94 ZJ (First build thread)

I started out with a bone stock 1994 ZJ that I bought for $1500 from a guy in South Lake Tahoe. I think it sat for a while before I picked it up because it smoked when getting on the gas a little bit the whole drive home, it eventually sorted itself out (for a while) and I ran an all stock drive-train. Day 1 my buddy and I painted the stock wheels black and bedlined the sides to get rid of the faded cladding.




In the same week I purchased a 4" zone offroad short arm kit, the kit was great and nowadays it sits on my buddies XJ. I paired the kit with a set of almost bald 35's that were just lying around in my backyard. Soon after I swapped the Dana 35 for a Dana 44 and then threw Aussie lockers in front and rear so I could get back into rock crawling. Just before the lockers I swapped to an NP242 t-case to get rid of the crappy 249 that it came with. I had to swap all the planetary gears and really get into the guts of both tcases to make it work.





My buddy got a new bumper for his JK so he was getting rid of his smittybuilt front bumper, I bought it for $300 with his winch and we welded it on in his driveway.




We took it to the Rubicon like this and it did great.








After the bumper was on I wheeled it as is for a while. Then I took a leap and bought the Iron Rock Offroad long arm kit and some brand new 35's. While i was at it I swapped in a steering gearbox from a jeep j20 cause I kept ripping stock boxes off the frame, and added a steering box brace. We threw on the Currie Currectlync steering setup and it's badass. While she was torn apart we put some armor underneath. I also made a huge WJ electric fan fit onto my radiator to cure my overheating issues. I bent a rod so much during an over rev that it broke in half. So I rebuilt the engine, and installed the plenum gasket fix while I was in there. I don't have any pics of the rebuild as I was doing all the works and didn't stop to take any.


















Recently I cut the JK bumper off and now I'm working on a new custom setup, I'm also currently working on some beefy sliders. I picked up the rear bumper for $100 from a fellow Zj'er down the road from me. I will be working on a rollcage in the near future. There's lots more I've done that I can't think of right now but i'll keep adding to this as i move forward.

Stuff I forgot: Chromolys all around, custom driveshafts from Tatton shafts, Axle skid plates, 4.88's, leather interior swap, probably more

 

Nice looking rig. Your long arm was it also a 4.5in lift?

 

The long arms put me up roughly 7" higher than stock.

 

Working on the bumper

 

Awesome build so far!