Eagle

^^^ What Geonovast wrote. Not just a standard transmission MJ. A 4.0L (6-sylinder) standard transmission MJ.

Agreed. Classic symptoms.

But the majority were NOT 3.07. The 3.07 came ONLY behind the 4.0L with the 5-speed. The 3.55 was used with the 4.0L and automatic, and behind the 2.5L with the base 4-speed manual. So it should be pretty easy to get an initial assessment of the ratio -- if the engine is (or was) a 4.0L, look for a clutch pedal. If it has a clutch pedal, it's probably a 3.07. If the vehicle has an automatic (4-cylinder or 6-cylinder) you can be 99.97% certain it doesn't have 3.07 gears. Shocks are not a problem in the MJ. The lower shock eye mounts to a pin on the spring plate, not to the axle. The shocks mounted to the axles in the Cherokees, but not in the Comanches.

The difference is what I commented on a number of posts above, but the year break is not 1994. The early XJ and MJ Dana 35s did NOT use c-clips to retain the axle shafts in the assemblies, they used retaining plates at the outer ends, where the outer wheel bearing seals are located. Beginning in (I think) 1990 they changed over to a c-clip design. The c-clips snap onto the inner ends of the axle shafts, inboard of the spider gears. I'm fairly certain that makes the spiders not interchangeable. What I'm not sure of is whether you can use the c-clip spiders in a non- c-clip axle.

If your MJ is a Pioneer or Chief it should have it. If it's a base model it does not.

What's the condition of your ring gear and pinion gear? That's going to be the crtical factor. The problem is that every differential housing is different by a few thousandths of an inch, every pinion gear is different by a few thousandths, and every carrier housing is fifferent by a few thousandths. So it's not just that "new" gears have to be set up from scratch, it's ANY gear set you put in your diff housing that's not the original. Use your old gears on a new carrier (such as if you install a limited slip unit) ==> reset the gears. Change the ring gear OR the pinion gear to another used gear ==> reset the gears. If ALL you need is spider gears, you can swap those with no problem. If your ring gear and pinion gear are in good shape, you can buy a new bolt set and mount the ring gear back on the carrier. If you have to replace the ring gear, you will have to check the backlash and the engagement pattern. It might drop in with no adjusting, but you can't count on that. You posted earlier that 11 of the 12 bolts holding the ring gear to the carrier were broken off. Can you get the broken off stubs out of the carrier?

PLEASE don't use smaller type than the forum default. The default is difficult enough to read -- yours is just about impossible.

Let me clarify/correct this slightly: What does NOT change about toe-in is that we always want the tires to be parallel (straight ahead) when the vehicle is driving stright down the road. The ideal toe-in is always zero, and the spec is always whatever will result in zero toe-in (or toe-out) when driving. The "spec" does not change. However ... due to the geometry of the steering linkage, the actual toe-in DOES change when you lift an MJ. Lift results in more toe-in -- lowering (or removing lift) results in toe-out. A 4" lift changes the toe-in sufficiently to wear out a set of front tires within a few hundred miles.

It sounds very much like your D35 is thoroughly trashed, and I would very much advise you not to spend a single penny on trying to repair it. If you found a good junkyard, find yourself a rear axle out of a newer Cherokee (there must be some in Texas with 5 speeds). The axle will be the correct width, and the driveshaft yoke will mate right up with your driveshaft u-joints. ALL you will need to do is pay a welder to cut the spring perches off the Cherokee axle and remount them in the same position as on the D25. You should even be able to use the old percehes. That's probably one to two hours of easy work for a decent welder. Then just bolt it in. The nose of the Chrysler axle is about an inch longer than the D35, so you might need to have your driveshaft shortened a bit. If your truck is lifted an inch or two, the extra length will probably just compensate for the lift. I think the Chrysler XJ axle route is, overall, going to be a lot less work and a lot less money than fighting a trashed Dana 35, and you'll have a better, sttronger axle when you get finished.

