5 Grand Cherokee Part 1

Today, we're starting project five Grand Cherokee. We're turning this 98 CJ from a soccer moms kitty bus to a hardcore dual purpose road and trail R.

We're going Skyward more than five inches, adding bulletproof axles and 35 inch wheels and tires. And that's just the start of this project. It's all today here on trucks and this thing looks tough, dude.

Hey, welcome to trucks. Well, I got a question for you. What comes to mind when you hear the words Grand Cherokee? Well, for some people, it conjures up images of a soccer mom or somebody flapping on a cell phone coming up an off ramp in an SUV that's never seen anything but pavement. But for you guys that know what these rigs are capable of, you know, full well, what a bargain these first generation Grand Cherokees have become and for a rig that can do double duty. Well, they're tough to beat. Plus not since the Jeep CJ

was a V8 available with two solid axles. Now, those Grand Cherokees in stock trim are a lot better at going to get groceries in bad weather than they are at, say, taking on the Rubicon Trail, but just like our little XJ here, cheap Cherokee that we showed you earlier this season. The Grand Cherokee or the ZJ can be pretty easily modified to not only take on some serious trails but to haul a bunch of people down the highway in comfort. Yeah. And we got a lot of good feedback on the realistic approach we took with our XJ

and we're going to use a similar formula on our bigger and more refined Grand Cherokee. But this build, that's going to be a little bit more upscale if you will than a regular Cherokee was.

Now, it's not like we're going to build some trailer queen or something.

But what we are going to do is choose modifications that suit the character of this vehicle and make sense. And as you can see, this thing is in pretty darn good shape. It's in nice condition. So don't start looking for welded up spider gears and hacked up quarter panels because that's not going to happen either.

Now, under the hood is a healthy V8 that was only available for the last year of this

DJ S 98. Now, the standard eight cylinder was a 5.2 L 318

and was a solid upgrade over the six cylinder, but this is a 5.9 L 360 putting out 245 horses and a stout 335 ft pounds of torque and besides the cold air kit, this one stopped with 100 and 70,000 miles on it

and don't think you got to fork over a ton of cash to get your hands on one of these things. We've seen decent higher mileage. Six cylinders go for less than $1000. 5.2 V8 for around 2500 bucks. And the top of the line five nines for less than 5000. Now that we've told you all the good things about the ZJ

and what a bar than they are. Let's take a look underneath and talk about some of the not so good things. Now, under here, you're going to find the front axle. The Jeep is used for umpteen years and is thrown underneath almost every vehicle to roll off the assembly line. The Dana 30. Now on this front drive shaft, they've dropped a stronger universal joint probably to eliminate some kind of road vibration.

In this particular Dana 30 it utilizes a CV style axle shaft rather than the universal equipped shaft. Again, not the strongest option. Our transfer case is an NP 249 full time four wheel drive or all wheel drive transfer case,

but we're going to replace that with an NP 2 31 2 wheel drive capable unit, but more on that later in the build.

Now, the rear axle is a data 44 with a limited slip and usually that's a really good thing. But in our case, we'll check this out.

As you can see by the magnet,

the center section is aluminum and that's proven itself to be weak and a little problematic in off-road high stress situations. But we've got a plan for something a little more durable.

Now, hiding behind these nice looking 59 limited specific wheels

are some of the crappiest brakes ever bolted to a Jeep even though they're discs. But don't worry, we got to fix for the discs out back as well as a great low buck junkyard upgrade for the marginal at best brakes up front.

Every great build up starts with a tear down. So we're pulling the front suspension off this thing first,

but instead of randomly pulling off parts and throwing them on the floor, we're leaving the wheels on the axle and unbolting it as an assembly. So it comes out as a unit which is gonna save you time as well as make it a little easier to move around your shop

since the shocks won't fit our plans. They're history too

here.

Now to replace this old suspension, we wanted to go with something that was going to give us a nice stable ride on the highway as well as a lot of flex when we were out whaling, which left us shopping for a long arm kit. We wanted a high quality product that was easy to install and a good value what we ended up with was this 5.5 inch lift system from Rusty's off-road products. This kit is bolt in, it's easy to install and it was about 1000 bucks cheaper than other systems that we compared it to. So that's money we can put into other things on this rig.

The kit includes rear, upper and lower, long arms and front radius style arms as well as replacement track bars,

longer coils, brackets, brake lines and shocks round out this kid.

Now, standard performance shocks are included, but we opted for Bill Stein 51 fifties.

They feature a

inspired cross flow reservoir and should help this Jeep handle off road and on. But before we install that, we've got to unbolt our track bar bracket because the new drop down bracket is going in its place and we've got to cut off our lower control arm mounts front and rear because they're going to interfere with our new long arms.

