THE PERFECT XJ - MY 2000 JEEP CHEROKEE, BLACK BEAUTY

good evening YouTube, I'm Dan H, welcome to the channel I call project. I started this channel about six months ago to document the build of my 2001 Jeep Cherokee XJ called the Beach Jeep, but as winter came and I got a little colder. I've worked less on the beach Jeep and more on other projects around the house and in the garage. I've also included a lot of content about this Cherokee, but I don't think I've ever formally introduced them. YouTube, meet my

2000

Jeep Cherokee XJ that I call

black

beauty

and let me tell you why I think this is the

perfect

XJ.

Right off the bat, this Cherokee is special because it still has less than a hundred thousand miles on it and I know it. Yes, they made two million Cherokees between 1984 and

2000

1, that means the newest Cherokee is still almost twenty years old, so I think it's very rare to have the Cherokee under a hundred thousand miles. I bought this Cherokee in 2017, when it had 88,000 miles. but it didn't look like that it needed some serious TLC it was far from a

beauty

so the same week the D beach engine exploded. I found this thing. It must have been divine intervention because the landing gear on this thing was extremely rusty, have you seen the front of my driveway, interesting, a solid fuse.

Russ, can clearly say that this is probably one of the worst you will ever find. Everything looked like this below. It was disgusting. I think if this had to be done. spend another winter in New York and be destined for the junkyard and since the seller was only asking for 2500 and it only had 88,000 miles on it, I had to take a chance on that rust and buy it, so when I bought it the first thing I did was take apart everything on it. there was on the landing gear, I took off the front and rear and sandblasted the bottom of it and ported it all over and it's held up pretty well so far.

I think I stopped the rest of this. tracks, but it is not without battles and I have to move on after removing the rust and applying por-15. I think it's the only way to save this thing, but it looks really good underneath, let's look at everything you see here in the The landing gear that's painted

black

is poor number 15, it's been about a year and a half and It actually held up pretty well, so once I managed to stop the rust, I thought I had a green light, it's not modifying this exactly how I wanted it.

Now that all of my mods are combined with this fully loaded factory in 265 60 r18 and match my Rough Country three inch risers

perfect

ly. The coolest part about these OAM dodge wheels is that they bolt on without the need for spacers and I just got a

jeep

center cap to match and go up from there. It's my reflective black pinstripe. I bought this black pinstripe to cover the horrible white pinstripe that came from the factory. I wanted this thing to be totally blacked out, but I also wanted some extra visibility at night, so this thing is perfectly reflected by the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.

He also continued the striping beyond the side markers until he reached the Angry Eyes headlight mod. Check out the video on that one and right next to it you can see the tinted side marker and turn signal lenses since it already had the black powder coated wheels I thought. I would continue with the blacked out theme so I replaced all the chrome trim, grille, headlight doors and tailgate trim with the matching factory black trim. I will replace the rusted and crumbling front bumper. I got a nice new set of tow hooks and swapped out the extremely dim factory fog lights for some nice two-by-six lights and put an aftermarket transmission cooler in front of the condenser to replicate a police Model I bought the Cherokee for the first time, the paint definitely showed.

It's an old friend of mine and I got to work on the clear coat with 3m compound and some polish and got the paint back to acceptable condition and the rest of the exterior is pretty standard. I simply removed the trim that a plate removed and I also have videos on installing the window tint and rain guard and on the outside of the liftgate. I have a 2014 GMC Arcadia rear wiper arm but before I could get it to work I had to replace half of the wires in the harness, they were all brittle and cracked and I also removed the center brake light and replaced it with a spoiler Orvis that has an LED third brake light.

I'm going to the trunk, you'll see my speaker box and utility cabinet. I have my 10 inch subwoofers on each side. and I have my amp in the middle under the plexiglass spare tire underneath with Jack storage and supplies and inside my utility box I have some utilities I have tools neck pillow blankets flares you never know it's all here ready To start, Locke also has Velcro to prevent rattling and to complement the sound system there is a pair of six-by-nine speakers well hidden in the tailgate. I also have a honeycomb LED light for maximum brightness. Now inside we have a factory leather interior.

Now everyone knows the Cherokees didn't have real leather, they had plastic or vinyl or something, they don't hold up as well as leather, but these things are working fine, so here's my old school Alpine amp powering the speakers and the rear doors and the speaker is on top so this Cherokee Had the factory infinity sound system with the amplifier located under the back seat but it didn't work. I looked everywhere for a replacement amp and just couldn't find one and unfortunately the wiring harness connectors were different on the Cherokee than the other

jeep

s that did. equipped with a similar sound system, so it had to disappear.

