Eagle

Yes you should purchase it. The death wobble may or may not be easy to fix. If you have read a bunch of posts on the subject, you must already know that very few of us agree on what causes it. Many people claim that a loose tie rod end or a bad track bar "causes" death wobble. Having driven to work daily with a very bad track bar for a period of several months when it was too cold and snowy to crawl under my XJ to replace it, I know absolutely for a fact that a loose track bar does NOT and CANnot cause death wobble. Nor does a bad tie rod end. I have experienced true death wobble twice in my life. Both times it was terrifying, even though I knew what it was instantly. The first time was in a brand new (less than six months old, under 10,000 miles, never driven off-road) 1999 Grand Cherokee. What triggered it was touching the brakes lightly on a long downgrade, when the front rotors were warped. But ... the rotors had been warped for awhile, and I had just driven over 100 miles on that trip alone. That was the ONLY time death wobble kicked in. Why that one time? My best guess is that I had never before encountered those exact conditions. Usually, I use the brakes to stop, not to regulate speed at 55 MPH. Even with warped rotors, when you step on the brakes hard enough to stop, the calipers clamp the rotors tightly. I think that light touch, possibly combined with the weight of the vehicle being shifted forward due to the grade, created a different reaction. The calipers (or at least one of them) got knocked back and forth by the rotors, that got transferred to the tires, and from there on it was Katie bar the door. What IS death wobble? Death wobble is a phenomenon that takes place when one tire starts to shimmy and, for whatever reason, instead of the one wheel just bouncing happily along (which can happen -- I've been beside cars on the Interstate where I can see one front wheel bouncing up and down at least two or three inches and the owner seems totally unaware there's anything happening), the shimmy gets transferred to the opposite wheel as well. That wheel starts to shimmy, and they create a harmonic, where each oscillation of one wheel send a reinforcing vibe to the opposite wheel. It keeps escalating until you either stop the vehicle ... or you crash. So they key is to stop tires from shimmying. In theory, a tire in motion should be self-stabilizing, like a gyroscope. But a gyroscope has to be perfectly balanced to run true. That's our clue -- if a tire is a gyroscope, then a tire has to be perfectly balanced to run true. Often, they aren't. And too many shops are perfectly willing to charge you full price for a half-assed job, and send you home with tires that are NOT properly balanced. The only other time I had death wobble was just after I had swapped a different set of tires onto the '88 MJ. I set off on a short drive, got about ten miles up the road, went into a sweeping right hand turn that took some weight off the right front wheel, and BAM! I stopped, caught my breath, turned around and drove home, and took those tires off. Never had death wobble again, even running 31" tires. (The ones that caused the problem were stock size.) My answer, obviously, is: TIRE BALANCE.

The ZJ box I got from a junkyard has a rubber collar (I wouldn't call it a boot) that fills that gap and covers the exposed splines. I've never seen that before -- none of my XJs or MJs has it.

Like most rust in comanches, it took the majority of my box brace from me, I only have it from the branched out frame support which is less than half of it. That's mainly why I asked So make a new one. You can mock it up in cardboard, transfer the cut and bend lines to sheet metal, and make your own.

Except that Metric Ton springs shouldn't give any lift at all -- unless the springs you're replacing are sagged. The factory MT springs provided additional load capacity, but they didn't provide any lift. What I plan to try is using a set of XJ main leaves with the eyes cut off as AALs for a set of standard MJ springs. The XJ springs have less built-in arch, so they won't add much lift (I think), but they will add load capacity.

I believe Hell Creek announced several months ago that they were no longer selling MJ springs. Search old threads.

XJs had horrible crash ratings? Really? Tell that to my graduate school roommate. His wife was driving a Cherokee, with their two sons on board, when she was hit head-on by a truck. Minor injuries, and my roomie credits the XJ with saving their lives. Why not use an XJ floor pan and weld the MJ box brace back on top, like the factory intended it to be?

What makes you think the pitman arm is supposed to be flush to the steering box? I've never seen one that was.

The only electric fuel pumps I've ever used were Stewart-Warner, and that was a long while ago. No problems whatsoever, but I don't know if they are even available today.

Nope. My wife destroyed a rotor on her XJ by ignoring a "funny noise." I knew what it was just by backing it out of the garage. When I asked her why she didn't tell me when it started squealing, so we could have saved the rotor, she said, "I thought all Jeeps made noises like that." Never mind she had been driving it for 50,000 miles withOUT any such noises ...

The caption was wrong. That wasn't even going to work on paper.

You don't need a lift to run 31s.

Frozen calipers are a problem with disc brakes, and not uncommon if the vehicle has been sitting for awhile. These days, it's probably not worth the effort to try to clean them and rebuild them. Much easier to just trade them in as cores and buy a pair of rebuilds.