You can use your weapon of choice when you're cutting the factory mouse, but the plasma torch gets it done in a hurry

up next. We'll get our front excellent place. And later it's a low dollar upgrade to get you the kind of breaks you need to really stop a rig like this. Stick around.

Hey, welcome back to the shop where we're tearing into our 98 Jeep Grand Cherokee taking it from a solid performance stalker to a modified multitasker. And so far we've stripped away the factory Dana, 3044 axles as well as the low slung suspension.

And we did that to make room for a new long arm kit from Rusty's off road. The 5.5 inch lift is designed to run 33 inch tires without any clearance issues. But we want to go with 35. So little fender trimming is gonna be in order, we're going to show you how to do that

at the same time as maintain a nice clean factory appearance.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, we got to see where we stand with our lift installed and with our control arm mounts cut off ground flush and hit with some undercoat. Well, it's time to throw on the front suspension and that starts with installing our new cross member.

The Grand Cherokee has a unitized body and frame. Almost every vehicle manufactured today has gone away from the traditional body on frame design

in favor of the unibody, which is more easily produced.

Rusty's had this in mind when they designed their long arm kit, incorporating plated crush sleeves that get inserted into the not so bulletproof frame rails and work in combination with his cross member to strengthen the whole structure.

After drilling and widening the holes with a un a bit or step drill, the sleeves get inserted into the frame rail

once the cross member is in the factory transmission mount gets reinstalled and torqued down.

Now the next thing we need to do is set our control arms to the recommended length and for a starting point with the lower need to be 35 and three quarter, the uppers 15 and three quarter. And once we get the lift installed on the vehicle, well, we can dial in our caster. Then.

Now for axel, we did some swapping around and trading things out and ended up yanking these curry Dana sixties out of our old YJ project. Now, good news for the Grand Cherokee is bad news for the YJ. These things are packed in 456 gears with a RB air lockers and for a dual purpose vehicle, nothing beats the versatility of selectable lockers.

The Eastwood ceramic chassis paint looks great along with the powder coated long arms, which is gonna make this easy to look at on the street as well.

Now we're gonna hold off on the installation of our pitman arm and our new track bar until we get the rest of the steering linkage worked out because what we're going back with isn't exactly stock

and most of you guys already know that disconnecting your sway bar and links when you're out on the trail, gives your axle a little bit more flex and keeps your tires in contact with the trail. Give you a little bit more traction

and being able to reconnect them when you're on the highway again, easily.

Well,

that will minimize the body roll.

Now, our curry front end is a hybrid axle of sorts uses the Dana 60 center but reuses the factory Dana 30 outers. Now that keeps purchase costs down and it allows you to keep your five on 4.5 bolt pattern wheels. But one of the drawbacks is trying to slow down a 4500 pound rig with less than stellar nineties era factory disc brakes and 35 inch tires ain't gonna help either, but they should

are going to look cool. These are 3 1575 16 inch BF Goodridge mud terrains. These are the new KM two designs. So, you know, we're gonna get good off road traction and judging by the design of the lugs, these things aren't going to be too noisy, going about 75 miles an hour down the highway.

Now, we've wrapped them around these 16 inch eight inch wide steels from Allied wheel. So since they're pretty inexpensive, we're not going to have to break the bank buying these things or worry about rock crash.

And by the end of the day, we'll know how much fender we need to trim back to clear those big tires. Once we get this thing sitting on the ground

after the break, we'll get our Dana 60 prepped and ready to go up into our CJ. Stay tuned.

Hey, welcome back to trucks. But with the front end of our ZJ just about buttoned up. Now it's time to throw on the rear long arms and get all the bracketry located and burned in to these bare axle tubes. All right, with the rear control arm mounts taken care of, we can get to work out back. Now, the front uses radius style arms, but the rear uses separate adjustable upper and lower arms that attach to a common bracket.

And just like we did on the cross member installation, what we're going to have to drill and sleeve the unibody to install the bracket,

check out these arms, these are made from two inch gum tubing. It should be plenty strong for our Jeep and what we're going to do with it,

the one end features a factory style rubber bushing that should isolate road noise and vibration quite well. And the other end has forged flex ends. They feature a chrome moly spherical bushing Dell R races and check this out. They've got this convenient preload adjustment.

Now, of course, just like up front, we're gonna reuse our Curry Rock Jock 60. It's already loaded with 456 gears in air locker in the much needed larger disc brakes.

