Floor panel rust

How hard would it be to replace most of the floor panels out of an xj for diamond steel or something else? My friend is looking to buy a cherokee and I'm doing my best to help him out with my knowledge of them. He's found a real nice one right in town, except the floor is really rusted out. Any suggestions on what he should do (provided he buys the car)?

I think trying to fit and weld diamond plate to an XJ floor would be an extreme pain in the wazuskas. It's tough enough to weld in flat plate.

Not long ago I think someone posted a source for replacement floor pans. Might even have been J.C. Whitney, but I'm not sure. Try a search.

How much of the floor is gone?

I personally havnt seen it. But he said that the rust is real bad and all the way through and everything so Id bet its a whole lot of the floor. I searched on Google for the floors but could only find wranglers and cjs and all the other framed jeeps. I fgured it was cause of the XJs unibody, but didnt knwo so I thought I would ask around.

make DAMN sure that the "framerails" aren't rotted out.

if it's just the floor, and you're good with hammers and dollies, you can make a floorpan pretty easily.

if you replace the whole floor, you can basically make it angular. nothin HAS to be rounded.

also, take a good look above the torque boxes for the rear springs. the pass side on on my XJ broke off because of rust (and it's only held on by spot welds )

honestly, my definition of "Real Nice" doesn't include tons of rust.

Be sure to put some POR-15 on there when your done!

I never found any.......

I redid my front drivers floor and rear passanger floor. The two most common places for rust in the floor pan. And I looked every where even the dealer. And the only place I found a floor replacement was the dealer! And it was the entire front floor pan and the entire rear floor pan. Of course this was about a year ago I think.

http://www.omix-ada.com/index.html

Try that website. I remember getting a catalog with rocker, body and floor panals in it, just not sure if it was Omix or a company out of PA, JC maybe. Juice

One bit of advice...dont go poking around the semas too much..youll find what your looking for if you do. That is, the idiotic engineers or maybe the ben counters who decided where to put seam sealer, on the inside seams, not the ouside. As a result moisture gets in between the seams and just sits there. The moisture does not make its way into the Jeep due to the sealer, but when it finally does its because your sheetmetal has completely rotted away.

Had those idiots put seam sealer on the outside seams, like you find in a Mercedes, then our Jeeps would last a whole lot longer without serious repairs.

Ive messed around with many XJs and have found the above to be true in every case.

My 92 which looked extremely clean when I pulled the rug to install the roll cage...after a little poking around at what appeared to be pristine floors, it was quickly revealed that at nearly ever seam significant rust was to be found, except that the seam sealer was hiding the cancer. This was one of the reasons I was so delayed to getting my Jeep ready for Moab.

XJguy