Project 89 rose

Project 89 Rose.
Hey, I’ve had this 89 limited since I was 16. It was my first car and I’ve had a lot of good memories with it, camping, wheeling, late nights crusin around with my friends. So it holds a lot of sentimental value to me. My overall goal with her is to return her to her previous glory. And maybe a little bit beyond if I can.
My plans for it are,
Headliner & sound bar
Carpet either replaced or REALLY well cleaned
I have some liberty seats I’m going to try and make fit
Font door speakers & maybe some tweeters
Just overall spruce up the interior, exterior, and some power adders and maybe down the road some axles, I’m thinking 8.8 and a sleeved D30
wj knuckles and brakes
Durango mc and adjustable prop valve
Add some panels to the front bumper
And the list will grow I’m sure…


This is what I started with when I was 16,


This is as she sits now, with 35x12.50r15 BFG KM2s on Centerline Hellcats, Rusty’s long arms, 4.5” springs with RE boomerang shackles and spacers for total lift about 5.5-6”, Rusty’s flares, full 2.25” exhaust with pacesetter header and flowmaster muffler, Rusty’s air tube, some stereo stuff, rear C4X4 bumper with spare tire carrier and hi-lift mount, and Gravesdiggerxj’s old front bumper. D30 and 27 spline C8.25 with 4.56 gears both of which are open. ZJ rear disks and booster (sucks, can’t seem to track down my problem)



The interior is OK but I want to make it nicer, so I got a rear carpet piece from the JY along with some interior pieces, a headliner, sound bar, and some newer sun visors cause the old ones were longer than the ones In the 96 I pulled the headliner from.

Very nice ride..

I really like that front bumper.

94xjstud said:

I really like that front bumper.

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Thanks, i'm going to weld my tow hook mounts to the bumper mounts and put some plate on the sides soon. Just to cover up the ugly vac bottle mostly.

chris y said:

Very nice ride..

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Thanks, its a work in progress haha. Always will be.. lol

For the carpet you can clean it really well with Oxyclean and dry it out and then spray paint it with a spraypaint for plastic to restore a consistent color to faded areas. I painted mine with just regular spraypaint and it turned out realy well.

jeeperjohn said:

For the carpet you can clean it really well with Oxyclean and dry it out and then spray paint it with a spraypaint for plastic to restore a consistent color to faded areas. I painted mine with just regular spraypaint and it turned out realy well.

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One of my best friend's dad owns a carpet cleaning business so i'll probably have him clean em. But i might try the spray paint thing cause the carpet i pulled from the 96 is lighter than my 89. If the front has a REALLY good reason to come out i'll try that spray paint idea. Any specific kind? I know there's about a million different kinds of spray paint now lol.

Any ways, update. I pulled the carpet and finished the sound bar. Looks great, the sound bar that is.... I've got some rust issues and about 8 different kinds of mold in my carpet.... Smelled awful!









Obviously i have some rust issues and mold so i'm going to clean it all really well and take a wire wheel to the rusty spots. I'm debating on getting a can of hurculiner and painting the floor with that but it's quite expensive... I don't know, i'm still thinking about it... Any ways this weekend i'm gonna work a bit on my liberty seats, that'll be exciting because in order to get the brackets to fit in the xj we'll have to cut a 1-2" section out of them. Here's some pictures of the liberty seat. The seat itself is the exact same width as the xj ones so that is promising.





As you can see, the old seats are in bad shape... haha More to come this weekend.

Instead of herculiner a cheaper route might be duplicolor bed coat in a can almost same thing but you can spray it on i did my rock sliders with it looks really nice and goes a long way im also shooting some across my rockers..

chris y said:

Instead of herculiner a cheaper route might be duplicolor bed coat in a can almost same thing but you can spray it on i did my rock sliders with it looks really nice and goes a long way im also shooting some across my rockers..

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I used it on my rockers and i really like it. The only thing that the hurculiner has that i would prefer in this situation is that it goes on thicker with a roller and it's rubber based so it would deaden sound better.... I'm kinda a music snob so i'm trying to cut out road noise where i can without dishing out the big bucks for dynamat. But if i don't end up getting the hurculiner i'll probably give it a coat or two of the duplicolor for sure, just to prevent rusting. Still have half a can left over from my roof rack i think...

I would not use duplicolor. I used it on the tub of my YJ (preped it good to) and it pelled in many spots in only a few months. I used herculiner inside my xj and below the trim on the side and it has held up very well. Its only like 75 bucks for a gallon at wal mart, that did two coats on the inside and I used a quart for the sides.

whitexj98 said:

I would not use duplicolor. I used it on the tub of my YJ (preped it good to) and it pelled in many spots in only a few months. I used herculiner inside my xj and below the trim on the side and it has held up very well. Its only like 75 bucks for a gallon at wal mart, that did two coats on the inside and I used a quart for the sides.

