Some may ask, why have a Blog about hot cars and then start off with a Jeep. Well, every gearhead knows this full well in New York. When you have a hot rod, that means you need a winter car, or a beater if you prefer. Some of us really don’t care what we drive in the winter, as long as it is cheap so more money can be spent on the hot ride. That is why today we will talk about bringing this Jeep back from the dead.

It is a Jeep Cherokee Limited that was made on 4/98. It has a 5.2 liter V8 with 112k on the clock. The black leather interior has almost no rips, 6 disk CD changer with cassette. It was picked up cheap for only $300 with descent tires on it.

Only one little problem. The passenger side frame is gone to rot and the front axil is falling out. What you see hanging is the trailing arm. After smashing it with a hammer to find all the weak spots, the offending meat was cut out with a plasma cutter. I have a hole in my palm to prove it from a piece of hot slag.

While I did this, Rob cut out new frame rails out of 4 inch U-channel buy cutting them to length then splitting them down the middle. After a while we decided that the exhaust was in the way and had to go, along with the heat shield. Luck be with us, the exhaust was put on recently, so heating it made it come apart with relative ease, minus the blister on my thumb.

We started in the back and worked our way forward, replacing the rail from the rear axil arm mount to the cross member. As I welding in the first rail, the sudden desire came to me to quote Shakespeare. I still don’t know why.  Not that it was relevant, because it wasn’t.

I guess it just takes a real man to weld a truck together while quoting Shakespeare. “A dog of the house of Capulet moves me.”

Once that piece was in and Rob hung from it to prove it was going no where, the other piece was put in so it over lapped the first and welded in.

If you look in front of the new stuff, you can see the rot hole under the cross member. We have our work cut out for us. That will come in Zombie Jeep, Part 2. Once it is done, everything will be under coated so for the most part you won’t be able to tell.

After that comes mess clean up, and this is just a small part of the dust and rust. The other pile I had already done was much bigger.