Jeep Cherokee XJ DIY Interior Mods, Bed Liner, Rotopax Windows, Electronics and Camping Equipment

hi there guys mike here welcome back to another video on the channel in the last video we took a look at a lot of the hardware you see on the jeep when you look at it at face value things like tyres suspension the armor and the frame stiffening work that's gone into it we even took a little bit of a look at the engine too and i showed you some of the mods i've done to that to increase power and get better reliability but in this video what i'm going to do is show you the internal mods that i've done to the vehicle and also some of the equipment i'm carrying too so you get an idea of what it's like on the inside and uh the kind of gear that lives in the jeep every day we'll start with the back because it's one of the most important areas on the vehicle or one of the main storage areas anyway and this vehicle gets used as a camping vehicle but the gear can come out of it and the rooftop tent can come off of it and it can just be used as an everyday kind of truck as well to pick people up from the airport put luggage on the inside but we'll start with this side here you can see i've got a fire extinguisher and axe and a saw there's also a little brush i'll explain that in a little while but i think one of the most important mods i did a while ago and i mentioned it on the channel was removing the glass from the window and replacing it with an aluminium panel and it's actually pretty tough i mean you can't push it out and obviously you'll see the other side i've got a rotor pack with a lockable mount in the middle of it which bolts through the aluminium that holds around about six and a half liters of water and um yeah it's pretty useful really just for having access to water directly on the outside of the vehicle but two of the bolts that obviously come through the panel for the rotor pack mount are actually longer than the rest and i did that just because i went to hardware shop got some longer ones i've got these plastic pieces here with thread inside and it just allows me to tighten down the saw and the axe to have some gear out the way but not rattling around in the back of the vehicle because that's one thing you do a lot with these vehicles you're chasing rattles literally all the time two things to add would be even despite not polishing the edges of the aluminium very well and putting a very aggressive raptor liner coating on it like a truck bed liner i've had no leaks so it's obviously working pretty well this isn't the only fire extinguisher i've got but it's definitely one of them and it's on a gold fire quick release fire extinguisher mount and i bought this from china must have cost me around 15 pounds you basically pull a pin and the fire extinguisher is kind of ready to come out on this like little rail here and it can lock back in place so i kind of like this because it makes it real fast to operate and the mount is then obviously permanently connected just with some jubilee clips putting it back isn't too difficult although it never really goes according to plan actually you kind of slot it in like that just notice that's come loose so that's something really to bear in mind it looks like the mechanism here screws in just on some thread so i might need to put a bit of loctite on that yeah apart from that minor thing which i've just discovered uh so some loctite there would fix that um it's pretty pretty good it doesn't tend to make too much noise when i'm driving unless i'm doing some real bouncy trails where the car is just kind of wobbling around a lot then you do tend to hear it doing this but it's kind of negligible really given the noise the rest of the vehicle makes the little brush i've got is um actually just like a housekeeping kit i've got a microfiber cloth that goes with this too but it's just come out the washing machine and i've got to put it in but it's really just for doing housekeeping when you when you're camping for long periods of time let's say a week or even longer as me and meg did for three months then you know you want to try and keep the vehicle clean so it's nice just to do a bit of housekeeping from time to time and uh yeah just just tidy stuff up you can see i've actually painted this panel here it's been wrapped aligned wrap raptor line's okay on plastic we have to use like an adhesion promoter and sort of scratch it up quite a lot but another thing we've got here is just half a peg that's because uh the rooftop tent ladder's broken and this is kind of a security pin that stops the whole thing collapsing the rooftop tent ladder is really poor quality actually but we'll have a look at that in another video just here's a really big bag and then here's just my tools and all my spare parts and this is actually the same toolkit i use when i'm working on the car at home it just all lives in this bag so if i'm in the garage i'll just take it out chuck it on the floor and work and it's not everything i use for repairing the jeep but it is kind of like the primary tools that you can address most issues with in the side pockets here this side and that