New to me 96 cruiser located in Massachusetts Lots of plans lots of questions

[Stoby]

Been an on & off roader off & on for most of my life. Been into 2 wheel woods riding heavily the past few years Ride a great bike Gasgas 300. Decided to due some 4 wheeling esp.since winter kills my 2 wheel fun.Was looking at jeeps and 80s Found what seems to be a nice 96 low mile 115k never wheeled vehicle at what I thought was high but fair price. She has F+R lockers but is gonna need a complete going over as I am pretty sure previous owner did nothing but oil changes. I've always loved the 80series i used to work for toyota in 96 and I thought they were the b@&&s. Only thing i liked better was the supra turbo -different type of fun. I've been a car guy all my life in the business one way or another always - Tech / sales / towing. Have an abundance of cool tools and a little bit of skill
i belong to a bunch of forums so i have an idea how to search and not ask too many of the same ?s everyone else has. look forward to learning and hopefully sharing.My plans are to do a basic maintenance then 2-3 inch lift and see what i can make myself for cool accessories,- bumpers, skid plates, racks etc.
Anyone want to chime in on what I should do and issues that are common to watch out for and things that needed to be serviced by now I'd appreciate it. Again I'm at 115k miles -all street but I dont believe anythings ever been done besides oil changes
Thanks
Stoby

 

[Chris]

Welcome Stoby. Looking forward to seeing your progress.

This is a UK based forum and therefore predominately UK based members, but not exclusively. The biggest issue we face here is rust. Yotas are not by their nature given to rust, but here we salt our roads in the Winter and no one does a chassis wash in the Spring. I would imagine that a very different climate over there means that yours will look significantly newer than our examples. Having said that, the rust typically only affect the rear tail gate, top of the windscreen and some areas low down in the body cavities. But what it does do is make them harder to work on with snapping bolts and seized diff lock motors. A 96 with 115k sounds like a brand new one!

For general off road, the 80 doesn't need much protection underneath and a lot of it just adds weight. A medium lift sounds good, lengthen the bump stops when you do though and get some decent tyres on. It's all just a question of how far you want to go.

Chris