Eagle

Yep. They were snake oil when they were sold for carburetors. Considering that multi-port injection squirts the fuel into the combustion chamber, and the air flow into the chamber is controlled by the intake valve, it is essentially impossible for these gadgets to have any real effect aside from lightening the owner's bank account.

500 CFM is too big for a 2.8L. Using the formula above, for your engine it would be: 170 x 5500 / 3456 = 270.5 CFM In reality, you probably won't be operating at 5500 RPM anyway, so that 270 CFM for practical purposes will be 245. A 500 CFM carburetor will be twice as much flow as you'll ever need.

Above is an example of several possibilities or offerings. I'm considering a '97 2.5 complete non-running engine that is about 2 hours away for $180. If it's not sold by Fri I'll pick it up over the weekend. My theory is this- I want to rebuild a core that is complete as a factory engine, keeping the crank and rods and head together. Theory being that if a rotating assembly that has been mated for 10 years and 100K miles.....it is a proven assembly. VS. Acquiring an assortment of parts from assorted engines........ie......crank kit.....etc..... I'm also concerned about buying parts that have been machined by unknown machine shops. If it were you......? Thanks Whatever makes you feel happy. But consider what is actually "mated" in an internal combustion engine. The rods and pistons basically don't contact the block, the "mated" parts are the rod bearings and piston rings. The crank doesn't mate directly to the block, it only "matesd" to the crank bearings. If you're doing a rebuild, you'll be replacing the rod and main bearings and piston rings anayway, so any previous mating will be gone, and you start from ground zero. Hopefully the pistons never touch the head, and in a rebuild you check the head for flatness and have it trued if it's not flat, so mating the head to the block isn't a requirement. And the head and block don't actually "mate" anyway -- there's a gasket separating them.

Yes, the new one could be bad. It's an electrical part, and it's not uncommon for such to be bad out of the box.

How many miles on the engine? If the noise is louder when the oil is hot (thinner), I would suspect a rod knock. It's a bit of a PITA but you can replace the bearings in situ by just dropping the pan.

Correct. And my preference would be to put the best tires on the front. The front does all the steering and the major part of the braking -- I like to have some ccontrol over my vehicle when driving. I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that one. The way I was taught, the best tires are always put on the rear, for this reason: http://www.discounttire.com/dtcs/infoTiresRear.do This is regardless of front or rear wheel drive. Yeah, I know there are people out there who want to put the best tires on the rear, even with rear wheel drive. I've never agreed with that, it defies logic, and real world experience proves the opposite. You're welcome to disagree, but that article isn't going to change my opinion that's based on driving for 54 years and well over a million miles. (Closing in on my second million, but I don't think I'll ever quite get there.) The article assumes you can steer with the front wheels. In the real world, if you don't have decent tread in front you CAN'T steer -- especially in wet weather or snow. If your front, treadless tires hydroplane, you're going off the road. The difference is you go off nose first and smash head-on into whatever's out there, rather than maybe fishtailing and sliding off the road sideways.

Wrong. The fan gets full voltage when the switch is set to high speed. For the other speeds, the power goes through resistors, which reduce the voltage to the fan, which is what makes it run slower. Test the voltage with the switch in each position and you should get different voltages. If you do, your resistor pack is good and the switch is good, so the problem is either the fan, or the ground. Do you have a battery charger? If so, try hot wiring the new fan to the charger and see if it runs. Or -- remove the negative cable from the MJ battery and hot wire the fan directly to the battery. See if it runs. If not ==> the fan is the problem. If so ==> the ground must be the problem.

What position is the switch in when you try to run it? If it won;t run on slow or medium but will run on full speed, the problem is the resistor pack in the air box (over the front passenger's feet).

Correct. And my preference would be to put the best tires on the front. The front does all the steering and the major part of the braking -- I like to have some ccontrol over my vehicle when driving.

I've never seen a tire shop that didn't use burp guns, for removing and installing tires. Which is why I never take my car to a shop for tires. I take the wheels (with old tires, if applicable) to the shop in the back of another vehicle and have the shop mount the tires and balance them. Then **I** put them back on the vehicle, by hand. With a torque wrench.

Why don't you swap in a GM 3.4L V6 from a mid-90s Camaro or Trans Am? Same basic block as the 2.8L so it'll drop right in, but a much better engine.

Rotate the headlight switch. It has a dimmer function, and all the way in one direction (I don't recall which direction) is OFF. Also, with age the dimmer coil develops dead spots, and turning the knob a short distance in either direction will often take it off the dead spot.

If the radio doesn't save settings, then whatever you're using as a feed for the memory circuit is not a constant-on feed, but switched by the ignition key. Take that wire and run it directly to something like the clock circuit on the fuse panel. I put a Pioneer in my '88 MJ and I had no problems, but it was so long ago that I have no recollection of how I wired it.