side we've got the spare parts for the vehicle and in here too um you know tyre repair kit and that sides all the tie rods and steering related things bolts and heavy hardware this size things like relays and fuses even got a water pump because uh you know it's a big deal really and water pumps one of the most common failures you can get and in all honesty it's not a massive job to do it on this vehicle because you don't actually have to take anything off apart from the auxiliary belt so you know that's kind of good but yeah rubber things we've got the map sensor that costs you a fortune in some parts of the world number one fuel injector does all the timing for the engine but also can be used as just a normal injector the crank position sensor again a really easy part to replace and actually access without having to drop anything we've got u-joints too but there's loads of parts in here and really that's another video if you really are interested in that kind of thing but some of these parts i have had to use so you know it's worth carrying spares when you get to know your vehicle at the very back there you'll see a cage this is just a diy cage i've made myself and it's actually connected to these supports just here too these are just like some straps basically some some heavily rated straps just to in the event of something horribly bad going wrong i have my young son sitting there and if everything is going to come forward you know you have something at least tied into the frame of the vehicle that can kind of stop it along with some arms there too but um i have an alley box now i have to say thanks to wingfield's quality adventure goods i know they gave me this box like three years ago but just so they know if they're watching i'm always grateful about being given this box i have another one too at home this is an alley box like a lightweight aluminium box and in here is all my camping cooking gear and food the reason i like the kitchen in one box is it just means it can come out it can go in the house and then essential gear can live within the vehicle but then i've got the space to put two suitcases in three suitcases in or other equipment if i'm doing something else with the jeep i've got a very large flask of tea this holds two liters uh so two liters this holds and it's a stanley that's pretty good we have other things in there like just washing up equipment and bin bags we've got tea we've got hot chocolate whoa everything's in boxes we've got the gas which i use for a very very small single burner and i do a lot of meals with that single burner it is legal to make fires here in sweden so i do a lot of cooking on fires too but there is a fire ban at certain times a year and also there's common sense and sometimes there's time and speed and just the ease of using a small gas stove like this most of my feed is for the staples anywhere containing these igloo boxes i pick these up from a charity shop for one pound per box and they're really good and here i've got like muesli so oats and fruit this is pasta saying they like gluten-free pasta because my wife's a celiac so basically everything i have is kind of gluten-free in here is rice i have another one just in here which is powdered milk so i don't have a refrigerator in this vehicle so essentially a lot of the meals i make are from dry food and there's obviously the kitchen area here too in a bucket you can take that bucket out and there's kettles and pans and other camping equipment plates and a grill but if you want to see a video on the kitchen and and again the spares and stuff and you're interested in the intricacies of exactly what i carry and what why just let me know in the comments section and obviously i can do a specific video about it but uh yeah behind the alley box i've got a folding table i bought this folding table from a camping shop in the uk called atwools it never originally had the basin in it but i cut a hole in the table with an angle grinder and glued it in with seam sealer so it's like a collapsible basin it works really well with the table because this table is folded in half so it opens up you pop the basin out fill it with water using one of the rotor packs and i originally had an idea too to make a hole in the bottom of this to drain it but in all honesty what i tend to do now is just tip the table upside down fold it up and chuck it back in the car and behind the table two seats both from ikea they're both very basic cheap lightweight plastic seats and i've just put some cushion padding on them just to make them a little bit more bearable in the winter but some lighter more technical seats would be great at some point for the time being they fold flat and when it folds flat it is really good for vehicles we've got a few important bits this side including the electronics setup but uh yeah what i've got here is just a fishing bag i mean this moves around the vehicle all the time but in the moment it's got summer gear in and in the winter a lot of the lures come out of this and the ice fishing equipment goes in and then i carry an auger too so that's just one bit of equipment really that you know