Jeep Cherokee Widetrack Revival - with questions for the experts - Stoffregen Motorsports

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

It's been a busy winter here in the Gold Country. Our winter storms brought so much rain and wind that I have been chasing my tail trying to play catch up. We actually had a tree fall on or house on New Year's Eve, which partially tore the chimney off the roof. Big oak, almost 3 feet in diameter, but even with all that weather and paying work besides, I snuck in some personal time for the Cherokee.

One of my pet peeves is body rot. Luckily for me, the Cherokee had rot only in sections of the body that would not require disturbing any of the original orange paint. Well, mostly. The majority of the rot was in the lower rear fender flares, with a couple spots of rust in the passenger floor sections near the rear fender wells. Nobody sells replacement steel fender flares for the full size Cherokees, and if the wrecking yard had them, which they did not, they would have charged $500 per flare. I can make them for the price of steel, plus a ton of hours. I did buy some lower rear quarter repair panels for a Wagoneer, from BJs Off Road, and they needed to be modified to fit. That was easy enough. In all, I cut out and replaced 17 different sections of body, and it took nearly three weeks to do.

Here is the front section of the left rear fender/rear floor patch.









And then on to more complex shapes, the rear lower section of the flare. It has an inner and outer piece.

 

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

Removing the old sections carefully leaves you with usable templates for the new parts, which I bent, shrunk, hammered and shaped into the pieces needed for a quality repair.

 

[Todd n Natalie]

Your workmanship never ceases to amaze.

 

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

Replacing the lower quarter took half the time of the flare, but the patch had to be shortened. Again, using the old part as a template helped a ton.

 

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

Your workmanship never ceases to amaze.

Thank you. All it takes is a few simple tools and some vision.

 

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

Before the quarer patch was welded in place, I welded on the flare section. This was done to make sure I could dress both sides of the weld on the flare, which would have been impossible with the quarter section in place.

Unfortunately, I failed to snap pics of the inner flare section during the process...

 

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

The same procedure on the passenger side of the body went a little more smoothly. Mostly because it was fresh in my brain. I now had to recreate the pieces, but opposites.

 

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

Here's a passenger side floor patch. Three pieces in all, but only one piece is pitured. And a bear to get to with the body still on the frame...





While I was in there, I stripped, primed and sprayed some undercaoting on the inner fender wells, and taped off and painted both rear flares.

 

[Todd n Natalie]

Thank you. All it takes is a few simple tools and some vision.

And a lot of talent.

 

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

Finished product. Notice all the old pieces on the shop floor. All of that, minus the lower quarters, had to be hand formed.

 

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

And a lot of talent.

I do appreciate that, but is a trained monkey talented?

Really all you need to do is think. A lot of thinking goes into figuring out the process. Where and how to bend, and in what sequence. Same goes for assembly and welding. How, where and how much. That's all. I'm just a big trained monkey.

 

[SkiWill]

I do appreciate that, but is a trained monkey talented?

Really all you need to do is think. A lot of thinking goes into figuring out the process. Where and how to bend, and in what sequence. Same goes for assembly and welding. How, where and how much. That's all. I'm just a big trained monkey.

And a patient one at that. Looks fantastic. Most people are in a rush and quality suffers. Patience is a virtue. The finished product looks fantastic.

 

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

Thank you.

 

[toddz69]

Beautiful work!

Todd Z.

 

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

Beautiful work!

Todd Z.

Thank you.