My '92 XJ dilemma.

[carolinajeepman]

On 5/19/2018 at 10:04 PM, gogmorgo said:

Getting the carpet out of the cargo area did this one in. After soaking in PB for a week, the rear seatbelt bolts broke two brand-new 1/2" t50 impact bits. Got maybe two turns on each of them before the one stripped and the other started snapping bits.

So given that it needs most of the lower sheet metal replaced, and that I only bought it to manual swap the MJ in the first place, I guess that's what's going to happen now.

But to make myself feel better about parting out the XJ I picked up something that's better worth saving as a daily:

 

 

 

 

 

'93 base 4x4 ZJ, pretty well manual everything... Including the locks, windows, and transmission.

It's a one-family vehicle, 267,000 km/165,000 miles, a little rough around the edges but overall in pretty reasonable shape. There's a touch of rust in the rockers that shouldn't be too much to fix, and supposedly some "wobble" that I didn't notice going around the block a couple times but I'm hoping is due to the 2" spacer lift and adjustable track bar, which looks legit but I'm thinking I'll put it back to stock anyhow. The plan is for it to replace the Saint as my daily.

Looks like I need to update my sig now. 

 

 

That's an awesome ZJ. I can't imagine there are many manuals out there anymore as only a few were made..

[Lthompson741]

Love the ZJ!    I don't think i've ever even seen one for sale.  I would probably jump on it if I did.

[gogmorgo]

On 11/9/2018 at 11:04 AM, Lthompson741 said:

Love the ZJ!    I don't think i've ever even seen one for sale.  I would probably jump on it if I did.

Yeah, I'm pretty glad I did. It's been a solid daily driver. I have had to fix a couple things on it, disuse and questionable repairs/modifications from the PO for the most part. But I've put just about 10,000 miles on it basically only changing the fluids and tightening some fasteners to get it there. I can't really complain about that for a 27-year-old Jeep that I got for less than the equivalent of US$1200. I just got back from a 2000-mile road trip with it. The Dana 35 is being a typical turdy5... pinion bearings are shot, but they do have over 170,000 miles on them, and I did pull a 5500lb trailer up some nasty grades over the Sunwapta pass with it, so there's that.

But overall I'm pretty happy with it. The lack of power options and the manual transmission really bring it back down to the rough utilitarian Jeep nature, in contrast to the semi-luxurious hockey-mom-mobile the Grand Cherokee turned into. And it's pretty nice cruising around in a fairly rare vehicle that just blends right into the crowd. My MJs are reasonably unique and afford me a certain amount of anonymity, but my Lada is definitely not anonymous. My previous daily driver was boring but attracted tons of attention. The opposite is nice.

[Lthompson741]

On 11/12/2018 at 11:22 PM, gogmorgo said:

Yeah, I'm pretty glad I did. It's been a solid daily driver. I have had to fix a couple things on it, disuse and questionable repairs/modifications from the PO for the most part. But I've put just about 10,000 miles on it basically only changing the fluids and tightening some fasteners to get it there. I can't really complain about that for a 27-year-old Jeep that I got for less than the equivalent of US$1200. I just got back from a 2000-mile road trip with it. The Dana 35 is being a typical turdy5... pinion bearings are shot, but they do have over 170,000 miles on them, and I did pull a 5500lb trailer up some nasty grades over the Sunwapta pass with it, so there's that.

But overall I'm pretty happy with it. The lack of power options and the manual transmission really bring it back down to the rough utilitarian Jeep nature, in contrast to the semi-luxurious hockey-mom-mobile the Grand Cherokee turned into. And it's pretty nice cruising around in a fairly rare vehicle that just blends right into the crowd. My MJs are reasonably unique and afford me a certain amount of anonymity, but my Lada is definitely not anonymous. My previous daily driver was boring but attracted tons of attention. The opposite is nice.

I had to go back and look at the pictures, I didn't catch that it was all manual, non power anything.   That makes me like it even more!