WJ Grand Cherokee by Trailworx Garage

[H2Micr0]

Hi All.

Thought I would post up my WJ Grand Cherokee build here for you all.

As a bit of background, I was the first to buy one of these from a local seller here in Sydney Australia, and from there shared the find on Scale Builders Guild. Now there are a few getting around thought some of you might be interested in seeing how my turned out.

I won't start from the very beginning but this will get all the important bits.


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I have been doing some research on the WJ Grand Cherokee.

The wheel arches on this body are not standard spec wheel arches.

They do however, closely resemble an aftermarket flare option available for 1:1 rigs.

And this of course meant that a stock spec build was no longer a viable option.

So a trail worthy/overlander spec rig is now the new target.

Like all good scale builders, I have a "small" pile of used scale tyres and recently picked up some 1.7 wagon wheels.

I mounted some 1.55 Pitbull Growlers on the 1.7s and liked the result.



More of that later.

Before I started on mounting the body I relocated the rear shocks using SCX10 Shock hoops and some holey alloy I had previously made. The original shock hoops will be right where the rear seat needs to be so will be fed to the dremel.



Then of course the front also needed to be lowered, so I removed the 90mm dual springs, and installed a single 110mm spring onto the 90mm shock creating a semi droop configuration.



I had to adjust the panhard bar to suit of course.

I thought long and hard on how to mount the body on the chassis.

I had a couple of requirements to work within.

1. no visible bolts
2. needs to be secure - I wheel my rigs, no shelf queens here
3. won't be removed very often

In the end I came up with this. I started at the rear.

Some alloy brackets and a piece of 2mm Styrene. A careful observer will note the curved outer edge of the sytrene.









I applied a similar idea to the front. This time bolting under the servo.





The first test fit of the body went pretty well. You have to stretch the body to get the front bumper over the front mount.



Two things were immediately obvious.

The wheel base needs adjusting.



And the rear is too high.

I removed the alloy plate and bolted the top of the shock to the hoop itself, lowering the rear ride height.


I went ahead and mounted my 1.55 growlers on the other 1.7 wagon wheels.

This is the current stance. I like this a lot and certainly has the feel of a modified street driven trail/overland rig.





The rear of the body is a good 10mm wider than the front.







The skid plate is near even with the sills, and the lower links have a nice flat profile.



There is heaps of room inside for the interior.



And the front motor mount and transmission is tucked nicely under the front bonnet (hood).



There is more to be done with the body mounts to secure the body to the mount. It currently slides a bit left and right.

Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[H2Micr0]

One of the things bugging me about this body was the rear wheel arch shape.



You can see I marked out where I wanted to trim it and make it a bit squarer, more in line with how it should be.

A short time later and we have this.



Much better!



With that done it was time to take care of the original rear shock towers on the Cross Canyon Chassis.



With that done I could start on a floor for the interior.



This sits directly on the chassis.



Some alloy angle will be used as mounts.

Now the floor can't be as deep as I would prefer due to how high the chassis sits inside the body. The chassis rails are also in just the wrong position to make building a 'foot well' in the front possible.

The false floor with the body mounted.



I then checked the driver and passenger were going to sit OK within the body.







With no foot well the legs sit straight out.



This shouldn't be a problem once I build the dashboard and most of their legs will be hidden.

I also plan to do a small center console and possible some door cards.

Now I have a floor height set, work on the dash can commence.

Then I noticed the floor was not flat within the body. In fact it was over 10mm higher at the front than the back.

A small amount of difference is fine, but it really was just too much.

So I worked out a way to lift the body at the front.





I glued two spacers on the body. The front body mount used to sit under the grill at the top edge of the spacers. Now the body mount sits under the spacers in the small gap. This lifts the body and makes for a more sturdy mount.





This is how much I have to 'stretch' the body over the mount.



When finished it should only need to be removed for maintenance etc. The batteries will be accessible without removing the body.

Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[H2Micr0]

Well, much of my work above has now been altered.

I was messing around looking at electronic routing etc, and installing some drive shafts, and found a couple of things I really wasn't happy with.

First, I really didn't have a lot of vertical travel in the front suspension.

Second, the inside of the front tyres rubbed badly on the shocks on full lock and partial flex

Third, the back of the motor was touching the servo.

After sitting and looking, looking and sitting, drinking Pepsi Max, and looking some more I realised I had to move a few things around on the chassis, and that of course resulted in changing the location of the chassis inside the body, which of raised the floor height SIGH.

To fix the second problem first.

I drilled two extra holes in the top of the front shock hoops so I could move the shocks in closer to the center line of the axle.

This entailed relocating the the lower shock mount from the link bracket to a location on the diff housing. This had the side benefit of lifting the Chassis up around 10mm which helped mostly fix the first problem at the same time.

