Eagle

I might have to remind my wife to carry the pepper spray I bought her for self-defense on her trips into NYC (as well as beautiful downtown New Haven. ... ugh). She never bothers to carry it, because when she did it was always buried at the bottom of her purse. Now we have TWO packs of coyotes roaming around the preservation and water company land behind our house, and the 'yotes have killed several small pets around town, as well as a couple of goats in the next town over. We're keeping her granddaughter's toy poodle, which weighs 5 pounds (officially, on the veterinarian's scale). She'd be just a tasty desert for a pack of coyotes and I'm concerned that the wife hears the coyotes at night, she knows there must be at least a dozen of them, and she knows that it's not recommended to let small pets out unsupervised even in the day time -- then she goes and lets the poodle out after dark. AARGH! If it were up to me, I'd be set up with a sniper rifle. However, apparently Connecticut for some inexplicable reason has awarded coyotes with protected status, so I'm not sure it would be legal to shoot one even if I caught it in the act of chowing down on our granddaughter's little poodle. Sheer idiocy -- coyotes aren't even native to Connecticut, how the [bleep] do they rate protected status? Jeff -- I saw the funny part.

The thing is, dropping the pan is a nuisance job, and a set of main bearings isn't THAT expensive. IMHO it just makes more sense to do the job all at once. You have to drop the pan to replace the oil pump ... why not just do the bearings while you're in there? Do the rear main seal while the pan's off, too. Then you'll have a motor that should be good for another 100k

I'm greatly relieved to know that my reputation is (temporarily) intact, but I wasn't intending to take in the totality of AMC vehicles in my response. The question was about an '86 MJ and that's what I meant by "the factory" -- the Jeep factory, in MJs.

Let's face it -- you have THREE oil pressure gauges saying you have next to no oil pressure. It's time to do something (besides buy another gauge). You need bearings and/or an oil pump. Both can be replaced with the engine in the truck, by dropping the oil pan.

AW4 is the correct name for it. If the guy at the shop doesn't know that, you might want to look for a different shop. Hint: The "AW" stands for Aisin-Warner. It's a Japanese transmission, not Chrysler.

There are just SOOOO many very old expressions that cover this: "It takes one to know one." "Birds of a feather flock together." And so on ... :banana: :brows: Just kiddin'. Really. Honest. No, no I was only kidding.

The XJ and MJ are identical from the firewall forward.

^^^ What he said. The so-called "open" system doesn't cool any better than the closed system. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The factory never sold the AMC 20 (or any other axle) with a locker. They did sell a lot of limited slips, and there's a good chance that's what is in your AMC 20.

I reckon it would sort of ruin your whole day to come out of the local Wal-Mart and find THAT where you left your car parked. :ack:

I will not even attempt to provide a definitive answer to this. You can think about it -- the "normal" position is horizontal, so if the bed drops when loaded, the arm gets pushed up. How much for full braking? I don't have a clue. Further, as far as I am concerned once the link has been removed ... all bets are off. The factory service manual procedure for adjusting it calls for a special gauge, and there's a spring or something (sorry, I'm going from memory here, not reading the book) that has to be replaced EACH TIME an adjustment is made. If the arm on yours is hanging loose, you have no way of knowing if it has been rotated clockwise, counterclockwise, one time or three times, or whatever. The height sensing valve in my '88 blew out when I had to make a panic stop two or three years ago. After experiencing that, I do not trust them. They are all +/- 20 years old at this point. There's no way to test them for integrity, and you can't buy a new one. My suggestion is to eliminate it completely, run ONE new steel line from the front to the rear of the truck and connect directly into the rear flex hose. That gives you 100% rear brakes all the time. If that's too much, then you can put a Wilwood adjustable proportioning valve into the steel line to the rear.

Help or hinder what? They are short add-a-leaves that lift an XJ 3 inches. In an MJ they'll probably lift about 1-1/2" and make the ride very stiff. Is that a help or a hindrance? What are you hoping to accomplish? Do you want lift, more load capacity, or both?

:agree: And if it's a daily driver it is even more important to NOT go any higher than you need. Jeeps are already bricks on wheels. Get 'em up high in the air and they can be very unstable in an emergency maneuver.

Mate, you STILL have not told us how you intend to use this truck. Not even God can tell you if this kit or that kit has everything you need until you figure out what you plan to do with the truck, and tell us. Just as an example -- I think drop brackets are a great idea for a street-driven truck at 4" or lift. For a vehicle that will be used off road, drop brackets are rock magnets. They are worse than no lift at all, IMHO -- and I say that after several seasons of wheeling on them. What's the plan, Stan?

But what are you trying to accomplish? You started out just saying you wanted to run 31" tires. Now suddenly you want a 3"-plus lift for under $200. What will you be using this truck for? As has been noted, the cost of a lift increases exponentially with the height. A 2" budget boost is not that expensive and gets you a very capable vehicle. Once you go to 3 inches and beyond, you get into high dollar territory where you start needing adjustable upper and lower control arms, longer brake hoses, adjustable track bar, maybe drop brackets, different shock absorbers, ... You can run 31s on OEM rims with no lift. Buy your tires, mount 'em up, and save your lunch money while you determine how much lift you *NEED* and what the best kit is for that height. The rule of thumb is always to run as LITTLE lift as you need for where you're going. Forget the 16 inch lift so the truck looks cool parked on the grass islands at the mall. That's for wannabees. As a world-famous designer once said (or wrote): "Form follows function." Build your truck to do what it needs to do, not because somebody said X or Y or Z is the hot trick of the week.

