What am I looking at here?

Hey everyone, new member here - hoping some of the knowledge base can help me out with a couple questions I have.

I currently have a '95 Jeep XJ - 231 T-Case (2wd, 4Hi, N, 4Lo), 4.0L HO Engine (That's about all I know from memory). It'd my daily driver and completely stock, but I've been in the process of deciding what needs to be done to make into a reliable trail-ready rig. Nothing fancy, probably not any rockcrawling, and anything done along those lines would be entirely situational.

So, now to the point - I crawled under her the other day to do some routine inspection after realizing that my mechanic didn't do anywhere near as much as he'd claimed to do last time it was in (didn't even change the oil/filter on what was supposed to be a full service :banghead.

Much to my dismay, despite the overall rust being nothing unmanageable, I came across this:



Can anyone tell me what I'm looking at? It's almost completely rusted off, hanging on by the edge of the metal - seems to be hitting up against what I believe to be my sway bars, as well. That's the rear end, left-side in case you can't tell. There's an identical piece (still intact) on the other side as well.

I've been having another issue recently with a very frightening grinding sound when I shift into 4Hi, but I'll save that for a later point since the Jeep is waiting on regis. atm anyway. We get tons of snow out here this time of year though, and the temp has easily been -15F at night. Gonna need to tackle that one soon.

Thanks in advance to everyone here. Look forward to posting more in the future, as I start the process of doing basic modding on 'er. And while I'm at it - if anyone has any advice for doing some basic mods to a stock XJ to make it more trail-capable, I'd love to hear them. Might make a seperate thread down the line.

That is the rear bump stop.

That looks like your bumpstop. NOT a big deal. If the bolts don't snap taking it out, it is a 15 minute job to swap it, and the part is about ten or twenty bucks. Hell, I wheeled my 96 for a year without them, because they had fallen off just like that. Eventually it did cause damage but as long as you aren't beating on the thing or driving over speedbumps fast, you will never notice it missing.

At first I thought I was looking at a gaping rust hole in the bottom of your frame rail and was about to tell you to find a new jeep.

Awesome, thanks for the quick reply - I was worried it might be something more serious, and scoured both my owner's and service manual for quite a while to no avail.

Sounds like something I can easily pick up at the local pull-and-save, won't worry about it for now. I'm pretty gentle on her, so shouldn't have any problems till I can make the trip.

Thanks again. You two just saved me a major headache.

Don't worry, you'll get the headache when pulling one at the junkyard, or if you escape that, while installing it on your jeep :wierd:

I always manage to hit my head on something working on the jeep.

That's actually how I discovered it - nearly hit my head on it, look up to see it just hanging there by the edge. 'fraid if I would have, it might've fallen and I'd have more to worry about then a headache - probably a concussion.

Getting it off the donor vehicle is dead easy, because you can just shear the bolts. Getting the remains of the old one off yours may be harder, because of course you must try not to shear them. It varies. I've had the rustiest Jeep be the easiest to work on and vice versa. Take it slow. Try to douse everything with penetrant, and introduce some inside if you can reach it, and then wiggle the bolt loose cautiously.

Driving without bump stops won't do much harm, but you'll get a hell of a bang on potholes.

Matthew Currie said:

Driving without bump stops won't do much harm, but you'll get a hell of a bang on potholes.

Click to expand...

out back... sure, but driving without ones in the front will lead to pinched/breached tranny cooler lines, and the possible trans failure that can fallow.... might want to check the fronts as well, theyre inside the coils.

I had bumpstops in the front and 100% stock suspension geometry and managed to punch holes in both trans cooler lines on my XJ. It took some doing though...

then I installed a 5 speed trans cooler line delete kit and now I don't worry about it anymore.

Sorry, I was thinking only of the rear ones, which do drop off with some regularity.