Welcome!

Welcome to RealJeep.com, where I will be posting updates as my `80 CJ-5 rebuild and '99 Cherokee upgrades progress. This will hopefully be a valuable resource to others who are looking for information on various modifications for their Jeep vehicle, or just want to learn from my mistakes.

Project 1980 CJ5

Project 1999 Cherokee XJ

I now have another Jeep in the garage, which will lead to new updates to the site. The CJ5 project made a lot of progress initially, but then I got married, bought a house, and decided to return to school to finish my degree, so the CJ work slowed down a lot. I still have it, and still intend to finish it, but it's a big project and spare time to work on it is hard to come by.

The "new" Jeep is a 99 Cherokee, and will be used as my wife's daily driver once our child is born, since it's the only vehicle we own that has four doors and it is too hard putting a child carrier in the back of our ZR2 Blazer. Since it is to be a daily driver I will be finding small, weekend time frame type, projects to upgrade it as we go along. It won't be a major teardown like the CJ, but updates will come more frequently.

Right now I am figuring out how to lift it enough to fit 31/10.5/15 BFGoodrich AT tires. My initial thoughts are to use Rusty's 3" add a leaf kit as a starting point and order a Skyjacker transfer case drop and track bar relocating bracket to install during the initial lift. I've considered using shackles and blocks in the back for the rear lift to keep it from being too stiff, but I don't have a lot of confidence in that working out very well. Later I can swap on an adjustable trackbar without messing up the front end alignment if necessary. One of my biggest concerns going into it is that a lot of the people in the forums say the 97 and newer XJs are more prone to driveline vibration and tire clearance problems than the previous models, so I guess I have to do it and expect to spend some time tracking down issues. I'm using the Skyjacker transfer case drop for this reason, as they have a 1.25" drop kit for the newer models while other vendors sell the same 1" kit for all years.