First time buyer..needs advice

First time Jeep buyer looking desperately for a Wrangler for my son. We finally (seems like Jeeps are tough to find in my area) found the perfect '98, both tops, clean, 64K, great looking rig. The bad news is it has a cracked exhaust manifold. I'm thinking this wouldn't be a big deal to fix and might provide a little father/son getting to know the vehicle weekend. Are there other problems that a cracked manifold could cause that I'm not thinking about? I did notice it had a new radiator hose on it and I think they didn't put a thermostat in it as the heater never did warm up. It seems to run fine other than that.

Cracked manifold seems to be a common problem in that year. There may be a recall on it so check at the dealer.

Problems from cracked manifold shouldn't be bad, unless the hot exhaust was venting onto wires or other parts that would suffer from the heat.

I'd make sure there's no thermostat prior to buying it; if there is one then you have a heating problem.