studflucker
New member
I own a '96 Land Rover Discovery (for sale now) for several months and was going to make that into my overlanding vehicle. I love the Discovery but the parts availability and pricing prompted me to purchase something a little more common to the US. After several months of perilously trying to find parts just to get the Discovery to a reliable point, never mind any upgrades, enter my 2002 WJ Jeep Grand Cherokee. Luckily I didn't pour a bunch of money into the Land Rover before abandoning that as my expedition project.
I picked her up earlier this year for $3,500 with the 4.7 V8, nv242hd, with about 178,000 miles on the clock. Fortunately, I was able to find this particular one that had just had the motor completely rebuilt three months prior to me purchasing it. PO did have paper work detailing such and it was obvious from the motor mounts all being recently cleaned that the rebuild actually did take place.
Nothing too special, Vehicle had a couple dings here and there but overall good shape. There is very little rust on the underside, but the kicker panels are the worst, not anything too far gone to fix however. Overall I'm pleased with the vehicle.
My Goals
My plans for the WJ are to build a vehicle with the ability to self sustain for a week or longer without common services. Obviously, that won't happen immediately although I'd like to think I'll be to that point in a year or little more. The vehicle needs to be competent offroading but I don't want a rock crawler by any means. The WJ will maintain its use as an every other day kind of daily driver. This also means that MOST work on it will fall during weekends and in a timely fashion that I have a reasonable expectation to be completed prior to the next day I have to be to work!
This thread will be my main source for the build as I plan on using it in an "expedition" role; to go anywhere from the overnight trip to the lake an hour up the road, and hopefully all the way to the TAT and even abroad someday! I will however be posting on other Jeep Forums and will update with those links as well once they transpire.
About Me
I'm currently live in Kansas, am 27 years of age and work as a branch manager for an equipment rental company. I have enjoyed mechanics ever since I was old enough to pick up a wrench. I enjoy and have owned dirt bikes, crotch rockets, enduros, slow cars, fast cars, lowered trucks (currently one of my other projects), scooters etc... you name it. I breached into the offroading scene, not because I wanted to have the tallest truck with the biggest wheels, but because I really love the idea of going into remote areas, being self sufficient, and completely secluded from anywhere between overnight and up to 2 weeks at a time.
This build will be slow. I am working on a somewhat tight budget although nothing will be sacrificed due to funds. I will either save up to afford the better option or live without. I don't like to cut corners unnecessarily. That being said I prefer to do ALL my own work, short of balancing tires and alignments; oh and differential work. I don't care to waste money on r&p gears hoping i get backlash and preload all set correctly. That also means I will, within certain parameters, prefer to fab something of my own. Obviously, if I can reasonably expect to do it cheaper, better, or in a shorter time frame than paying for an equal or lesser option. Of course, that being said I am in no way perfect. If anyone here sees something that I am doing wrong or simply could do better I'd really appreciate the feedback and take it whole heartedly. "If you're learning, you're not losing."
My other constraint is time. I can't remember the last time, disregarding vacation, that I worked less than 55 hours in a week. So weekends and evenings are my only time to work. Of course, I've been working where I work for a while now so I am afforded the luxury of having 4 weeks a year of vacation to do larger projects and expeditious trips. Our first trip is set for Arkansas in late October. Should be a timeframe in which I am comfortable with my vehicles abilities by then, however, I am prepared to wait until the first part of next Spring if things don't pan out.
So of course the first thing I did once I got the Jeep home is changed all the fluids and thoroughly checked everything out. All seemed well so I drove it around as much as possible to have any problems come out of the woodworks.
I noticed a weird "crackling" noise when I would turn the AC compressor on. It sounded like light radio static over a speaker. I did some research and found that I was low on refrigerant, topped that off and was good to go.
It was only a week later I noticed some wetness in the passenger floorboard. Of course it was the heater core. I'm positive it was that way when I bought it, I don't think the PO necessarily knew about it, but my suspicions are high.
I went down to the local Jeep dealer and that weekend got to work!
This is gonna require some Liquid Motivation!
Went ahead and did the tweeter speakers while I was at it
Dash out
HVAC housing out
Out with the old in with the new
Got it all back together. It took me longer to do this than to lift the Jeep (more on that later) I did take my time and did it right, and the work isn't hard; it's just painstaking and time consuming. Of course I had to do this a week and a half after topping of my refrigerant. So I had to go back out and buy more to fill it back up. Not only a couple days later I noticed my AC freezing up, so despite my best efforts to keep the AC lines free from the atmosphere I had to drain the whole system. Luckily, I have a co-worker who used to do HVAC work and he had the vacuum setup to evacuate the whole system of moisture and air. After that, filled up with refrigerant for the THIRD TIME (man this is getting expensive) and everything has worked awesome since then. If anyone wants more pictures or has any questions about the dash removal I have quite a few, just wanted to hit the main points to keep this thread about what it's about!
