couldn't turn a bolt on it until its paid off. Unfortunately this means that I didn't take a single picture of it for the year I drove it. Some minor maintenance items were attended to(ac compressor, couple lines, and a window switch) but the 4.0 with 150k miles ticked like a clock. The second tax reruns hit nearly a year after purchase, the big boy checks started getting written. First purchase was a 4.5 inch rough country long arm lift. The installation was smooth, considering it was on the floor in my garage.
After rolling around on the tiny 29 inch doughnuts, I beefed up to some mickey thompson deegan 38s in 32*11.5*15 and some black steel wheels. I wheeled it in that condition at cliffs insane terrain and loved my rig.
Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