For starters, I would try to narrow the problem down to front or rear. It has been decades since I encountered a severe brake pull problem, but if memory serves, a test would be to go to a LARGE parking lot at a time when a big chunk of it is empty. Get rolling at around 15 to 20 MPH, going straight, hold the steering wheel lightly with just your finger tips ... and stomp on the brake pedal. What happens? If the truck swerves to the left but the steering wheel stays fairly straight in your hands, look to the rear. If stomping on the brakes yanks the steering wheel out of your hands, look to the front. If the issue is front, I would suspect a frozen caliper ... especially if the truck hasn't been driven for awhile. If that's the problem, pull 'em both off and trade them in for a pair of rebuilts. P.S. Idler arm? On an MJ?

Are they trying to claim that ZJs, WJs and Libertines crash more often because of design defects? How about just because too many people buy a vehicle that says "Jeep" and think that means the laws of physics no longer apply to their driving?

If you are swapping from the base model, 2-spoke "station wagon" steering wheel to the 3-spoke sport steering wheel, be sure the new wheel comes with all the small parts under the horn button, and be sure you know how those parts all go together. It's not difficult, but it's not necessarily intuitive if you're not taking out the same style wheel.

^^^This. I briefly owned a WJ V8. It had a lot of problems, and the rear axle was one of the worst. You do NOT want one of these axles. If someone gives it to you, sell it for scrap value and use the money towards a real axle. Don't even think about using it.

I'm really in over my head on this one. Just over a year ago I picked up a used 2001 XJ Sport. I confess -- I was seduced by the low mileage on the odometer and the fact that in most outward respects it's a twin to my 2000 XJ. So I didn't check it out nearly as well as I should have, and I've been paying for it ever since. And paying ... and paying ... and paying ... I'm gradually getting the mechanical issues straightened out. It runs decently, gets me to work and back, and having all power windows and locks is a big improvement over the '88 XJ with manual everything. But ... there's a new trick: A couple of months ago, while driving guests to the airport (2+ hours each way) I noticed that the clock on the radio blacked out. A few minutes later, it came back -- spontaneously. This happened a couple of times on the way to the airport, and a couple or three more times on the way home. Didn't seem to happen around town because it took awhile before it would start playing tricks. Recently, it has begun doing it during my daily commute, which is only a half hour. The radio and CD player still function -- but there's no lighting in the display, so if I'm using the radio I have no idea what station I'm on, and if I'm playing a CD I don't know what track is playing. (Fortunately, I also don't care -- I don't jump tracks on my CDs.) But I really miss having the clock. This morning I noticed something slightly different. It wasn't raining, so I didn't have the headlights on -- but the radio display was very dim. Probably even dimmer than the reduced brightness it switches to when the headlights are one. It also seemed to get gradually dimmer as I drove. When I started the engine after work, there was no display -- usually it's fine on startup and then goes walkabout. This is the factory radio head with tape player, CD player, and 3-band equalizer. I have no idea if the lighting is LED, liquid crystal, or a conventional bulb providing backlight. The FSM provides no information at all, and the shop foreman at the dealership tells me they don't work on the radios so he has no idea if the lighting is even serviceable. Does anybody have any information on what I should look at first?

Heh, heh -- In my wife's native country, anything with 4-wheel drive is a Jeep. They have no understanding whatsoever that "Jeep" is a brand name. To the it's a generic descriptor, like "truck" or "sedan."

I didn't realize the BA 10.5 had such a high first gear. Okay ... With the AX-15, 5000 RPM in first would get us up to 35 MPH. The BA 10/5 would get us all the way up to 39 MPH. (Still a wee bit shy of 55)

1. JB Conversions 2. Dunno 3. Because nobody wants to admit that a competitor did it first/better 4. JB Conversions

With stock tires, in 4th gear (1:1 ratio) 55 MPH is 2054 RPM. I don't have the BA 10/5 manual handy but I have the 2000 XJ manual next to my desk. 1st gear ratio for the AX-5 is 3.93:1, and we can probably assume the AX-15 and BA 10/5 aren't very far off. Crunching the numbers, 2054 x 3.93 = 8072 RPM. So ... no, we can't hit 55 MPH in first gear. Using 5000 RPM as the redline, 1st gear would actually top out at 34 MPH.

Have you considered that hot oil is thinner than cold oil, so there's higher pressure when cold and lower pressure when hot? Your gauge may just be telling you what the oil pressure is ... which is sort of the point.

No. The problem is that the vent glass doesn't have a full frame, so where the frame ends there's a small "step" from the metal to the glass, and the rubber gasket couldn't be molded closely enough to properly seal that point. That's where they leaked. If Hornbrod or anyone has one that DOESN'T leak there, consider it a major miracle.

As I've posted numerous times before, I am running 31x10.50s on factory alloys on my '88 Cherokee at factory height ... and the Cherokee has a smaller rear wheel opening than the MJ. 30s are not a problem.

Personally, I would MUCH rather start with a 2WD that hasn't been butchered or abused than somebody else's abortion on wheels, which is what that first truck is. 127,000 miles is VERY low miles for an 80s vintage Comanche. The ad says "OBO," so offer him maybe $1000 or $1200 and see what happens. Converting to 4WD is a bit of work, but the parts can all be gotten from a Cherokee in the junkyard. The only thing that doesn't swap over directly is the rear driveshaft, because of the difference in wheelbase.