Eagle

The shape of the track bar and the drag link don't matter. What counts is the angle of a straight line drawn from the upper pivot point of each to the lower pivot point.

Geonovast is correct, the AMC pony cars used a Model 20 rear axle behind the V8s and the hubs were splined onto the axle shafts, not forged as one piece. It wasn't difficult to spin a hub off an axle -- I managed to do it, with a 2-barrel 290 c.i.d. engine. The ratios weren't great, either. The standard ratio was 3.15:1 with the 4-speed (3.54 optional), and 2.87:1 with the automatic (3.15 optional).

What extra gear? The 242 doesn't offer an additional ratio -- the full-time 4x4 position is still high range, 1:1 ratio, just like the part-time high range. The full-time position is something that's useful in street driving, when pavement conditions may alternate between slippery and dry frequently. It offers no advantages that I can think of for off-road.

IMHO ... no. They don't need it. As Alexia posted above, if you drop the pitman arm without dropping the track bar mount by the same distance, you screw up the suspension geometry and you will have bump steer.

The moly? Yes, it helped, but on very cold mornings I still bypass the 1-2 shift and just go to the first downhill from my driveway in first, then jump directly to third.

With the XJ/MJ inverted Y steering, the draglink IS the right side tie rod end. If you look at the parts listings on Auto Zone and other sites, I don't think you'll find a "draglink" (or "drag link"). You'll find left and right side, inner and outer tie rod ends. It can be confusing when the tie rod "end" is more than two feet long. My '88 MJ had a 4" lift when I bought it. No dropped pitman arm, and the stock drag link was plenty long enough.

I use 75W90 GL3 gear oil with a liquid molybdenum disulphide additive I used to buy from JC Whitney. Dunno if JCW still sells it (I still have one bottle left) but more recently I've seen a company on the Internet called Mr. Moly (or something like that) that sells what appears to be the same stuff.

Not really limited slip, although they did use clutches for locking. In operation the Quadra-Drive diffs functioned exactly opposite to a clutch-type limited slip like a Trac-Lok. In a Trac-Lok, which most of us here are familiar with, the clutches are normally engaged. If one wheel loses traction, the clutches allow the axle to transmit torque/power to the opposite wheel -- up to a point. If the amount of power/torque exceeds the gripping force of the clutches, they release and the diff functions as an open axle. This is what allows the diff to be "transparent" to the driver when turning corners on dry pavement. In the original Quadra-Drive, the diffs are normally UNlocked. When one wheel begins to rotate faster than the other wheel on the same axle, the valve in the internal gerotor pump begins to open, sending hydraulic pressure to the clutches and progressively engaging the locking function of the differential. Since the Quadra-Drive system was always in full-time 4WD (the only option was to shift into low range), this was always working. It was quite aggressive, and under some conditions it was obviously operating on dry pavement. Usually, though, it was "fairly" transparent on the street. Engagement off road and in slippery conditions was very aggressive. The original Quadra-Drive system was completely mechanical-hydraulic. There were no sensors involved, and no computers. I know the Quadra-Drive II is different (which is why it's called Quadra-Drive II). I've never read anything that fully explained why Jeep changed the entire system after just a couple of years, but I know that "VNH" (vibration, noise & harshness) was a big concern in the Grand Cherokees, so my best guess is that the original Quadra-Drive's occasional lack of "transparency" wasn't acceptable to the NVH engineers. Too bad, because that part of the '99 WJ was great. The rest of the vehicle, however, was pretty much junk.

From the book manuscript I started several years ago (permission to reproduce is NOT granted): To answer your question, to use the '90 brakes on the '88 axle would also require replacing the calipers and steering knuckles.

That's the Quadra-Drive II. The '99 WJ used no computers. I know how Quadra-Drive worked, and I know what an automatic locker is. I understand that mnkyboy doesn't want a locker with a 242, but his explanation of why he thinks it's bad is utter nonsense. A lot of people also spout similar alarmist BS about how terrible even a limited slip is in snow. I'll be 69 years old in a month. I've been driving since I was 12, legally since I was 16, and except for a year in Maryland and a year in Vietnam courtesy of the U.S. Army, I've always lived in New England. I've been driving vehicles with limited slips or lockers since 1966, and if I had my druthers I'd never own a vehicle that didn't have at least a Trac-Lok. You guys do what you want, but stop spreading disinformation to support your own phobias.

