Looking to get a '99 Cherokee. Are they good vehicles? I've just always liked the way they look and I'm pretty broke (have about $3k to spend.) I live a pretty /out/ lifestyle, never get snow where I live, just want something that I can throw anything in the back of, toss kayaks onto, chuck my shepherd in the back and hit the trails. Needs to be reliable enough to be my daily.
Are there better options?
>better options
not for $3k. unless you can find a clean H1 for that price.
H1s start at 10x that, Dumbfuck
Spend half your budget or less on the Jeep and just hold the other half for parts and you'll be happy.
get a job then faggot
Is there anything I should know about it? Is it even worth buying?
Well I'm assuming you're in the US. The XJ is a good vehicle, it just breaks especially with trail use. Parts are cheap though and the XJ is easy to work on. I would suggest getting a manual. I recently got a ZJ for my wife and she refuses to learn manual. The automatic transmission feels pretty slippy sometimes and it's a source of worry for me. Also the dash is much more complex than on an XJ so hopefully nothing goes wrong in there.
It breaks? Like how? Are there any problem areas I should prepare for?
Well, I replaced the radiator on mine immediately. They can be hard on universal joints and shit. I mean, it's rugged but it's a light truck if you go hard on a trail you'll break stuff sooner or later. You'll probably still be able to drive it - mine never overheated even with the leaking radiator - but you just have to maintain them. It's much better to have money in the bank to fix anything that might or might not go wrong than to tax your budget on something with a reputation of "more reliable" and need to fear breaking something and not being able to afford to fix it.
Makes sense. So say I found one for $1200, what should I put the extra money towards that would minimize the amount of time I need to spend working on it?
They're OK but you should be able to get a 4runner on that budget that will be less costly in maintenance.