it's just something i like to do and i make lots of fish catch fish nice to cook fish on the fire too up here we've got the electronics pack so this is kind of like cables and all sorts of other gear if i open this up it's a real mess because i never put it away last time but we've got like a 12 volt pump with a big long extension lead so i can use it up in the rooftop tent to charge the rooftop temp mattress and also be used for the boat along with lots of attachments for the compressor we've got cables something for the laptop that does sort of like 15 18 17 and 21 volts and it comes with lots of adapters so you can charge a whole range of kit with it the thermacell backpacker that plugs into like a little butane can keeps the mosquitoes away in the summer although sometimes it doesn't keep the mosquitoes away but it's just an electric thing with cables for iphones and samsung's and anything really that we bring with us ipads and stuff and that just lives behind this strap up here and uh yeah just lives there really so it's kind of useful you'll see just here in this big black box i've got an auxiliary battery a leisure battery basically it's such a long time ago since i've bought it that i will write exactly what it is in the description for you but it's a banner battery and it's very large it's too large for what i want it for but um it served me really well and it charges when you drive the vehicle so you see this big cable here it runs all the way under the passenger seat to like kind of a smart dual charger kit that then runs around to the front of the vehicle and connects to the battery at the front so as you're driving along you know it's supposed to detect the the voltage of both the car battery and this battery and apply some juice to this to keep it charged and the setup seems to work because i've run it for four years and neither battery seems to have any problems just to secure it in place i use an orange strap with some rubber just to sort of take the noise out of this thing going all over the place it used to do before that rubber was there and the tie-down points i've replaced with some 10 mil bolts and a bigger d-ring there mainly just down to corrosion and you've got these two big fat plates either side as well just a bit of support it's a nice little setup it does me well i'd love for that battery to be in a different place and when i ran a drawer system it lived in the back of the drawer system and also at one point it was where the passenger seat is at the back there but now i have a son and i like to use the vehicle for all sorts of stuff i want the passenger seats in so there's really nowhere i can think that it can go and it absolutely will not fit under the bonnet in the front of the engine bay so this thing just lives here i've kind of learned to live with it although it'd be great if it wasn't there but it is and you can see the electronics up just here it's pretty simple we've got a fuse box here so everything is run on different fuse if something goes it's pretty easy to know what it is and it's also very easy then to select different fuses for different applications so you're not sort of like going to run any risks with anything blowing up but it's a nice little fuse box and that's just bolted to the side of the plastic here the other side of this uh plastic kind of a trim really is a metal panel and you have to cut a big rectangle out of that metal panel and then roll the edges around and use some rubber edging so you're not cutting through wires with the vehicles vibrating and just armor the cables with this kind of stuff that you get here you can armor all the cables with that and then you generally don't run into too many issues with with vibrations kind of gradually cutting through the rubber of the wire and then one day bump for fuse goes and you can't work out why but we've got two 12 volts cigarettes and one is used for the light here and it's a removable light on a magnet the idea behind that was if my vehicle breaks down and i don't have a light i can basically just take that off and unclip it here and then run it on the underside of the vehicle with a big magnet from this 12 volt volt port here and you can buy these extension cables for them too i used to have one but they're so poorly made i just thought i'd make my own um we've got four usb so you've got two here five volt one amp and five volt 2.1 amp the same just here too we've got a digital battery reader analog is better because it doesn't draw power but you know i've got this digital one which says it's 12 volts and obviously you turn the whole setup off like that turn it on and the pump is just down here too of a switch [Music] you know so we can run the the pump to pump up the boat or do my tyre pressure and this is side lamps on the actual side of the vehicle too so we've got some lights there that can shine out at night so you can see the bears making a charge for for the bacon there we go that's the setup another bit of gear in the back is just the fishing rod there but what i will mention about the back is the whole back of the vehicle or the inside of the vehicle has been