97+ door swap...

so here goes my first attempt at a write up...

this is for a 93 2 door xj... just to clarify...

with a little time searching and a few messages back in forth with kejtar for some pics of his swap (thanks man!) here i am trying to give a little something back...

1. get doors from a 97+ xj matching your body style

2. cut off old doors... you can unbolt them if you'd like but i hate torx bolts and my sawzall was needing some lovin...

3. get new bolts... these were m8 1.25 x40 allen head.... i couldn't find any button head metric allen so i just got some regular ones and rounded them off a bit... they almost fit without grinding... i just didn't want to grind the hinge out the little bit it needed



4. bolt up door... it's the same bolt pattern and everything... just get a helper to hold it up....

door lined up...



now everyone knows that it's the striker that you have to mess with... i went this route...

5. i eye balled the striker where i thought it would engage the latch mech. then tacked it in place...





7. i gently closed the door to see if it was in the proper position... luckily i only had to move it once... as soon as the door was catching both bars on the striker i tacked it up a little more and slammed the door shut...





8. once i was happy with it i burned the striker in... i didn't mess around with trying to oval any holes and drill more holes with extra backing plates... so i just welded it in...


hope this helps anyone trying to do this....


once the door was actually bolted and lined up properly it was super easy to locate where the striker needs to go...

Thanks for the write up. I've been thinking about doing when i make a set of half doors for my 92

whoops i forgot one last thing... you will need to swap over your door lock cylinders... it's not hard... once you get the interior panel off you'll see some metal rods with clips... just pop off the clips and the rods slide out... then there is a "c" type clip holding the cylinder in place... just pop that out... you may need to change the rod attached to the lock cylinder as well... that's just as easy... take off "e" clip from both cylinders and switch rods... then snap the "e" clip back on...


sorry no pics of this... but it's really not hard... just tedious as you have to feel some of it inside the door...