Original lower shock mount point.



New lower shock mount point.



New Shock location.



The new shock location is on the right.



This change worked great! The tyre barely touched the spring on full lock and articulation. No issue in my book.


Then I discovered problem 3.

This is the best pic I have of the actual issue.



I had originally thought it was missing by a whisker.

But when I tried to adjust the pinion mesh to the spur, it just wouldn't. And that was because of the interference between the motor and servo.

So, to fix that I had to move the entire front motor/trans mount backwards.

This then meant I couldn't use the shock holes I had just drilled. Not happy.

This is how it all sits now.



The top of the shocks are angled forward a little to use the front mounting points on the top of the shock hoop.

The one good point is that the COG moves back slightly in the car. It was rather forward.

OK let's recap.

Tyres no longer rub on shocks - Check.

Created more vertical upwards suspension travel in front - Check

Motor has plenty of clearance to servo - Check

Put body back on chassis and now the front sits WAY TO HIGH LOL.

No pic sorry of that.

To fix that I was able to get the front body mount to slide up higher to the same vertical position it used to be.



This of course meant the problem with the chassis being at a horrible angle in the body from front to back returned.

That meant that the rear body mount needed to be changed to allow the chassis to sit higher inside the body.

This is the original configuration.



And this is what I changed it too.



I also had to change the rear shock upper mounting location to move the rear tyres away from the body.

Now I had a chassis that was reasonably flat inside the body, enough suspension movement front and rear, and a floor that was too high for the driver to fit in without crushing his skull on the roof.

To fix that I made some drop sections in the floor for the seats to sit in.



A bit of leg surgery was required. Good thing they never get out of the car.



Both sides done.



Stop that monster, he cut off our legs!!!!!!



And now for some gratuitous flex shots.











Now I am back to thinking about the dash and interior and electronics etc.

Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[H2Micr0]

So I decided to test fit the glass to the body to see how much room I needed to allow for when I go to build the dash.

And found something odd.





See the gap?

After a bit of investigation I found the roof just behind the windscreen top appears to have a depression, almost like a heat fault with the body.

I tried to capture it on the camera, but is hard to see.







You have to push the glass, and subsequently the roof up quite firmly to get the glass to fit correctly.

Now I don't know if my body is the only one, so you others out there that grabbed one of these, please let me know if yours is the same.

So I thought about this issue for a bit, and came to the conclusion I needed a sunroof in the WJ.

A sunroof? Crazy man!!! How the hell would that fix the problem?

Well, the depression in the roof is right where a sunroof should be. By cutting out the depression, in theory, it should give the front of the roof less resistance to 'push' up with the glass.

Anyway, on to the pics.

Mark out the shape.



Feed the dremel. It was hungry.



Clean up the cuts with some files.



And yes my theory proved correct.

No pics yet, but the roof section is MUCH easier to bend up.

Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[H2Micr0]

Time to give this thing some life!!!

I worked out a way to mount the batteries and allow me to change them without removing the body.







And with the body on there is room for some protection and a hitch.





This pic isn't that great, but you get the notion of how low the 'fuel tank' is.



The electrics are also mounted up the back.

I am running an Axial Ae2, CC BEC, Integy Lathe 45t motor, and a cheap metal gear servo.





The Ae2 switch is mounted through the rear floor and while out of the way is accessible from underneath.





And now that I have batteries, and electrics mounted, there is only one logical thing for me to do.

TEST DRIVE!!!!!









WOW, as of right now, I am very impressed with this build on my test rock pile.

I took the time to finalise the rear body mount, fabricating some locking and locating tabs so the body couldn't slide around.







Now to get to work on the remaining things so I can get some paint down soon.

Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[H2Micr0]

I finally got down to it and started working on my very first scratch built dash.

I set myself some very reasonable goals.

1. I am NOT trying to build a replica of a real dashboard.

2. I AM trying to build something that represents an appropriate dashboard and that will look good in videos while on the move.

OK then.

Step 1.

I drew the basic shape of the curve of the dash and then shaped some other bits and pieces to match.





I then slotted another piece of stuff and my curvy shape thingos and slotted and glued them all together.







Hmmm, so far so good.

Then I grabbed some thin plasticky white sheet stuff and sorta wrapped it over my first creation and applied liberal amounts of paste to keep it all together. Heavy things to hold it down while glue dries.



First test fit.





I left it to dry for a few hours and came back to this.



I may have been a bit too generous with the paste application.

So a grabbed some more plasticky white sheet stuff, this time a bit thicker, and glued it over the first.





Well, that isn't too bad really!!!!

Then it dawned on me that I needed to fit the glass to the body and test fit the dash as the glass under the cowl was quite thick from memory.

