Eagle

How many miles are on the engine?

IMHO you have nothing to lose by trying a valve job on your own. If there is a seat that needs to be cut, that's a job for a machine shop. However, it's entirely possible that simply re-lapping the valves to the seats will resolve most of the issues. War story: A long tiime a go, my ex-wife and I had a 30-foot sailboat. The engine was an inboard, a little 4-cylinder gasoline job called the Atomic Four. Paid a yard to service the boat before putting it in the water one year. Halfway through the season, the engine started losing power. It kept getting progressively worse. Followed things through and found that the yard had not replaced the fuel filter, it was almost completely plugged, and the engine had been running very lean because it was starving for gas. Replacing the fuel filter helped a little, but not much. Ran a compression test, and one cylinder was barely above sero. Obviously, the lean run had burned a valve. We limped through the season, and that winter we put the boat up for sale. Found a buyer who loved the boat. I disclosed the engine problem to him, and he was okay with it. The price was negotiated to allow for having a valve job done. But ... I was in Connecticut, and the buyer was from Pennsylvania. He wanted to take the boat from Connecticut (Long Island Sound) to Maryland (Chesapeake Bay) to have his yard make the repair, but he was afraid the weak engine might not get him through the currents around NYC (Hell Gate). So I agreed to do a quick-n-dirty valve job just to get him to his home port. There was an old-time auto parts store and machine shop in the town where we lived, and I had become friendly with both the owner and the counterman. The counterman was a former Coast Guardsman, he doubled as a machinist, and he was familiar with the Atomic Four. The engine was an F-head -- valves in the block, not the head. He agreed there was a burned valve. The shop actually stocked valves for the Atomic Four because it was such a popular engine. I worked out a deal with the shop owner that I could hire the Coastie to help me with the work if I agreed to buy any parts from the shop. So we went down one Sunday morning and pulled the head. Sure enough -- badly burned exhaust valve. Too far gone to save, so we went back to the shop and grabbed one valve, and a head gasket. We didn't recut the valve seat, just dropped the new valve in and lapped it, and slapped the head on. Compression check looked good, so we called it a day. Coastie's price? A case of his favorite beer. The new owner reported at the end of his first season that the engine ran so well he never bothered to have the valve job re-done. So that's the moral of the story -- all it'll cost you to try is some time, some lapping compound and a suction cup, and a head gasket.

I don't know about the MOOG springs, but the ZJ V8 front coils are the same Jeep part number as the XJ Up Country coils, and they provide one inch of lift, not two. Since you have invested in the springs, my suggestion if you really can't live with a one-inch lift is to buy a pair of 3/4" coil spacers and call it good.

Very nicely done. Where did you get the Wilwood proportioning valve? I don't think that's the same one that Chrysler used to sell through the Mopar Performance catalog.

Stop being so practical. If everyone thought like that, in another five or ten years there won't be any Comanches, and IMHO that would be a shame.

ANYTHING can be fixed. This is going to sound crazy, but it is true. There was a guy in NAXJA-NAC ten-plus years ago who had what started out as an '86 XJ 2.8L. He got it in his head that he wanted to convert it to a 4.0L, but his was an early '86 with the firewall issue. He was buddies with the owner of a small, independent used car lot and repair shop that sort of specialized in Jeeps. So he took it to his buddy and they brainstormed how to convert his XJ with the least effort. What they decided on was to take a newer XJ that had been rear ended, and use that as the donor. They cut both trucks clear through just behind the A pillar, then welded the newer nose onto the '86 body. You can't tell by looking at it, but I've been underneath and you can see the welds. That's what they did. A new front frame ear is nothing to get excited about.

The rear TJ D44 is a good axle. Obviously, you'll need to weld on perches for leaf springs. The front TJ D44 is a D44 center section with the same Cs and knuckles as the D30 used on other TJs, XJs and MJs. The primary advantage to it is that it allows running the same gears as the rear, and you can get deeper gears for the D44 than you can for the D30. If you're getting both for $500 IMHO it sounds like an okay deal. If it's $500 for one -- well, I don't know. A few years ago people in NAXJA were cheerfully paying $500 to $600 for just a rear XJ D44, but those days are gone. Nobody pays that much for them any more.

A friend of mine just repaired a similar problem on a Yota PU. It can be done. You'll have to plate it -- there's nothing there to weld except rust. You're going to have to plate it long enough to get to where you can find solid metal.

Likewise. Simple is good. :)

I've encountered a disappointing setback in the search for the Cooper AT/3s. The shop I wanted to buy from, an independent tire shop up the road in Waterbury (CT), doesn't stock them but can order them. I was getting close to pulling the trigger when I happened to read a news article on the web site of one of the local newspapers. The article was about a couple of gentlemen who stole a truck, then went out and stole dozens of sets of tires and rims off cars on new car dealers' lots -- including my Jeep dealer (24 sets!) The cops got a lead, obtained a search warrant to collect security videos, and got a video of the two thieves unloading the stolen tires. And where were they unloading them? Into the back of Tony's Tires & Wheels. Looks like I'll be searching for a new tire dealer.

