Welp; going to Target in [MENTION=4700]Miss Esa[/MENTION]'s new Cherokee we heard some unpleasant clunk from the rear suspension coming into the parking lot, and I noticed the rear passenger side suspension was sitting nearly 2 inches lower than the driver side.
I knew going into getting the Jeep that the rear leafs both looked pretty spent, and inspecting the underside nothing stood out to me as having 'collapsed' at the time.
I had some more time to spend under the truck today, and found that the rear bump stops were about gone, which between that and the tired rear leafs likely explains the Clunk we heard. Unfortunately I made a different discovery up stream from the bump stops that neither myself or the PO were aware of:
May be hard to gauge from the picture, but there is a solid 6-8 inches of Unibody frame missing that's about 1.5-2 inches wide under the passenger side rear of the truck. This is located between where the front and rear of the leaf mounts up to the unibody, so I'm rather alarmed to find this as I was about to drop a few hundred dollars on new leaf packs and rear suspension.
So First question: Is this an immediately dangerous/structural problem given where it's located in relation to the suspension?
Second question(s): How on earth would someone go about getting this repaired? Anyone have a shop where they've had this kind of repair done that they'd recommend? How much would it cost?
I knew going into getting the Jeep that the rear leafs both looked pretty spent, and inspecting the underside nothing stood out to me as having 'collapsed' at the time.
I had some more time to spend under the truck today, and found that the rear bump stops were about gone, which between that and the tired rear leafs likely explains the Clunk we heard. Unfortunately I made a different discovery up stream from the bump stops that neither myself or the PO were aware of:
May be hard to gauge from the picture, but there is a solid 6-8 inches of Unibody frame missing that's about 1.5-2 inches wide under the passenger side rear of the truck. This is located between where the front and rear of the leaf mounts up to the unibody, so I'm rather alarmed to find this as I was about to drop a few hundred dollars on new leaf packs and rear suspension.
So First question: Is this an immediately dangerous/structural problem given where it's located in relation to the suspension?
Second question(s): How on earth would someone go about getting this repaired? Anyone have a shop where they've had this kind of repair done that they'd recommend? How much would it cost?