Eagle

Is there anyone who has installed a Mopar Performance Phase I or Phase II cam in a Jeep 4-cylinder? Or does anyone have links to any articles or videos that can offer any information on what kind of power and torque increases the cam generates? Only asking about the 4-cylinder. I know the cam specs are the same for the 4-cylinder and the 6-cylinder, but the two engines start out with very different power curves, so results for the 4.0L won't be helpful.

WHOA! You ain't just a'hummin', Pardner. I wouldn't buy one from the rust belt, so I just check Autotrader for Arizona. Only found three -- the cheapest was (IIRC) $16,900, and the fancy red one was almost $32,000! Somebody call 9-1-1 ... I'm suffering an extreme case of sticker shock. Plus -- they were all automatics. Didn't they make the LJ with a 5-speed?

The rear axles has been modified to put the leaf springs on top of the axle. The factory setup is spring-under. From the photo, it looks like the factory spring pads have been removed from the underside of the axle tubes, so going back to a stock setup will require either welding on new pads, or re-re-locating the ones that are there now. (Or swapping in a stock axle.) Here's your dilemma: Once you add up the numbers of axle tube diameter, spring perch height and offset, and spring pack thickness, the MINIMUM amount of lift from a spring-over conversion is about 5-1/2 inches. So if you want to get to 4-1/2 inches, w you WILL have to undo the spring-over conversion.

Good -- a wider range than I thought. Excellent. I had an interesting day today. I have a friend across town who has a TJ (not the Unlimited) with a snow plow. The last couple of storms he has taken pity on me and plowed my driveway so I don't have to do the whole thing (100 yards worth) with the snow blower. Well, he blew out his back a few days ago and can hardly make it from his chair to the bathroom. Aside from my place, he plows his place, his mother's house, and the lot of the building that used to be his father's service station. His middle daughter (20 years old) managed to scrape a path out of their driveway, but I volunteered to do his mother's place and the shop. It took me about an hour and a half to clear my driveway with the snowblower, then I went off to make my appointed rounds with the snow plow. I haven't done any plowing since I sold my old full-size Cherokee, almost twenty years ago. It wasn't hard to get back in the swing, but his up-down/left-right control is a hand-held box on an umbilical cord. Mine was permanently mounted to the dashboard, and I think I like that better. Plus, his TJ is a 4-banger, 5-speed, on 32" or 33" tires. WOW! Talk about under-powered. My old beast was a 360 cubic inch V8 with Quadratrac. But -- aside from the lack of power, I really enjoyed spending an afternoon in a TJ. It rekindled my lust for a TJ Unlimited. I'm about to do some surfing and see what they sell for. I'm sure I can't afford one, but ... a guy has to have dreams, right?

Good grief! That dude's head bobs around so much, he must have a chiropractor on retainer. What an annoying twit.

What's required depends on what was done. I have an '88 MJ that had a 4" Trailmaster lift on it when I bought it. It rode like crap and I hated it, so I put it back to stock and I don't think I sacrificed any off-road capability by going back to stock height. In front, I removed the control arm drop brackets, put in stock height coil springs, and stock length shocks. Replaced the Rusty's (crappy) track bar with an OEM track bar. The rear was lifted with AALs, so I removed those and replaced the shocks with stock length shocks.

What years did the make the original TJ (2-door) Wrangler Unlimited?

UGLY!

Back around 1980, I was in a bind and I needed cheap transportation. I paid all of $50 for a clapped out 1968 AMC Javelin with a 232 c.i.d. 6-cylinder engine and a 3-speed manual shifter (on the steering column -- the proverbial "three on a tree"). It had been parked for a couple of years because the head gasket had blown. I pulled the head, gave it a quick check with a straightedge and it looked okay-ish, so I didn't even bother with a machine shop. I pulled the valves, cleaned them up a bit, and re-lapped them by hand with a suction cup and a small jar of lapping compound. The cylinders had had water/coolant sitting in them for two years, so they were nasty. I used a ridge reamer to cut out the carbon rings at the top of each cylinder, rotated the crank so I could clean out each bore with the piston at the bottom, then I used a cylinder hone to clean up the walls while each piston was at the bottom. I didn't even replace the rings. I slapped a new head gasket in it, torqued it down, and drove it for two years. I mention this because the AMC 232 is the same basic engine as the Jeep 4.0L. Pete said they are tough. He wasn't kidding. They are TOUGH.

The '88 track bar part number was superseded by the late model track bar. The early ones didn't have a grease fitting -- the later ones do.

Except in Venezuela ...