I've been driving (legally) since 1960, and I can remember my parents commenting on the shimmy kicking in at 55 MPH on my mother's 1958 station wagon. Intuitively, it would seem that different size tires should start to shimmy at different speeds, but it's always around 55 to 60 and seems to be independent of tire size. (Caveat: the largest tires I've ever owned have been 31x10.50-15s.) Properly balanced tires do NOT shimmy at 55 MPH. If rotating didn't chase it away, it just means that at least two of your tires are out of balance.

That depends on whose add-a-leaf. Rancho, for example, sells only one AAL for both vehicles. There may be some companies who have a special AAL kit just for Comanches, but I don't think I have ever encountered one.

I still don't know what you think "lifted specs" are, and I can't tell you because I have no idea what that means. Alignment specs typically cover three things: Caster angle, camber angle, and toe-in. Toe-in should be as close to zero as possible UNDER DYNAMIC CONDITIONS, which means with all slop in tie rod ends, etc, pressed out the way the wheels would be rolling down the road. We typically set toe-in to about 1/16" to 1/8" with the vehicle at rest to allow for that slop, but a good front end machine will push the tires out to get a more accurate setting. This doesn't change because of lift. Camber is not adjustable on the Comanche, and because a lift doesn't move the axle relative to the road and it's a solid axle, this also doesn't (and can't) change as a result of lift. What DOES change due to lift is caster angle. Our trucks need around 6 degrees to 7 degrees of positive caster. Lifting the truck moves the control arm pivots relative to the axle, thus affecting caster. Too little caster contributes to death wobble. Adjusting it back within spec (preferably as close to 7 degrees as possible) **may** help alleviate death wobble. I don't regard that as "lifted specs," I regard it as adjusting it back into spec after the lift puts it out of spec. As to tire balance -- if you had a wobble at 55 to 60 MPH, your tires were (and still are) out of balance. That's not negotiable -- that's a fact.

I have never heard of death wobble that stops by itself without your slowing the vehicle down to a complete (or almost comple) stop. What's your idea of "lifted" alignment specs? Why do you think the wheels should be pointing any different on a lifted truck than they do on a stock truck? If you didn't have problems before the lift, and you do have problems after the lift, then obviously the lift changed something and you need to get it aligned to find out what. Lifting a Comanche affects the caster (which is critical), and also (to a small extent) the toe-in. Both can contribute to death wobble. So can (and does) tire balance. And if the alignment is marginal, then tires that were balanced "okay" before suddenly aren't. Those "slight vibes" you had before at 55 MPH? That's tire balance. It doesn't seem to matter what tire size, improper balance ALWAYS seems to result in shimmy at between 55 and 60 MPH. Your truck needs to meet the front end man.

An AAL generally produces lift regardless of whether it a SOA or SUA. For example, Rancho sells the same full-length AAL kit for the Comanche and for the Cherokee. It produces about 2-1/2" of lift in a Cherokee, and about 1-1/2" of lift in a Comanche. An AAL is not just a spacer. It's an additional leaf in the spring, and how much lift it produces depends on how strong it is and how much arch it has. When I bought my '88 Comanche it had a Trailmaster 4" lift in it. The rear lift was from a short AAL kit, nothing else.

No, because the additional leaf increases the carrying capacity of the spring, causing it to bend less due to the weight of the vehicle. Some AALs have more unloaded arch than the leaves of the stock springs, so they actually force all the veaves to bend (arch) more even before weight is applied.

You should be able to use spider gears out of any dana 35 from a junkard. Put up a post in the Classifieds and somebody probably has a junk axle around that hasn't been tossed yet and they can pull the spiders for you. {EDIT}Any Dana 35 from the years 1986 through 1989. Your axle is (or should be) a non C-clip axle. In 1990 Chrysler switched to a C-clip design and I don't think the spider gears are the same. (Not sure on that.)

As Hornbrod wrote, part #17 does not need to be replaced "Unless you have a lot of side to side slop in the driveshaft yoke ..." If you have enough slop that a new seal was destroyed in a short time, you might need to replace part #17.

