Greetings and seeking KJ wisdom

Greetings all, just bought our first KJ, its a 123,00ç mile 07 Liberty Limited. Typical rust, mechanically sound.
Needs ball joints for sure, any guidance on 2 inch lift while doing the suspension work appreciated.
I bought this thing to pull our clean TJ off the roads for winter. I know nothing about it until 2 weeks ago.

SmoothinWI said:

Greetings all, just bought our first KJ, its a 123,00ç mile 07 Liberty Limited. Typical rust, mechanically sound.
Needs ball joints for sure, any guidance on 2 inch lift while doing the suspension work appreciated.
I bought this thing to pull our clean TJ off the roads for winter. I know nothing about it until 2 weeks ago.

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If it were me, i would not spend the cash for a lift, since the body is rusty. I have 2 of these. 04 and 06. Neither worthy of a lift imo.

Weld it up first, it doesn't have a chassis so the rust massively affects the strength of the body.

KJowner said:

Weld it up first, it doesn't have a chassis so the rust massively affects the strength of the body.

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Tell me what you mean by "weld it up".
I bought this thing for a winter beater with a heater. Perhaps I will forget about lifting it and just spray foam the holes with Great Stuff and spray bomb the crap out of it. Spend some money on the brakes and suspension.

Can you post pics of your KJ? It would be easier to see what kind of structural issues the rust might be causing, if any.

SmoothinWI said:

Tell me what you mean by "weld it up".
I bought this thing for a winter beater with a heater. Perhaps I will forget about lifting it and just spray foam the holes with Great Stuff and spray bomb the crap out of it. Spend some money on the brakes and suspension.

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I mean the sills etc are structural, if you have major corrosion there it will have lost a lot of strength, they normally rot out there. Spray foam is not a good idea, it holds the water in there and makes it rot faster + it only adds the illusion of strength!
There are new panels available that will sort it out properly and give you a strong safe car that will give you years of winter service.

Ours had some rocker rust (holes), toward the rear, and it is lifted (10 years now). Has not been a problem - it is largely a daily-driver; not an offroad machine. The plastic rocker covers retained moisture and mud over the years. I cut off the rough stuff cleanly. Then used rust converter, primer, and rust paint along the bottom 5" or so. I know there are replacement full-length rockers to weld in, but I think I may form my own weld-in patches instead.

I chose the Teraflex spacer lift years ago. There are now knockoffs of that too

The outer rocker is just a thin cover panel, inside is the heavier structural steel, I put some pictures on here of mine when I welded it up, the rust you see outside is tiny compared to the rust inside on the structural stuff, I had new inner sills folded up by a sheet metal shop so I could just chop all the rotten metal out and weld new in.
We have annual inspections so any structural rot take the car off the road.