Probably not, but you never know. A 33-year old truck with a blown engine? IMHO it's worth maybe 2/3 of what you paid for the wheels and tires. To anyone who knows Jeeps, a Rusty's suspension kit doesn't add any value, and may reduce the value. Why don't you just put a head gasket in it?

So you haven't done the second drain and refill? I wouldn't do anything else until you have done that. As I posted above, the torque converter holds a significant amount of joy juice, so just draining the pan (even if you drop the pan) doesn't get all the old, burned fluid out. I think you need to do at least one more drain and refill cycle, maybe two more. If that doesn't solve the problem, then you can start looking for other issues.

What I needed was to explain to my step-grandson in Chile why I can't get the transfer case skid plate off my late wife's 2000 XJ because the bolts are seized up in the riv-nuts and the riv-nuts just spin when I try to unfasten them. Grandson can't understand why I don't just use a longer breaker bar. Omega Rugal gave me something to send him. If that doesn't convey the idea, I'll ask you guys for more help. Thanks.

I envy people who can speak multiple languages. My late wife's cousin speaks six languages, all fluently. DISGUSTING!

Thanks, Gents. Omega Rugal has returned from parts unknown, so the translation has been accomplished.

Where is Omega Rugal when I need him? Llamando Omega Rugal por favor!

Google translates doesn't "translate" so much as "transliterate." It's perhaps marginally better than Bing translator -- but not much. DeepL is far better, but I need a technical/mechanical situation explained and the computer translators don't have the vocabulary to even begin to handle it.

If anyone speaks Spanish fluently, please contact me via PM. Thank you.

Keep in mind that draining the transmission pan -- whether you pull the plug or drop the pan -- doesn't drain the torque converter. Because iof the dip stick issue, I would start by just pulling the tranny drain plug. Drain, refill, drive it a bit (even if all you do is jack the rear wheels off the ground and run it in the air, then do another drain and refill to purge as much of the old, nasty fluid as possible.

You have a transmission problem.

Bolt-in. The box is exactly the same, the only difference is the MJ box has a 14:1 ratio and the ZJ box has a 12.7:1 ratio. I swapped a ZJ box into a 2001 XJ that needed a box. On the road (on 235/75-15 tires) it drove exactly the same as my 2000 XJ. In parking maneuvers, the ZJ box is 3 turns lock-to-lock and the XJ/MJ box is 3-1/2 turns lock-to-lock. I don't regard it as an improvement or an "upgrade," but it is a viable swap.

Thank you. If you think it's any good, please spread the word. The real hurdle with self-publishing, it turns out, isn't the writing or the publishing, it's the promotion. Most of the writer web forums suggest that authors should have web sites, but those are mostly people who churn out romances or fantasy books on almost a mass production basis, so they have lots of titles and they can always talk about the next one that's "coming soon." Having a web site when I only have one, potentially boring title doesn't seem to me like a great investment in resources.

Pete beat me to it. One of the aftermarket gasket makers has a rear main seal that has two wiper lips on it. The second wiper rides on a part of the crank that won't be worn, so it should seal even if the crank is scored. Be sure to lube the new seal with Vaseline when you install it. You should never install a seal like that dry. Just don't get Vaseline on the ends where they have to be glued together with RTV.

If there was a Yahoo group for XJs, it wasn't the foundation for NAXJA. Prior to NAXJA, there was an XJ forum. I don't remember the name of it, but it was an actual forum. The domain was owned by an individual, and he had the contract with whatever service was hosting it. I was active on it, along with a number of others. We would send the guy money periodically to keep things running. And then, one fine day, he just ... disappeared. My fuzzy recollection is that he pulled his disappearing act right after having conducted a fairly successful fund raising campaign, but I'm no longer clear on that. Anyhoo ... the guy who owned it was in absentia. We kept it going for a short while by sending money directly to the hosting service, but that eventually ended when they realized they were no longer dealing with the owner of the domain. Plus -- the now-missing owner was the only person with the password to be able to get in and act as admin for the site. Somebody (I don't remember who) put together a campaign to raise funds to migrate the whole mess over to a new domain, on a new server, using new software, and with paid memberships. The deal was that people who chipped in to get it started (IIRC we ponied up $150 each as seed money) would be established as Life Members. I chipped in. Somebody knew somebody who drew up a set of by-laws, and NAXJA was born. By comparison, the Comanche Club was (from my perspective) much easier. I wheeled an MJ in those days, and I was of the opinion that NAXJA didn't really give Comanches the coverage or respect they deserve. I was thinking about starting a forum dedicated to MJs but I had no idea how to go about doing it. And then I woke up one day to find that some dude named Pete M had gone and done it. So I signed up and sent Pete a few bucks, and here we are.