I'm on the east coast. You want to look for the rust.
Get under and look at the "sils" (area under the door, just in case it's not really called that). If this area is not rusted then the rest of the zuke should be pretty good. In my experience if this is good then it's a good start. If it's bad then look everywhere. The sils are not too hard to fix. 4X4 square tubing and then it's stronger than stock.
wipers are a big problem and a pain to fix. Look around where the arm comes out of the window frame. If it's cracked or warped, this means the arms are seized or almost seized. The solutions to this is to yank out the dash and take it all apart. I'll try to take some pics of one of my solutions...words cannot describe. While you are in there you should take the heater core out and wash it....there is a 99% chance that there is a ton of leaves/mud/crap on top of the core and it'll stop the air flow and give you no way to keep the window defrosted.
Lock the hubs and get back under. try to spin the front drive shaft, if it spins then one hub is not working. just a hub is not a big problem. at the same time you can check the u-joints. Push up on everything..t-case, tranny and all big parts. Look for broken mounts.
get in and fire it up, try it out. In 4x4 cut the wheels to the left/right and then drive in the tight circle....if you hear a clicking noise coming out of the corner then your birfield joint is dry/worn out. If you can find a used spare then it's not so bad. You should take the whole front apart as soon as you get it home to grease all the bearings and parts.
If the body is good then the rest is easy to work with.....if the body is shot and the rest is good then it's just a pain to work with. IF iiit's got new paint then look closely.
If you were to give me just a bare tub with no rust or a complete running zuke with a rusty body then I'd take the tub hands down.....
take some pics and post them.....pics are good.