I will get onto the lift next. stay tuned
I picked her up earlier this year for $3,500 with the 4.7 V8, nv242hd, with about 178,000 miles on the clock. Fortunately, I was able to find this particular one that had just had the motor completely rebuilt three months prior to me purchasing it. PO did have paper work detailing such and it was obvious from the motor mounts all being recently cleaned that the rebuild actually did take place.
Nothing too special, Vehicle had a couple dings here and there but overall good shape. There is very little rust on the underside, but the kicker panels are the worst, not anything too far gone to fix however. Overall I'm pleased with the vehicle.
My Goals
My plans for the WJ are to build a vehicle with the ability to self sustain for a week or longer without common services. Obviously, that won't happen immediately although I'd like to think I'll be to that point in a year or little more. The vehicle needs to be competent offroading but I don't want a rock crawler by any means. The WJ will maintain its use as an every other day kind of daily driver. This also means that MOST work on it will fall during weekends and in a timely fashion that I have a reasonable expectation to be completed prior to the next day I have to be to work!
This thread will be my main source for the build as I plan on using it in an "expedition" role; to go anywhere from the overnight trip to the lake an hour up the road, and hopefully all the way to the TAT and even abroad someday! I will however be posting on other Jeep Forums and will update with those links as well once they transpire.
About Me
I'm currently live in Kansas, am 27 years of age and work as a branch manager for an equipment rental company. I have enjoyed mechanics ever since I was old enough to pick up a wrench. I enjoy and have owned dirt bikes, crotch rockets, enduros, slow cars, fast cars, lowered trucks (currently one of my other projects), scooters etc... you name it. I breached into the offroading scene, not because I wanted to have the tallest truck with the biggest wheels, but because I really love the idea of going into remote areas, being self sufficient, and completely secluded from anywhere between overnight and up to 2 weeks at a time.
This build will be slow. I am working on a somewhat tight budget although nothing will be sacrificed due to funds. I will either save up to afford the better option or live without. I don't like to cut corners unnecessarily. That being said I prefer to do ALL my own work, short of balancing tires and alignments; oh and differential work. I don't care to waste money on r&p gears hoping i get backlash and preload all set correctly. That also means I will, within certain parameters, prefer to fab something of my own. Obviously, if I can reasonably expect to do it cheaper, better, or in a shorter time frame than paying for an equal or lesser option. Of course, that being said I am in no way perfect. If anyone here sees something that I am doing wrong or simply could do better I'd really appreciate the feedback and take it whole heartedly. "If you're learning, you're not losing."
My other constraint is time. I can't remember the last time, disregarding vacation, that I worked less than 55 hours in a week. So weekends and evenings are my only time to work. Of course, I've been working where I work for a while now so I am afforded the luxury of having 4 weeks a year of vacation to do larger projects and expeditious trips. Our first trip is set for Arkansas in late October. Should be a timeframe in which I am comfortable with my vehicles abilities by then, however, I am prepared to wait until the first part of next Spring if things don't pan out.
So of course the first thing I did once I got the Jeep home is changed all the fluids and thoroughly checked everything out. All seemed well so I drove it around as much as possible to have any problems come out of the woodworks.
I noticed a weird "crackling" noise when I would turn the AC compressor on. It sounded like light radio static over a speaker. I did some research and found that I was low on refrigerant, topped that off and was good to go.
It was only a week later I noticed some wetness in the passenger floorboard. Of course it was the heater core. I'm positive it was that way when I bought it, I don't think the PO necessarily knew about it, but my suspicions are high.
I went down to the local Jeep dealer and that weekend got to work!
This is gonna require some Liquid Motivation!
Went ahead and did the tweeter speakers while I was at it
Dash out
HVAC housing out
Out with the old in with the new
Got it all back together. It took me longer to do this than to lift the Jeep (more on that later) I did take my time and did it right, and the work isn't hard; it's just painstaking and time consuming. Of course I had to do this a week and a half after topping of my refrigerant. So I had to go back out and buy more to fill it back up. Not only a couple days later I noticed my AC freezing up, so despite my best efforts to keep the AC lines free from the atmosphere I had to drain the whole system. Luckily, I have a co-worker who used to do HVAC work and he had the vacuum setup to evacuate the whole system of moisture and air. After that, filled up with refrigerant for the THIRD TIME (man this is getting expensive) and everything has worked awesome since then. If anyone wants more pictures or has any questions about the dash removal I have quite a few, just wanted to hit the main points to keep this thread about what it's about!
I will get onto the lift next. stay tuned
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