Project Empty Wallet

[Rinkor16]

So I bought this car when I was 16 which was over 2 years ago. I really wanted a 4 wheel drive vehicle and I found a sweet deal on this cherokee... Now I don't know if I would drive any other car hehe. Any comments, ideas, and feedback would be greatly appreciated



Now on to the more important stuff...

I finally bought a 4.5" Rough Country lift and started the long and painful project of installing it. It was really difficult to do since we didn't have any good jacks to lift the car. And truthfully I've never really worked on my car very much, so this was DEFINITELY a learning experience. So we got the rear end up, took the tires off and began to remove the old leaf springs.



After we removed the leaf springs I decided that I really needed to remove my muffler. Not sure what happened to it, but it looks like someone stuck a potatoe in there and it blew up. Didn't want anyone cutting their leg on it when they walked by my car.



We finally got the leaf packs off... And not to my surprise we could flex the spring all the way under our own body weight. I'm thinking about strapping some shoes to both leaf springs and jumping around in them ... I'm glad I bought new leaf packs, I really needed them.



After we got the new leaf packs installed we put the tires back on... I drove it around like this for a little bit to see how much drive line vibration I would get. Everyone at Safeway was staring at me when I went to get some food haha. Looked kind of like a dragster.



After that it was about 11 pm so we decided to call it a night.

[Rinkor16]

The next morning I began installing the t-case drop kit... Probably the easiest part of the install.



After I finished doing that I began the long process of swapping the front axle out. The 4 wheel drive on my old axle was toast. The engine used to leak a lot of oil right on top of the vacuum unit, so it pretty much never worked. I then began removing all the bolts for the driveline, upper and lower control arms. After slamming my hand into the bottom of my car multiple times I managed to get the axle out.



We put the new axle on a pallet jack and move it into place...



Then we started bolting on the upper and lower control arms... But then we ran into a pretty big issue. I bought a pair of 1 3/4" spacers for the front and they looked more like 3" spacers. We were having a lot of trouble getting the lower control arms to bolt on because we were maxing out the upper control arms. We finally got it on and then took a step back and noticed that the axle was not even close to being in the center of the wheel well. So we decided to remove the spacers until I could buy some adjustable upper control arms. So we remove the upper control arms, dropped the axle and removed the springs and the spacers. This time the upper and lower control arms bolted on with ease...

[Rinkor16]

Then things were going smoothly until we went to put the brake pads on... The old ones wouldn't fit! By this time it was past 1 AM so we decided to give it a rest until the next day. The next day we installed the calipers and brake pads that came with the axle and they went right on! I bled the brakes and put the tires back on and lowered the car back down to the ground. Then I installed the new adjustable trackbar and realised that I had to redrill the hold for a 5/8" bolt... So now I had to go buy the biggest drill bit I've seen to install the trackbar! After a visit to Home Depot I finally got the adjustable trackbar on and tada!

Finally finished!

[Rinkor16]

Here's a picture of all the stuff I pulled off my car... The garage was a mess too




As you can tell we didn't put stuff back, we just left it on the floor lol.

[Rinkor16]

Here's a write up on my camo headliner that I did a few weeks ago...

I decided that I wanted to redo the headliner because it was sagging really badly. When I got in my car the fabric would sit on top of my head. So I took off all the plastic trim that was around the headliner and removed the lights. Then I had a buddy help me carefully remove the headliner.



I peeled off the old material so that the glue would have a cleaner surface to stick to. Then I took a brush and removed even more of the old glue and fabric left behind.



Then I took a trip to Joann's fabric and bought some camo cloth. I used 2 cans of 3M adhesive spray on this headliner too. I sprayed both cans on the cloth and headliner and then let it tack up for 5 minutes. Then I had 2 buddies help me hold the cloth while I flattened it out evenly. You may notice that in my first picture I didn't have a sound bar... I found one at pick-n-pull and decided I'd buy it



Then I let it dry for 24 hours and installed it the next day!



Looks like a normal car on the outside... But wait until you see inside!

[Rinkor16]

While I was installing my lift I got my Cherokee Talk sticker in the mail for 250 posts!

[Rinkor16]

Sorry for the massive photos lol.

[muddeprived]

Awesome progress. I can't really tell from the pictures but did you swap in a low or high pinion 30? How's the jeep riding? Is it stiff?

[Rinkor16]

I put in a high pinion Dana 30... The leaves are definately stiff but she rides pretty good. Much more fun to drive than when it was stock

I'm gonna work on getting the brakes to work properly tonight.

[jakeWI]

nice. like the lift for sure. not sure those are car parts sitting there on the garage floor though. haha. Like the headliner to. looks familiar

[Rinkor16]

Originally Posted by jakeWI

nice. like the lift for sure. not sure those are car parts sitting there on the garage floor though. haha. Like the headliner to. looks familiar

Most of the stuff on the floor was tools and food When I saw your camo headliner I couldn't resist

[jakeWI]

i was just kidding about the car parts. i was referring to the fact that you called it car parts and not jeep parts haha.

[flawlesslydisturbed]

Looks awesome. I like the camo.

[Rinkor16]

Thanks everyone... So a little update...

When I installed the brake pads I thought I put them on correctly. Well I started driving and I could hear a grinding noise. The brake pads were constantly rubbing on the rotors and I definitely didn't want them to fuse together. So I searched around on the internet for a couple hours since I didn't know what year axle I had or what was going on because it didn't use the same brake pads that I used to have on the front axle. I figured out that axle came from a pre-1990 Jeep Cherokee. So after a visit to Autozone the guy tells me that I'm missing a part... These little clips



After fiddling around with them I finally got them on the rotors the right way and my brakes stopped grinding! Now I can finally drive my car around town lol

[Carl]

Nice work on the lift, looks great. I hate those little clips...I lost them a few times while I was installing my lift. Fortuately I had a parts XJ to strip parts from.