wrapped aligned sometimes with a spray some some areas with a brush and the roof's been bed lined as well i don't run any carpet and i don't run any headliner to be honest with you i would actually like headliner again in this vehicle i think it looks better and it's also more functional for me in this kind of climate um it gets really cold in the winter and yeah having headliner would be nice but when i took the headliner out there was corrosion on the roof above the driver's side head obviously the most heavily used area in the vehicle i suppose and the moisture coming off of somebody and going through the headliner and into the roof and caused some surface rust there so i cleaned all that up and i bedlined the roof so maybe if you've got a cherokee out there it's worth taking the headliner off and bed lining the roof you know and putting the headliner back in or even maybe restoring the headliner and putting it back in so if i can get some headliner one day it is going to go back in the vehicle but with regards to a carpet i would never run a carpet in this vehicle again you see rust in all the same places on cherokees and then when you take the carpet out and you see where the water goes you realise why the rust is always in these same places on cherokees they're notoriously bad for leaking and the carpet is awful for actually being able to ventilate itself and dry off it has this big rubber thing on the bottom of it and it just holds water it's a really bad design so having a bed lined floor with just removable mats is a really good setup for these vehicles you get great peace of mind that you're not going to get any reoccurring rust um even if you leave the vehicle for a whole summer with water in it like i have at some points or a whole winter with ice in it like i get in the winter i still don't get any rust because it's able to air itself out and dry it's not being sandwiched and caught between two areas and just left there for 10 20 years so bedlining it is with raptor liner i definitely recommend it i knew that was going to happen i knew i was going to happen but i thought like i think every time i'm quicker than the water and i'm not but that's the back of the vehicle um sorted really some changes to the inside i guess the windows count i mean i have the windows tinted they were tinted when i got them but i tinted them again before i get onto the gear on the inside i'll talk just about some of the mods i did to the vehicle itself um in the last video i did mention i did a lot of restoration work on the jeep and you can see i've i wrapped aligned inside the door wells here sort of like the bit in between the door and the vehicle and uh it's a nice restoration job really i think raptor liner is a really nice paint and it cuts up the color a little bit but also just puts a really tough paint kind of where a tough paint needs to be the same with the bottom of the doors too but inside here we've got the arb awning room this can go in the back of the vehicle too because sometimes my wife likes to sit next to my son and just kind of play with him and stuff when we're driving long distance to keep him entertained and and this just basically opens up inside the arb awning and gives you kind of like an area really where you can just chill and when the flies are really intense you know they're not going to bother you and the nice thing about the arb stuff is the mesh is really really fine but um this thing's pretty good it's quite heavy but we're actually thinking about turning this into our accommodation like where we sleep and getting a wood stove for it so it can be insulated and winterized but that's for another video [Applause] i've also got here my recovery back i picked this bag up from a charity shop for a couple of quid i suspect you haven't heard that one before but you do get some really good stuff in these charity stores if we open this up it's like all my recovery gear really i mean normally you might think oh you should put that in the tool kit bag but um i don't really like to do that because i see it as a part of recovery but it's just a five ton bottle jack and i just cut the top of an axle stand off of it and just pop that on the top there and it just gives me a little bit more security when i'm lifting it up and you know you can put a little bit there's a rubber pad in there that i chuck on the top there so i don't just tear my paint up every time i lift my vehicle up i've got a couple of high visibility vests i've got my warning triangle which again is actually really useful even when you're on the forest roads in the snow um some gloves got a nine ton snatch block for the winch um all the straps are rated at five ton so this is just like a quite a useful strap you can use for various things this one you can wrap around trees this is 10 meters it's obviously what i use for most of the recovery um in here i've got jumper cables i mean you know it's a recovery kit at the end of the day and we've got two winch blankets just here uh some bungees you know just useful for nothing to do with recovery but they're just in there anyway and that's obviously part of the the