Eagle

It would be great if some of you who bought it would post reviews. That one 5-star review is getting lonely ...

Former Javelin and AMX owner here. I bought a 1968 Javelin sight-unseen with my combat pay from Vietnam, and it was waiting for me when I came home. The next year my brother bought an AMX, and we plus a friend created the Javelin/AMX Sports Car Club. I believe our state club was the first in the country. Welcome aboard.

When I bought my '88 MJ it had a 4" lift installed by the previous owner. It was a TrailMaster lift, with coils and control arm drop brackets for the front and a short add-a-leaf in the rear, along with a set of TrailMaster shocks that would shake your fillings out just driving down the interstate. After a year or so, I had had enough and I pulled the lift out, restoring the truck to factory ride height. I had a complete set of shocks from a stock height XJ that one of the guys in NAXJA gave me for my help in installing a lift on his XJ. The front shocks, of course, bolted right in. Not so the rear. The XJ rear shocks, when fully extended, were about a half inch too short to reach from the lower mounting stud to the upper mounting stud. I had to head over to Advanced Auto and grab a set of Gabriel rears for the MJ.

How old are the spark plug wires? Have you tested them for continuity and resistance?

The ZJ was intended to be the replacement/update for the XJ.

Heh, heh ... At one time I owned the '88 Jeep XJ and a 1993 Honda Accord 4-door sedan. Guess which one was built entirely in the U.S. and guess which one had more American-made parts in it?

True. Chrysler killed the Comanche because it was too much competition for the Dakota. Also, IMHO AMC royally screwed up by not offering an extended cab. My first XJ/MJ was a 1988 XJ that I purchased new. I really wanted to buy an MJ ... but I needed more secure interior storage space than the MJ offered, so I had to settle for an XJ. An extended cab MJ would have been a game changer.

I disagree that the Comanche was ever, in any way, a replacement for the Scrambler. The Scrambler was a stretched CJ.

The swing arm on the rear load-sensing valve should be approximately horizontal (parallel to the axle). For the rear, your shoes have material left, but I would replace the wheel cylinders. Here's my view on why: As with most (probably all) front disk/rear drum brake systems, there's a basic problem. Disk brakes are always adjusted. When you take your foot off the brakes, there aren't springs that move the pads away from the rotors -- all that happens is that the pressure is removed. That doesn't work for the rear, because the rear brakes are "servo assisted." This is why it's important to not get the front and rear shoes on each side reversed. When the vehicle is moving forward, once the shoes make contact with the drum the friction tries to rotate the whole assembly, and the geometry of the internal parts is such that the rotation increases the pressure. This doesn't happen in reverse, which is why your parking brake may hold the truck when you're pointing downhill, but not when you're pointing uphill. So you have all those springs and things to pull the shoes away from the drum when the brakes aren't applied. But ... because the front pads are always ready to rock and roll, it doesn't take a lot of peddle movement to engage the fronts. Once the rear shoes get worn, they may not be making much (or any) contact by the time the front pads are fully deployed. The rear brakes are equipped with self adjusters, but those only work if you back up "smartly" and then slam on the brakes -- multiple times. I suspect that you, like most MJ drivers, are actually driving around using only the front brakes because the rears aren't properly adjusted. With my '88 XJ (which is by far my highest mileage of the fleet), I've replaced the front pads probably three times for each time I've replaced the rear shoes. Why? Because the rears aren't doing anything -- and I used to be sort of anal about adjusting them manually every few months. One of the side effects of that is that the seals inside the rear wheel cylinders get gummed up and don't like to move. Once that happens, even if the shoes are properly adjusted you still won't have rear brakes. Wheel cylinders are cheap. Just replace them.

That's understood. I'm not so naive that I don't understand why companies need to have a presence on channels like Instagram and Fecesbook. I'm not sold on Tiktok, though. People with a 15-second attention span are just going to jump to the next time waster, not buy expensive products. My point is simply that for vehicles such as the Comanche, if those are your only ways of promoting your company and your product -- you're going to miss a lot of prospective customers. Speaking only for myself, although I know I'm not alone in this, it's not just that I don't like those sites. I don't have an Instagram account. I don't have a Fecesbook account. I don't have a Tiktok account. I never will have accounts on any of them, and I never look at them. Yes, I'm a Luddite -- but I'm also the demographic that cares about old Comanches.

A quart a week is a lot. How did this dealership diagnose crankshaft walking? If that's really happening, how long ago was the rebuilt engine installed? A new or newly-rebuilt engine should not have that -- so I'd look into whether it's covered by whatever warranty you got with the engine. If it's a scored crank -- one of the "name" gasket and seal companies (FelPro, maybe) makes a rear main seal for the Jeep 4.0L engine with a double wiper lip -- precisely to address this issue. I would try that first. Looking at alternatives, I think that almost has to be the cheapest thing to try first.

