Eagle

How will your truck be used? Street? Highway? Off-road? Are you looking for good ride, good suspension control for high speed, or maximum articulation for rock crawling?

A failing fuel pump would not interrupt the spark, and therefore would not cause the tachometer to drop to zero while the engine is turning over in gear at highway speed. In this case, I think it has to be ignition related. CPS would be a good place to start.

I'd say it has to be ignition. The tachometer is electronic, not mechanical. If the engine stops firing but the vehicle is in gear and rolling, the engine will still be turning and a mechanical tach would still be showing RPMs. The electronic tach actually has no idea what the engine is doing, it's just counting ignition pulses. So if the tach drops to zero -- the ignition isn't firing momentarily. I would suggest focusing on that.

TIRE BALANCE!

That one was done using a full-length longbed box. Where my wife came from in South America, 4-door pick-em-ups are very popular. The beds are big enough to be useful (longer than a Cheromanche), but not even the six feet of an MJ shortbed. I think the boxes on those South American trucks are about five feet. I think a dual can MJ built on a shortbed would look okay. Yes, it would have a long wheelbase, but I've driven some dual cab full-size pickups. Those require a master mariner's license for piloting an ocean liner.

IMHO Jeep really screwed the pooch when they came out with the MJ. There is no usable storage inside the cab. They had the 2-door XJ, so they could easily have based the MJ on a 2-door XJ unibody, provided a smidge of interior storage space, and given better access to the space behind the seat all in one shot. Doing it the way they did was, IMHO, incredibly shortsighted.

The '87 isn't even OBD1. OBD1 came the Jeep in the 1991 model year. The Renix system used a proprietary scan tool. There were some professional grade scanners that had adapters and software to read Renix, but be sure that's what you're getting before you buy. Also, keep in mind that the Renix system doesn't store codes. Scanning a Renix is watching the data in real time, but if the engine won't start and run, there's nothing to read.

Lowe's? Home Depot? NAPA? http://www.amazon.com/300-Piece-Snap-Ring-Shop-Assortment/dp/B000K7GREQ%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q%26tag%3Dduckduckgo-d-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB000K7GREQ Got a Harbor Freight near you? http://www.harborfreight.com/225-piece-retaining-ring-assortment-67654.html

I'm 100% on your side. And for me the same applies to Jeeps, firearms, or houses. Some years ago I looked at a house that was in my price range and looked good in the listing. On the way to see it the broker told me that the seller was a single woman and that some relative (an uncle, IIRC) was helping her out by fixing up some things to get the house ready to sell. OMFG! Doors that weren't straight. New roof shingles that looked like they were put down by a drunk at midnight. And it just got worse from there. After about five minutes I told the agent I was not interested. I also suggested that he tell the woman if she wanted to sell the house NOT to let her [uncle] touch one single thing more. I bought my '88 MJ Chief with a lift installed NOT because it had a lift, but because it was an MJ and I wanted to rescue it from the dweeb who had been hacking on it. The selling price was a lot lower than what he was asking, and I wasn't about to go a penny higher. I ran it with the lift for two years, I think, then took it out and put the suspension back to factory configuration. Working on a truck like that is an exercise in ambivalence for me -- I HATE seeing what people do to perfectly good vehicles, but I derive a lot of satisfaction when I'm able to satisfactorily undue the destruction. The bottom line is that, for most people, NOBODY else would modify a Jeep exactly the way you would want it. And for that reason, IMHO it's just plain silly to expect someone else to pay top dollar for your mo=difications.

Not at all the same thing. Lots of people have done the Cheromanche mod, and you get a vehicle that has a load bed that's no more than two feet long. Now HERE's a nice crew cab XMJ:

I didn't know it was 'shopped. Even so, it shows what an MJ would look like if stretched to accommodate 2-door XJ doors, and that was the question to which I was responding. Nice 'shop job -- one of these days I need to learn Photoshop.

As has been said, anything can be fixed -- the question is how much work and how many dollars will be needed. The way to repair it would be to buy a parts Cherokee, cut the frame stubs off both cabins, and wend the XJ front assembly onto the MJ cabin. A decent body shop could do that easily, but they have the necessary frame jigs to make it come out straight. The cost would be prohibitive. Trying to do it at home would be a monumental undertaking. Option number two might actually be less work, although it sounds counterintuitive. There was a guy who was very active in NAXJA-NAC in the early years. He had an '86 XJ, and he wanted a 4.0L. But he liked the rest of his vehicle. So his friend, who owned a small used car lot and shop, took an '88 or '89 XJ and sliced it in half just behind the A pillar. He did the same with Earl's '86. Then they grafted the newer front half onto the rear of the '86. You couldn't even tell it had been worked on. And it was plenty solid, because Earl wasn't shy about taking it off-road.