bottle jack and this is just like a board that i use for snow but also for soft ground it's just thick aluminium around about five mil along with some thick multiplex wood there some hard wood and it's just pretty useful just to put on the ground i mean like if you put that bowl jack on this ground now it's going to vanish under the weight of the vehicle i put the recovery bag back in and that's normally where it lives just down there but if i have my son in the car i don't like having heavy things near him and there's not really a way of securing that even with the seat belt this i don't mind so much because that actually can be seat belted in pretty easily and it's not very heavy but that's got a lot of metal stuff in it and i always think you know if there's a crash we roll over and that knocks him on the head or something you know he's as good as gone so that's usually either in the front with me if my wife's in the back it usually goes down in the footwell of the passenger side or it actually does go in the back of the truck i actually prefer to have it here when i'm on my own because basically it's easier to reach and i've been in situations where the back of the vehicle is at an angle where i can't open the tire carrier so i can't actually even get to the recovery equipment and once that happened i started to move it around and separate it from some of the other equipments that's up the front i do have a winch though so you know you could argue i could use that but it's just nice to have the gear near you if we open this side here there's not much going on this side we like to camp as a family i'll be honest with you i do go out on my own and if i do go out on my own i still leave this in a lot of the time i built an isofix bracket into the seat that mounts to the frame of the vehicle as well an isofix is kind of like the modern safe alternative to seat belt seats that you get and you'll see it obviously has some movement in it like they will do and they should do but it's a really really strong system and the nice thing about it is max is getting bigger and heavier and this seat will rate up to a certain kilo and then we take this out and clip it and we just clip another seat straight in so you never have to muck around with taking the seat out and it rotates makes them really easy to put in you know the vehicle is quite high for my wife anyway she complains about it all the time and i wind her up saying i'm getting 37's next but basically you know you just take max you rotate the seat you put him in and he really finds his seat comfortable he sleeps really well in it and he just he loves it actually he's he's quite happy when he's in there but just a few other simple mods we've got the same the other side but we've got grab handles so when you get inside the vehicle you can obviously pull yourself in with that grab handle there you can hang equipment from it as well you've got a grab handle up here as well so you can kind of pull yourself up into the vehicle this is the passenger side which would be the driver's side to a lot of you other people around the world who might be watching um but yeah same sort of deal really did a lot of the raptoring in here and restoration work around this area just to toughen it up i run a pretty skeleton trim setup inside so there's no headliner as i said a lot of this plastic stuff around here is not here along the side edge of the seat there's no plastic either and at the time when i ran the vehicle i used to do a lot of kind of i don't know what you call it mud plugging i think people call it driving through muddy water all the time you know just flooding the vehicle going through rivers you know back in the uk that is a lot of what the off-roading is a lot of river crossings and mud and clay and you know really flooded areas because that's just they get you get a lot of rain there basically and that's what it's like over there so when i was running that kind of off-road setup i used to get so much rubbish inside the jeep that i just took all the plastic away and ran a skeleton set up just so i could jet wash the inside and make it easier to clean and i had all the drain plugs out a lot of the time as well because when you drove for a river it would all just drain back out again but as a result i i tossed a lot of that stuff away took a lot of it to the recycling center and i only kept the bare essentials so i run kind of just enough trim so the vehicle looks nice inside in you know by cherokee standards but there's not really too much along the passenger side here in the glove compartment we've got more maps of places we've been to in europe but most of these maps actually are all scandinavia they're all sweden because obviously that's predominantly where we travel now but with regards to the the driver's side you'll obviously see a lot more going on and i'll kind of talk to you from here but show you all the clips up here we've got a gopro mount this is just a housing to chuck a gopro into got a phone clip there just something i've screwed in place just because nothing ever seems to do but this just holds the phone allows me to use gaia