1997 ZJ Grand Cherokee - Daily-Driven ZJ

As our youth cooks away in fluorescent-light-strung offices, we like to hold onto what ignorance we have left and daily drive Jeeps that most people would put on a trailer. But as we age, we're starting to see the benefits of not being the biggest state-trooper target on the freeway. It gets old spending at least one morning per week explaining to an officer that what we're driving is actually street legal, and we slowly start to yearn for something that maybe couldn't make it through the hammers. The idea of splitting our needs between a strict wheeling Jeep and a second daily driver that can handle our crazy driving is getting mighty attractive.

At the same time, we sure as hell don't want to waste away sitting in a honda, so we got to thinking about something that would be low-pro enough for us to be practically invisible on the street while not giving up the potential for having a little off-road fun if it's unexpectedly found on the way to work. coincidentally, the ZJ Grand cherokee is starting to become very affordable. If we could build one that would be more capable off-road than a stock one while keeping its innocence and improving its street manners, we'd be in business. think we're asking too much? nah, because it worked!

After spending about a month finding and purchasing a '97 Grand cherokee, researching and ordering parts on the phone, one weekend of installation, and one dumb brother who got suckered into helping, we had our daily-driven bracket racer ready for work-and perhaps an occasional stop at the oval dirt track.

The Grand cherokee we bought only had around 100,000 miles, but the past service upkeep on it hadn't been great, as evidenced by the shot shocks, the worn-out bushings, the illuminated check-engine light in the dash, and so on. our ZJ would really lean over in a corner.	The original c-section-stamped control-arm bushings purposely have voids in them to allow for flex and movement. the problem with this design is that once the rubber gets old and soft, the arms allow for too much movement and wear out quickly. You can see where the rubber bushing has cracked and split apart on this arm.	We started on a Friday night after work. It's not like we had dates or something to stand in our way (whimper). the last of the parts had shown up earlier in the week, so we were ready to tackle this project and have it done in time to drive to work on monday-if everything went right.
We have a hard time leaving anything alone, so we felt pretty proud of ourselves ordering only a 1-inch-lift coil set from ome. This would get us up off the ground just a little bit, while keeping close-to-stock geometry in our suspension. the ome coils gave us a slightly firmer spring rate, which was not only better for street performance but also better for off-road jounces.	The old man emu (ome) coil set comes with new yellow urethane coil isolators, but we stuck with the original factory rubber isolators, mainly because of color and the fact the original rubber ones were still in good condition and not all cracked.	To help get some control of the sway and dampening departments, we went with a set of edelbrock Ias (Inertia active system) shocks. they bolted on just as easily as a stock shock would. We tried a quick run around the block with only the shocks changed and couldn't believe the difference, though there was still some uncontrolled front axle movement due to worn-out bushings.
	We decided to trade out our factory front control arms for four rock krawler solid stock links. the rock krawler links will not deflect nearly as much as our factory units, giving us crisper handling on the road, while the krawler joints allow for more articulation off-road. The krawler links have the krawler joints at one end and urethane bushings at the other end to dampen vibration.	All the rubber in the factory antisway bars was also wasted, but instead of just ordering replacement urethane pieces, we opted for all-new hotchkis antisway bars. Why? though it clearly doesn't allow for as much flex off-road, the hotchkis units will greatly improve the handling capabilities of our ZJ, and because this ZJ is going to spend 95 percent of its life on the highway, we wanted to build it accordingly.
How much difference does a wheel make? Just check out the same 31-inch BF Goodrich all terrains on the factory wheels in the rear, and then shpock the front end with 15x8 american racing wheels. Our american racing wheel has a slightly different offset at -19mm, but with the 1-inch ome lift, nothing rubs anywhere now that we've clipped the front plastic bumper. plus, the dark gray of the teflon-coated chamber wheels matches the gray plastics on the side of our ZJ and makes for a spiffy-looking package.	With our daily-driven Grand cherokee finished in less than two nights and a day, we were ready to go rip up some tight mountain road corners Sunday morning, and of course, try a little off-roading. though the handling was vastly improved, as was our high-speed dirt road driving, our ZJ predictably suffered in the flex department due to the hotchkis antisway bars. Very soon, we'll be ordering some type of disconnects for our front and rear antisway bars, eliminating this downside to our build.	To match our ZJ's black paint and gray plastics, we used American racing teflon-coated 15x8 chamber wheels encased in BFGoodrich 31x10.50r15 all-terrain tires.
Our ZJ racer was nearly complete, but we wanted to do something about the front end. In just a few weeks of owning our Grand, we'd already scraped the bottom of the plastic front bumper multiple times when screwing around in the dirt. We didn't want some huge off-road bumper that would add weight to the front end and draw unwanted attention. a little Web research led us to www.kevinsoffroad.com, where we found a lower radiator support that would not only give us superior radiator protection but also allow removal of the bulky factory support that resides below the lower part of the plastic bumper.	The hotchkis antisway bars mount in the factory locations on the unibody and axlehousing and come with solid links that we'll probably replace with disconnects in the near future.	For a cleaner look and more ground clearance, we hacked off the lower part of the factory plastic front bumper with a cutoff wheel. We had to lose our foglights, which we were sort of bummed about, but it was worth it.