I believe this one has 2-door doors:

First time I ever heard of drop kit being called a "CAD." CAD is usually an acronym for Central Axle Disconnect. One more example of why it can be important to use words when trying to communicate. That said -- several companies have been offering control arm lowering brackets for years, and RRO did NOT invent the trailing braces. The '88 MJ I bought back in 2000 had a Trailmaster 4" lift in it with their control arm lowering brackets. It was good quality and it did what it was supposed to do -- but the front springs and the rear AAL were too stiff and it rode horribly. I removed the lift and gave it ti Frank the Dog, and I couldn't be happier.

KJ1H - I'm a couple of hours south of you, near New Haven. Let me know what you need -- I have "stuff" that may help fill in the blanks. (Like a rust-free, black driver's door ...)

Congratulations!

Another forum I belong to has an area for "Blogs." Like our shout box, I never even look at it. If I wanted to read blogs, I would go to a blog site. If I'm in a forum site to discuss, I'm in a forum site to discuss. Seems pretty straightforward to me, but it seems like the people/companies that create forum software think they have to be like a Swiss Army Knife of Internet software. IMHO we would be better off if they would just focus on making their forum software work better, faster, and more reliably.

Personally, I ignore it.

I'm in Connecticut. Our motor vehicle regulations don't allow for the tires to extend outboard of the bodywork. On both #1 and #2 they do. Connecticut also has a 4" limit on how much a vehicle can be raised above stock. That means body lift (which I know doesn't apply to MJs), suspension lift, and larger tires. Both #1 and #2 are much, much more than 4 inches higher than stock. Here's a link that summarizes the situation for the Northeast states: http://www.fourwheeler.com/how-to/suspension-brakes/131-1010-lift-laws-you-need-to-know/

I would say, "Best of luck to you," but we make our own luck so you don't need any more from me. A great many years ago, the first boss I worked for after getting my degree told me that one decision never matters in life. What matters is that, once you make a decision, you have to make all your subsequent decisions support that one. If you can do that consistently, you'll have it made.

Number 3 for the win. Not even remotely interested in an MJ that has been heavily modified and can't easily be returned to factory original configuration. FWIW, neither #1 nor #2 would be street legal in Connecticut -- but I wouldn't be interested if they were.

No. The '89 has a metric thread. The Purolator number is L14619 The oil filter base on the Jeep 4.0L engines is an adapter that's screwed to the block. You can remove the metric adapter and install an adapter for the 91+ engines and then use the L14670 filters.

I think it would just get you close to what newer vehicles with rack-and-pinion are like. The change to the ZJ box changes the steering from 3-1/2 turns lock-to-lock to 3 turns. Going to a 10:1 ratio would make it 2-1/2 turns lock-to-lock. It's definitely on my bucket list for when I win the lottery.

Following Don's advice, I snagged a box from a '98 ZJ when I needed to replace the steering box in the '01 XJ I picked up for my daughter. To my surprise, it needed quite a bit of adjustment on the over-center screw, and I still think it probably could use a bit of tweaking on the worm bearing preload, as well -- but I don't have a spanner wrench to fit that. It's pretty well dialed in now, and it is a modest improvement over the stock 14:1 XJ box. But I've decided if I ever need to replace the box in one of the good XJs or MJs, I'm going to call up AGR Steering and order one of their 10:1 boxes. Not a good choice for a truck with big tires that does rock crawling, but since I'm pretty much driving just on the street these days, I think I would be very happy with the 10:1 box. I'd prefer to buy it locally (Borgerson is just a few towns north of me), but Borgerson only offers the 14:1 and 12.7:1 ratios -- no 10:1 competition steering.

FYI, Clayton's is located not far from where I live, and his original location was even closer. I used to belong to the same off-road club he did and I've wheeled with him. Clayton is an industrial engineer, and he developed his longarm kit to stand up to his own rather "unique" style of wheeling -- which is not gentle. Then other members of the club started asking him to make kits for them, and it grew into a business. IMHO it's top notch stuff, and still probably the best longarm kit available. Not for me, because I'm not interested in lifing or modifying any of my Jeeps that much, but it's the way to go if that's what rocks your world.