It can be difficult to detect dragging in the rear brakes because you're spinning the differential when you turn the drum. I find it's easier with both rear wheels off the ground and both tires off, that way you're only turning the opposite brake drum, not an entire tire and wheel. Ideally, the brakes should be adjusted out to the point where you just BARELY begin to hear a slight (I did say "SLIGHT") bit of drag noise when you turn the drum. The problem is, the brakes are designed to be adjusted with the parking brake cable retracted. If the parking brake cable is rusted and can't retract, you can't adjust your brakes. Yes, you can turn the star wheel and you can get the shoes to pull in -- but the brakes won't work right, because the parking brake cable has everything screwed up. If the parking brake cable is rusted or broken, either replace it (preferable) or remove it temporarily.

Another common problem is a parking brake cable getting rusted up, such that it doesn't fully release the brakes on one side.

I never checked with a thermometer, but they should not be too hot to be uncomfortable to the touch after a short drive. And they should be pretty much the same temperature. You have a shoe dragging.

The engine wouldn't affect it. Either your speedometer is wrong (which you can check with a GPS) or your tachometer is wrong. Is the tachometer original to the vehicle, or did you swap it in? If it came from a 4-cylinder vehicle, think about this: An electronic tach doesn't really measure engine revolutions, it counts ignition pulses. For a 6-cylinder engine, there are three pulses per revolution (remember, it's a 4-stroke engine). So -- 1000 RPM equals 3000 pulses. Now look at a 4-cylinder engine. One revolution is only two pulses, so three pulses is 1-1/2 revolution. So put a 4-cyl tach in a 6-cyl truck, it sees three pulses, and reports 1-1/2 revolution instead of 1. 1000 actual engine RPM shows up as 1500, and 2000 RPM shows up as 3000 RPM.

Unpossible. The '89 4.0L uses a single, serpentine belt. If the belt isn't running the A/C, it also isn't running the water pump, cooling fan, or alternator. I agree with you -- that's a $500 truck. {Edit to add} Looked at photos again and the ad. It's only a 2WD. It has the "station wagon" steering wheel, so it's a base model with idiot lights, no gauges. He has dash covers, so I'll bet the vinyl dash is cracked from AZ sun. Looks like bucket seats, so I wonder what they came out of. The passenger seat belt is flopping around loose, so my guess is that the retractor is fubar as well as the latch (which, BTW, cannot be repaired, only replaced). The guy is dreaming.

So I guess the hot tip for WJ owners without hitches is to go on Craigs List, find a cheap universal hitch, slap it on and call for your $100 gift card and free factory hitch "replacement."

I disagree. The Pinto came out in 1968. The WJ came out thirty years later, LONG after the problems with the Pinto fuel tanks (and, incidentally, the problems with Crown Vic gas tanks) were known throughout the industry. But Jeep didn't want to have a spare time standing up in the cargo area like the Cherokee, and they didn't want the spare slung underneath like the Comanche -- so they stuck it under the cargo floor. That obviously meant they had to mount the gas tank pretty low, where it's particularly susceptible to damage. My WJ didn't last a year, but in the nine or so months I had it I was a bit safer because I had the Up Country (off-road) package, so my plastic gas tank had a steel skid protecting it.

31x10.50-15s, 3.07 gearing: 70 MPH is 2436 RPM in 4th gear, 1827 RPM in 5th gear. Chart: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pHFuhGgj6dQDfzyfFJH5z7NCDLW2KX3ABQgAJr3lBvM/pub?hl=en&hl=en&output=html (The link to the chart is in the DIY forum area) That's based on actual tire manufacturer's revolutions per mile data, not a mathematical calculation based on unloaded tire diameter. Question: If you have an AX15, why are you asking about 4th gear? Don't you use 5th gear at 70 MPH?

I SOOOOOOOO want to drive some "roads" like that.

The speedometer "quill" (the piece on the lower end of the cable that holds the speedo gear) has to be indexed when you put it into the transmission or transfer case. How it gets oriented depends on how many teeth are on the speedo gear. If you didn't index it correctly, it's possible the two gears inside aren't making contact.

I didn't realize you were marrying into a complete family. Having done that, I can say with some authority that it makes life ... interesting. Congratulations.

If they're dry rotted and cracked after just four years, they must be pretty crappy tires.

Try pointing it slightly below horizontal. Think how it works. Normal (unloaded) the arm should be horizontal. There's a rigid rod from the end of the arm up to the chassis. Put weight in the bed. More weight needs more brakes. Bed goes down, rod goes down, axle stays at same height ==> arm goes down. I don't think so. More weight, bed goes down closer to the axle. So the stationary rod moves the valve arm up (not down) above horizontal to the axle to increase rear brake bias. So try pointing it slightly above horizontal. :doh: Don is correct. I was picturing the valve as mounted on the axle, not on the frame. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain ...

Try pointing it slightly below horizontal. Think how it works. Normal (unloaded) the arm should be horizontal. There's a rigid rod from the end of the arm up to the chassis. Put weight in the bed. More weight needs more brakes. Bed goes down, rod goes down, axle stays at same height ==> arm goes down.

Did you follow the procedure for bleeding the bypass circuit, or did you just do a normal bleed at each wheel? Is the arm of your load-sensing valve horizontal?