Original XJ Build on Eddie Abbondanzio

The Unexpected End

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My first XJ is no more. I feel bad that I was unable to finish it after all the time and effort I put into fixing the rust it had but the project stopped being enjoyable and I had to be realistic with myself that it was not going to be finished in a timely manner.

Rust Repair Part 27: Prepping Four Doors Takes Forever

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve come to the realization that unless a body panel is covered in epoxy primer and in good enough shape that you could start on body filler then the metalwork isn’t actually done. The XJ is still a long ways away from being ready for filler but asking myself this question when working on each panel has been a handy litmus test for me to tell when it’s actually “done” (ok maybe a better phrase would be good enough).

Rust Repair Part 26: Welding in the Driver 2x6 Rocker

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It’s taken much longer than anticipated but with the outer quarter panel welded in I was finally ready to install the 2x6 rocker. Back in May of 2024 I did most of the prep work so all I really had to do now was the final steps of welding in the 2x6.

Rust Repair Part 25: Rebuilding the Driver Quarter Panel

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One of the last big TODOs left on the driver side was to rebuild the quarter panel. Welding a panel in is moderately easy but ensuring it’s properly aligned is hard. Since the driver side was also missing the inner wheel well / lower structure of the quarter I had less reference points to work with which made me slightly nervous.

Rust Repair Part 24: Final Tweaks for the Passenger Fender

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

With the passenger side just about sorted out, the last panel that needed some attention before I switch over to the driver side was the front fender.

It wasn’t actually in that bad of shape relative to the rest of the Jeep but it did need a new mounting point down by the 2x6 rocker, and also had some rust in the lower front corner by the side marker.

Rust Repair Part 23: Fixing The Windshield Pillar Gaps And Adding Bracing

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

With the XJ sitting on the chassis table I felt it was time to address the windshield pillars not lining up with the front doors. The pillars are almost touching the top corner of each door because back when I was replacing the drip rails I didn’t brace the roof enough and it shifted.

Rust Repair Part 22: Getting Jiggy With the XJ and Putting It on a Chassis Table

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve made it pretty far on the metal work for my XJ without a chassis table but once I finish up the driver side I’ll need to start replacing the floor and frame rails so the rear suspension needs to come out and that means the XJ won’t have any wheels. That’s gonna be a problem because every so often I need to move the XJ around to make space for other projects like repairs on my daily so a chassis table just seems like the best option.

Rust Repair Part 21: Blowing Off the Dust a Year Later AGAIN

Sat, 17 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Another year has come and gone and the XJ remains in pieces. I truly intended on starting to fix it last time I posted about the XJ but then I impulsively bought a second XJ and it needed some work of it’s own that ended up taking me almost a year to finish.

Rust Repair Part 20: Blowing Off the Dust a Year Later

Fri, 10 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I can’t believe it’s a been a year since I last worked on the XJ. When I first paused working on the XJ to get my EG hatch back on the road I didn’t think it’d be for more a few months but sure enough here we are a year later.

Rust Repair Part 19: Salvaging What I Can of the Driver Side

Mon, 15 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a lot of rust on the driver side of my XJ, but it’s not as bad as the passenger side used to be. Back when I first began on phase 2 of the rust repair, I purposely started on the passenger side as I thought it’d be the easier of the two sides, but it turns out that wasn’t the case.

Rust Repair Part 18: Diving Into the Driver Side and Fixing the Drip Rail

Thu, 13 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Having finished the passenger side, it was a little daunting looking at the completely untouched driver side knowing I had so much work ahead of me. I was a little worried I’d lose my motivation from analysis paralysis on where to start so I decided to dive right into it and start with the roof like I did on the passenger side.

Rust Repair Part 17: Finally Finishing the Passenger Quarter Panel

Wed, 12 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

It’s taken me roughly 3 times as long as I imagined to finish all the work on the passenger side, but it’s been well worth the effort. To recap the past 6 months I’ve replaced:

Rust Repair Part 16: A New Rear Passenger Inner Wheel Well

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes life does that thing where it gets in the way for awhile. The XJ ended up sitting and collecting dust for a few months due to other priorities eating up my time but I’m finally tearing back into it and making progress again.

