Eagle

Anyone who has been messing with cars (and trucks) for more than a couple of years has probably done that at least once. You lived through it, and now you know not to do it again. Happy New Year!

I have a set of four of what I call "honeycomb" Cherokee alloy wheels (I've also seen them called the "lace" design), but I only have one of the center caps. Not sure if what I have is even the correct center -- it's black, with the word "JEEP" inside a ring that's about 1/4 of an inch wide. The wheels were originally gold, but have been repainted silver/aluminum. Does anyone have a set of wheel centers that will fit these wheels?

16? That's an unusual size for an almost stock MJ tire. What are you running for wheels?

Yep. And those rigs had a special version of the differential made by a company I used to work for. They also have a special version of the transfer case.

May your Jeeps always keep the rubber side down.

Guess not.

What do I win if I tell you? (Yes, I do know. There are a lot of them around and they have diesel engines.)

He still has his truck with a clean title, and the damage is being repaired. That's what counts. Just remember that you can go to a body shop of YOUR choice. And if the repair cost comes to more once the shop gets into it, the insurance company is still on the hook. Many years ago I had a full-zize Cherokee with a snow plow. Doing a driveway, I was stopped at the side of the road, Jeep was "state highway orange" in color, and I had a strobe on the roof. Teen-age girl in her mother's brand new XJ came tearing down the road, much too fast for snowy, slushy conditions, and slide into my left rear quarter panel. No question of fault. Her insurance said they'd pay. I took my truck to the shop my family had used for a couple of generations. They found a couple of things the adjuster had missed, called the adjuster, he agreed and gave them a go-ahead. Right at the end, they realized that the new rear quarter panel had a different opening for the gas filler. The old style was just a round hole for a plain, round gas cap. The new one (all that was available) was for the Grand Wagoneer style, which had a larger cap and a trim ring around the opening. The adjuster balked at paying for the extra parts to finish out the gas filler because it was an "upgrade." I reminded him that (1) it wasn't my idea to have his client run into the back of my Jeep, and (2) she had rear ended me and all I asked for was to have my Jeep repaired. I basically asked him if he really wanted me to visit a neurologist to see if I had any whiplash injury from the accident. He authorized the new parts.

I've been running one in my '88 Cherokee for fifteen years. I'm basically at sea level -- you will NOT see any difference in performance, but if you drive gently you will see an improvement in gas mileage. All the high altitude CPS does is allow the timing to advance a bit farther. But when you drive peddle to the metal, the engine is always at the point of detonation and the knock sensor is controlling how far the timing can advance -- so under heavy load or heavy acceleration, the knock sensor overrides the CPS and doesn't allow that extra 2 degrees of ignition advance to kick in. Where it does become operative is at cruise throttle.

Exactly as Gogmorgo wrote: It depends. I had a Trailmaster 4" lift that used AALs in the rear. Rancho has a full-length (sort of) for the XJ and MJ that gives about 1-1/2" when installed in an MJ. Keep in mind that the more lift you get from an AAL, the stiffer the ride. Your ideal is probably to combine a modest AAL with longer shackles to make up the total of 3-1/2".

Ah! I see the plan. The problem with that plan is that the motor mount brackets are arms that stick out from the sides of the block and sit on top of the "frame" ears. Unless you want to fight with the bolts holding the motor mount brackets to the block, the motor has to come out by being lifted off the frame ears, it can't be dropped through them.

You can swap the drive train from one vehicle to the other, but not by swapping bodies. The XJ is completely unibody, and the Comanche is unibody to the back of the cab, with a frame grafted onto the back behind the cab for the box. The axle ratios for the 4-banger is probably 3.55, the 4.0L is 3.08.

You don't use it to heat the engine -- you leave it plugged in while the vehicle is parked so it's partially warmed up when you go to start it. I guess if you park the MJ for a week (or weeks) at a time, the drill would be to plug it in Friday night to be ready to go on Saturday morning.

I agree that yours are not factory mirrors or brackets. Does your truck have the vertical reinforcing member inside the doors? (Part #5 in Hornbrod's diagram.)

The factory unit was a freeze plug heater. I put one in an '88 XJ that I fixed up for an ex-GF who moved to Montana. It went on the left side of the block, IIRC in the front-most freeze plug hole.

True. I don't know how old your mother is, but I went to high school in the early 1950s and the "cool" cars then had the rear suspension dropped (to the point that some actually put small wheels under the rear bumper to protect it when entering driveways and such), with fender skirts for the rear wheel cutouts and continental spare tire carriers. There were some cars like that in the student lot at my high school that would easily win first prize if they showed up at any hot rod show today -- and they were the kids' daily drivers. What goes around, comes around.

There is no difference between 2WD steering and 4WD steering. The pitman arm is the same. As to the transfer case, what are you using for a shift linkage? The YJ linkage is very different from the XJ/MJ linkage and works in the reverse direction. In other words, you may be pushing when you should be pulling.

Dunno if you understood what Shelbyluvv wrote. There's a difference between "totalled" and "can't be fixed." "Totalled" is an insurance term, it doesn't mean it can't be fixed. Almost any damage can be repaired. The problem is that, if the cost to repair the damage exceeds the blue book value of the vehicle, the insurance company will only pay you the blue book value. That's supposed to "make you whole," in legal language, by giving you enough money to buy a replacement vehicle of supposedly comparable value. And when the insurance company hands you that check, they take title to your vehicle. If you want to keep it, then you have to buy it back from them by giving them back some of the money they just handed you. You can then use whatever's left over to try to repair the truck yourself. But ... the insurance company will have reported the VIN to the motor vehicle department as having been totalled, so that goes on your title. To register the truck again, you'll have to go through whatever inspection hoops your state has set up for inspecting vehicles that have been rebuilt from salvage. That's why the suggestion to try to avoid directly involving the insurance company.

Look everywhere. If the bumper is bent, most likely the frame is bent. I don't understand how a rear-end collision could push the engine into the radiator. Check your motor mounts.

Many, many people have done this. What you need to be aware of is that there is a slight difference in deck height between the 4.0L and 4.2L engines. If you do the "budget stroker" using stock 4.2L connecting rods, using OEM replacement pistons results in a bump in compression ratio that usually causes detonation problems. At least one of the companies that sold shop-built stroker engines used 4.0L rods with custom pistons. Other people deal with it by doing things like polishing and enlarging the combustion chambers in the head, and running a cam with enough overlap to effectively lower the compression. I remember at least one person who ran two head gaskets to decrease the compression -- but I don't recall how long that held together. By all means, spend a lot of time reading Dino's web site. Zero in on discussions of "quench."

You have to stop reading sources that don't know anything. That isn't true. My '88 Chief has a YJ transmission, transfer case, tranny shifter and transfer case shifter in it -- it was that way when I bought it. The transfer case shifter would have hit the dash, so it was cut off. The tranny shifter doesn't hit the dash.

Lock cylinders are set to work with keys by inserting the key and then filing the pins flush. Buy your new cylinder, then take it and your key to a locksmith. It shouldn't take him more than ten minutes to set the cylinder to work with that key.

If you have a '91 or '92, you can buy a high performance chip for the ECU. It increases power, but you have to run high-test gas with it. No, there is no chip available for the Renix years.

That's a YJ shifter. Much too high for an XJ/MJ.

The easiest way is to buy a Chief or Limited instrument cluster with the tach, and just swap the clusters. The wiring is already there. Since you have a Pioneer, your should already have gauges rather than idiot lights, so you wouldn't have to change any sensors.