Cheep Cherokee Part 4

Today. It's one of our best budget builds ever. We're taking project cheap Cherokee out to Kentucky's beautiful land between the Lakes for some off road fun. We'll take on their awesome dirt trails. Steve hill climbs and even hit the boulder strewn rock garden to see just how far our budget XJ will take us. It's all today here on trucks.

Hey, welcome to trucks and welcome to Turkey Bay, Ohv Park here at land between the Lakes National Recreation area. We are here to see if our cheap Cherokee project can carry us successfully to the trail. Let us beat on it all day long and bring us back home again without the gas guzzling tow rig that we usually bring on a payoff with us and us. We're betting on this thing. Yeah, we're pretty confident our jeep can hack it. And even though this has been a fairly low budget build, we think we spent the money wisely splitting the difference between a daily driver and a weekend wheeler.

And so far our cheap Cherokee has performed really well on the highway with no vibrations,

even without installing a slip Yoke Eliminator kit in the transfer case.

And that's money that you can save or spend somewhere else like on fuel, which ain't getting any cheaper. Speaking of money, we're gonna give you guys a breakdown of just how much it took to build this rig. So you can do one on your own.

Now, you might notice the scenery has changed quite a bit from the private parks. We typically go to, to play around with our four by fours.

Those hardcore parks have been temporarily closed over environmental concerns. So today we're going to be wheeling at a state park called Land between the Lakes.

Land between the lakes is a fabulous place. We have 100 and 70,000 acres. It's surrounded by 300 miles of undeveloped shoreline

and there's over 300 miles of trails and back roads for people to enjoy a

lot of wild flowers. Um Turkey,

obviously Elk and Bison, all of those type of things that are indigenous to this area. Now, at land between the lakes, they not only work really hard to preserve some of our most beautiful natural resources.

They also are working very hard to preserve our ability to have a lot of fun with all kinds of off road vehicles.

The forest service believes that and supports that. Ohv Riding is a valid use of public land, but we all have to work together to find a way to make it sustainable for all the generations to come after us.

Now, as you can see Turkey Bay is an awesome park with a great OHV ride area

and we're really anxious to get some more dirt underneath these tires. But before we do that, we're gonna give the Jeep a once over and give you guys a chance to take a look at what it was we started with.

Now, this isn't our first budget build and it's definitely not our last

and we couldn't pass up the price free.

But with that kind of deal, you end up paying another price.

The time it takes fixing up a worn out ring in

this one,

it had a few extra scars.

Now, our goal here was to transform this turd into something worth driving, but you gotta be able to drive at first and remember this thing was crashed up front. It was a push model.

Our crash damage was low and light. So it was an easy fix with the right equipment. Guys don't use cables or oak trees if you don't have access to a frame machine or if you're not sure where to start, have a qualified frame shop, fix it for you. Our hit was about a four hour repair at a qualified shop, which is not that expensive when you consider that includes them fitting the sheet metal.

So while Kevin was getting the frame stretched back into shape, Tommy, and I took a trip down to all star auto salvage to search for some low buck upgrades

like this 8.8 inch rear axle.

The 8.8 is a solid upgrade because it shares the same five on 4.5 inch bolt pattern.

It comes with 4, 10 gears, limited slip and disc brakes for free.

So after stripping it down to bear tubes,

Tommy welded up the weak point where the tube meets the center section.

We use parts, store purses and U bolts

with homemade spring plates to set the rear suspension back in with new spring packs.

And what do you think of our $70 paint job? Yeah, you heard me right. 70 bucks. Not too bad, huh?

And the fender flares, they finish off the look, the bumpers. Well, Ryan designed them and built them. So all we've got in him is the cost of the steel and the cost of the off road lights.

Now up front, we used an upgrade. A lot of you. Jeep guys already know about axel chefs with the larger U joints out of a later model day of 30. And like we told you before, well, they're not bomb proof but they should be more than enough to keep up with our 4 L and our 33 inch tires.

At least. We hope so.

Now another upgrade the front axle benefits from is this limited slip selectable locker? Now, we threw in some 4, 10 gears to match the back, but being selectable up front gives us way more options off road.

One of the advantages of only going three inches up, but we didn't have to buy a custom drive shaft, just the original shaft straight out of the stock 231 transfer case into an adapter for the rear axle flange

and we could have stopped right here. But hey, let's face it. Dual purpose means dual purpose.

So a roll bar

rocker skids,

a high lift jack

receiver winch

and some off road lights make this Jeep Cherokee a functional trail rig.

The total bill for the cheap Cherokee project comes in at just over $6000 and that includes every single thing that you see here including the Jeep.

Now, we could have just thrown a socket set in a duffel bag and hit the road. But project cheap Cherokee is locked and loaded. So for what a lot of guys pay for just a pair of axles, we've got a complete and capable rig

up. Next, we're hitting the trails without tearing them up. But our Cherokees is not so lucky.

Ouch.

And later can our mild XJ survive the 350 tons of boulders in the rock garden.

Stay tuned to find out.

Hey, welcome back to trucks. We're up here at land between the lakes, testing out our face lifted XJ and making sure the modifications we made are going to let us tackle some tough trails as well as drive us home at the end of a long weekend and so far everything is going really well. The Cherokee did great on the road trip up here. It tracks straight. It's got decent ride quality and there's no vibration. So this could really be a daily driver.

Hell with the highway. Let's find some trails or some hill climbs. See what this thing can do in the dirt.

Now, it only took one phone call to the Turkey Bay staff to find out that this would be the perfect place to test our Cherokee

out here, there's a wide variety of terrain and obstacles that range from easy trails to off camper hill climbs that should challenge our mildly built XJ riding on 33 inch tires.

And these are your trails. Pick a lineup.

We also got in touch with Mike Brewer of Tread lightly to share some tips with all of us. Now, Mike is no off road rookie. Not too long ago, he sold his sprung over YJ truck and trailer to simplify his wheeling trips.

Sound familiar.

Anyway, he's a tread trainer with a lot of knowledge to share tread lightly is a national organization that was created uh through the National Forest Service. As a matter of fact, the message is to promote responsible

activities outdoors on public and private land.

Whether if you're a TV, you're biking, you're hiking,

uh you know, even hiking, stay on the path, do not deviate from the, from the path

as long as we can continue to co our coordinating with the National Forest Service. I, I see no problem that we cannot keep this open, but it's gonna take everybody working together.

So we aired down the tires and let Mike Brewer be our guide on some of the milder trails just to shake things out a bit.

Everything was working great. We had plenty of ground clearance so far

and then there was a time we wish we had just a little bit more

down the center.

Well, this gives us

a great opportunity to test out our winch.

Come on

and with the elbow mics, very capable and limited,

pulled us out of trouble effortlessly.

Yeah,

I got

it.

The

ar

we went to Midas for break, right. We did go to Midas for breaks as a matter of fact, rather thankful,

our bushwhacker flares gave us the extra room we needed to really flex out this suspension.

But a couple of times when we really stuffed the front wheels up into the fenders,

they complained a little

but never broke or lost their shape.

I'm surprised the plastic didn't break. You just pulled the bolts out.

Hey, who put those on

the

chuck and John from that?

I'm blaming them.

The 10 gauge never raised above 190. The brakes u joints and drive shafts held up great. And unlike our 79 Broncos, Bronco,

the power steering pump never complained once with a 33 inch wheel

and check this out, this trail is called Rocky Road.

You're crazy, man. And there's an elk over there that heard you breathing. He's coming after you.

It was one of the best trails we hit all day because it started out fairly mild.

But the further we went,

the more difficult it got

and all this just proves again that Jeep got it right with the XJ.

We just made it a little better.

That was good.

That was that test of almost everything on this vehicle. It flexx grade the offenders. We tested our POV camera too.

This thing rocks every time we lost traction. Simple flip of a switch. We had full spool up front,

locked in and going

and

we treaded lightly.

Now, we love getting out here and trail riding and just enjoying the scenery. Like the saying goes a bad day on the trail is a lot better than a good day at work, but we can't always take it for granted that there will always be places to ride,

especially on public land

after the break. We know Mother Nature didn't create this trail unless she's a real bitch. Stick around.

Hey, thanks for sticking around as we put our chief Cherokee through its paces at the Turkey Bay Ohb Park.

We also wanted to get some insight into what goes into managing a public land off road area.

The biggest challenge to date has been the transition from open riding

to a designated trail system.

