Eagle

Dead how? No spark? No compression? No ___?

An '89 is a Renix computer, and those cannot be reflashed. High idle is usually caused by the idle air controller on the throttle body.

That presupposes two things that don't work on the 2000 4.0L: (1) You need to remove a spark plug to feel if #1 is coming up on compression or exhaust; and (2) You have to be able to see the timing marks on the front of the engine. I'm old enough to have grown up with points and condensers and actually setting the timing every time we did a "tune-up." Which, back then, we did every 10,000 miles. I know what the timing marks look like -- and they aren't visible on the 2000 XJ. And I don't feel like fighting the idiot coil rail a second time just to pull ONE spark plug so I can feel for compression while I crank. I was hoping you would tell me that Jeep thought about this and made provision for it. I guess not.

Somebody sold you some bad dope. Are YOU not aware that when the Liberty was in final testing, Jeep did as they had always done and drove one over the Rubicon Trail? And that it was so BAD that to get it through they had to manually pile stones at many of the obstacles to make approach ramps, and they still had to push or pull it over some obstacles? Yeah, it's just a wonderful off-road vehicle. Not. You can't go by articles from other countries -- they don't generally have a clue as to what 4-wheeling is about. Heck, in my wife's native country they call anything with 4WD a "Jeep." On the trip when I first met her, I went in order to go wheeling with an off-road club there, one of whose members had invited me. So we're out in the middle of an ocean of sand dunes, standing next to his 2000 Cherokee Classic, and we hear an engine over one of the dunes. "Here comes Ivan and my old Jeep," says my host. Cool, I think, I get to see what he used to drive. And what he used to drive turned out to be a Daihatsu Rocky. To them it was a 'Jeep" -- hey, it has four-wheel drive ...

Looks interesting. Any easy way to line up #1 at TDC/compression without having to remove the coil rail and the #1 spark plug?

I found the TSB on-line. My problem is #6, not #3. I get rough starts with COLD starts -- like after being parked overnight. And it doesn't go away a few seconds or a minute after a rough start. Also, this XJ doesn't have the retro-fit leaf guard on the manifold, so there's less heat to trap. And it isn't that hot here -- today was the hottest day since early April, and it only got up to about 72 degrees. This is a 12-year old vehicle that has gone 96,000 miles, and this problem just showed up within the past ten days or so. I'll think about wrapping some insulation on the injectors, but it doesn't sound like a slam dunk from here.

I sort of think that wrapping some tape around a clutch alignment tool that's "close" is probably not going to get the job done. We used to have a saying in the Army: "Close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades." Well even testing the clutch disc on the input shaft on the bench that disc was really tight. Okay. But SOMETHING is interfering. I've bench pressed enough transmissions onto engines lying under the car on a gravel driveway to have learned that it doesn't take much misalignment to prevent the transmission from bolting up.

What? 2000 XJ. Coil-on-rail. There are three coils, and each fires two cylinders. If one of them was bad, I should have lost both #5 and #6.

I sort of think that wrapping some tape around a clutch alignment tool that's "close" is probably not going to get the job done. We used to have a saying in the Army: "Close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades."

That was my first thought, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask the resident Jeep techs here if the factory has any diagnostic tree to follow for such symptoms. The XJ has 96,000 miles on it, BTW.

