Father and Son beater jeep (93 XJ)

ordered Solid diff covers front/rear today for $65 a pop, diagnosed that I have a NSS issue, but really have not put any work into this yet because I have to finish putting the steering upgrades together on my 77 Jimmy first.

I took a day off work that was supposed to be our best weather that week and work on the Cherokee, first I had to finish hooking the steering up on my 77 Jimmy.

Then I put some new battery terminal ends on the existing cables and had my kid drive it over to the shed so I could weld the driver door back on (had him drive so I didn't have to climb over the center console again lol)

its a dark pic but he had a huge smile on his face and said "this is WAY better than driving the tractor"



found a few more issues while working on it, I think I need new motor mounts lol


obviously the steering shaft has made contact with the motor mount bracket before


I am really glad i just bought this thing to beat the crap out of cause someone already made a fine start to it






and whatever these "repairs" were supposed to be. they will end up getting plated and repaired.

I stripped a bunch of stuff off like the a/c, battery and tray, alternator, and ordered motor mounts after seeing just how bad the driver side one was.

Saturday I got a bit of time to work on it and got the motor mounts changed, just put stock replacements back in for now.

motor mounts are easy once you have everything out of the way






he was excited to get out and work on it




he was not excited that i kept taking his picture lol

vacation policy changed at work so they cashed out extra hours, little extra money there so I bought an aluminum fan shroud with 3 electric fans, a Barnes 4WD heim steering kit, Barnes 4WD axle tubes, 136 amp alternator that I am relocating to where the a/c compressor was smittybilt 2781 air compressor for it. Thinking I can squeeze it by the extra battery under the hood edit, air compressor is not going to fit by the extra battery but cant really come up with a good location for my air tank, probably just in the cargo area for now.

been working on dual battery trays for the last week or so, getting a few minutes in here and there.

here is where the second battery will go but i am going to have to move the ECM


we built both trays basically the same, I copied the original shape of the plastic tray and made a mount, a tray, and a hold down


test fitting, we used riv-nuts the hold the tray to the mount, the passenger side we used the 3 original studs to bolt it in, the driver side we used 3 more riv-nuts to bolt it in




the top side of the tray and the bottom side of the hold down are sprayed with bedliner


This is a sheet of tool box drawer liner I am laying in the tray as a cushion from the bolt heads to the battery


second battery mounted


both batteries


there is some vibration in the brackets, thinking I will watch it once i have it running again, if I need to I can easily remove it and put a cross brace in the lower bracket.

finally made some headway on the alternator, seems like it took forever and it kind of did with about 5 revisions.

On my last Cherokee I ditched the A/C and relocated the stock alternator to where the a/c compressor was, that time I ground down the a/c bracket to flat and used the stock alternator bracket bolting the 2 brackets together. this time I was putting a bigger alternator in and figured I would just bolt a plate over the stock a/c bracket then bolt the stock alternator bracket to it, this didn't work because then the whole thing was too tall and the hood wouldn't close and I'm not ghetto enough to just cut a hole in the hood for the alternator to stick through lol.



so I started to grind down the original a/c bracket like last time and just was not liking it this time, so I started making my own bracket.





I was going to bolt the stock alternator bracket to it but because I changed the height there was contact issues with the alt and the heater pipe running from the water pump. The first alternator used a 6 and 12 o'clock mounting position, I looked online and found an alt from a early 2000 Grand Cherokee or Dakota would fit better, I wouldn't have to swap pulleys, and its 136Amp.





it had its own small issue though, this mounting bracket that I wouldn't be using would be in the way when changing plugs



so now its not



I made a couple of cradle brackets, lined the alt up with the other pulleys and welded them in

(the sun made the pictures hard to see)






then it was onto building battery cables, there was a bracket next to the fuse box that held the overflow bottle, i cut the uprights off cut some sheet metal, bent a half inch lip to firm it up and mounted it there. here I have a resettable breaker between the alt and battery, also the (not wired yet) VSR to handle charging the second battery.

I had been VERY slowly working towards finishing up the charging/electrical upgrades when life and work and weather weren't getting in the way.

I was also being lazy and not wanting to crawl under it and pull the wiring from the starter to re-do it, but good thing I did


I had to buy a replacement plug for the new alternator and of course its just generic white wires, the junkyards around here wont cut a plug from a harness since they want you to buy the whole harness.


When I upgraded the alternator on my TJ I had to re-do the plug on it and if you hooked the wires up wrong the gauge wouldn't work, I have swapped the wires back and forth on this one and the gauge seems to be working either way.


And it runs again by the way.

I was supposed to have the whole weekend to myself... ya that didn't happen. But I did get a few hours Saturday.

After pulling the facia off I started noticing just how bad the damage was. you can see the driver side is quite a bit higher than the passenger.


some more pics of before




not only is it broke all the way across it, but it is caved inward also.


At this time I was really contemplating moving onto version 2.0 where I pull all the drivetrain out and put it into my CJ6 after building a new frame but damn it we wanna go wheeling sooner than later and we just plan to beat the crap out of it anyways.

so I beat the crap out of it... with a 15# sledge hammer


hard to tell without setting the radiator back in but it came back down quite a bit




then I moved onto getting rid of some of the bent and badly welded scraps


I am going to build a new crossmember and trying to decide if I want to put the winch behind it, or just in front of it? behind it will give a better approach angle but also make it harder to free spool

and I was super shocked when I unbolted the steering box and this came out in 1 piece with all the damage around it.

Yesterday would have been a wonderful day to weld outside... if I had gas for the welder.

So being at a stand still on the front I moved to the back, pulled the rear bumper and hitch, while I was under there I noticed this




so now I get to replace the fuel tank, luckily one of the wrecking yards near me has a couple for $57

Then I pulled the carpet out of the rear and started a cut and fold on the rear quarters but I think I got lost somewhere lol






I have done the cut and fold on other Cherokees but this time I decided to just cut it all off with the thoughts of lengthening the rear wheel wells, then I will just plate in what's left.