Eagle

That's the one. It's ready to go, but you DO need an overflow catch bottle. First because coolant is toxic and should not be dumped on the ground, and second because the system WILL push coolant out when hot, and you need to provide a way to suck that coolant back in as the system cools down. You can buy catch bottles for under 10 bucks at the parts chains, it isn't a big deal.

I think you just have to find the biggest, thickest (most rows) radiator you can -- and then say a few Hail Marys. Cooling is the major issue when doing a V8 conversion in an XJ or MJ. One of the guys up in Rhode Island had one he bought already converted. I don't remember what it had in it for a radiator. I do remember that it ran okay on the street, but on a trail ride he would have to stop and allow it to cool down about every 15 or 20 minutes. I also think an equivalent size copper radiator will cool better than aluminum. Aluminum is preferred by racers because it's lighter, but copper conducts heat better than aluminum. Which means, if two radiators have equal surface (tube) area and equal fin area -- the copper one will cool better than the aluminum one.

The pirates in the lifeboat didn't understand that they were holding nothing. I guess they don't play Texas Hold'um in Somalia. No hole card, no sleeve card, the other guy had all the aces. They had a lifeboat. not a ship ... so there was no value in either the boat or the cargo. They had ONE hostage -- they couldn't exactly say "Let us go and give us 12 million dollars or we'll kill a hostage every hour." One shot, and they would have been toast anyway. The smart move would have been to surrender and spend the next 20 - 40 years in a nice, clean prison where every day brings three hots and a cot. Oh, well ... life is full of choices. Now their mates on shore are vowing "revenge." I think it's time for all the armies of the world to team up and just march through that stinkin' hole from one end to the other, and clean out the whole mess.

The one I've been using is a Moroso, which I get from Summit Racing. Since I last bought one, though, someone has come out with a nifty one that's specifically designed to replace the Renix XJ bottle. It's been posted here a couple of times or more. Somebody must have it bookmarked.

Was the seller Jeeps Unlimited? If so, I'm surprised, both at the initial refusal to even check when he was told the light wasn't for a Comanche, and secondly by HIS rudeness to those who contacted him in good faith to try to head off a train wreck of a sale.

Yes.

JeepcoMJ is correct. The bolt pattern isn't the issue. The issue is that the ports on the HO heads are higher up, and shaped differently, and the position of the locating dowels is different. You can mate Renix manifolds to an HO head (or vice versa, I guess), but with the turbulence created by the mismatched port shapes I have always wondered if there's any gain at all, or really a new loss. Personally, if I had a Renix (which, in fact, I do) I would use a Renix head, clean up and polish the ports a bit, maybe do a light polish on the combustion chambers, and go with it. One thing to consider, gents: Most of you know that I'm a certified Olde Pharte. I've been playing with these things for a loooong time. It has always been considered accepted knowledge that doing a valve job without also doing the lower end of the motor accelerates and increases blow-by, because the new valve job seals great but the old rings don't. Way back when I was married to my first wife in the early 1970s one of the heads on her car (which I had bought used -- a 1969 AMX 390 4-speed) needed work. We were newly-weds, on a tight budget AND trying to help support her recently-widowed mother, so a complete engine rebuild was out of the question. I pulled the heads, cleaned up the valve seats using a manual cutter (basically just removed old carbon), did some very mild polishing, installed new valve seals, and slapped the heads back on. Oil consumption increased by a factor of about two+. Before the head work it used a quart in maybe 1500 miles. Within a couple of weeks after, we were using a quart in about 750 miles. Which just demonstrates the wisdom of the old adage: "If it ain't broke ... don't fix it." BTW -- I've never heard of a head gasket seeping oil. If it's oil, I would look elsewhere for the source.

You might get some responses if you wait a bit more than 16 minutes before kvetching. Aside from which, this is a Jeep Comanche forum, not a politics or current events forum.

Check the timing. Timing is not adjustable on the 4.0L, but there was an issue with "indexing" the distributor. There was a TSB out that explained how to re-index if it was off, but I don't know if that TSB is even available any longer. I believe it only applied to the Renix years. Did you check the impedence of the plug wires? If they're old, they may be fubar. The original plug wires aren't really "wires." They are a synthetic filament with carbon embedded in the weave for conductivity. Over the years, the wires get bent, twisted and knocked around, and the carbon can get displaced. That leaves gaps, and the spark may have difficulty jumping the gaps. New plug wires are cheap from Auto Zone.

After Chrysler took over, a lot of the uncertainty disappeared. By 1996, there were no more 4-speed manuals, and the axle ration for the 2.5L had been standardized at 4.10 (4.11) for both the 5-speed manual and the automatic for several years.

