Eagle

It's still a piece of crap. Don't do it. You'll be sorry if you do.

Your salvation is the fact that the Comanche is nothing but the pickup truck variant of the Cherokee. Everything from the rear of the cab forward interchanges with Cherokees of similar vintage (except the seat brackets). Even the doors are the same as 4-door Cherokee front doors.

^^^ This. The 2.8L was a horrible, horrible engine. The 2.5L is a much better and much more reliable power plant. It is absolutely NOT worth the effort of converting from the 2.5L to a 2.8L. Think of everything you'll have to replace if you swap. The 2.5L is fuel injected, the 2.8L is carbureted -- you'll need a new fuel pump (lower pressure). You'll need new motor mounts. You'll need a new exhaust system. There will be a myriad of little things that will have to be changed as you go along. Don't do it.

YAY!!!!

What year is the truck? On the passenger side of the engine block, near the distributor, there should be a flat, oblong boss with a series of characters stamped in it. Post what those numbers are -- those are the engine build codes.

Not the way Pete did it, with XJ rear sway bar mounts. Then use a regulation BPE - simple. Will save aggravation down the road fighting those bolts again. I might consider that on any of the "keepers," but I'm fixing up the '01 to sell. Even at top dollar I'm going to lose big bucks, so even an extra $40 invested isn't a good option.

They shouldn't. I think the author forgot to mention something about a lift. Some years ago I thought I was going to be economical. I had a stock height MJ that needed rear shocks, and I had a set of nearly new, good quality XJ rear shocks. So I removed the bar pins (destructively, unfortunately) and went to install my "free" shocks. Fully extended, the shocks were 3/4 of an inch too short to reach both mounts. So I went to Pep Boys and bought a pair of their cheapest Gabriel shocks. Then I had the problem of finding a set of bar pins to put the XJ shocks back to being XJ shocks. Finally got some from somewhere, and had a tough time getting them installed. No, stock MJ rear shocks are too long for a stock XJ.

Not the way Pete did it, with XJ rear sway bar mounts.

What I don't like about the bar pin eliminators is that the result is the upper and lower shock mounts being at 90 degrees to one another. That has to be hard on the shock.

How do you get a wrench in there?

Thank you. I would have guessed metric -- and I would have guessed 8mm. And I would have been wrong. That's why I asked.

You should be able to drive from Massachusetts to Arizona and back for $1000. Be sure to check out the Grand Canyon while you're there ...

Does anyone happen to know what size bolts are used for the upper mounts on the rear shocks? I need to replace the shocks on the '01 XJ I bought for my daughter. The underside has more rust than any vehicle should ever see, so I'm anticipating that I'm going to snap at least a couple of them and have to drill and retap. I'd like to have the new bolts available before I start. Thanks.

But it runs in open loop mode, which is -- by default -- a very rich mixture. It's got to hurt gas mileage to run like that all the time.

Good for you in figuring it out. It always helps when the manufacturers ship parts that don't fit, and forget to tell you.

I've also read that a mix of ATF and acetone makes an excellent penetrating oil. I haven't tried it yet, but I have a half gallon of "Ed's Red," which is equal parts of ATF, acetone, and mineral spirits, that I may try. Ed's Red is used as a firearms CLP. I never thought of trying it as a penetrant until reading about the ATF/acetone mix.

No you don't need the shell -- you need the rear frame. Don't forget, MJs are unit body under the cab. If you're REALLY good with a welder, you could have Jim cut off a frame and ship that to you -- but that would mean destroying one of his complete trucks. The frame is basically sheet metal. It would be work, but if I were in your situation I would go shopping for some sheet metal and start re-building the frame. I wouldn't tube it -- I'm sort of a purist, so I would try to make it look as original as possible. Maybe see if Jim (or someone) can make you drawings or tracings of what a solid frame should look like so you have a decent pattern for making the repair sections.

I have the same question. If you're driving it around with no oxygen sensor, the ECU must be in open loop (warm-up) mode all the time ... which means your fuel mileage must be in the toilet. Or did you go retro and install a carburetor?

Do you still have the Renix wiring and ECU, or did you replace the electrics with the HO engine? Assuming you still have the Renix wiring, the Renix temperature sender has a single wire that's hot, and it grounds through the body of the sender. The operating voltage is thus a nominal 12 volts. I believe the new style operates on a 5 volt constant input from the PCM, and then grounds back through the PCM. You could try just connecting one wire to the Renix hot wire and grounding the other to any bolt on the engine, but I don't know if the voltage difference will affect the readings.

Holy crap! That's a bearing puller, not a press plate. At 25 tons, I'm amazed that you didn't destroy the bearing puller. You were lucky ...

Marvel Mystery Oil is a cleaner as well as a lubricant. The normal dose is one can added to the full crankcase. To really purge a dirty engine, you could do an oil change, put in five quarts of oil rather than six, and dump in two or three cans of Marvel. I wouldn't drive it hard like that, but since your plan won't be putting any load on the engine I don't see that as a problem. I would NOT change just the filter, and then add the Marvel to the old, dirty oil. Use new, clean oil -- even if you go to Wal-Mart and buy their house brand. It won't be in there for long, and you're not going to be stressing the engine.

Awhile ago I picked up an '88 MJ shortbed with 2WD, and the mighty 2.5L engine with 4-speed manual tranny. The body is in decent shape but the engine has 219,000 miles on it and the clutch is gone. My options: 1. I could just replace the clutch and see how long the old engine would keep going. 2. I have a 1986 XJ 2.5L 5-speed, 4WD. The engine in that is a rebuilt with only 30,000 miles on it. I could freshen that engine up and throw it into the MJ. 3. I also have a wrecked '87 XJ with a 4.0L 4WD automatic, with a bit more than 100,000 miles on it. I could freshen that engine and swap it into the MJ. I'm not planning to sell this MJ, I hope to keep it as a weekly (not daily) driver for normal household, weekend warrior type jobs. What would you do? Why?

That photo looks like the speedo head end of the cable with the cable broken off. Starting in either mid-87 or 88, Jeep changed from a speedo cable that screwed onto the head in conventional fashion to one that snapped on. That white part is the nylon snap fitting. Squeeze the outer ring at the end closest to the speedo head and it pops right off. A speedo cable for a 1988 thru 1990 Cherokee with 4WD should be what you're looking for.

I was thinking the same thing.

Thanks (NOT!) for reminding me about that. A good many years ago I was building a Javelin to race in the New England hillclimb circuit. Trying to be as safe and (pseudo)professional as I could, I installed a kill switch on the transmission tunnel, where it would be in easy reach of my hand. Got it all wired in, fired up the engine to test it, hit the kill switch -- and the only thing that happened was the headlights got brighter. After that, I had to sit down with the wiring diagrams and figure out where I needed to cut in my kill switch wiring to actually accomplish the purpose. Embarrassing, to say the least.