XJ 4 door with pickup cab?

[gsmith]

Would like to see pics from guys who ditched the hatch & rear roof made a working tailgate and used the rear of an mj cab or made something really clean to create a crewcab with ultra short bed look. Seen it on this site but would like some input from some guys who did it themselves. I can do all the bodywork, paint and welding no problem. Just want tips to make it easier and faster. Any potential snags and timeframe start to finish. Thanks!

[GoliathJeeper]

Check out XJ Database. TONS of pics. You will see plenty of what you are asking about. www.xjdb.com

[bigwhitey]

Here's some pics as I went along.
http://www.floridajeepers.net/viewtopic.php?t=22748&highlight=cheromanche

Product today but always changing

http://h1.ripway.com/94xj/8inchSJcoils.JPG

[Goatman]

Would like to see pics from guys who ditched the hatch & rear roof made a working tailgate and used the rear of an mj cab or made something really clean to create a crewcab with ultra short bed look. Seen it on this site but would like some input from some guys who did it themselves. I can do all the bodywork, paint and welding no problem. Just want tips to make it easier and faster. Any potential snags and timeframe start to finish. Thanks!

Here are pics of mine being done: http://fototime.com/inv/B4A05DB0AC37174

I cut the MJ cab at the pinch seam near the bottom. The MJ cab is taller than the XJ, so the XJ roof goes all the way to the back, and the roof and MJ cab sides are joined at the drip rail. On mine, the seam at the top rear where the back of the cab meets the roof is fiberglassed in on the inside to make that joint strong and durable. The cab was positioned so the back seat still works.

Have fun,

[Chero-King]

Read this thread, he used an MJ bed on his.
http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=90919

[DansGreyMj]

those r nice but IMO this is the best one ive seen
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c8/danielnoda/6752.jpg

the cab and bed r separate

[JrTxJ]

those r nice but IMO this is the best one ive seen


the cab and bed r separate


any more pics of this or a link??

[MogifiedXJ]

those r nice but IMO this is the best one ive seen
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c8/danielnoda/6752.jpg

the cab and bed r separate

That is one of the coolest cherokees I have ever saw. Do you have any more pics or a link perhaps???

[Lawn Cher']

That is one of the coolest cherokees I have ever saw. Do you have any more pics or a link perhaps???

Since the bed and cab are seperate, I think it qualifies as a Comanche.

[jsk2052]

Whatever you wanna call it that thing is sick.

[DansGreyMj]

Since the bed and cab are seperate, I think it qualifies as a Comanche.



who cares if they r separate its more flexible that way

[Root Moose]

who cares if they r separate its more flexible that way

It is important to have the bed separate from the body if you want to use the truck bed like a truck bed.

You don't want to be like those Honda Ridgeline guys with all the waves in the sheet metal behind the rear doors because they put heavy stuff in the bed of their "truck".

[Ted Young]

Is that a modified XJ with a shortened MJ bed?

That looks REALLY good and is the cleanest 4 door XJ pickup conversion I've ever seen, in pics at least.

[DansGreyMj]

i found it on ebay
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120072858874

[hermie16]

in the pictures on ebay, what LA kit does the XJ have? I don't recognize it..

[rehab]

in the pictures on ebay, what LA kit does the XJ have? I don't recognize it..
looks like a home brew stock type four link with longer arms.

[1bolt]

That red crew cab MJ just ended tonight again still unsold apearently it's stuck around 5 grand and no one wants to pay more for it... As with most of us, he seems to think his rig is worth twice as much as anyone else does... In this case I'd be inclined to agree considering the crazy amount of time and money that must have cost. Still no one who wants to buy it agrees.

Try as I might I couldn't get the guy to send me full sized pictures or I would have posted them here. He said he was going to send them but never did.

[saybye]

i will def be doing this in the near future... just gotta find an MJ to donate a rear window and ill be set...

[AkJeepKid]

Is that a modified XJ with a shortened MJ bed?

That looks REALLY good and is the cleanest 4 door XJ pickup conversion I've ever seen, in pics at least.

It almost looks tooo easy. haha I mean you but right behind the back seat, weld rear hatch in place, then measure and cut the bed... this would be a fun build IMO. Plus great to have to say you have one.

[1bolt]

in all seriousness there's nothing easy to it. assuming you have all the doner parts you need. The rear hatch of an XJ is Fiberglass until the redesign and not weldable. Even if it was you still have to attach your rear suspension onto something that's not going to fold up like a taco the first time you cross some rail road tracks.