I'm probably one of the few people who had to remove a factory amp wiring harness, now moving on to the interior, I now took out every piece of the interior. I lowered the floor and did some preventative maintenance for-15. I also cleaned each piece while outside the vehicle before putting it back in, including shampooing the carpet and scrubbing the seats. I ended up working a lot on this driver. Seat, of course, the outer seat panel was torn as usual, so I took the entire seat apart and sewed fabric from an extra cover for the spare tire.

I think this is the best solution to fix these broken seats because it is actually the same factory material. and these spare tire covers are thick and durable so this will never break again and of course while the seat pad was off I cut it out with an Exacto knife and welded the seat heating element where it had been shorted and broken and Then we cleaned all the dirt from the motors, greased them and cleaned all the contacts inside the seats, which was definitely a lot of work, but it was worth it, everything works and now we will move on to the console.

Of my favorite modifications, I relocated the seat heating buttons from where the shift cup should be and mounted them directly to the console. This is where I think Jeep should have put them to begin with. It fits perfectly and I didn't have to cut or splice. all the wires, all I really did was make a template for the shape of the buttons and cut them out nice and neat with an Exacto knife. Also the interior is trimmed in limited wood grain, the wood grain comes on the front and rear door cards and the radio center bezel.

I ended up looking for a faux terrestrial wood grain steering wheel to match a 2000 WJ , they bolt on and the airbag wires are plug-and-play as long as it's a 99mm and I think a 2001 Grand Cherokee but The best part is the cruise control buttons work and here's a look to my speedometer, it's from a police model XJ that does 120 miles per hour, so here's another one of my favorite parts of this Bezel I made years ago for beach teeth by cutting three original panels and joining them together long before 3D printing was invented. All switches are LED illuminated and I have a long idle.

A European rear fog light switch. Fog light switch. Defrost button. and last but not least, a custom rear wiper switch. I actually added an LED because I couldn't stand the fact that Jeep left this button off and didn't give it an indicator light, except for the prototype button I made with my brother's. Cherokee I Karen you, this is the only other Cherokee you will see, but the rear wiper indicator light there is also an auxiliary audio jack USB charging and USB fast charging with a remaining power outlet here is my trusty LED flashlight with power light, the The flashlight base is connected to the 12 volt transfer case shifter indicator lights, so that every time the parking light is on and these lights are on, the flashlight will charge and of course , since I was able to move the heating buttons up here, I can use my change and under a box of emergency $20 bills I ran out of gas.

I also converted the floor panel, it lights up the white LEDs and illuminates my Weathertech floor mats and here is an extremely rare piece that came on the Jeep with the Infinity sound system. side view mirror tweeter cut out on top I have an auto dimming rear view mirror that I was able to do on the 2004 Grand Cherokee. This was a super easy mod, all they had to do was connect it to the power and ground from the overhead console and also I refinished the headliner and upper console trim with black Alcantara suede, it's nice, and I also can't forget the sun visors I made, those were a pain in the butt too, okay, here's my bluetooth obd2 scanner, this thing sends real time information to my phone via the Tork app, this Bluetooth scanner was only about ten dollars and the Tork app was only five dollars, so for about fifteen dollars you could look up your own fault codes and clear your own lights Check engine and move on under the hood.

Basically a stock Cherokee engine bay. I have the yellow Optima top battery and just a few wiring mods of course the power to the amps and on the back I have a cable that connects to the PCM for the long idle mod when I first bought it. On this Jeep I made the valve cover gasket, oil pan gasket, oil filter gaskets and rear main seal. I also had to replace the oil pan because it had rusted holes in it and of course the new oil pan also got its fair share for fifteen The only real part that is not available under the hood I would say are my four hole injectors and I wrapped the fuel rail with heat resistant tape, especially around the number three and four injectors.

They're just trying to do the best I can to avoid. heat's okay guys, that'll do it with this one in the Black Beauty Cherokee. I hope you agree with me now when I call this the perfect XJ either way, it's the perfect one for me, it's my daily driver. I love it. I hope you like it too if you want to see more of this please give me a like and subscribe and continue watching this channel. I have more XJ content with the Beach Jeep version. I also have a special surprise and more Jeep content. and this one is special, so stay tuned for more.

Remember to like and subscribe and I'll see you in the next project.