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

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.

In terms of fixing it I figured I’d need to remove all of the bracing inside the cabin since it’s holding the roof in the wrong spot and that’d prevent me from pushing it to where it needs to be.

But before I did that I made sure to weld bracing from the frame rails to the 2x6 rockers just to ensure they don’t move.

Then I got to work removing all the bad bracing. This took roughly 3 - 4 hours of careful cutting and grinding.

All done.

To ensure I had a safe pushing point at the top of the windshield pillars for my portapower I tack welded a tube into place.

And put a tube down by the floor to use as the lower pushing point.

The lower tube ended up being a bad idea though as one of the door pinch welds started to crumple when I was pushing the driver side roof forward so I had to switch to angle welded on the floor above the frame.

Then after some careful pushing and measuring I was able to get the windshield gap back to normal.

Both rear door gaps are messed up now since I replaced the rear door hinges after the roof shifted so I’ll need to go back and fix those next.

It’s kinda hard to see the difference so here’s a 50/50 of the driver side.

The top corner still looks slightly closer than the bottom but that’s just how Cherokee doors are.

Passenger side 50/50.

And with the roof sitting back where it should be I added some bracing just to ensure it never moves again. I really don’t want to have to redo this all again.