gps which is my navigation system and also charge my phone and have access to it pretty easily we've got glass breaking hammers so we've got a couple of these in the vehicle and they also cut seat belts too so i have access to one here and so does she if she's sitting next to me or whomever is sitting next to me there's also another one just up there for the passengers in the vehicle i also have a cb radio plugged into the front there it's an m760 plus with a fire stick connected to the front bumper in the center console i've got a few things that i can access one is is a head torch um it's just chargeable i don't keep this in the back i keep it here because when it's dark when i get out the vehicle to do my tire pressure or whatever um i want a torch on my head and i don't want to go to the back of the truck to get it we've got a wi-fi winch remote just here i normally use this one but in an event that runs out of batteries i've got the plug-in one here so this is the the main winch controller just there too and i've also got a spare key to be able to switch the winch on with the dead switch just up top there we've got a medical kit and there's actually a tourniquet and an israeli compression bandage on that med kit there too on the outside you can see one side's the tourniquet other side is a compression bandage the med kit comes off and it's a rip away med kit and this velcro panel is kind of basically strapped to the center piece here at the top um the reason it comes off is you you know it's impossible to operate it while it's hanging upside down everything will just drop out of it but but also maybe you want to take it somewhere you know maybe somebody injured themselves over there and you want to go take the med kit to them um but it just gives you access to be able to pull it off the roof put it here open it use it and you've got the tourniquet you've got the the grips and the compression bandage and the reason they're on the outside of the kit is because i always think that in the event of a serious collision um maybe i'm knocked unconscious maybe megan is maybe there's some sort of severe bleeding i have access to the tools i need without basically having to get a med kit off the roof then open it and then find what i want i can just grab it straight away and you're just saving seconds really to be able to do that so yeah that's why we have it that way there's also a carabiner hanging off a d-ring at the side of the med kit and that's got like some tools on something for the camera gear the winch key that i normally use and a core valve remover for tyres and that's how i do my tyre pressure other than everything else i've shown you we've got the same sort of door card here in here's uh some books a knife i always keep this actually in here but i have my main knife um i was wearing on camping and a small saw the reason i carry a small saw as well as the big saw in the back is sometimes you're driving a track and um you know there's a there's a dead branch sticking out and you just want to cut that one little branch it doesn't just tear your paint up and going to the back of the vehicle opening the tyre carrier getting the big saw out getting to the branch it kind of takes time so just getting a little pruning saw out and chopping it down and driving on just saves you a bit of time and it can also then go in your pocket and you leave the vehicle we've got the same mats so these can just be pulled out we've got the the main fire extinguisher the one you can grab straight away just here just here's kind of a basic switch panel and it looks really rubbish i know but i only have this and i will get a proper switch panel at some point when i can but this is the auxiliary lights at the front for the winter and this is a egr sorry an egt uh temperature gauge so at the moment we're on about 30 degrees in the manifold there on cylinder number four but uh basically i will make a nice panel here and then i'll have a boost gauge just here as well so that's the way that will hopefully be eventually and that really sums up internal mods on the vehicle there's not really that much that's changed inside it's mainly just streamlining things stripping stuff out painting stuff restoring stuff making it easy to clean so i don't have to really care if the whole cab fills with water i know it's not going to rust and i can just pull the drain plugs out and let it all flow but i hope you enjoyed this video i hope you found it useful and i'll see you very soon in another one thanks again

Channel: Workshop & Wilderness Adventures

Views: 131,258

Keywords: overland Jeep, expedition Jeep, Jeep Xj Diesel, Jeep XJ upgrades, Jeep Build Walkaround, Jeep XJ Bumper, Jeep XJ 35s, Jeep XJ 6.5, Lift, Jeep XJ OTK Steering, Jeep XJ One Ton, BFG KM3 Jeep XJ, Jeep XJ Offroad Fabrication, Jeep XJ Best Mods, Jeep XJ Upgrades, Jeep XJ Offroad Upgrades, Jeep XJ Overland, Jeep XJ Bug Out Vehicle, Jeep XJ Frame Stiffeners, Jeep XJ Armor, Jeep XJ Expedition, Jeep Build review, Jeep update, 4x4 build and parts, MCQBushcraft

Id: 2b4PyDhUWAE

Length: 30min 0sec (1800 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020