Mods vs Resale

sgmartz said:

Curious to get feedback from everyone on how you think about mods to your TJ, do you factor in resale or not? Specifically what I am thinking about is I want to get some sliders and am looking at the boat style versus others. I am still a little uncertain where I am going long term with my build. I have not decided to do a full blow dedicated trail rig and would like to keep it always street capable. For this style of slider, it requires bending back or cutting the excess from the tub. I had been thinking I would always like to return it to stock if I ever want to sell it. As long as it’s street able and capable of doing 65, I don’t really care personally. I am also thinking about high line fenders down the road. Have others thought of this? Would like to hear your considerations. Thanks!

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If you plan on resale ,don’t do anything extra to it.

As a rule people in general are afraid of one heavily modified-

And I have seen owners struggle to sell one that is especially if they’re trying to get a lot of their money back

It really gets down to how desirable the vehicle is- I have an LJ Rubicon that is pretty low mileage and was modified very tastefully and correctly with great components- I was willing to pay really good money to get the vehicle.

If it had looked radical and had an unknown history and lift parts I didn’t recognize, I would have likely shied away.

There’s no hard answer to your question the cars how much somebody desires something is the name of the game-

I am going to venture to say I think most of us on here don’t even fool ourselves thinking we’re going to get any significant portion of additional money or time back at the point of resell- what we want to get back is the enjoyment that we get right now, and we do.

Most of us love jeeps. A lot.

Ignore resale and build the thing you want.

Standard sliders vs mini boatside is irrelevant for resale. Both result in a bunch of holes in the tub. And if some weirdo buys your Jeep and doesn't like them, standard sliders cover up the folded over body seam. It simply doesn't matter.

There’s an old saying

“Buying a car and not driving it or making it what YOU want is like dating and saving her virginity for the next guy”

I modify EVERYTHING i buy to my hearts content
Old guys get angry with my protouring mods to classic cars, but ZFG….theyre mine. Same philosophy you should have with YOUR vehicles

I don’t look to get any of my money back from mods. I do the mods because it is what I want to do to improve it, make it work for me. I try and make those mods decent quality and complete. Same as @AndyG there will be a fair amount of people who shy away from a heavily modded Jeep, I am one. I prefer to get one as close to stock as possible and do my own mods so I know what has been done. When my daughter was looking for JK crawled under too many jeeps and back out saying “Nope” as things just didn’t look right.

Guess bottom line, I do the mods for what I will enjoy from them. Then again I don’t plan on selling anytime soon. Had YJ for 9 years, sold it. Now 30 years later back to LJR and JKUR and no plans of selling the LJR. I have to admit it crosses my mind to sell the JK every now and then. But enjoy having them around. Not to mention the wife has a JKU too.

My TJ has plenty of mods. When I was gonna sell it, folks on here told me most wouldn't want it because they would prefer to built it themselves. They were 100% correct. I didn't sell it and added more mods...

The mods don't really add to resale unless you have Dana 60 axles front and rear, Atlas TC, LS swap, 37's or 40's, etc. One type of sliders isn't really going to be valued much over another.

Just figure for every $1000 you spend on mods, expect it to be worth maybe $100 in resale aside from major upgrades, some listed above. Don't buy a new $1000 soft top expecting to get that money back.

I’ve found that the best investment when selling a vehicle is to get it professionally detailed. That is unless it’s a total POS in the first place. Upgrades do not matter much to me. I start at BB value.

Somewhat. Bolt on things not so much but the moment welding and cutting gets involved then there is some consideration. How the mods are executed really determines resale, did you use a known longstanding reputable brand or something from china at 4WPs? Are the welds just globbed up or was it a pulsed MIG or TIG?

As far as resale of the mods themselves, I cant speak for Jeep but I get all my money back with Toyota.