This is in the Pub because it's about my wife's 2000 XJ, so there's no cross-over to the Comanche. I'm stumped and I need diagnostic suggestions. My wife is away and I've been driving her XJ because my newer one is overdue for an oil change and my old one needs a front hub. About ten days ago, I stopped at the post office. When I came out and fired up the engine, it sputtered a couple of times, ran VERY rough for a few seconds ... then stalled. When I restarted it, the check engine light was on. It idled much slower than normal for a few seconds, then stalled again. Restarted a second time, NO check engine light, still ran rough, but it kept running. I knew I was long overdue for spark plugs, so I grabbed a set and installed them. It seemed to run smoothly/normally -- for a day or so. Then I began to notice that, when stopped at traffic lights in Drive, every few seconds the engine would give a little skip/burp/stumble. Twice it died, but restarted immediately. Then it seemed to smooth out. Until today. Today it got MUCH worse, and late this afternoon it lit up the check engine light and threw a code. P0306 -- Cylinder #6 misfire. Okay: The code tells me #6 is misfiring, and that's how it felt -- like I was only running on 4 or 5 out of the 6 cylinders. But the code doesn't give me any hint WHY it's misfiring. This is a 2000, so it has coil-on-rail ignition. I can't just pull a plug wire and check for spark. I have a bottle of injector cleaner in the tank, and that has been working for several days. What else can I do to try to zero in on what the cause of this is? I need to get this fixed before my wife gets home. (Fortunately, I have a couple/few weeks, but I would rather get it now rather than wait for the mast minute. Any suggestions? Should I swap a couple of injectors to see if the misfire moves to another cylinder? I know they are rated for less flow, but could I pull an injector from a Renix engine (of which I have multiple) and try that? I never drive hard in the XJs, so the injector would never need to put out full capacity, and I would use it only for diagnosis. If that shows the injector to be the problem, I'd buy the correct replacement. Got any other suggestions?

Scared? You say that as though Chrysler had somehow been hurt by the Comanche. The truth was, they pulled the plug on the Comanche because they could see the Jeep people would rather buy the Comanche, and Chrysler wanted us to buy the Dakota. They weren't about to pull the plug on the Dakota, so the Comanche had to go. And they won't build a new Jeep truck now for the same reason -- they don't want to compete against their own Ram trucks. There's really no reason to build an all-new full-size Jeep truck. Once you get into the 2500 and 3500 series, the Rams use the same solid axle, 4-link front suspension as the XJ and MJ. What Jeep does need is a small, Jeep-size pickup.

Being an olde pharte, I don't like Tupperware guns. I prefer traditional, all steel firearms.

If you remove that top "cap" inside the cab, that won't get you access into the frame rails. The sheet metal floor runs across the top of the rail, then the "cap" is welded on over the floor pan. Where are you seeing rust inside the frame rail? Are you sure it's not just rust from the cap? I don't think you CAN see inside the frame rail.

I would never install a used track bar. It's just not worth it.

Your paint code should be on an ID plate under the hood, and also on an ID plate on the trailing edge of the driver's door. Any commercial auto paint store can custom mix the color if you give them the code.

You may need different rear shocks. I remember a few years ago trying to put a pair of stock Cherokee rear shocks on a stock 2WD Comanche and the shocks when fully extended were about 3/4 of an inch too short -- with the truck at rest, the shocks should have been at mid-travel.

The metric ton package had one more leaf in the rear, not longer leaves. I would expect an AAL to provide the same lift with a metric ton, or maybe less than on a standard suspension.

In-line sixes are tough, because the power pulses are perfectly evenly spaced. It can't really even begin to sound "good" unless you change to a lumpy cam with a high lift and short overlap. For a stock engine: Gibson. http://www.gibsonperformance.com/

I don't see any photo or link, but ... An '84 could not have a Peugeot tranny, because that was introduced in the 1987 model year with the 4.0L engine. And the Peugeot was a 5-speed manual, so it would not have had a column shift indicator anyway. The auto tranny in the '84 XJ was a Chrysler 3-speed, so the shift indicator won't have any provision for overdrive.

What are you going to run for brakes and hubs? The WJ has a different wheel bolt circle than the XJ and MJ.

Looks is minor. It's far too easy to blow the bead when the rim is as wide as the widest part of the tire. For example, I just looked up the specs on a Goodyear Wrangler "SilentArmor." For a 31x10.50-15 they recommend rims from 7.0" to 9.0" and they base their specs on the use of an 8.5" rim. Ditto for the Wrangler SR-A.

The factory never offered an MJ or XJ brush guard. Probably a dealer installed option. Yes, they did. My '87 MJ has one on it. But I don't have any pics.

What's the backspacing for the wheels, and what size tires do you plan to run?

This should sum it up. The following is from the manuscript of a book I started a few years ago. This material is copyrighted -- by me -- and by posting it here I am NOT releasing it into the public domain. Please respect my copyright by NOT copying this and distributing it in any way. (If you wish to print one copy to stick in your toolbox, that's okay.)