Eagle

Speaking as someone who was in charge of hiring for a mid-size, national architecture/engineering firm for several years -- you should be aware that most positions have more than one applicant, and the resumes have to be filed. We use standard letter (or legal) folders for that. And most HR people sit at desks, not drafting tables. They have neither the space nor the spare time to take your resume across the room and tape it to a window so they can get far enough away to read it. My reaction as an employer if I were to receive something like that in response to a position being advertised would be to assume you're not serious about your work or my job, and to throw it away. If you make life more difficult for me and my staff while applying for the job, I would have to assume you would be an even bigger PITA if I were to make the mistake of hiring you. Just sayin' ...

Possibly the transmission mount has compressed and the exhaust pipe is tapping on the cross member.

It sounds like you're fairly close. Maybe your truck idles fast. Before you go ripping the cluster out again, get your hands on an idle tach (or a regular add-on tach that hasn't been installed) and use that to check the RPMs showing on your cluster tach through the range covered by the idle tach. You can take the feed from the smaller of the diagnostic plugs under the hood. I posted a pin-out for that connector a couple of weeks sgo.

Who cares about idle? The purpose of a tachometer is to tell you when to shift. You need it to be accurate in the range where you normally drive. I don't know any way to get it right other than to calibrate it against a known-good tachometer.

My spreadsheet doesn't include 205/75 tires, but for 215/75R15s, with 3.55 gears 4th gear would be 3114 RPM at 70 MPH, and 5th gear would be somewhere around 2242 RPM. With 215s and 4.10 gears, 70 MPH would be 3607 RPM in 4th gear and around 2597 in 5th. These are based on actual tire manufacturers' revolutions-per-mile specifications, not a theoretical calculation based on tire diamater that doesn't account for sidewall compression in service.

When you get it, do not overfill it. The coolant in the system expands when it gets hot. The tank is designed to allow the air in it to compress. If there's insufficient air space, it can't compress and the excess hot coolant has to go somewhere.

Quadratec (www.quadratec.com) has the cap and bottle for around $25. I posted a link to their listing about a week or ten days ago. Be sure to buy the cap and bottle together. Typically, the old cap doesn't seal on a new bottle, and a new cap won't seal on an old bottle.

We did talk about this before, and I checked both my '88 XJ and my '88 MJ and found that the front and rear driveshafts ARE locked with the transfer case in neutral. My recollection is that your vehicle in those videos doesn't have the original transfer case in it.

No it doesn't. A few years ago the axle end fittings on my '88 XJ were so soaked with oil that they got too soft to seal. I was astonished one day leaving my GF's house in a snow storm that I couldn't get up the hill on my normal route home. The light was on, but the axle wasn't engaged. I think there's a switch for the light on the firewall. It really doesn't tell you much of anything except that you have enough vacuum to turn on the switch.

Jeep has (or had) two repair kits -- one was for minor separation and the other was for major separation. They gave some criteria in the TSB for deciding which kit you need but I don't recall what the numbers were. If it's still available, I think the "major" kit would fix this, because IIRC the repair strap extends well beyond the original hinge weld area.

"Steep"? Man, I knew Jeepers were notoriously cheap, but you guys give the word an entirely new meaning. D44s were selling for $500 to $600 ten years ago. $225 for an XJ D44 isn't "cheap," it's Grand Larceny. They don't make 'em any more, ya know ... L_N_F has a point, though. A D44 in a '90 XJ would be highly unusual.

The short bed has a shorter wheelbase, so the tailpipe is shorter both in front of the axle and behind. That pressure bottle is supposed to have pressure in it. It's part of the pressurized cooling system, it is NOT an "overflow" bottle like on the 91 and newer models. The cap IS the radiator (pressure) cap for the cooling system. DO NOT open it when the engine is warm or hot. It is properly filled if it is half full when cold. There's a post inside, beneath the cap, that's marked (notched) to show the correct fill level.

Nope. The pewgoat was used behind the 4.0L I-6 from 1987 through mid-1989. The 2.8L 5-speed was probably an Aisin-Seiki AX5, although there's a very remote possibility of a T-5 (which Jeep used occasionally if they ran short on AX5s).

To follow up Pete's suggestion, you are more likely to find an AX5 in a 4WD vehicle. Go ahead and buy the tranny and the transfer case. You can just leave it in 2WD, but you'll be that far ahead if you decide to make it a 4WD later on. If you can get both the front and rear axles and the front driveshaft from the donor, you'll have all the parts.

Aside from being underpowered and using atruly awful carburetor, the 2.8L engine has a propensity for sticking connecting rods through the side of the block. It really is a pretty terrible engine.

1984 (XJ only, since the MJ didn't start until 1986) through 1994 will fit. However, somewhere around 1990 or 1991 they switched from using AMC keyways (and keys) to using Chrysler keyways (and keys).

I have a 2000 XJ with the NV3550 and I have no problems with it popping out of gear. But mine was made right at the end of 2000 model year production. The problem may have been early in the model year.

They aren't "changes," technically. Pete hasn't revised the rules. The problem is that people have been bending the rules (or pushing the envelope, depending on your perspective) more and more, until it reached a point that called for a reminder. Now ... behave, or I will be forced to resort to a four-letter word myself. FORD! FORD! FORD!

That shouldn't happen if the alignment is correct. The camber should be zero, and the toe-in should be nearly zero. A sliught change in caster shouldn't translate toe-in to camber by enough to even be noticeable. However, your experience does reinforce the wisdom of checking alignment after making any changes. In my case, I was reminded of this when I removed the 4" lift from the '88 and then drove it off to a NAXJA trail ride in another state. Steering was perceptibly odd on that drive. When I arrived at the camp site, one of the guys had a tape measure and some free time, so we checked the toe-in and found that it had become a significant toe-OUT. Naturally the adjusting sleeve was virtually welded in place (I guess the former owner had never had an alignment done), but I was eventually able to correct it enough to drive home again, where I soaked it down with PB Blaster and aligned it properly.

The CPS bolts have a shoulder that's sized to locate the CPS properly. Buy it from a dealer.

Another reason to use pre-mixed coolant :D I mix my own coolant,, I can get a gallon of distilled water from wallyworld for .67 bucks!! The mix was somewhere around 7 bucks,, the non mix was 10, so the better deal is me mixing it + it lets me play chemist.. :yes: +1. Pre-mixed is a marketing scam. A gallon of pre-mix is 50% glycol but you pay about 90% the cost of a gallon of pure glycol. Wal-Mart has sold distilled water for 69 cents/gallon for years. That's all I use in my cooling systems. I save the old jugs and make up my own 50/50 "pre-mixed" to carry in the vehicles for emergencies. I just use a black grease marker to mark those jugs "50/50".

The 242 is a full transfer case. It offers 2WD-Hi; 4WD-Hi (Part-Time); 4WD-Hi (Full-Time); Neutral; and 4WD-Lo (Part-Time).

I have an 88 4-cyl with an AX4 tranny that has an internal slave. I'm sure the AX5 was the same setup.

Check the flange before you buy a tank. Not the O-ring -- check where the lines go through the flange. That's where they leak.

16.5" are truck rims. I've never seen anything that size with the Jeep bolt circle.