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Huh, it's held up really well on my rockers. No chipping or anything. But this is going to be under carpet anyways so it shouldn't see the abuse that it would on the under carrage... In theory anyways ;D

whitexj98 said:

I would not use duplicolor. I used it on the tub of my YJ (preped it good to) and it pelled in many spots in only a few months. I used herculiner inside my xj and below the trim on the side and it has held up very well. Its only like 75 bucks for a gallon at wal mart, that did two coats on the inside and I used a quart for the sides.

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x2 it last like 7 bucks for a can of "bedliner" would. i did the same with the same result. just do it right with herculiner or something or youll end up doing it again anyways

Okay fine haha twist my arm... It's like 30 bucks a quart i bet i could get it done with just that. But i ain't gonna sand off the duplicolor on my rockers. I've had those painted for quite a while now and there isn't a single flake or chip... Plus if it does, touch ups will be fast and cheap.

Well got the hurculiner done. Thinking about a second coat. but it turned alright.

All buffed up and i threw some rustoliem on the bad spots to avoid ANY rust getting on the bare metal.


A few shots. Of it finished.




Think it turned out alright. Doesn't have to be perfect cause it's going under carpet. But the quort turned out to be almost the perfect amount for the back area.

I think it will really help with road noise and i'm quite pleased.

Next, if i don't decide to do another coat of hurculiner, is to throw in the new carpet piece and put the sub and all the trim stuff.

Next projects are

Get the power windows and locks to work in all the doors.
(ideas welcome)

More on the liberty seats.

Put some work in on the front bumper (have a ram air induction idea i'm kicking around)

D30 truss, custom diff cover, and spring retainer clips...

Remove the mechanical fan and get dual electrical fans put in.

In that order. But i have a bunch of tests coming up in school so it might be a while before i get too much done on it.

Interior resto has been put on hold until i can track down a small leak in the back... So this past week i put a lot of time into my front bumper and pretty much got her done.

Before:

The plan was to add some side plates and light tabs, then drill different mounting holes because it didn't fit my jeep very well. It was contacting the body pretty bad at the corners and i couldn't get my cracked side reflector off cause the side bits were angled up too far. I also wanted to try and smooth out the transitions between the tubes and the plate.

The filler plates:

Relocated mounting holes:

Burning in the side plates:



Lots of grinding to smooth it all out:

Light tabs ready to burn in:

First pass of the bondo:

Close up of how i molded the corners all together:

After three passes of bondo and a coat of primer i used Duplicolor truck bed liner to finish up the paint:

Here it is mostly done and test fitted, Just need to weld the tow hook mounts to the bumper mounts and make holes for all the extra bolts, right now i'm only using the 6 stock locations with some grade 8 hardware:

Your bumper looks tuff as nails, Good job .
I am working on a 92 cherokee right now, like you I am going to/trying to mount liberty seats into mine, thinking i'll reuse the XJ's seat mount.

UpIslander said:

Your bumper looks tuff as nails, Good job .
I am working on a 92 cherokee right now, like you I am going to/trying to mount liberty seats into mine, thinking i'll reuse the XJ's seat mount.

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Thanks, i'm pretty happy how it all came out.

Good luck with your liberty seat install. I'm going to try and modify the liberty mounts cause mine came with full electronic brackets that probably work bettter than the stockers in mine. Although in the end i might give in and end up using my xj ones. But i'll give it a shot. I took a look at mine today actually, but i had already been working all day and got impatient haha. Keep us posted on your ideas and what you're doing with yours, i'm interested to see other peoples takes on what needs to happen.

For the windows/locks I would look at the boot between the door and body. After openly and closeing for years the wires can break in there, that was the problem on my '00, if not make sure your gettin power to the switches, then back traced the wires from there

Like what you did with the bumper, looks a lot better IMO. Good job on the rear herculiner too. :thumbup:

Brad M. said:

Like what you did with the bumper, looks a lot better IMO. Good job on the rear herculiner too. :thumbup:

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Thanks I've decided to get another gallon of the hurculiner and do another coat in the back and the rest up front as soon as i feel like pulling the front carpet..

JT86XJ said:

For the windows/locks I would look at the boot between the door and body. After openly and closeing for years the wires can break in there, that was the problem on my '00, if not make sure your gettin power to the switches, then back traced the wires from there

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They already work... kinda... The door locks make an effort but it doesn't

seem to be powerful enough to flip the lock over. And the windows work in

the back with lots of popping and stratching noises, and the driver one works

on warm days (like summer, not warm winter days) but gets stuck if you roll it

down all the way... So i'm pretty sure i'm looking at a different problem with

every door. My plan of attack for this is just to have one door panel off at a

time so i can work at it a bit at a time until i've got that door all working right,

then i'll move on to the next one. I've already started on the rear driver door,

and found that a large chunk of the cable that operates the window was

broken off in the bottom of my door. But i cant figure out why the lock motor

isn't powerful enough... Also the door won't open from the outside very well

so i've got to figure that out too while i'm in there..

Check this write-up for your door lock issues -

http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=983428