Heya guys,
Im Luke, 28, from Gippsland in Victoria. Im looking to get into my first 4WD after tax time if the tax man is nice to me. Ive been looking around at all kinds of 4WDs on the low end of the price spectrum, as im a mechanic (get paid peanuts!) and my wife is a stay at home mum to our young kids so money is not in abundance. Jeeps have sparked my interest due to the fact they arent torsion bar front ends like alot of the 4WDs ive been looking at - pajeros , jackaroos, challengers, 4runners/surfs. One of my mates also has a newish wrangler and fucking loves it, and seeing how the yanks mod there is always cool!
So what im looking at is the XJ cherokee and ZJ grand cherokee. Looking for some pros and cons to both these aswell as constructive advice. I dont plan on doing any serious offroading (yet, im sure ill get addicted haha). I have 3 kids all in car seats at the moment, need them all to be able to fit across the back seat, and mostly plan on doing some basic 4WDing, touring and camping.
How is the leaf rear in the XJ compared to the coil rear in the ZJ?
Are they both body on chassis? or unibody? one of each?
Are the 4.0l straight 6 and autos reliable?
Are they cheap/cheapish to mod?
Im coming from the slammed car world so this is a big change to me, have been 4WDing with some mates before and loved being passenger. Have also driven customers cars home after major works (defenders, amaroks and loved sitting so high on the road). Have a 95 Honda Integra, which just got defected for the 2nd time a few weeks ago.
Having to cancel the remaining 2 weeks of rego as i cant afford the money or time to fix the issues to get it back on the road before tax time. Was/is my first car, is very sentimental to me but kinda on the fence about getting rid of it.
Sorry for the long post, and very keen for some responses and input, and perhaps joining the community for a long time.