Eagle

Testing - This is a test

In general, wheeling (and daily driving) just compacts the dust into a solid cake. You are supposed to remove the extinguisher, upend it, and slap it a couple of times to loosen the cake, then reverse it and shake it a couple of times to loosen everything up. All of which remonds me that I have not done that recently in any of my Jeeps ...

I think I have a rear window I could contribute to the cause, but I don't know how to get it there from CT in one piece.

Fire extinguishers don't much care how they are stored. On the side, rightside up or upside down, the problem is that vibration over time packs the dry chemical into a solid mass that won't discharge through the nozzle. Any extinguisher that's carried in a vehicle should be taken out and shaken vigorously periodically. If you can't feel (and maybe hear) the chemical shifting back and forth when you up-end the extinguisher, it probably won't work if you try to use it.

Why do you need a crossmember? Is yours trashed? What you probably need isn't a crossmember, but a transmission mount. If you're replacing an AX-4 or AX-5 with an AX-5, you probably don't even need that.

mvusse, this is why I NEVER take a vehicle to a tire shop. I take the rims, in the back of the MJ, and just drop the rims by the back door. I use a torque wrench each and every time I change or rotate my tires. It's not just stretching the studs -- although that's a problem, too. If they lugs aren't properly torquesd, in the correct sequence and run up in increments, the front rotors can be warped. Once they are warped, they will never get UNwarped. A fringe "benefit" of never allowing an air gun on my lug nuts is that the cheesy stainless caps last forever.

Hacksaw the metal band off the hose. No, my recovery bottle inlet is at the bottom. The clear hose you see is the overflow outlet, but I typically keep the bottle so it's about 1/3 full when cold, so there isn't any overflow. Mine is the exact same bottle used in the markashurst kit linked to earlier in this thread. Note that he doesn't have a hose on the overflow.

Dunno. I bought my first one in the summer of 2000, at a local speed shop. IIRC I paid $115 for that one. Then I discovered that Summit Racing carried them and I bought two more, about a year later. I think I paid about $80 each for those. I haven't followed the pricing since. For whatever it's worth, here are some pics of my installation:

WOW! I never knew about that direct replacement tank. That is sweeet! (Albeit pricey.) Got a picture of how it looks installed and plumbed?

Interesting. First time I've heard that. What I've heard previously is that Yukon buys gears and repackages them, leaving you with no idea who made them. I don't know which is correct. I don't buy Yukon, I buy Dana-Spicer. If they are made by Yukon, so be it -- at least I have some assurance that Dana-Spicer will stand behind their brand.

Why not just use an MJ seat? There's no shortage of MJs with bench seats -- everyone's looking to dump the bench and install buckets.

If the floor pan ("frame") is straight, it can be fixed. The roof is actually easy to remove and replace -- it's apparently held on mostly with construction adhesive. So your best approach might be to get a "new" roof from a junkyard, take off the bent roof, set the new roof in place and then straighten the B pillar to where the roof fits correctly. Then button everything up. One of my friends in NAXJA rolled his XJ and squashed the A pillars. I got him a new roof and that's basically how he approached it.

I'd say she jumped a curb and came down HARD on the right side frame "rail," bending the chassis on that side. Take a good look underneath and see if the frame runner is straight in the vicinity of the B pillar. I think the entire unibody is sprung. Can it be fixed? Sure. But probably not by you in your garage at home.

Check again. I absolutely guarantee you that the same hub/bearing unit does NOT fit all years. I have samples of both types out in the scrap pile. I have compared them, and they dimensions are visibly different.

http://comancheclub.com/forums/viewtopi ... permission 4th post in the thread

Keystone? Eric Veng?

Camera batteries were dead, so the pics will have to wait for Friday. Sorry. You don't NEED a catch bottle, but if you don't have one you'll squirt coolant all over the engine compartment, plus you'll constantly lose coolant. The Moroso filler neck comes drilled and tapped for a barbed fitting that accepts a small (3/16" ID? I think). Use that with a radiator cap that allows coolant to flow back, and you can fill the tank to the top, have no air in the system, and have the equivalent of a '91+ "open" system -- with more capacity. If you don't use the overflow bottle, either you just run a hose down and let any overflow spray onto the ground, or you close off the opening with a plug. In that case you can only fill the tank to about half full (like the plastic tank you're replacing), because the coolant needs space to expand.

'86? Was that late enough to be built after they had corrected the Fiero's propensity to live up to its name, and self-immolate?

Over-the-road big trucks have used that method of balancing for years. I havn't tried it, but others who have tried it report that it works very well ... especially on larger, wider tires that are almost impossible to get correctly balanced using conventional (or stick-on) weights. Plus -- because the pellets are rolling and bouncing around in there, even if the tire shifts on the rim, cups, or flat spots, it will always be in balance. I've never heard of a tire shop doing that without asking/telling the customer, though.

