Eagle

How old is your oxygen sensor?

He didn't say, and he and his family are off on a camping vacation so I can't ask him. Cruiser? Paging Cruiser ...

A tech friend who used to work in a Jeep dealership once told me that when they replaced a seal and reused the crush sleeve they torqued the pinion nut to 250 foot pounds and called it good.

The set in my '88 Cherokee have well over 100,000 miles on them. No problems so far ...

You can't measure toe with the vehicle on jack stands, because things will change when the weight is on the tires and supported by the ball joints. Any adjustment you do on jack stands won't be accurate. You do it on flat, level ground with the wheels on the ground. Once you make an adjustment, you then roll the vehicle straight back a car length or two, then back to the original point and measure again. This is because the tire contact patch won't turn when you make the adjustment, resulting in the tie rod ends being under stress rather than in a somewhat neutral position. Rolling back and forth allows the tire contact patch to coincide with the new alignment.

You're supposed to use a new nut every time you have the yoke off anyway. Are you reusing the old crush sleeve or installing a new one with the new seal?

Aha! According to Advance Adapters, that number is for an NV 3550 transmission from a 2000 TJ http://www.advanceadapters.com/downloads/273510AA.pdf

5210 4388AA appears to be a proper Jeep part number sequence, but I can't find it in any of my Jeep parts manuals.

I see a problem right there. You don't understand wheel alignment. It is not possible for the passenger tire to toe out -- a little or a lot. The toe specification is a measure of the distance between the two tires, and it has nothing to do with the vehicle body, centerline, or side. The theoretical ideal is zero toe. If the fronts of the tires are farther apart than the rears, they are toed out. If the rears are father apart than the fronts, they are toed in. This is measured directly between the tires, or by high-priced equipment that takes angle measurements and computes the toe (in or out). Zero is ideal, but that means zero when driving down the road with the friction between the tires and the road pushing against all the components of the front end, each of which has some minimal amount of slop. To allow for that, we build in a small amount of toe-in when doing a static alignment, figuring that the road friction will take up the slop and the result will be close to zero on the road. Doing a shade-tree, tape measure alignment, we typically look for 1/16" to 1/8" of toe-IN -- the distance between the fronts of the tires should be less than the distance between the rears. You adjust the toe-in to spec, then move the vehicle until it's moving straight forward and back. Then if the steering wheel isn't centered, you adjust the drag link to center the wheel. Toe rarely causes pulling, because toe is a symmetrical setting. Pull is caused by uneven tire pressure, mismatched tires, sagging springs, caster, or camber. Oh -- and you absolutely cannot tell by eyeballing it if the tires are toed in or out, unless the amount is massive. The flares are not parallel to the vehicle centerline, and the flare edges are the natural visual reference. It's deceptive. You MUST measure.

But the mechanical fan doesn't have a direct, positive, mechanical connection to the pulley. The fan mounts to a housing that contains a viscous clutch. Think of it like a small torque converter, with NO lock-up. The fluid inside is formulated to get stiffer as the temperature increases, yet still allow enough slippage so that at higher engine speeds the fan isn't being driven by the engine, thus saving horsepower and increasing fuel economy. Over time, the fluid breaks down and isn't stiff enough to drive the fan fast enough at idle to pull enough air to cool the radiator. The classic symptom is overheating at stopped idle, and the temperature going back to normal as soon as the vehicle is moving. There is a way to test this, IIRC, but I don't remember what it is. Yes, the fan is turning -- it just isn't doing much work. Appearances can be deceiving.

What you DON'T want (IMHO) are KYB shocks. Years ago, my brother talked me into buying a set for my '88 Cherokee. They were AWFUL. They were very harsh over pavement cracks and small bumps, yet the provided almost no control over larger bumps. I took them off and replaced them with a set of Monroes (a series since discontinued, and replaced by the Sensa-Trac) that are infinitely better. The 2001 Cherokee I bought used three years ago came to me with KYBs in the front. Same thing. I finally got around to wrestling with the rusted-in OEM shocks in the rear, and replaced everything with a set of Rancho RS5000s all around. The Ranchos were given to me by a friend who had lifted his XJ. They are pretty firm, but they are are a huge improvement over the KYBs. OME get rave reviews, but they're pricey. I'm partial to Monroes, with Gabriel being a close second. In Monroe, I like the Gas-Magnum line. The Reflex line is their premium series and should be very good, but I've never found the money to spend on them. I avoid the Sensa-Trac line because of the "groove tube" feature. It's good at stock height, but if you change the ride height at all (such as a budget boost) the piston isn't centered in the grooved section of the bore, and the ride and handling are adversely affected. In Gabriel, I again lean toward the Ultra series as being an economical shock that rides well and works well. These have a 1-3/8" bore, which is the minimum I think should be accepted in any shock. Worth a look also are the LTV (1-5/8" bore) and the MaxControl (1-13/16" bore) series.