To do a proffesional job on the other hand on a rig you plan to drive and use regularly you need an MJ to cut up, some frame rails need to be grafted to the front 4 door XJ to mount the bed and suspension to, or you need to lengthen the MJ frame (a long bed and wheel base MJ might be usefull here). and graft the 4 door on. you need to stretch the wheel base fill in panels where the wheel well used to be on the XJ graft the back of the MJ cab behind the XJ far enough back that the XJ's rear seats are still useable. which means your cut on the XJ and the cut on the graft have to include more sheet metal (you can't just use the rear window line as a stopping point like some "back half" chop job trail rigs do; the seats go further back than that) Unless you want to put Compact truck king cab jump seats back there.

Lining up those huge grafts will be a problem, and will require a few man days of welding thin sheet metal, all the way around, dressing the welds and then seam sealing them against weld porosity and unless you are a master sheet metal fabricator you will have hundreds of hours of body work ahead of you before paint. And that's to say nothing of stretching your wheel base and suspension work (remember its much heavier than it used to be). It also doesn't address the rear doors which have a wheel arch in them that is now funny looking and out of place.

[saybye]

Here's some pics as I went along.
http://www.floridajeepers.net/viewtopic.php?t=22748&highlight=cheromanche

Product today but always changing

http://h1.ripway.com/94xj/8inchSJcoils.JPG

hatches are a little easier to come by than mj backs and they come off much easier too. what year did they start making them metal? the one on my xj is fiberglass...

[rockwerks]

hatches are a little easier to come by than mj backs and they come off much easier too. what year did they start making them metal? the one on my xj is fiberglass...

97 to 01

[Smittty9785]

what i want to know is where he got the rear doors? and last i knew they never made a 4 door comanche. so tell me how in the hell are his rear doors not rounded near the rear fenders just perfectly square. thats what i dont get...

[Wil Badger]

look closer!!!!

http://i12.ebayimg.com/07/i/000/83/1e/a7b0_1.JPG

he left them rounded then just made a fill panel to make it look square.

as to how to make them square thats easy and was kind of explained above.it has also been done before and a picture of it was posted in here in some chop thread not to long ago either.you need a full Comanche to start.you would need to cut the Mj at or near the middle of the door line then graft that onto the Xj.you could also cut the doors and graft the rear half of the door to the front part of the Xj door.there by mirroring exactly what the front door looks like.

here one after a quick search

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v690/Jeep1991/Comanches/IMG03.jpg

you'll notice though he only used part of the Mj cab not as much as i'm speaking of so he had to do some blending on the top right corner of the Xj door to make it happen.

[Kittrell]

what i want to know is where he got the rear doors? and last i knew they never made a 4 door comanche. so tell me how in the hell are his rear doors not rounded near the rear fenders just perfectly square. thats what i dont get...

You are wrong in that respect my friend. This piece of crap used regular XJ rear doors. The lighting in the first pic posted here is very deceiving.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v690/Jeep1991/Comanches/4726_1.jpg

And to quote a good friend, member in good standing with Bird Shit Welders Anonymous. There is a reason the thing won't sell. It's very poorly put together.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v690/Jeep1991/Comanches/4994_1.jpg

Though what you are talking about has been done.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v690/Jeep1991/Comanches/IMG03.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v690/Jeep1991/Comanches/img07on7.jpg

But why does it seem so difficult to you? As with the rest of the rig, it's called fabrication. Take the back half of a front door, and the front half of a rear door, and bingo, square door.

I do like the work that went into this second one I posted. But with the 7 foot bed, it's hardly of any use. When someone takes the time spent on the second one, making it look like the first one. Then I'll be impressed. Someday, it'll happen. Until then I can only stare at my digital renderings and wonder why it's never been done.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v690/Jeep1991/CrewCab.jpg

*edit, damn you Will..........:D

[Wil Badger]

hehehe i try.i haven't really been on here much since i sold the Xj.

that blue one would rock.as said above some time ago .it would be easier to blend the Xj mid section to a long bed Mj to make it happen.that way you kind of get a boxed frame of sorts under the bed section and half of the cab.if you really wanted to get crafty you could go all out and make an entire frame. cut the unibody rails off the front half ,make some body stiffeners and braces for the bottom floor sections and bolt it down like a standard truck body and bed.

[DeadEyeJ]

Or just buy a dam quad cab mid size pickup...

You Cherokee guys are so sentimental it's just nuts.

[1bolt]

Is that sarcasm? You are paying dues to belong to a group that's all about Cherokee's.

If anyone here wanted to just go out and buy their rigs NAXJA would have shut down in 2002. Honestly your comment can be applied to ANYTHING custom or hand made, probably your own rig. "you could have gone and bought that and it would have been better made" I don't even have to see your rig to know it's probably true, because it's probably true of 99% of the modified XJ's and MJ in here mine included :)

[1bolt]

You are wrong in that respect my friend. This piece of crap used regular XJ rear doors. The lighting in the first pic posted here is very deceiving.

