Eagle

Sadly, it probably is the slave, but there are a couple of things to verify first. 1) How are you bleeding the clutch? I've seen people (including some who REALLY should know better) try to bleed the clutch by pumping the peddle madly while the bleeder is open. All this does is foam up the fluid. It's a two man job, and it requires patience to do it by the book. 2) There is a third component that can cause loss of pressure, and that's the line/hose assembly between the master and slave. I had one blow out at a toll booth in the Massachusetts Turnpike when I was 100 miles from home. That was a looooooong drive with no clutch. Both ends are metal, but the middle portion is rubber, like a brake flex hose, and it can crack. The good news is that you can crawl under the vehicle and look for wetness pretty easily.

DON'T DO IT! I know Pete means well, but I own multiple XJs as well as multiple MJs. I can assure you that a great many XJ owners take the O-ring and spring out of the XJ proportioning valve, which makes it work just like the MJ distribution block ... because the rear brakes on XJs with the OEM proportioning valve suck. It will NOT accomplish the one thing you would want it to do ... prevent rear wheel lockup in a panic stop.

$122 ?? For that plus $75 you could convert the rig to an open cooling system with a new radiator and never worry about a "pressure bottle" again. But with that surge tank you have all the benefits of the open system, none of the headaches of figuring out how to control the auxiliary fan, and you DON'T spend that $75. Why spend $75 you don't have to on a conversion that accomplishes nothing? The newer radiators are exactly the same size and they don't cool any better than the "closed" system radiators.

If the goal is just to get the truck started and drive it out, I think I'd drop a few bucks on a junkyard carb for a 2.8L, fire it up, and drive it home. Plenty of time to figure out the next step after the hulk is home.

Too nice to part out.

Also my MJ is a 4.0 and the XJ the cluster came from was a 4.0. So I thought the tach would work correctly. It should. How do you know it's off? How much is it off? At idle it reads below zero. That doesn't sound like "off" ... that sounds like "broken." Even if it came from a 4-cylinder donor, it would show a reading at idle, but instead or 650 (or so) RPM it would be indicating 975 (or so) RPM. You could try taking the tach out of the cluster and adjusting the potentiometer on the back, but I'm not optimistic that it'll have enough adjustment to fix this. If you can get it to read accurately at idle, be sure to cross-check at around 2000 RPM, because it may be off there, as well.

Also my MJ is a 4.0 and the XJ the cluster came from was a 4.0. So I thought the tach would work correctly. It should. How do you know it's off? How much is it off?

Moroso offers a couple of aluminum surge tanks. Two sizes, two styles of filler neck (two stamped, two machined). Nice units, and that's what I run. More recently, someone came out with an aluminum flat surge tank that is specifically made to replace the plastic XJ/MJ tank. It has been written up here multiple times and a search should get you a link to it. If it had been available when I did mine I would have chosen it over the Moroso, but the Moroso is a few bucks cheaper. At this point, I have three of the Moroso tanks so I don't need the other one.

The fuel pump ballast resistor is on the inner driver's fender, between the air box and the sheet metal. It's a white-ish ceramic thingie with a fairly heavy wire stuck on each end. Jumper the two wires together and see if it makes a difference.

There seems to a lot of stuff on The History Channel that has nothing to do with History. I occasionally watch Pawn Stars, but that's about it.

Ummm ... who do you think makes Rancho? Rancho and Monroe are both part of Tenneco and I'd bet a donut they all come out of the same factory. The reason I don't recommend the Sensatracs isn't that they're not good. IMHO they are VERY good. But ... they adjust to road conditions by having short bypass grooves in the bore at the mid-height position, allowing for a softer ride at "normal" height that stiffens up as the suspension compresses or droops, when the piston gets beyond the grooves. If you'll be towing or carrying a heavy load frequently, you lose the benefit of the "groove tube technology" ... so why pay for it? You can get the Monro-Matic Plus for a few bucks less than the Sensatracs, or you can go for the Reflex series for a bunch MORE than the Sensatracs. For a daily driver that sees a lot of miles at highway speeds, I might go for the Reflex. For most of us who use an MJ as a weekend warrior, 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th) vehicle, the Monro-Matic Plus is fine.