The problem is we need coil control arm and track bar brackets instead of the old leaf spring pads. Now, it's possible to carefully cut off and reuse your stock brackets, but it's a real pain in the butt and it's not nearly as strong as the axle bracket kit. Rusty offers

to make this as simple as possible. What we're doing is measuring from the center outward to make sure that our brackets are in the correct position. Basically, we're using the stock data 44 as a template or a pattern to position our new brackets on the recycled data 60

A Lyft manufacturer usually assumes that you're using the stock drive train when you're installing their system. So we're transferring the placement of the stock brackets onto the new Dana 60

tacking them into place as a starting point.

Now, it's important to make your tacks strong enough to support the suspension

while at the same time making them accessible to a grinder or cut off wheel just in case you have to move things around

when you're swapping components around, like we are sometimes you have to make minor adjustments for clearance and travel.

But a good rule to follow is to sit the axle in the position, it will be in at ride height and work off that center line.

Now, the opinion needs to be pointing at the transfer case output and although the spherical lens on the long arms will allow for some adjustments,

you need to at least start out close

the shocks get set in for mock up as well. And it's important to gauge the amount of travel. So you don't end up using them as limit straps or bump stops which will severely abuse them and shorten or end their life.

The Panhard bar controls, rear axle, lateral movement and bolts into the factory top mount,

just make sure your axle mount is welded in solid. This thing sees a lot of stress

now with 5.5 inches of lift, there's no way we're gonna be able to reuse our stock drive shafts like we did on the cheap Cherokee. And we're gonna need a slip Yoke Eliminator kit. But luckily for us, we scored a used transfer case that's already got one in it

and we picked up that transfer case for 100 bucks and those deals are out there. If you want to look for them, we're gonna deal with that later. But right now we're gonna focus on these knuckles and brakes and getting our wheels and tires in place so we can see what this thing looks like down on the ground. And by the way, we got a low buck upgrade up here that you guys are gonna love

when we come back a little time. Some cheap junkyard parts, a drill press on a welder. Equal some great new brakes.

Hey, welcome back to trucks. Well, we're on the home stretch with a rusty's lift install, but right now we're going to do a salvage yard upgrade that some of you Jeep guys may want to pay attention to because this break upgrade can be made to work with almost every Jeep from 1987 and up.

Now you guys remember our friends at all star auto salvage from the Cherokee build. Right. Well, this time, they helped us out with these outer knuckles and disc brakes off a newer 04 Jeep Grand Cherokee, but the knuckles are good for more than just a break up grade. They also feature a raised steering arm to help alleviate angles on the drag link

to adapt them to the original axle. We started by swapping in ball joints that match the knuckles.

Then a spacer is needed to keep you from having to use the axle stub shaft that the newer grands use

pre heat, the cast knuckle weld and then let cool slowly.

The original unit bearing hubs can be reused

but ours are new. And from o'reilly

for rotors, there are a couple of options

we chose to go with 04 grand rotors the same year as the knuckles and calipers,

red drilling them was as simple as marking to match our current five on 4.5 bolt pattern and heading over to the drill press.

Now, if you guys are going to do this swap, make sure you change out your ball joints to match your later model knuckles, believe it or not, there's a very small difference in the taper and you want to get this right.

We raided the Industrial Depot bids to find some spacers that will center the giant by comparison, calipers to the rotor

and now we're finally ready to throw on the new wheels and see just how much this project has changed.

And this thing looks tough, dude.

Definitely pulls it out of the soccer mom category. But, uh, looks like we're gonna need a little bit of fender trimming too.

Yeah, we'll do that. Add some bumpers, build the spare tire carrier, add some off road, rocket protection,

uncork the exhaust.

I think it looks tough.

Now, if you guys are looking for a tunnel cover that's not only going to protect what you're hauling, but save you a little bit of the pump. Well, agri cover's got what you're looking for with their access roll up cover.

This tunnel is model specific for the tightest fit in your truck and comes with aircraft grade clamps to secure your rails to the side of the bed.

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installation is real easy by using just a few basic hand tools and once installed on your truck, the access has a lifetime warranty which covers all of its components, even the fabric. Now, how much gas you can save with one of these covers depends on how you drive. But AGRI cover claims by streamlining your vehicle with a cover, you can get as much as a 10% increase in economy.

Agri cover's line of roll up tunnel cover starts at about 500 bucks and you can go to agrico.com to find a dealer close to you. And by the way, this 08 tundra, it just won truck of the year award. And we've had a bunch of email from you guys saying, hey, when are you going to work on a tundra? So watch for this truck to show up later on in the season because we got a cool plan for it. Thanks for watching trucks. See you guys later.