The Brendamobile

So my Grandpa gave me a 99 Explorer with a bad transmission for free. The plan was to fix it up and it would be my wife's new daily driver. So I spent about $1000 and a million hours getting it going and making it nice. Five seconds into her first drive in it she told me she hated it. After driving it for a month, she was on the hunt for a new rig. She wanted a 97-01 Cherokee in white with color matched fenders. It didn't take long before we found what she was looking for.

So we bought her this;


It's a 2000 4.0 AW4 231 with a LP30 and an 8.25 with 140,000 on the clock. It met all her requirements except it doesn't have cruise. Everything seemed to be in good shape and in good working order so the first things to address were the gay wheels and tires and the cassette deck with a broken cd changer.

I scored a set of practically new Wild Country 30x9.50s ATs on turbines for $150. While the tires were in good shape, the wheels were not.



So I cleaned them up, sanded them for 10 seconds, (because that was boring and too hard) then painted them black.



Before;


After;


Then I removed the pinstripe and put some air in the tires and took it for a quick drive to make sure they rolled smooth.



Looks way better in my opinion.

I'm pretty excited to have an XJ again. My plan for this is to do all the little things I've always wanted to do to an XJ to make it nicer inside and outside, and most importantly nicer to drive. With my other MJs and XJs all that took a back seat to offroad performance.

Tthose wheels look gayer than the other ones. Nice clean rig though. Hopefully it works out for you.

bails85 said:

Tthose wheels look gayer than the other ones. Nice clean rig though. Hopefully it works out for you.

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Didn't realize wheels had a sexual preference.

Nice looking Jeep.

Some ravines would look mint on that thing.

Cruise control is not hard, I added it to my '99. Doesn't work under about 37 MPH though

Bails...what wheels are you running so we can judge them?

I like the color combo. What plans do you have for the interior?

really good looking XJ, thats the same rig my wifey wants as well or in silver, oh and leather oh yea and, Rubicon wheels and dont forget navigation,yadda yadda yadda..... her list is long and goes on, and well at least its an XJ! she loves XJ's, so ill keep her lol. Beautifull clean xj, not a big fan of black rims, im old school i guess i like the silver,chrome,polished look personally but those black rims on all white look really good. keepus posted on the progress and good luck

Speaking of the interior, I got the cassette player replaced with an Alpine deck my wife chose based on looks and ease of use for her. She also picked up a cheap phone mount so she could use her iPhone for hands free navigation.



I didn't like either when she brought them home, but after installing both, I'm really happy with the deck and the phone mount is actually very handy. The deck has streaming Bluetooth audio as well as Pandora control and hands free telephone. I mounted the mic to the phone mount and made a call using it, to my Mom, and she said could hear me clearly. I think the combo is going to work out well.

Plans for the interior are an LED conversion, new speakers, sound deadening, a power inverter for her camera equipment, quality floor mats, and an air freshener, although we're still undecided on scent.

Today I also got my center caps in. Big thank you to xcm for these, and for the quick shipping, thanks man.





I'm really digging the contrast of the chrome center caps on the black wheels, my wife is happy with the look also, she didn't like the exposed lugs or axle nut. I also removed the roof rack bars because I'm all about aerodynamics.

Due some recent reliability issues with our Explorer, I'll now be driving this to SierraFest, so I threw on a set of Lightforce 170s I had lying around.

nice looking heep. i'm partial to later model white xj's.

booooo on painting the turbines black.

but that's just my personal preference.

nice looking heep.

Why all the hate for painting the turbines black? I prefer black wheels on just about everything, and we're going for a Stormtrooper look here.

So after fixing the dryer, the wife allowed me to take the Brendamobile to SierraFest.





Only hiccup the entire drive was the A/C quit working for about 10 minutes. No idea why.

Today I removed the Cherokee and the Sport badges from the door. While doing that I realized how faded the plastics were. So I used a propane torch to bring it back to life.

Fender and rear door done but not not front.


Close up.


In process




Before:


After;


All detailed, something I agreed to do after the 1500 mile trip to Deer Valley.

Personally I like aluminum wheels on white XJ's. I have never been a fan of the turbine whells, but to each their own. Looking good.

goblazers_6 said:

Why all the hate for painting the turbines black? I prefer black wheels on just about everything, and we're going for a Stormtrooper look here.

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no hate. Just a preference.

I like the silver wheels.

my truck has white steelies.

I just don't care for black wheels. The current "murdered out" trend is just stupid to me.

The term "murdered out" is stupid

The wheels look good IMO, I am thinking of putting a set of wagoneer turbines painted black on my MJ (6 lug D44's)until I decide which wheel I want. Oh and mine is white too...

goblazers_6 said:

Today I removed the Cherokee and the Sport badges from the door. While doing that I realized how faded the plastics were. So I used a propane torch to bring it back to life.

In process

Click to expand...

Whoa Whoa! What? I love awesome tricks like this one and this has totally evaded me! You mean by heating the plastic you can bring the oils back to the surface? Please explain.

And now that you have the center caps on the turbines it looks kinda cool - can you strip and polish just the bead of the rim? That could look sweet with the center cap.

goblazers_6 said:

I also removed the roof rack bars because I'm all about aerodynamics.

Click to expand...

In an XJ? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?

Also, did you and your wife ever get the air freshener scent issue worked out?

Okay I got a few house projects and put of the way, so it's back to work on my fleet. It is a fleet now because I picked up a 92 Comanche a few days ago.



So today I did some needed maintenance on the Brendamobile.



Fresh oil and filter. Since I'm a hippie I used "green" oil.



I also threw in new Champion plugs and air filter. Then I tackled the leaky front pinion seal. It was a bitch to get out, but the new one went in real easy.



The front speakers weren't working, turned out to be splices in the boot between the door and body. So I just cut the wires in the kick panel and spliced into it and ran new wires through that boot. The wife will be happy they're working.

I dig the wheels the way youve got them now, nice contrast... they allmost look cop ish, but better! Looking good! I allways love seeing stable pics.

Very nice.

edit: OH, and a x2 about more info about your propane re-blackening please, your in progress pics look like night and day... Wow..

Brendamobile maintance day two:

Her battery terminals needed to be replaced, so did the cable to the starter. So I decided to redo all the cables in 2AWG.

I ordered new "military style" battery terminals from sponsor Prime 4x4. $13 after shipping. They were at my house within 48 hours of my order, and I'm really impressed with the quality. (They're a sponsor, buy some stuff from them.) I bought the cables at a local welding supply shop. Then I put color coded heat-shrink on it.



Before:


After:


Side by side comparison:


What I took out:


It doesn't struggle on startup anymore, and the marker lights seemed brighter at idle, but that could be in my head.

Also since summer is over it was time to change from coolant to antifreeze. What I took out was pretty dirty anyways.



Okay so that takes care of the "have-to's" so now I can get to the fun stuff.