Harbor Freight Tools sells a manually operated transmission jack for around 50 clams. I wouldn't buy it if I ran a shop but for the weekend warriors like us ... let's just say it beats all heck out of bench pressing a transmission while lying on a cold concrete floor (or a gravel driveway) with about 2.79 inches of clearance above your nose. Don't forget -- getting the tranny OUT is not half the problem. It's barely a quarter. Coming out is easy -- to put it back in you have to align the shaft on the tranny with the clutch release bearing and the pilot bearing or bushing in the end of the crankshaft. If you don't get things lined up and try to force it -- well, that's how you bend clutch fingers. Oops -- http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/d ... mber=39178 Looks like the price went up since I bought mine. Still money well spent, IMHO.

Yeah, that's the simple version. But ... it ain't that simple. There's a bypass involved. The ballast resistor is in the circuit when the engine is running, and when the key is first turned on, to run the fuel pump and bring the system up to pressure. When the key is turrned to START, the ballast resistor is bypassed and a more or less parallel circuit sends full 12 volts to the fuel pump during starting. Once you release the key and it's back in the RUN position, the bypass is de-energized and the circuit again goes through the ballast resistor.

I don't know for sure, but I do know that I have the hulk of an '86 XJ 2.8L automatic here, and that definitely has 3.73 gears. That would be my first (and last) guess.

Good news, Rusty -- thanks for reporting back. I hope the new job works out for you. As for the miscarriages -- there's no point in questioning God's will. My mother had two (or three?) miscarriages before I came along. Who knows, by the time I was an adult and on her own she probably wished more than once that she'd lost me, too. But after me she had another son, and then our little sister. One miscarriage doesn't mean much more than that your wife had one miscarriage.

ZJ V8 coils add 1" to a stock XJ or MJ. A long time ago I verified with the parts guru at my dealership that the 2000 XJ Up Country coils are the same part number as stock ZJ V8 front coils. And the Up Country option in an XJ rides 1" higher than stock.

Ummm ... Blue Loctite is not permanent, that's the red stuff. And Loctite is a thread sealer as well as a thread locker. If you want to seal it AND be sure it won't unfasten itself, blue Loctite would be a good choice.

All the 4.0L engines use a 2-piece seal. The 2.5L uses a 1-piece seal. I don't accept that the "right" way to replace the RMS on a 4.0L is to pull the transmission. I've never known anyone to do that, and there's absolutely no reason to remove the transmission since it doesn't in any way impede access to the seal.

That's not exactly what he said. The bolts that hold the tranny to the bellhousing are accessed from inside the bellhousing. You can't remove the tranny without removing the bellhousing. What he meant (I think) was that you can remove the bellhousing from the tranny and put it on the engine temporarily to ensure that everything is lined up. Once that's done, you have to take the bellhousing off the engine and reattach it to the transmission before you put everything back together.

Probably wouldn't happen within a week, but a build-up of crankcase pressure can push oil through the rear main seal. It's more of a problem at higher speed/RPM. A couple of trips to the corner store with a light foot on the throttle wouldn't be an issue, a 3-hour drive at 75 MPH on the interstate ... you're pushing your luck.

Keep in mind that Jeep changed calipers, rotors, hubs and knuckles a few times over the years. If you slap in a newer axle and try to use the older calipers, they'll lock up. You have to keep all those parts matched by "generation." I've posted the run-down several times.

I believe JeepcoMJ meant extensive rework to the transmission. The gears part of a 2WD tranny is the same as that for a 4WD tranny, but the 2WD has a standard, tapered talishaft housing and a tailshaft that ends in a spline to mate with the drive shaft yoke. The 4WD tranny doesn't have a "tail" shaft -- it has an output shaft that's configured to mate up with a transfer case, and instead of a long tailshaft housing it has a shorter housing with a flange to which the transfer case bolts up. In theory you could remove the tailshaft and tailshaft housing from a 2WD tranny and replace with the parts from a 4WD tranny, but ... where are you going to get the parts, how much will they cost, do you know how to do the work, and is it worth the cost and effort when you could just go to a salvage yard and buy a tranny with a transfer case already bolted up to it and call it a day. You canNOT just buy a transfer case and bolt it onto a 2WD transmission.

The 2WD trany has a tailshaft in a long housing. The 4WD tranny ends in a flange, to which the transfer case gets bolted.

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It's just above the rear axle, on the left side of the differential. There should be (but very possibly won't be) a round rod connecting a lever arm on the proportioning valve to a ball stud on the differential. If that rod is NOT there ... someone else has been mucking around with your brakes and you have zero idea what's going on with them because you won't know what the previous mucker around has done.

Main bearings +/- $85 Rod bearings +/- $45 Pan gasket $21 Rear seal $16