No, you do NOT want the one from Rusty's. Read some of the old posts/threads about Rusty's products. I think you need to clarify your intentions. You started out asking for the cheapest way to run 31" tires. The answer to that is -- no lift necessary. Then you said you wanted more ground clearance, but you left the criterion of lowest cost unchanged. You were given several options that would get you around 2" of lift for under $150, possibly closer to $100. Now you're asking about lift kits that cost more than $300 -- before shipping. What do you want to accomplish? What is your budget? Right now you have us shooting at a moving target. Every time we answer a question you change the parameters. BTW - This is a forum, not a cell phone. It's rude to use texting abbreviations in a discussion forum. It's more difficult for us to read, and when people are in a hurry they tend to skip over the posts that are difficult to figure out. Try English. It has worked for several centuries (or so I've been told).

As noted, V8 Grand Cherokee front coils will give you about an inch. Add a set of 3/4" coil spacers and you're at 1-3/4". For the rear, Rancho has a full-length AAL for the XJ and MJ. It's good for 2-1/2" in the XJ and about 1-1/2" in the MJ, so that's a good match for the 1-3/4" in the front. An alternative is a set of 2" coil spacers in front and an AAL in the back. Other folks favor longer shackles for the rear. I don't, because longer shackles do not add any strength to the spring, but they work the spring more which leads to fatigue. A full-length AAL strengthens the spring and for that reason I think it's a much better solution. It would have helped if you had explained your goals in your original post. All you said was you wanted the cheapest way to run 31s, and the answer to that is still to do nothing.

To repeat a question already asked: Are you sure it went into 4WD? Many years ago, on the way to work during a snow storm, I threw my daily driver into 4WD to get up a particularly steep hill that had not been plowed. The lever went into the 4WD position just like always, but I couldn't make it up the hill. I finally had to give up and take an alternate route. Subsequent checking showed that the vacuum connections on the CAD were shot and it wasn't engaging the axle. The transfer case itself, which is shifted mechanically, was in 4WD, but without the axle being locked the front wasn't doing anything. Both the front axle disconnect and the light are actuated by vacuum. If either doesn't work, I would start by checking for vacuum leaks. Then check for a burned out bulb.

No you don't. Drop the drive shaft, and the access to the fuel pump is wide open.

Bob's first stroker was (and probably still is) in his XJ daily driver. I used to visit him regularly when he was building both the truck and the engine. It was a stroker. Unless he has changed the engine, it is still a stroker. The truck was a shell he rescued from a junkyard in Massachusetts. Nobody wanted to buy it from him for the $100 he had paid for it, so he decided (since the pro dragster he had been crewing on had been sold) to build it into a drag truck. I watched the transformation take place, and I was in the shop when he flow tested the head after he had cc'd it. In fact, the original tailgate off the truck is leaning against my garage. The engine he had in it then was a stroker. If the engine now isn't ... he has swapped engines. And back when Bob did his first stroker, in the XJ, Hesco and Clifford were not the only ones selling strokers. There was a company in Maryland, that has since gone under. And there was another company, that's still around but the name of which I can't remember. And then there was the strokers' e-group, where all the guys who were doing their own hung out and exchanged information. We knew about the VAM engines and pistons back then. There was an American living in Mexico, for example, who was hot on tracking down a source for them. Sadly, he died of a heart attack just when it appeared he was close to scoring. Dino Savva was a member of that group, too. He built his stroker in Saudi Arabia. I don't think he used anything from Hesco or Clifford.

You don't need lift to run 31s. I am running 31x10.50s on a stock XJ right now, and the XJ has smaller rear wheel wells than the MJ. So, to answer your question, the cheapest way to get enough lift for 31s is to not lift. NO trimming is necessary if you run OEM Jeep wheels.

How important it is depends on what position it's in when it's NOT connected. What that thing does is to limit (reduce) the amount of braking pressure that goes to the rear wheels when the pickup bed is unloaded, because when the back end is light it's easy to lock up the rear wheels and spin out. As you add weight in the bed, the bed squats down on the suspension, which has the effect of the rod from the differential pushing up the arm of the valve to allow more braking ... which you need with more weight in the truck. If it's disconnected, it might be in the position that allows full braking force to the rear ... in which case you'll have great brakes but you'll have to watch out for lockup and spinout. Or it could be in the position that allows NO braking to the rear -- in which case you will be doing ALL your driving using front brakes only. Your stopping distances will be increased over what they should be, you'll use up front pads rather quickly ... but your rear brake shoes will last (literally) forever.

I'm glad to hear he finally has it running right. Bob is an old friend from NAXJA, and I saw that truck when he first started building it. There were LOTS of problems getting the engine sorted out, mostly due to the fact it's a stroker and it was a trial and error process finding the optimum injector size. I think there was another ":doh!" type problem, too, but I don't remember what it was. He's a long-time serious drag racer, and there's perhaps nobody (other than perhaps Dr. Dino Savva in Saudi) who knows more about the stroker engine.

Thanks, I missed that the first time around. Fact (verifed by yours truly): 31x10.50 tires with 3.73 gears turn EXACTLY the same RPMs for a given speed as stock tires with 3.55 gears. EXACTLY the same. So consider if towing your intended trailer would be bearable with a stock truck with automatic, on stock tires. If so, then 3.73 gears would be okay and 4.10s would be a little better. However, if your answer about a stock rig being bearable for your purposes is, "Heck no! No way, Jose!" ... then you move to 4.10s being the least gear you should consider, and 4.56s or even 4.88s being preferred.

I think maybe we'll just do a pre-emptive strike on this discussion. The caution about doing business with Nate's has been posted and duly noted by some. There is really no need to discuss, and certainly no need to be calling each other names.