Ohio - the Air Force Museum at the air base in Dayton. You can easily spend between a half day and a full day right there. If your route will take you anywhere near St. Louis, be sure to stop and check out the arch. It's run by the National Park Service. Observation chamber at the very top, museum underground between the two "feet." There's a lot of things/places worth seeing between Ohio and Colorado, but I would have to reflect on what I've seen and when before offering other suggestions.

That could be the first time I ever saw the word "finagling" actually spelled. If it has an overflow hose how does it hold pressure? The same way a radiator does -- with a pressure cap. The cap has a heavy spring to resist pressure, but when the pressure reaches the rated point the cap allows coolant to escape into the catch bottle. The cap also has a return check valve with a very WEAK spring, so as the system cools and the coolant contracts, it can suck the coolant back out of the catch bottle. Which essentially turns a closed system into an open system. The Moroso aluminum bottle I put in my '88 XJ works the same way.

I stand corrected. Now that I think about it, my '88 XJ came with the exact same Class 1 hitch on it, which is why the photo of the garbage up behind the bumper looked vaguely familiar. I went through the exercise of removing that hitch and installing a Class 2 receiver so I'd have a secure structure for a rear town hook. That was so many years ago I had completely forgotten that tyhe Class 2 hitch isn't what came on the XJ. But even the light duty one had the nut strips in the frame. In fact, they're riveted into the frame.

They all come from Crown (except any N.O.S. OEM units). They're on Crown's web site ( http://www.crownautomotive.net/category/XJ-Lamps.html#56000099 ). Crown won't sell direct to us serfs, but they do list their dealers on the site. It happens that my Jeep dealer also carries Crown, so I often use their stuff if the OEM parts are too expensive.

That's not an XJ/MJ shifter. It's out of a YG or TJ Wrangler, and they have longer shift handles. I have an '87 MJ 5-speed, and '88 XJ 5-speed, and a 2000 XJ 5-speed. The shift handles are all the same length. Shift throws are not massively long, but they're also not short-throw like a sports car. And it has to be kept in mind that the transmissions -- all of them -- aren't drag race transmissions. If you like to bang shifts like a drag racer, you WILL destroy the synchronizers in a short time.

I may well take you up on that. Since you have one out, can you confirm that the 4-way switch is part of the same assembly as the turn signal switch? At least for the '00 vehicle, I suspect the switch. The other odd behavior it's exhibiting is that the lane-change feature of the turn signals (where you press the stalk lightly, without snapping beyond the detent) doesn't work. The turn signals work when the switch is moved beyond the detent, but no momentary-contact lane change function.

I prefer standards and all the MJs I own and have owned have been standards. But my wife's 2000 XJ is an automatic, and so is the 2001 XJ I bought for my daughter. Around my area I prefer the 5-speed, but I have to admit that in urban, stop-and-crawl traffic the automatic is a godsend. I will also point out that (as much as I don't like to admit it) the automatic is FAR better for rock crawling and various other off-road adventures. I was able to keep up with the pack in the '88 XJ and the '88 MJ, but it was tough on the clutch, and tougher on the suspension and drive train in general than wheeling with an automatic.

I'll put this in The Pub since it's about XJs built long after the demise of the MJ. I need advice from anyone familiar with '00/'01 XJ electrics. A couple of years ago I picked up a used 2001 XJ with the idea that it would become my daughter's vehicle when she got her driver's license. That hasn't happened, so I've been driving it, and gradually repairing whatever was wrong. One defect I haven't gotten to is that the turn signals work, but the 4-way flashers don't work. Shop foreman at the dealership suggested that it might be the flasher, since the late-model XJs used a single, combination flasher. Fast forward to this week. Drove my wife's 2000 XJ, stopped at the mail box, turned on the 4-way flashers ... and they don't work. And I replaced the combo flasher in my wife's a couple of years ago. Apparently the 4-way switch is part of the same multi-function assembly as the turn signals. The part is still available from the dealer, but it's not cheap, I probably need two of them, and electrical parts can't be returned. Does anyone know enough about the late model Cherokees to know if the multi-function switch is a likely culprit?

Not even CLOSE to stock. The problem with buying someone else's mods is that they think they're worth a lot of money, but the reality is they're never done the way you would want, they're rarely done well, and it's tough to negotiate a fair price. Based on your original description I said $750. Now that I've seen the photos, I'll lower that to $500, tops. If he beat on a 4-cylinder hard enough to trash the transfer case, you KNOW the truck has been seriously abused and your buying a rolling box of problems. It's a broken truck. You're buying a rolling chassis, not a functional vehicle. Both you and the seller need to understand that.

Me too!

Bent wheel?

Post a photo. It should be impossible for the shoe to work its way off that peg (stud). Are you certain you have the springs installed correctly? Did you use new springs?