So after just one trip to PA with the club, I realized I had to build a rock rig. Maybe because the Jimmy project is nearing completion or just for an excuse to fab more random stuff. Bought a pretty cheap 96 XJ that has had a lot of past mods already, some of which I sincerely question. The kid I bought it from really had no idea what was what other than it used to run, had one ton axles and a winch. He kinda got in it for no good reason and never really did anything with it and his dad wanted the eye sore out of the yard.
The good:
-It has front and rear dodge dana 60 axles, drivers side diff
-3 link coil job in front
-Full hydro steering
-Racing seats with 4 point Schroth racing harnesses (although seats and harnesses are not actually attached to anything)
-Most of a roll cage
The bad:
-Very much a hack and wack cage and an odd/spotty conversion from a front unibody to a rear custom rectangular frame
- rear has leafsprings with an odd and busted trackbar thing???
- front end fender unibody framing is a bit of a mess so uch so that there's no room for the battery and there are 6 foot cables running to behind where the seats would mount.
- random wires running everywhere, bit of a birds nest in places
- hood is not attached to anything- not sure why, and the windshield is busted out - no a negative but there's still glass remnants around.
- intake has no filter or screen of any kind
At sale time it was not running, kid thought starter was bad so I had no idea what shape the engine or tranny or anything else was in.
After figuring the good parts were useful regardless of the rest of the rig, I brought it home. After a bit of tinkering, investigation, and recharging I found out the following:
-Motor starts and runs seemingly well (let idle 30 minutes without issues) - had a bad battery (still has half a tank of gas!)
-has manual switch controlled rad fans that really seem to push a ton of air
-tyranny cooler
-hydro steering works fine, although seems like it responds very quickly (certainly not the older ratio I'm used to)
-rear diff is welded and I'm assuming front is as well
-4.10 gears
-standard Cherokee setup with 4.0l I6, AW4, 231
-winch works, although the synthetic line is shot
One thing I'm questioning due to my lack of experience with jeep engines (predominantly worked on gm and ford's) is is this 4.0l worth keeping? I know the AW4 isn't a great tranny vs a th350 or 400 or modern 4L series but it's already hooked up and the conversion parts cost would just drive me to do a full on 5.3ls swap anyhow.
So if you were about to create a custom rock crawler rig, would you keep the current setup (which I'm inclined to do for the time being just to see how cheap I can do this) or plan to do the swap and sell the current setup. (I still need to check compression yet - that'd make my mind up easily ifn it's not good).
Looking to add 4 link to rear regardless. I don't have any experience with link suspensions so what better way to learn than to dive in and build! Original plan was to custom build (or buy) full frame/cage on front and rear linked one tons with an automatic transmission. Motor, tranny and t/c as well as gears were all tbd.
Any input is welcome and appreciated!
Pics attached as soon as I can shrink the sizes down for the upload max requirement...