I've towed a Comanche longbed (complete) on a tow dolly behind my shortbed MJ. That one was a piece of cake. I also hauled a partially stripped (but the body and drive train -- the heavy stuff -- were all intact) MJ on a flatbed car hauler intended for a much larger/longer vehicle than an XJ behind the shortbed MJ. That tow was across very hilly terrain from Massachusetts down to Connecticut -- and it was raining. We made it, but I wouldn't recommend it as a routine practice.

How about with BOTH locked? How do you think the Grand Cherokee WJ with the original Quadra-Drive works? Both axles have automatic lockers, and the transfer case has an internal differential. My WJ was a piece of junk for a lot of other reasons, but I loved the Quadra-Drive system.

mnkyboy, you have stated your case, and you keep regurgitating the same thing, but you're wrong. I'm not going to convince you, and you're certainly not going to convince me regardless of how many times you restate your position. You set your truck up the way you want, so allow other people to set theirs up the way they want. Simple.

You don't run a part-time transfer case in 4WD on dry pavement because the front and rear driveshafts are locked together and MUST rotate at the same speed. But the front wheels travel a wider arc than the rear wheels on turns, which means any time the vehicle is not traveling absolutely straight ahead, the drive shafts are trying to spin at different speed and are being resisted by the transfer case. Eventually, that strain results in something breaking. The full-time option, with the internal differential in the transfer case, completely eliminates this issue. That's why it's there.

The purpose of running full-time 4WD on the street is to have four wheels driving rather than two. Running with an auto-locker just helps ensure that all the wheels are working. I fail to see a problem. How does this in any way defeat the purpose of the full-time 4WD system? Seems to me it enhances it.

Please explain your reasoning. The full-time position uses a mechanical differential in the transfer case to allow the front and rear driveshafts to turn at different rotational speeds. The transfer case doesn't know and doesn't care in the front or rear differential is locked.

No.

Back when New Process/New Venture Gear published the strength of their transfer cases on-line, the NP231 was rated slightly stronger than the 242. The difference was negligible. A lot of the guys in NAXJA-NAC were running 242s, and I never saw one fail nor did I ever hear of one failing. The 242 does give up a little bit of ground clearance. I wouldn't call it a lot, and I don't think it's enough of a difference to worry about.

I've been running a high altitude CPS in the '88 Cherokee for years. My house is at elevation 460 above sea level. You don't even notice it's there, and if you drive with a lead foot you won't see any benefit from it. It allows the distributor more advance, but the Renix system also has a knock sensor, so any time you put your foot into it far enough to cause detonation, the knock sensor retards the timing back to where it would be with the seal level CPS anyway. I drive with a light foot, and I figure the high-altitude CPS is probably giving me a couple of miles per gallon.

I would just swap the tranny and transfer case. Even if you replace the dashboard cover, there's no need to remove the wiring harness from the vehicle. Why make unnecessary work for yourself?

Be glad it won't start. Trying to run it with leaking injectors is just inviting it to catch fire.

Yeah, if the odometer is working, the cable and drive gear at the lower end are okay. The problem has to be in the speedo head itself.

They sure do have some silly gun laws, though. And we're headed in the same direction under the leadership of His Royal Highness, Emperor Obama the First.

Won't work. My '88 Cherokee has the 10 x 1-3/4" brakes. The first time I did the brakes, the parts house sold me 10 x 2-1/2" shoes, and the drums wouldn't go on. Once I realized what was happening, I thought I was onto an easy way to upgrade my brakes, so I tried fitting a 2-1/2" drum I had from another Jeep. Still wouldn't seat. The 2-1/2" backing plate has a slight offset toward the centerline of the vehicle compared to the 1-3/4" backing plate. The drum hung up on the lip of the backing plate before the flange made contact. Won't work even with the 1-3/4" shoes. A friend in AZ told me a long time ago he used rear drums and backing plates off an old Ford Crown Vic police car, but those have been rear disc for so long the drum brake parts are just as hard to find as the Jeep parts. If you have nothing and need to be able to drive the vehicle, you can use the complete 1-3.4" brake setup, but you'll have to run it with the 1-3/4" shoes and drums. That's really not the end of the world. The front brakes do at least 60 percent of the work, and probably a lot more. Unless you routinely haul a full payload, I don't think you would ever notice the difference.

And 5 birghtness levels, too! {look carefully}