I would use Monroes. Whatever the line is next cheaper than the Sensatrac. Way back when my '88 XJ was new (ish), when the factory shocks wore out my brother talked me into buying a set of KYB Gas-A-Justs for it. I HATED them. They were sloppy over big bumps and dips, yet extremely harsh over pavement cracks and closely-spaced ripples. I didn't even wait to wear then out. I had them on less than a month before I did what I should have done. I put on a set of Monroe Magnums (a series that has been discontinued). Those rode and handled much better, and lasted well over 100,000 miles.

Nope. Over-revving should not result in overheating. Prolonged idling might, but not over-revving. Unless your fan and/or water pump weren't working. 1) Drain the oil, into a clean, OPEN pan. Inspect the oil carefully for evidence of coolant in the oil. If you find a lot of coolant, you may also have damaged some bearings, in which case the new motor might be wiser. If there's no (significant amount of) coolant in the oil, go to: 2) Borrow a machinist's steel straightedge and check the top surface of the block for flatness. Also inspect the cylinder bores. If the mating surface of the block is flat and there's no visible scoring in the cylinders, go ahead with the low-miles head. All it'll cost you (apparently) is a head gasket and some time.

You still have not explained what caused the head to crack ... or what caused the head gasket to blow. Getting stuck in mud typically does not blow gaskets or crack heads. That said ... if you blew a gasket and the resultant overheating cracked the head, unless you got enough coolant into the oil to score the bearings your short block should still be good. Why go through all the work of swapping an entire engine if you can just bolt a head onto it and drive it?

Before throwing the baby out with the proverbial bathwater, and recognizing that it's a lot easier to swap a head than it is to swap an engine ... HOW did you crack the head? What's the likelihood of other (collateral) damage?

Another vote for just installing a used engine. She apparently didn't tell you WHY it is seized. If from standing, it could be rusted rings and that can be freed up -- but there's a good chance it'll always use oil. If it's seized because it overheated, there may be other damage you'd have to do a tear-down to assess and repair. It isn't worth the effort -- just get a known-good engine from a junk yard and swap it in.

So what happened?

Are there two switches? Possibly you got a 2-speed switch for a vehicle without intermittant wipers?

Rear main seals do not last forever. Doesn't matter if the vehicle is driven daily or parked for several years. If the '88 needs a RMS, the '87 will need a RMS ... if not today, then maybe next week. If it's 4.0L, the RMS does not require dropping the transmission, only removing the oil pan.

You mean the other line to the rear? No, it won't. If anything in the rear is leaking, you essentially have no rear brakes and the front brakes are doing all the work.

:???:

I ran my '88 MJ Chief with 3.73 gears and 31x10.50s for years. That combination was an accident. I bought the gears for the '88 XJ with the intention of running 30x9.50s. Then I got the lifted MJ, which came on bald stock-size tires, and my brother gave me his old 31x10.50s from his Nissan. The truck was a dog with 3.07s and 31s, I had the 3.73s, so I said "Why not?" and put 'em in. It was okay but I wished at times they were 4.10s. Street was fine, but the crawl ratio (especially with a 5-speed) wasn't low enough. In fact, looking at road speed and RPMs, the 31x10.50s through 3.73 gears ends up being exactly the same overall, final drive ratio as stock tires with 3.55 gears. Which reinforces my general rule of thumb, 3.7s for 30" tires, 4.10s for 31s, 4.56 (or 4.88) for 33s, and 4.88 for anything larger than 33s.

Andy in PA (or Andy from PA) also lowered an MJ. I don't recall if he posted any details.

You guessed it -- there was originally a tag on each spring. I pulled the code off the tags on my (now my wife's) 2000 XJ Classic when it was new and the tags were there and readable. The XJ has Up Country. When I used that number to order a duplicate set of springs to put in the old XJ, the parts guru recognized the code and asked why I was ordering ZJ coils for an XJ. That's how I know XJ Up Country coils are the same as stock ZJ V8 coils.

It's worth whatever the buyer and seller agree on. Clean, rust-free MJs of any year are difficult to find. It all comes down to how badly you want it. It's well-known that I'm a curmudgeon, but if I were asking $2,500 for a vehicle and you offered me $1,500 I'd throw you off my property. If you came back the next day and offered me $5,000 I'd tell you to f*** off. You're talking about an offer that's roughly 40 percent less than the asking price. That's not an offer, that's an insult.