First I had to work out how to secure and hold the leading edge of the windscreen to the cowl, given the previous mentioned warpage in the roof.

This is my solution, and I think will not look out of place when all done.









With that done I found I just couldn't get the dash to fit, even after much hacking with the dremel.

I realised in the end it was just too tall, so decided I needed to remove around 4mm from the overall height of the dash.

I peeled back the skin.



And just hacked away with the dremel.



Applied more adhesive paste and used my vice to lightly clamp it all back together for a couple of hours.



And it worked, I think.

Test fit back in the car with the glass in place.









I think that after I paint on the blackouts around the edges of the windscreen all will be hidden.

Obviously there is a lot more to do to the dash, but now the general structure is in place I can move forward with that.

I took it for another test drive with it all in place and it still drives really well.

Quite happy as it stands.

Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[H2Micr0]

With the dash main structure in place I moved to the rear of the car.

Having an 'Overland' theme, the WJ has drawers built into the back, which in my case will store all the electronics.

I carefully shaped the top of the drawers to suit.

The test fit went well.









Then I had a go at making a rear seat. I think this actually turned out pretty good.







And a test fit with some scale accessories in the back.



The seat base is glued to the floor section.



The rear 'drawers' and seat back are all one piece.





This really does add some depth and a sense of realism.







The hole in the top is to allow the battery wires to push up into this area as space is rather tight.



This scale storage box will be glued in place.



Now what could this be for????





Just some bits stuck together right?

Well after a bit of loving attention from my dremel we have this.





These added bits will look the part in pictures and videos of the rig. Experience shows me that in videos you see very little detail of the interior, but you need the basics to be there to help with the overall effect.





Still more to do on the interior, but nearly there.

Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[H2Micr0]

Even a Jeep needs a steering wheel.

But I didn't have one to use.

So I had a bit of a look around the Trailworx Garage and spotted something that I thought I could make work.



A wheel off a BMX toy my wife found for me at the $2 shop.

Riiiiiggggghhht, a steering wheel you say?????

It just takes a bit of imagination.





That should work.

Now for the steering column.



Feed the dremel a bit and you have this.





Cool, I like it.

Then I started work on a center console.





That adds more visual depth.



Also made some rear headrests.















Used some paper clips to install the headrests.



And finally started spraying some colour around.





Getting close to some body colour I think.

Hope you all like this simple interior job.

Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[H2Micr0]

I widened the floor of the interior to fill in the gaps down each side.



I painted the lower part of the rear cargo/drawer area and the bottom of the floor in Satin black.



The top and rear seat back were painted grey.



Then I used some some self adhesive felt and carpeted the top of the cargo shelf.





The storage box is glued in place and I played around with scale items for the rest of the shelf area.



I also wound down the drivers window.



I then painted the mask on the leading edge of the windscreen to hide the gap behind the dash.





Then decided the passenger wanted his window only partly wound down.



During this time the driver was replaced as who goes out wheeling in a suit????

Mocking up the interior and adding a few more detail items.





And that is the interior ready to go.

Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[H2Micr0]

I did go through a few options regarding paint, and then found this at Bunnings (local Hardware Store).



This is a new addition to the Rustoleom range here. We don't get the full options sadly.

This is Rose Gold Metallic.

Before paint, I went over the body with some files and sand paper. There are quite a few mold lines that need attention.

Then I primered the body.







Then followed up with the body colour. These are taken while still wet. Quite happy with the final product.









While that dried I did the interior and glass work in the above post.

I test fitted the glass, and just HAD to put the body on to see how it looked and I started blacking out the grill, adding mirrors etc.









After a bit of research I realised the model has had projector beam headlights fitted and as this is a mildly customised rig set about installing the aftemarket head light and tail light assemblies.





Using some spray paint in a paint lid and a fine brush worked my way around the detail parts on the body.









Then some silver paint for the lights front and back was added before rolling the assembled rig into the sunlight.



Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[H2Micr0]

Well, I am excited to say . . . . .

FINISHED!!!!!!!!!

Well for now, until you finish reading this post and watching the videos.

Let's face it, These things always have more to be done.

I expect this one to evolve with time like my D110 has.

OK enough of me blathering on, some pics would be good right?????

And a link to the first video????

Here we go.











Then I just HAD to take it out on the trails!! I mean this is not a Shelf Queen or Mall Crawler, nooooooooo.











I am REALLY stoked with how well this drives.

Surprisingly capable, and I look forward to trying it on some actual rock terrain soon.

Here is the Part 1 of the Grand's Maiden Voyage.

Thanks for following along on this build.

I wanted to be the first with a completed WJ and believe I have done it justice.