Rust Repair Part 15: Finalizing the 2x6 Rocker

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Even though I’m making progress it sure feels like the parts pile is getting bigger as each week passes.

The doors on the left are the old ones and will eventually be scrapped once I remove all the parts I want to salvage off them, but everything else is waiting to be installed. I also still need to order fenders.

Rust Repair Part 14: Welding in the Passenger 2x6 Rocker

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In this post we’ll continue building out the 2x6 rocker for the passenger side.

Finishing Up The A Pillar

Before I could weld up the outer rocker I needed to finish the A / B Pillars so I’d have something to weld it to.

Rust Repair Part 13: Replacing the Passenger Inner Rocker To Prep for 2x6 Rockers

Sun, 16 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

With all this metal laying around it was about time I started putting it to use.

While the 2x6 rocker mod (aka rock sliders) for XJ isn’t uncommon by any means, I’m planning on taking a slightly different approach in how I tie them into the unibody. My goal is to hide the welds, and also leave some hidden access holes that’ll let me spray fluid film down into the rockers each year before winter.

Rust Repair Part 12: Welding in the New Passenger Drip Rail

Wed, 14 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

My new metal brake finally arrived.

Before settling on the Woodward Fab Boss 16, I spent several hours researching metal brakes and looked at a ton of different models across various manufacturers such as Baileigh, Tennsmith, Grizzly, JET, Eastwood, and Enco.

Rust Repair Part 11: Finishing What I Started

Sat, 20 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Just shy of two years ago now, I embarked on the largest rust repair job I’ve ever done on my XJ. It took me several months, but I was able to replace the entire rear cargo floor including the crossmembers, gas tank bracing, and unibody frame rails along with welding in rear frame stiffeners over my newly made frame rails.

Fabricating a New Rear Bumper

Sun, 20 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been driving my Jeep around for almost 6 months now with no rear bumper. I know, I know, not the safest choice but I don’t drive far. Why? Because 6 months ago I wrapped up an extensive rust repair project on my XJ where I cut out and replaced the entire/images/thumbnail.jpg" rear floor along with the unibody frame rails and crossmember..

Replacing a Saggy Headliner

Sat, 05 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Delaying the Inevitable

When it comes to my cars, I like to bunch up my repairs / mods into batches where I’ll focus on one small sub-category of tasks before moving onto the next. I find this to be a great way to break down massive projects into manageable chunks, and is a technique I learned from my software career.

Installing a Gentex 177 Auto Dimming Rear View Mirror

Sat, 24 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It’s hard to explain, but driving a car at night that has an auto dimming rear view mirror is a real treat. It’s one of those things that you’ll never notice when it’s working, but as soon as you don’t have it you’ll notice its absence immediately.

Rust Repair Part 10: The Finishing Touches

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The epoxy primer I used on the underside of my repairs is some pretty good stuff, but I wanted just a hair more protection down there. And after all can you really say you did a rust repair job on your Jeep if bedliner wasn’t involved? Because of that I picked up some UPOL Raptor liner to spray. I bought the 4qt spray kit because I wanted some leftover bedliner to spray my new rear bumper later on but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Rust Repair Part 9: Closing Up The Floor

Sun, 27 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The least exciting portion of this project by far was closing up the two holes left in the floor directly below where the rear seat goes. I initally cut these holes in the floor way back at the beginning of the project because I needed to remove the original frame rails.

Rust Repair Part 8: Welding on Frame Stiffeners

Sat, 19 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

One of my biggest concerns about my custom fabricated frame rails was the vertical welds joining the frame sections. Vertical welds like those are a big no no when it comes to frames because they’re especially prone to failing. The common fix for this is to weld on fishplates that help brace the welds but since I’d have to weld on 6 fish plates on each frame rail I figured it’d be simpler to just go with frame stiffeners.

Rust Repair Part 7: A New Fuel Neck Housing And Making Cut N Fold Panels

Sun, 13 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Fuel Neck Housing

I’ve been ignoring the gaping hole around where the fuel neck passes through the interior to travel down towards the gas tank. I had a feeling it’d be easy to fix so I never put much thought into it. I honestly didn’t bother to worry about it until I had the floor fully welded in and no choice but to finally address the issue.

Rust Repair Part 6: Turning A Patch Panel Into A New Cargo Floor Pan

Sun, 06 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I didn’t want to try to salvage the original cargo area floor from my Jeep. It had rusted through in several spots, and I kinda chopped it up into several pieces because I only removed bits of it as a time when I was fabricating the new frame rails.

Rust Repair Part 5: Designing A Custom Gas Tank Cradle

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Directly below the floor of the XJ in the cargo area sits the gas tank. Tucked tight between the frame rails it rests a mere 1/2" from the floor. The mount for the gas tank is also what braces the floor in the cargo area.

Rust Repair Part 4: Hooking Up The Suspension

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

With the frame squared away I needed something that I could mount up the suspension to. The only thing holding in the rear axle at this point was the rear driveshaft and the front mounts of the leaf springs.

Rust Repair Part 3: Déjà Vu Replacing the Driver Frame Rail

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The driver side frame rail was in far worse shape than the passenger side on my XJ. I opted to replace the passenger side first since there’s a little less going on on that side. On the driver side the fuel neck hoses pass through the frame, and all of the fuel lines, brake lines, and vacuum lines run parallel down the frame rail.

Rust Repair Part 2: Bending a New Passenger Frame Rail

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Using a metal brake to bend up new frame rails wasn’t my plan A. Nor was it plan B. It was actually plan C. I was trying to fix my Jeep on the cheap because this repair wasn’t suppose to happen till spring. That meant no buying extra tools and trying to make do with what I had.

Rust Repair Part 1: Fabricating A New Rear Crossmember

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Background

I like to joke and say that anyone else would have sent my XJ to the junkyard.

My Cherokee is rusty, has a laundry list of issues, gets 17 MPG on the good days, and is literally a brick on wheels. But I love it.

Dana 30 Front Axle Rebuild

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The front axle of my Cherokee has been in desperate need of some attention for quite awhile. Just about every component on it was worn to the point of needing to be replaced and the axle housing itself had built up some pretty intense rust.

XJ Build - 02/03/19

Sun, 03 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Cherokee strikes again. A couple weeks back when my exhaust snapped just before the catalytic converter I noticed my muffler had a minor leak. It wasn’t anything major and wasn’t loud so I figured I could probably just run it till spring and deal with it when it was warmer out.

XJ Build - 01/26/19

Sat, 26 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve honestly been very lucky with my Jeep. My previous daily driver was a 2009 Subaru Legacy, and while it may have been excellent in the snow it had a very high cost of ownership. I figured out that it was costing me on average $100 in maintenance per 1000 miles travelled. It may sound silly to have sold the Subaru and bought a Jeep that was 9 years older but I have zero regrets doing so. The Jeep has never left me stranded, and never surprised me with an issues until recently.

XJ Build - 10/26/18

Fri, 26 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

With winter approaching fast, and my Civic only having summer tires I needed to hurry up and finish the Cherokee. The Civic was also suffering from a stuck open thermostat that ensured the engine temperature never reached operating temp, and my heat was always cold.

XJ Build - 10/21/18

Sun, 21 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Patching Holes

This post is a continuation of the mini series about restoring my old XJ cherokee. In the previous post I talked about cutting out and welding in a new rocker panel.

XJ Build - 10/8/18

Mon, 08 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post is the second part in my mini-series of restoring my old xj cherokee. If your interested, check out my attempt at saving the rusty roof.

Like most xjs out there, especially those in the rustier parts of the US, the rocker panels needed some love. I never really captured a good before shot of the rust on the passenger side rocker. It was roughly 9" in length and about 3" wide. I finally decided it was time to fix it when I managed to puncture a hole in it using my key. (You can even see the hole in the picture if you look close).

XJ Build - 9/03/18

Sun, 02 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a big fan of older vehicles. I just love the simplicity of them and how easy they are to work on them. Plus the cost of parts really can’t be beat. Since my civic is far from snow worthy I also own a 2000 Jeep Cherokee. It may not be the prettiest vehicle out there but it’s never let me down, and has successfully traveled 20,000 miles in it’s first year of owner ship with a couple road trips ranging in the 800-1000 mile range.