And to quote a good friend, member in good standing with Bird Shit Welders Anonymous. There is a reason the thing won't sell. It's very poorly put together.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v690/Jeep1991/Comanches/4994_1.jpg


I saw that and assumed it was typical jpeg compression which always adds artifacts, expecially to specular highlights. If the guys welds are really that bad then there must be a gallon of filler on the outside. Perhaps that explains why the guy wasn't keen on sending me full size pics. All in all that is still an impressive looking (for what can be seen) build. Considering no one here is building SEMA cars including I'll assume Mr. Photoshop; I wouldn't be so quick to be crapping on it.

It seems even more out of place given the amount of pure chop and hack going on around here: back halfed XJ's, exco cages, cut and folded rear quarters, trimmed fenders , home brewed bumpers etc.

Also I'd say that shot has nothing to do with why it hasn't gotten more than 5 grand. I doubt most people even noticed that shot It's not going over 5 because no one is paying more than a few grand for any Cherokee even ones that are filled with 20,000 dollars worth of new unwheeled aftermarket upgrades. Speaking of which l I watched an MJ recently go for 4 grand when the brand new undriven axles alone were worth $7,000, let alone the atlas II or 10k worth of other high end parts.

[Kittrell]

You are right. It's actually because it's an '88 MJ with 269,000 miles on it. A janky thrown together interior, and no real special aftermarket parts. People keep talking about the money he has in to it. But I really can't say I see it anywhere.

[saybye]

Is that sarcasm? You are paying dues to belong to a group that's all about Cherokee's.

If anyone here wanted to just go out and buy their rigs NAXJA would have shut down in 2002. Honestly your comment can be applied to ANYTHING custom or hand made, probably your own rig. "you could have gone and bought that and it would have been better made" I don't even have to see your rig to know it's probably true, because it's probably true of 99% of the modified XJ's and MJ in here mine included :)

Amen!:yelclap:

[1bolt]

You are right. It's actually because it's an '88 MJ with 269,000 miles on it. A janky thrown together interior, and no real special aftermarket parts. People keep talking about the money he has in to it. But I really can't say I see it anywhere.

Money and time same shit, even assuming his welds are horrible looking, it's still hundreds of man hours. just to get the grafts together. Shorten the bed, fab whatever he had to for a frame, and then attach the back of an MJ to the front three quarters of an XJ. Double that for the body work, and paint. It's also supposedly a fresh rebuild worth a couple grand all by itself. Not to mention fabbing the four link.

If you think all that is trivial then you are nuts.:wierd:

You can hate it or like it all you want but to say their isn't anything apparent that would cost much is silly. Obviously I like it and think he pulled off something unique and useful without making yet another boring trailer queen show car with a 5,000 dollar paint job. It seems like he built it to use it.

One last thought that "bird shit" weld looks more like seam sealer made super ugly by jpeg compression to me every time I see it. maybe it is maybe it isn't. but look at the other pic next to it that shows what apears to be the gas filler neck cover plate... seam sealer there for sure.

[Root Moose]

Money and time same shit, even assuming his welds are horrible looking, it's still hundreds of man hours. just to get the grafts together. Shorten the bed, fab whatever he had to for a frame, and then attach the back of an MJ to the front three quarters of an XJ. Double that for the body work, and paint. It's also supposedly a fresh rebuild worth a couple grand all by itself. Not to mention fabbing the four link.

If you think all that is trivial then you are nuts.:wierd:

You can hate it or like it all you want but to say their isn't anything apparent that would cost much is silly. Obviously I like it and think he pulled off something unique and useful without making yet another boring trailer queen show car with a 5,000 dollar paint job. It seems like he built it to use it.

One last thought that "bird shit" weld looks more like seam sealer made super ugly by jpeg compression to me every time I see it. maybe it is maybe it isn't. but look at the other pic next to it that shows what apears to be the gas filler neck cover plate... seam sealer there for sure.

I agree with the spirit of your post however, that is some serious bird sh!te welding.

[Kittrell]

If you think all that is trivial then you are nuts.:wierd:

It's not trivial, but in terms of money, actual dollar amounts, which is what we've been talking about this whole time, it's just not there.

And you know what, thats great. You're right, maybe he did build it to use it and the corners he cut were good enough for him. But for everyone else that is looking for a clean conversion, this isn't it. And it's certainly not it at eleven thousand dollars. I understand everything you are saying, and where that is coming from. But when you are trying to sell it, none of that matters. What you were after when you built it and what everyone else who is looking to buy is after, are never gonna be one in the same. And you just have to accept that and come up with a reasonable, realistic dollar amount, if you ever want to sell the thing. I'd not pay more then $4,000 for what he has there. And even that is a stretch.

[saybye]

tach: can you take some pics of the rear interior section? im guessing there isnt any room for anyone to ride back there? i would like to see come pics of the wheel wells also from the inside. thanks!