More 'Overland' type items will find their way on to this build, starting with some sliders, which it seems to need soon.

Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[H2Micr0]

The second part of the first run video is now published, so please enjoy.

Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[H2Micr0]

As I have a scale event planned for Dec 4th, and the D110 has a burnt out motor, I plan to use the Grand.

But it needs sliders.

The body did score some damage on it's first outing and I needed something to protect the lower edges.



The front and rear bars are an issue to be tackled later on, and may just need to get constant touch ups, or something a little more drastic. I will think on it.



OK, then sliders.

This is the under side of the Grand.



The challenge is to build something that will prevent any deflection of the sides and to protect the lower edge from further damage.

As you can see there is quite a void under here. The skid is approx 12mm higher off the ground than the sills.

I considered using sheet metal and tube to do the job, but mounting options were limited, and they would end up quite complicated and heavy.

So I opted to use the Handi Art board again.

Now a LOT of thought and Pepsi Max was consumed to get to this solution.









































I think the pics tell the tale.

As you can see I also incorporated front and rear wheel arch pieces. I still need to add inner fenders at some point though.

The black styrene skids are sacrificial and can be replaced if needed later on when worn to the point of uselessness.

Then I needed to take it out for a test run.









And they worked great!!.

The good part is that these slider boxes weight next to nothing yet are strong. They bolt to the underside of the floor so can be removed for repair etc if needed.

While functional, the black slider strips nicely balance out all of the gold paint work too.

Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[H2Micr0]

No, not done yet LOL.

For the scale event next weekend, I also want to pull the camper trailer.

So, I needed a hitch for the Grand.

First thing I did measure the hitch height of the D110. I want the hitch height to be close to that if possible so the draw bar of the camper trailer would still sit relatively level.

Firstly, what space do I have to work with?



Hmmmmm. The batteries sit under the 'fuel tank', so I need to factor that in.

I found some alloy angle in my pile of metal stock. Yes, this looks like a hitch, I can see it now.



The black line on the tape is the hitch height of the D110 transferred onto the Grand giving me a level to work to.

A quick chop here, another chop there, a bit of file work and the basic structure is coming together.





More chopping and a bit of bending gives us this.





The hitch will be bolted to the rear body mount and should be strong enough for it's intended purpose.





I painted it black before final fitting.



I think it looks appropriate, and we will find out soon enough if it can fulfil it's intended function.

Happy Trailing

Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[H2Micr0]

Set out this morning to do a steering servo swap, and got a bit carried away.

While I had it apart I painted the white body mounts black.



They were rather obvious under the guards.

Then I added a vitally important detail, that no Scale Builder should overlook.



Next up was an exhaust. Got to be able to listen to that V8 rumble!!



Decided to add my special Trailworx Garage number plates.





And installed some SDI wheel hubs.



As is often said, the details bring it to life.

I did get the 30gk Savox installed, and did a bit of maintenance, added some loctite where needed etc.

Then I spent a couple of hours modding a trailer with scale details that I had been playing with for the Shorty. I like it better this way.

Ready to for tomorrows scale run!!







Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[H2Micr0]

Sunday was a beautiful day here in Sydney Australia.

We hit the rocks and had a great day.

Here are some pics from the day.









We had a mix of experienced and new drivers. I enjoy sharing my knowledge with the new guys.

It is rewarding to see a new driver follow your advice on what line to use, where to place their tyres etc, and then the smile on their face when they drive up that climb is very satisfying.

The Grand performed great, and probably just needs a little bit of weight up front. That will come when I build the brush bar and add a winch later on.

I got some neat shots with the trailer during the day.













All up I spent around 6 hours wheeling the Grand. And I only had one grub screw back out.

Very VERY happy with how well it goes.

After my scale friends had departed I went back out and captured some video of the Grand and the Off Road Trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP4j6bHv98A

Thanks for following along with this build.

I will update it as things change.

Cheers
H2Micr0

 

[lzysmrf]

Looks great. Awesome work, and attention to detail. "thumbsup"

 

[chino63]

Another awesome boils with a generous sprinkle of scratch build for good measure.i really like the Rocker box/slider idea, came out great! "thumbsup"

 

[War Pig]

Great job on this rig! Saw it on Facebook a couple weeks ago, in fact I've had a picture of it on my phone since November 20th. I have a body coming in the mail to me right now. I'm excited to start building it here real soon.

 

[BigSki]

Great job ! I've owned a few of the 1:1 WJ's in the past ( or should I say, they've owned me!) I think that you have a nice, unique scaler to have fun with. Your color choice is almost spot on for a factory WJ color.

Be careful not to overheat that V8, it will drop the valve seats out of the head and then you'll have one hell of a mess on your hands. :mrgreen: