my next build...project "X-Cab"

[JeepcoMJ]

by measuring on my dad's (well, eyeing it up.... :roll: ), I figure I can get an extra 2 feet out of it, especially since I'm going to be either building a custom fuel tank for below the cab, or I'll be building one to fit between the A posts of the rollbar. after all, I do plan on having a 4.5' bed on it.

[JeepcoMJ]

hmm...it could end up being a 4 door now, there would be less seams to blend that way...and I really could do the suicide door on one side (or both depending on roll cage etc.

 

and I really have no idea when this one will be built...I'm building my dad's diesel first, as I now have the body for it.

[Badger]

the way i sloppily wrote it above would work as a 4 door as well just use the shorter stock front door.if you want working back seats the body has to be the same length so to go from an extra cab to a 4 door is not much different.only real difference is with the B pillar.you could do it one of two ways.cut just like i said above but instead of welding the cherokee B pillar to the door you would it back to the body or the other way would be to cut the Comanche right on the door seem.meaning you cut and seperate the outer skin form the B pillar leaving it.take your Comanche body ring weld it into place.take the rear doors and B pillars off the Cherokee and weld the B pillars onto were you cut the Comanche cab and blend them in.do the thing with the rear doors and another set of Comanche doors and you are done .

 

one 4 door with square doors all the way around.

[1bolt]

There is a four door crew cab short bed Cheromanche out there, it was on Ebay a half dozen times and got talked about on NAXJA in a thread or two. I'm not talking about the burgundy crew cab 2 wheel drive MJ with the full size bed (also been talked about on NAXJA and probably here). But more of a SUT "sport utility truck" in the mold of Avalanches and Explorer sport tracks.

 

Sadly I never got the guy to send me high res pics of the thing, it's basic proportions were quite bad @$$ though. It looked really good but didn't quite have enough rear seat because his MJ graft was right behind the rear door (C pillar) he bobbed the bed in the front, and didn't do anything about the rear wheel relief of the rear doors.

[Badger]

i know exactly the one you speak of and it was hacked and cobbled together horribly.i'll say it again since the Mj has a stronger thicker frame and is flat from the rear of the cab back to the bumper.not to mention the longer wheel base would be helpful.this would give you the ability to give the people in the back some good leg room as well as be able to just use a standard front bench for the rear.this gives you enough room for some speaker boxes back there as well.

[1bolt]

Hah I bet you were the one I had an argument with about it, oh well to each there own, having never seen it in person or even high res pics of it I can't judge too harshly.

 

Found pics of it stashed on my HD

 

Not being a professional body guy I'd say that's not too shabby. He obviously used a couple MJ roofs to avoid having to massage the XJ roof into the MJ cab back.

[Badger]

see how it has that stupid door opening.the way i'm talking about doing it you would get a full door.

 

 

you could save some more space by taking out the vent area.

[offroader461]

i like the full door better than using the rear doors off the 4dr XJ...just looks cleaner in my opinion

[feerocknok]

i like the full door better than using the rear doors off the 4dr XJ...just looks cleaner in my opinion

To massive, like a Mega Cab to me.

[JeepcoMJ]

seen that and that's EXACTLY what I'm trying to AVOID having mine look like.

 

what a cobbled piece of crap

[1bolt]

That thing seems to garner some disproportionally hateful reviews.

Thing is I can't figure it out, here and on NAXJA two places filled with more reckless sawsall hackery, and booty fab than just about any other enthusiast vehicle web sites out there. How are you guys setting your standards?

 

No offense to my fellow Jeepers, but the amount of cosmetically "done right" one-off custom Jeeps here or there can be counted on one hand. We (and I include me in this) got saber sawed front fender flares for tire clearance, cut and tucked rear quarters where they rust out, back window and hatch "back halfed" XJ's, tube bed MJ's, labaron hood vents, rattle can and drive way paint jobs (Me too!), Exco cages, HERCULINER INTERIORS... LOL

 

I also like the Photoshop'ed version better, the problem with the photoshop'ed version is that it's photoshopp'ed... That means it was not built using real world structures, measurements or man hours. It looks like the the front doors are stretched, and the rear doors and MJ cab graft don't leave enough room for a functional back seat, just like the real red one. The rear door on the photoshoped one is sweet and the amount of work (and extra doors and B pillars for grafts) it would require might only be worth it to someone who's trying to win shows...

 

How many of us here are trying to win shows?

[Badger]

how i explained it would give you all the room you wanted ,the correct B pillar,and a what ever size door you wanted to run.yes its photoshopped but that doesn't mean its not do able .

 

the reason why it doesn't look right is because it was the long door on the front.the person who did it shrunk it down to a size the resembles a short door.as said it s a photochop its only there to give reference to.

[JeepcoMJ]

the reason that that cherokee is a cobbled POS is...

 

1. cherokee rear doors...are halfassed. you want a 4 door, and want it to look good? ok, then don't just plate in the !#%@$#% wheel well. at the very least add that skin to the door and put storage where that wheel well was (open the door and you get storage) or an air tank or SOMETHING.

 

the bed had weld lines across it...it was halfassed inside and never had full body work done.

 

the frame wasn't plated too well...it has a longarm kit on it, and that kit extends back and BOLTS the frame rails up from what I saw.

 

the interior is rough, the bed is too short for any functionality, all round it's just rough. it's a nice "rough" job...and I wouldn't buy it.

[sinnaevd]

with an entire extra cab its completely do able since you will also need more rocker to add on for the added door length.your going to have two seems either way.if you really wanted to have some fun .you could do a true quad cab.now i don't mean true 4 door but make the extra cab section open in suicide fashion.

 

if you cut you're cab right before the turn up for the B pillar ,stretch it back the 2 feet or what ever.then take you're the other cab and take the center section out of it.weld that in as your fill from the roof to the frame rails .leave some extra frame rail on the bottom of it to sleeve into the original frame.this will help strengthen it.now this ring of body so to speak gives you a full length door opening from the front to the back as well as a roof opening.from this point you take the original Comanche door and cut the front off of it and section it down to what you need.go to a junk yard snag the rear doors of a 4 door Xj as well as the B pillar.take the B pillar weld it to the front of the rear door.section the front of the door off and weld that to the rear of the Comanche door.this gives you the rear door with the ability to make a working roll down window.put suicide hinges on it and get some latches from say a Ranger or S10 and get them into the B pillar area.next bolt on the front doors of the 2 door.

 

here is a guy that kind of did it with a 2 door Xj

 

 

 

of course if you started with a Comanche and do it the way i describe(can you tell i have thought about this a bit) you get to keep the square corners of the cab,you get work doors all the way around for easy access to the rear seat or storage,and it stays clean looking if not almost factory.if you don't stretch the frame along with it you don't get enough room before the rear wheel.don't the long bed and short bed have the same wheel base just a different bed length ,longer over hang to the rear.if so the rear tire would be right there at the back of the cab.

 

That Adam Keller motors is about 5 mins from my house. I wonder how they know eachother because I have never seent hat one around before...

[JeepcoMJ]

you probably never will either.

 

that thing was cut completely off the unibody and put on a frame too!

[Badger]

you probably never will either.

 

that thing was cut completely off the unibody and put on a frame too!

 

you know that for a fact? i have never seen information on it before other then those pictures.

[JeepcoMJ]

I know it for fact.

 

I found the build thread somewhere on google...can't remember where now

 

I think this may be it...

http://rides.webshots.com/album/525849414zSEbht

[Badger]

that link is to something completely different.but still an interesting group of pictures

[JeepcoMJ]

I had a link to it somewhere...I'll have to dig it up. but it was very similar.

[1bolt]

I remember the supposed weld inside the bed, The thread you're thinking of is on NAXJA and was just a bunch of us speculating. Most of which was based on some crappy shrunk down JPEG's pulled off of Ebay.

 

Someone decided the welds were "bird $#!& welds" based on some bumpy looking specular highlights on the inside of the bed in one photo. Which could have been anything including orange peel in the paint, clear coat sag or paint over seem sealer). The "bird $#!&" comment in relation to sheet metal lead me to wonder if the person who came up with it ever welded anything but farm equipment. But I kept my opinion to myself. (hint, you can't lay nice beads on thin sheetmetal unless you want your body panels to look like fried bacon)

 

If you look at the roof line, the front bed line where he bobbed and the area where the MJ cab back must have been grafted onto the C pillar of the XJ, you will notice no wavy lines... no visible seams, and crisp body lines...

 

So either the guy was a good sheet metal fabricator, or he was an excellent body man, or both. If he was poor at either one these area's would look like s**t

 

The body lines are good, the door gaps are better than stock, the paint seems good, and yeah he left the rear door alone. I don't think the rear door is enough to warrant crapping all over something that was obviously otherwise well done...

 

That suicide door light blue 2 dr looks worse to me. It also has the wheel relief and doesn't look well proportioned to me, but no one is crapping on it :dunno:

 

Far as the bed goes and the back seat proportions, the photochop is the only one that gets closer to "right" for me. It does it by stretching the front door in a way that would be hard to duplicate without exact measurements, and the biggest part. The rear door is a total fantasy... It's square, look at a real rear door. At a minimum it would have to have custom made glass, re-worked window tracks and longer than stock window trim (that doesn't exist on any XJ to be easily converted) and so would need to be hand made from longer stock. Then you need custom made interior trim panels for the door and behind and below the door.

 

There's a couple thousand dollars per side and several hundred man hours worth of good reasons not to start f'ing with that rear door if you're building something to be used, and not a show truck or trailer queen.

 

Anyway mine will have stock rear doors and you all can crap on it all you want it'll still be badass

[Badger]

you can do what ever you want as long as it works for you.just telling you what i think would be the easiest way after playing with it myself.

[JeepcoMJ]

rear doors would be easy bud...you use an MJ front door (since you're using the back cab anyways the door jam will work with an MJ door), cut the hinge end of it off and eliminate the wing window. square it up to match the front of a cherokee rear door, using the cherokee B-pillar and front inside of the cherokee rear door on the front of your now "rear" comanche stock door. ta-da you have a comanche 4 door with a working rear window.

 

and actually...whether or not you can weld well on sheet metal, there's something called a polishing wheel...you use it to clean up the welds (takes time...you don't want to wave the metal by heating up the section too much) and THEN you smooth and paint it.

 

at the very least, please square off the rear of your xj rear door and like I say, put storage in what used to be the wheel well. perfect spot for a holdout :P

[jared]

wow. obviosuly this thread just turned into talk now.

 

the red cheromanche that is a "piece of crap" looks pretty good to me, but i can understand why the rear door is the way it is. that is a $#!& load of fabrication to build another door, or to modify that one. not only do you have to modify it, but then made weatherstripping, the latches work and make it look good.

 

a 4 door cherokee is like that because of the rear wheel being right there, but also the floor pan kicks up there too, so changing all that could have totally screwed up the interior he would be working with, and made the job harder than it has too be.

 

me personally i would not waster time doing a 4 dr manche, just get a cherokee.

 

but the 2 door xj door manche idea is great, more room behind the seats for storage, but again i would't waste time with trying to fit a seat back there. to much work.