It could be the tires, it could be tire pressure, it could be uneven wear on the tires, it could be caster and/or camber -- it could even be that the rear axle isn't square to the chassis and is trying to drive the body in a circle. There's no shortage of things to investigate.

No. Replace the fan clutch on the mechanical fan. (That's the viscous hub that bolts to the water pump, and to which the fan blade is bolted.

Early years had two kinds of mechanical speedo connection. '86 MJs (and '84 and '85 XJs) had a metallic clip at the speedo head end, with a screw to hold the cable to the instrument cluster. '88 thru '90 had a nylon compression clip, with no screws. I haven't had the cluster out of my '87, so I don't know which style was used in '87, or if it was a mid-year change during the '87 model run.

Two models. The XJ Wagoneer also had all red lenses and no separate turn lamps in the rear.

^^^ Correct. And I believe you posted in one of your first posts that there are a lot of Cherokees even though there aren't many Comanches. Remember, the Comanche was the pickup truck version of the Cherokee -- just like the Ranger and the Explorer. The floors are different so the seat risers won't interchange, but otherwise basically everything from the rear of the car forward is the same as from a 4-door Cherokee. And the Cherokee started two years earlier, so for a dashboard cover you have your pick of 1984 through 1996 Cherokees. It's the same. How can it look different? Would the 95 cherokee dash fit?...it looks different

Up to 1996, not 1997. And doors have to be from a 4-door Cherokee.

^^^ Correct. And I believe you posted in one of your first posts that there are a lot of Cherokees even though there aren't many Comanches. Remember, the Comanche was the pickup truck version of the Cherokee -- just like the Ranger and the Explorer. The floors are different so the seat risers won't interchange, but otherwise basically everything from the rear of the car forward is the same as from a 4-door Cherokee. And the Cherokee started two years earlier, so for a dashboard cover you have your pick of 1984 through 1996 Cherokees.

Before tackling a full-blown replacement, you can always try something like this: http://www.amazon.com/No-Liquid-Leather-Vinyl-Repair/dp/B000E24APU/ref=pd_sim_263_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=00Q90VRQ89F9ASZSWHCK If it works, you spent ten bucks and saved a lot of work. If it doesn't work ... you blew ten bucks and you would have done the work otherwise anyway.

There is no PCM on an '88 -- it's a ECU, and I don't think it feeds through the fuse panel. The Renix wiring diagrams have been posted here, somewhere. See if you can find the link.

Check the ground cable from the battery to the chassis.

Fuel pump relay?

There is no need to remove the main leaves. I've done the home-brew spring thing twice with XJs and once on my old Javelin race car. I didn't take the main leaf out for any of them.

You'll love it. Don't forget, the top gear has the same ratio in both the 5-speeds and the automatics. For the 5-speed, 4th gear is 1:1 and 5th (overdrive) is (depending on year and tranny) 0.72:1 or 0.75:1. With the automatics, 3rd gear is 1:1 and 4th gear (overdrive) is 0.7x:1. 75 MPH won't be doing anything to you that it isn't doing to every XJ and MJ that has an automatic transmission.

Actually, I said you gain 33% capacity, but that on-line calculator says it's 43%. It's a fairly simple exercise in structural/mechanical engineering. The lower leaves aren't stiffer than the main. They are the same thickness and the same width. You are mistaking the fact that they are shorter for stiffness, but if you took just the center section of the main leaf, it would be equally stiff as the shortest leaf (ignoring the overload leaf, which is twice the thickness). That said, I support the concept. I've done the second main leaf conversion on two XJs that were severely sagged (and one had a broken intermediate leaf). The first gave me 1-1/4" of lift. It started out sagged half an inch, so the net was 3/4 of an inch. The second had sagged a full inch. The AAL gave me an inch and a half, so it now rides a half inch higher than stock. In both cases, the increase in capacity could be felt just in the firmer ride (which I like).