Eagle

You put the front wheels ON the ground -- or on a pair of ramps. Have a helper sit in the driver's seat and turn the steering wheel gently. Without a track bar, instead of the road wheels turning, the chassis will shift laterally over the axle.

A friend of mine had the body of his 1949 Hudson street rod stripped by blasting with baking soda. Worked great. It doesn't hurt the metal at all, and it takes off everything you don't want to put paint over. You don't even have to mask the glass -- it's so fine that it actually polishes out old sand pitting in the windshield. The glass will look better after blasting than before.

I have seen only one that sealed to the cab. Most have their own front window and there is no seal to the cab.

Keep in mind that the turn signals and hazard flashers in the XJ and MJ do NOT share the same flasher can. There are two flasher modules on the fuse panel. They interchange, so you can swap them one for t'other as a quick test. If the turn signals work and the hazard flashers don't the wiring is good so it must be a fuse or the flasher module. If neither the turns nor the hazards work ... you have deeper-rooted problems.

Tell me he didn't buy the stroker engine from Clifford Performance ...

Is he running platinum tip spark plugs? The tips can come off, and when they do they tend to break things inside the engine -- like pistons. I won't run platinum plugs. I use only standard NGKs, and they run fine in all my Jeeps.

Death wobble is not caused by a worn track bar. Death wobble is caused by something causing one tire to shake badly (usually tire imbalance) and then that shake gets transmitted to the opposite front wheel. If the opposite front wheel is also marginal in balance, it picks up the shake as a harmonic, and from there the two "feed" on each other in an escalating cycle. I drove my '88 XJ for an entire winter with a track bar so loose I had a full quarter of a turn at the steering wheel that did nothing before I could start changing direction. (Not recommended, but it was a cold, snowy winter and I didn't have any place to change it out that wasn't cold and covered with snow.) I had no death wobble.

The shop I use tried to tell me that, too. It's because they don't carry metric stock, so they go to the next larger SAE size rod. They showed me a 9/16" u-bolt and it looked huge, even held next to the original 14mm MJ u-bolt. I guess it's actually not too far off, but it struck me as overkill and it makes more sense (for me) to standardize on one size.

THat would have to be a 1984 or 1985. It could have 4.56s. A few years ago I had a 1984 XJ Wagoneer, 4-cyl auto. I gave it to a friend in my NAXJA chapter for his daughter, who was about to get her driver's license. He came down to my place to pick it up and I followed him most of the way back to his place to be sure he wasn't going to get stranded. He commented that the tach was showing some crazy RPMs at 55 MPH, so it probably had something like 4.56 gears in it.

There are no bushings in the tie rod ends, or at the upper (frame) end of your track bar.

No, the Chinese junk is crazy cheap. I've seen cheap Chinese tie rod ends last less than a year. Do the math.

Not in 1994. Chrysler standardized on 4.10s for ALL 2.5L Cherokees.

MJ u-bolts are not 9/16". They are 14mm, which is smaller than 9/16". And XJ u-bolts are not 1/2", they are 12mm ... which is smaller than 1/2". Since I mess around with both XJ and MJs, I went to a local spring shop and had a bunch of new 1/2" u-bolts made up, and I'll use them for both XJs and MJs. A new, high-tensile 1/2" u-bolt has to be as good as a rusty, 20-year old 14mm u-bolt, IMHO. And with all the hard-core wheeling I've seen XJs put through, I have never EVER seen a 12mm u-bolt fail, so I feel completely comfortable using 1/2" u-bolts in my MJs as well as in my XJs. 9/16" = .5625 14mm = .5512

Those Mopar perches are EXTREMELY beefy ... and that $18 (or so) price is for the pair, not per each. You'll pay $40 and up to the aftermarket suppliers and what you get for $40 won't be as good as the Mopar units. But ... with reasonable care, it should be easy to grind off the welds and reuse the original perches.

They aren't the same. If you could set a "first generation" hub next to a "second generation" hub, off the vehicle, you'd see the difference instantly. Ditto the early rotors next to the composite rotors.

Not unless you also change knuckles and hubs. Read my post immediately above yours.

As noted, Chrysler went back to one-piece rotors in mid-1999, not 1996. I've posted the run-down before, but here it is again. As before, this is from a book I am writing and it is copyrighted. By posting it here I do NOT grant anyone permission to copy it elsewhere, post it elsewhere, or in any way give or send it to anyone else. It is important to ensure that you have matching knuckles, hubs, rotors AND calipers. Mix and match, and the calipers may sit off-center on the rotors and cause all manner of problems.

Several years back, I had one of those carbs rebuilt by "Mr. Carburetor," a local shop that specialized in tuning carburetors back in the heyday of the muscle cars, and stayed in business servicing the street rod crowd. He got mine running, but he strongly advised scrapping it and going to a conventional, non-computer carburetor from someplace like Summit Racing. Something in the 350 to 400 CFM range would probably be about right. Mr. Carburetor said the OEM carb on the 2.8Ls was junk. I have no reason to doubt him -- haven't yet heard of one that runs/ran well.

Looks nice -- for a Dodge. Having owned four of the original 2-seat AMXs (as well as several of the original style Javelins) I have to say that thing doesn't look even a little bit like an AMX.

What engine is this for, a 2.5L or 2.8L? And what cable are you talking about removing? I thought those carbs had electric chokes. If so, they use a small resistance unit to generate heat to gradually disengage the choke.

In the interests of pedantry, while the above advice is all pretty much spot on, I would like to point out that the length of the track bar and the amount of lift do not in any way affect the track width (reference the title of this thread) ... which is the distance between the front wheels. Your track width has not changed, but your axle has been pulled off-center.

You should NOT have the engine running when you remove the temp sensor to burp the system. Park with the nose pointing downhill, so any air pockets will migrate to the highest point -- which will (hopefully) be that rear corner of the block. Then fill until coolant comes out of the hole, and then replace the sensor. Personally, I don't do it that way. I let it heat up with the cap off the tank, until the coolant in the surge tank boils, then immediately shut off the engine and wait. After about a minute or two, as the system cools it'll start sucking coolant out of the bottle back into the system. After it stops sucking, restart the engine and repeat. Usually takes three to five cycles to purge most of the air.

I thought 99 was a transition year...I seem to remember you mentioning that in a post awhile back. When I bought new rotors for the 99, O'reillys had two different rotors for it. They looked like they were one-piece cast to me. :dunno: Personally, I was avoiding getting an 00 or 01 to avoid the coilpacks and LP D30, but that's me. I think '99 was a transition year, which is why I'm avoiding it because I could expend a lot of time and energy looking at '99s I wouldn't buy because of the brakes. I'm looking for a street Jeep, daily driver, not a trail machine. The low pinion front axle doesn't bother me at all for the purpose intended. And I have no problem at all with the coilpacks -- they're more efficient than a distributor.

He said 185 :hmm: My bad. I'll blame it on the monitor at work. IMHO even a 185 is a mistake, but nowhere near as serious as a 165. It's important to remember that the purpose of a thermostat in an automobile is to keep the temperature UP. If your cooling system isn't capable of keeping the temperature down to 195, how's it going to keep it down to 185?

AFAIK the 99 XJ still used the composite rotors. I don't feel like replacing brake rotors every three months. Been there, done that with a '99 Grand Cherokee. Not doin' it again. Sinkrun -- where is Rimersburg, PA? Eastern or western part of the state?