Uh, Turkey Bay has been

open riding since its inception in 1972

up till 2004 when that transition to designated trails took place. And the hardest thing to do

has been to try and change, maybe not change but modify the public attitude, uh,

towards something that they've, they've known to come and love

and kind of take a step back and, and, uh,

keep them on the trails and try and instill a little more uh, responsible ethical riding behaviors.

One way they do that is through the ride for keeps program.

It consists of four key points that are not only common sense trail etiquette, but they're easy to remember.

The first one on the list being, keep it safe. We don't need anybody getting hurt. We preach safety and anything we practice. The second tier of ride for keeps is, uh, keep it legal. That means having the proper permits, having the proper tags.

The 3rd 3rd item is keep it on the trails

that everybody stay on the Mark trails stay within the boundaries of Turkey Bay. And the last one is keep the privilege

on public land. It's a privilege, not a right to ride on the trails.

So we just want to keep everybody happy and hopefully keep Turkey Bay open in the long run.

Yeah, but it's not just public lands that had to deal with outside pressure from environmental groups, like we mentioned before, the private parks that we typically take our four wheel drives to, well, they've had to deal with government agencies telling them how to do things as well.

And you'd think with private land, well, you can do whatever you want. It's yours and it would be big fun to come barreling up this stream. But if you think about it long term, this might be somebody's fresh drinking water, or there might be a farmer that hydrates his livestock from this water source

and having a truck that is leak free will help minimize the impact we have.

Now fixing leaks is never fun, but it is important.

We spent the better part of a day repairing a leaking rear main seal

and replacing the steering box, input shaft seal.

It was a dirty job and time consuming, but it only costs us about 20 bucks to do it.

Not bad considering the peace of mind that you gain.

I know we're going to feel better. The next time we come up to a water crossing, knowing the underside of our rig is nice and clean.

When Kyle Verrell

mentioned that the forest service had brought in 350 tons of giant rocks to play on. It, caught our attention

on the right. So we decided to check it out and give our Cherokee a little workout.

So if Kevin spotted me and a constant eye up for a tree that we could winch off of, we crawled and scraped our way down some seriously gnarly boulders

and believe it or not, the Chief Cherokee crawled the entire course.

Not too bad for a grocery getter.

Now, see, you don't need a $20,000 rig. A couple 1000 bucks. A little bit of pedal finesse. You can go rock crawling, baby.

I can't believe it kind of walked through there like that. That was pretty cool, man. It was great. Good

spot.

Thanks.

Once that hood got up in the air, I couldn't see a damn thing.

I tell you something that surprised me how hard it was walking backwards on that stuff.

No

fighters are athletes too. No joke

up next. We'll take a look at some of the cool projects we've got coming up this season. Don't go away.

Hey, welcome back. Well, this XJ, it has definitely proved itself in more ways than one. Not only are these a rock solid platform right from the factory, but it also showed you guys that you could take one of these Jeeps, throw a few inexpensive upgrades at it. Polish it up around the edges a little bit and you can drive this thing home after beating the tar out of it all day long on the trails.

Yeah, we had a really good time out there and not to beat it to death. But if we want to continue to have access to places like land between the lakes, we all need to get involved. Join, tread lightly. With the blue ribbon coalition or the United four Wheel Drive Association,

donate money, attend a public land use hearing. Just get involved.

Now the rest of our season it is chock full of cool trucks. We get to come back to the muscle trucks and show the world that this red lightning is going to wipe the floor with that 454. Yeah, you can think that if you want to and

speaking of Chevy, you guys may or may not recognize our 283 that came out of our six, six C 10 horsepower, freshened it up to the tune of 270 horsepower and 300 ft pounds of torque.

Now, this thing will find its way back into the chassis along with some other solid upgrades to make for a nice daily driven classic and project H RT. Well, it gets finished up with a custom interior and several other tasty editions that are going to get it ready for one of you lucky viewers to win this truck at the end of the season. So thanks for watching and stick around because it only gets better.

Now, we told you we used the cherry bomb glass pack in our cheap Cherokee project and we did that for a couple of different reasons.

First off, the compact round body doesn't take up a lot of room under the truck, so it was easy for us to tuck it out of the way. For protection.

And secondly, they're straight through design captures are

off high frequencies inside the glass while allowing unrestricted flow out to the tail pipe producing that classic rumble. But the main reason we use this is because it's our cheap Cherokee and cherry bombs line of glass packed mufflers starts at just 40 bucks. Thanks for watching trucks. We'll see you guys next week.