July 2015 | 181,250 miles
With the daily AND adventure duties safely in the hands of the MPV, it was time to break ground on the Jeep Cherokee Moonshot Project. And what better tool to begin with than the DEATH WHEEL.
Note the stupidity right off the bat…first time using this fabled implement of destruction and of course I would use it to shoot sparks all over oily cardboard and drain pans. Nothing like cutting your arm off AND catching on fire at the same time.
If you noticed in the pictures, the rear axle is already out, and I’m giving it the third or fourth attempt at getting these rusty, seized leaf spring bolts out. Removal would require the nuclear option, but since I didn’t have a space-age plasma cutter I opted for the medieval tools at hand. Well, medieval if you ignore electricity.
With the leaves finally cut free I still needed to get the bolts out, and the grinder and sawzall were called back into action.
Some of the bolt fragments were easier to retrieve than others.
At the end of things I had the rear end of the Cherokee taken much further apart than I’d ever attempted before. But even at this point I knew enough to know that disassembly is often the easiest and quickest part of the project. The can of worms was officially opened.