Tiktok?!?!?! Real men don't do Tiktok. Seriously -- if you want to reach olde phartes like me, you need something other than Tiktok, Instagram and Fecesbook.

You guys do spectacular videos. Well done. And it's wonderful to see such a well set-up Comanche out doing what Comanches should be out doing.

No, they are not. The reason the newer owners' manual says they aren't is because Jeep lost a huge lawsuit when some kids were killed when an older Jeep rolled over and the "roll bar" didn't protect them. Jeep argued that it was a "show bar," not a "roll bar," and that they never promised that it had any protective capability. The jury didn't buy that. So Jeep, instead of beefing up the bars to make them effective, just starting printing literature saying the roll bars are not intended to provide roll-over protection.

Better in some ways, worse in others. No difference in strength. The short tailshaft housing has a seal that rides directly on the tailshaft, so when you pull the driveshaft the fluid doesn't run out. Not a big deal when working under the vehicle at home, but if you experience a rear drive problem on a trail and need to drive using just the front (with no rear driveshaft), there's no worry about losing all the tranny fluid before you get off the trail. The newer ones also supposedly have a true neutral position, for flat towing. I haven't tested it, but what I've read is that on the older ones the neutral position disconnects the engine from the driveshafts, but leaves the front and rear locked together -- which is not good for towing any distance. BUT ... that long, unsupported length of tailshaft hanging out there is extremely prone to driveline vibrations.

That's really unfair. Amazon's shipping has been getting worse and worse. I have had two recent instances where the tracking information says the package was handed to a resident. But I'm the only resident, and nobody handed anything to me. In fact, one time last summer I was in the driveway tinkering with one of the XJs when an Amazon truck rolled in. I wanted to save the guy some steps so I put down my tools, walked over, and offered to take it from him right at the truck. He said no, the rules required that he put it on the doorstep and take a photo -- which he proceeded to do. Neither of the "handed to a resident" deliveries had a photo, of course. I spotted the first one about a week later -- in the weeds behind the mailbox at the side of the road, between the stone wall and the mailbox post. The second was just a few days ago. It was dropped on the grass beside the driveway about 30 or 40 feet from the house. There were tire marks on the grass, so my guess is that he drove the nose of the truck onto the grass and just dropped it out of the window.

I have one of these, which by digital standards is pretty ancient: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minolta_Dimage_A1 It takes CF cards, of which I have a couple because my Canon EOS Rebel also uses CF cards. But this Minolta (which I got used) came with a MicroDrive card. MicroDrive was an IBM achievement back in the day. It's the same length and width as a CF card, but a little bit thicker. And inside is a very tiny, physical hard drive. The MicroDrive worked for a while after I got the camera, but it eventually died and I now have a CF card in it.

Pull the flares and save them. The backing plates, too. The studs on the backing plates can be drilled out and replaced. Regardless of what anyone tries to tell you, the MJ rear flares are NOT the same as XJ 2-door rear flares (which are the same as XJ 4-door rear flares). As far as I know, nobody makes replacements for the MJ rear flares. The one that's damaged can be rebuilt by plastic welding.

A friend of mine and his brother inherited a near perfect building with their father died. It used to be a gas station and independent garage. The pumps and tanks are gone, lifts have been removed, but it's a 3-bay garage with a small office area and a rest room. They're asking $4,800 per month -- which is the going rate. The kind of buildings you can rent for cheap are out in the boonies, and basically abandoned. Some may not even be safe.

You call that "ancient"? Ancient is cameras that use -- you know -- FILM. I have 3-1/2" floppies if you want a couple. [Edit to add] It says "Dual Media." What are the dual media. Does it also take CF cards, or does that just means standard and high-density 3-1/2" floppies?

One of the guys in the North Atlantic chapter of NAXJA did this in Pennsylvania. He's a member of this site, too, but I won't mention his name without his permission. My fuzzy recollection is that it was an old service station that had been out of active use for quite some time. I don't remember the details. I had my eye on two such places not too far from me. They had been empty for a good number of years. And then one day they were gone -- POOF! Demolished. There is now a self-storage warehouse on one of the sites, and the other site is still vacant and up for sale.

The brace install video led me to this one. I really like the way you have your truck set up for overlanding. Very well thought out.

The Park interlock shouldn't affect turning the engine off. You can do that with the transmission in gear. The interlock only affects turn the key far enough to lock the steering column and remove the key. You may need to adjust the ignition switch push rod in the steering column, or you may need a new key cylinder.

I've been wrenching for 65 years and I've never seen a spark plug that looked like that.

Guys, once again I'd like to thank each of you who bought a copy from the bottom of my heart. I wish you could all have seen her face when she opened the copy I gave her and she realized that it was HER book. I had wanted to catch it on my cell phone, but her parents are very concerned about privacy, especially when it involves their children, so I gave up on that idea.