Factory spec for the 4.0L and the 2.5L is 13 psi minimum at idle, and 37 to 75 psi above 1500 RPM. Most 4.0L engines with under 100,000 miles will typically run 50 to 55 psi at about 60 or 65 MPH, which is around 2,000 RPM. The pressure should go up a bit as the RPMs increase, so a 2.5L should be expected to run a bit higher due to the gearing. As the mileage adds up, the bearings wear and oil pressure will probably drop. My '88 XJ 4.0L with 287,000 miles on it has been running about 40 psi at highway speed and 30 at idle for several years. No funny noises coming from deep inside the engine, so I just keep on truckin'.

None of the highlighted statements above are correct. My '88 Cherokee has the dreaded BA10/5 Peugeot transmission. It now has 287,000 miles on it and it's running fine. It has been wheeled all over New England and at Paragon in Pennsylvania, wearing 30" and 31" tires through stock gears (not an ideal combo for wheeling, I know, but harder on the tranny). I have carried loads heavy enough to be riding on the bump stops -- from Connecticut to New Mexico. The XJ has a class III hitch on it and has towed some heavy loads. The tranny may not stand up to driving it like you stole it, but most manual trannies won't. That's not use, that's abuse. Slamming shifts wears or breaks synchronizers. I have an MJ with an AX-15 and I have a 2000 XJ with an NVG 3550. Just like the Peugeot, they HATE shifting from first to second, and if you repeatedly bang the 1-2 shift the tranny will be toast in a matter of days. That's not a condemnation of the tranny 0-- that's a fact. In fact, the same was also true of my first AMC Javelin. When the Javelin first came out in late 1967 (as a 1968 model), the 4-speed behind the V8s was a wide-ratio Borg-Warner T10, The ratio split sucked, and shifting fast from first to second detroyed the synchro. By early 1968 they had switched to a close-ratio gear set, and that problem pretty much went away. I used the wide ratio set for road racing, and the close ratio set for drag racing.

The AX-15 and the AX-5 are (were) made by Aisin-Seiki, a Japanese company. The AX-5 is a lighter-duty, slightly smaller version of the AX-15. The AX-5 was used in the 4-cylinder XJs and MJs, the AX-15 was used with the 6-cylinder engine. If you could find a way to install an AX-5 behind a 4.0L, it wouldn't last very long at all. But ... since the bell housing is smaller and has a different bolt pattern, you would need a custom adapter to install it.

The NVG3550 is a truck transmission with an (almost) granny first gear -- first is MUCH lower than on the BA10/5 or the AX-15. I have a 2000 Cherokee with the 3550. It's a great transmission ... but it won't take kindly to speed shifting. Drive it that way and you'll destroy second gear (or the second gear synchro) in about a week.

I guess if you're installing a different yoke you should replace the crush sleeve. I know the dealships don't replace it when doing a pinion seal. The procedure for crushing the sleeve is based on the torque (in inch-pounds) needed to rotate the pinion gear in the housing, but with the axle all assembled that can't be measured. The torque needed to crush the sleeve is around 250 foot-pounds, so when doing a pinion seal they usually just torque it back to around 175 to 200 foot-pounds and call it good. Since it doesn't sound like you want to disassemble your differential (and I don't blame you), I think you could probably follow the same procedure.

Why do you need to replace the crush sleeve if the bearing isn't bad and doesn't need replacement?

I have found that the 10mm bolt fits a new track bar perfectly, but if the old one was allowed to slop around too much the hole in the axle bracket may become enlarged. The factory setup uses a nut with a tab, which makes life much easier. On my '88 MJ, I found a double thick, heavy pattern, hardened 10mm washer and a friend welded that to the fact of the backet for me. No more problems. Consider that a 10mm bolt is .3937" in diameter. A 7/16" bolt is .4375". That's a difference of .0438, which is 3/64 of an inch. If you have to drill out the 10mm hole to allow for that amount of difference, how much slop could there really be? Not much.

If you use the Cheroke axle in the MJ, you will have to move the spring percehes whether you go spring under OR spring over, because the width between the perches is different. If you go spring over on the MJ, the resulting lift will be 5-1/2 to 6 inches, not 3. And with the change from 4x2 to 4x4 AND to an automatic, your driveshaft will almost certainly not be the right length. The Cherokee driveshaft will be much too short, so it's not even a consideration.