Bracket? We don't need no steenkin' bracket. I used a short length of 1.5" x 1.5" steel utility angle, from Home Depot or Lowe's. The kind that has alternating slots and holes punched in both legs. I drilled two holes in the lip where the upper edge of the firewall is joined to the cowel panel under the hood and bolted the horizontal leg of the angle there. The vertical leg sticks up, and I found holes/slots that fit the holes in the Moroso tank with no modifications. I'll try to grab a picture this afternoon. Looks like that dude used the exact same overflow catch bottle I did. It came from Advance Auto, IIRC. I have mine in the same place. There are two sizes -- the small one fits where he shows it, the large one does not.

I dunno about you guys. Back in the pony car days, any time I bought a used Javelin or AMX about the first thing I did was to remove the power steering and put in a quick ratio manual box. The second thing I usually did was to upgrade the front brakes to 1973 Matador discs and chuck the power booster. My first wife was 5'-4" tall and weighed 125 pounds. SHE drove a 390 AMX with QRM steering. You healthy lads should be able to handle it.

Having just seen a question about fast idle, two days ago Old Faithful started acting up. The throttle would stick, and if I took my foot of the gas and disengaged the clutch, the idle would be around 1200 RPM. Then if I tapped the pedal sharply, the idle would drop to normal. That lasted about a day. Then the idle went to 2500 RPM and tapping the throttle didn't bring it back down. So after work this evening I attacked the throttle bellcrank lever with PB Blaster. To no avail. No improvement, and things felt VERY sticky. Tried to remove the air horn to check the throttle body. Naturally, one of the three screws won't come out. So I went back to trying to lube the linkage. Extended the cable as far as possible and sprayed with white litium grease. No improvement. Finally I popped the little plastic ball socket off the throttle body end of that part of the linkage. That confirmed that the throttle body was free, the drag was between there and the pedal. Kept moving the rod up and down, hoping all that PB Blaster would soak in. Accidently popped the lower socket off the ball on the lower bellcrank arm. Okay, tried moving it by hand, without the rod. HEY! It moved freely! So I sprayed a bit of white lithium grease into each of the plastic cups on the ends of the linkage arm, snapped the arm back in place -- and it's working perfectly. I guess after 20 years, plastic loses any self-lubricating properties it might once have had.

Ummm, yeah. It likely means that your distributor is worn out, the shaft is wobbling around, and it's not properly keeping time. Sounds like you most likely need a new (or rebuilt) distributor.

"These tires are ticking time bombs on people's cars." Yeah, right. Keep in mind, that statement was made by a guy who earns his living from telling people that new tires aren't "new." Gotta tell you, I'm pretty far into my second million miles of driving and I have never EVER heard of a new (meaning "not a retread," not "less than 6 years old) tire having a tread separation. Y'all do as you wish. The tires on Old faithful were used when I got them, I've had them more than 6 years, and I'm not concerned that they'll lose the tread. The bigger problem is sidewall cracking from UV and ozi=one exposure. That's more of a problem with tires that don't get a lot of miles, because the rubber tends to lose elasticity faster. Tires with crazed sidewalls are dangerous. The other problem is running tires underinflated. Ask Ford and Firestone about that ...

No, it should not be a choice. Sorry. If all they could possibly do is run into a tree and remove themselves from the gene pool, THEN it should be a choice. As long as they're on the same road as me, my wife and my granddaughter, it should NOT be a choice. Not when they have the capacity to kill other people through their inattention to the task of driving. A couple of years ago an illegal immigrant gal ran a stop light and totaled my friend's plow Jeep. You guessed it -- she was so busy yakking on the cell she didn't even look at the light. Even after the crash, she didn't stop yakking -- just hopped out and started bawling to her friend that "someone just ran into me." (He was stopped.) :nuts: I almost got t-boned at an intersection a few weeks ago. Light turned green for me. I drive a 5-speed, so it took a moment to shift into gear, THEN I started to roll. And a babe coming the other way had to lock up all 4 wheels to stop about an inch short of my driver's door. Yeah, she was on the phone. And SHE glared at ME like it was my fault she had to stop. :nuts: :nuts: The problem is, it's a damned telephone. The mind doesn't make the connection that THIS telephone is in a guided missile, not your kitchen or bedroom. The mind switches off driving and gets involved in the phone conversation. This has been proven through too many studies to ignore. What I find interesting is that the same phenomenon doesn't seem to hold true for CB radio. Why? Because people with CBs in their rigs know they're talking on a radio in a damned truck, and they keep their mind on the driving. Can't tell you how many times I've lost parts of a conversation on the CB because my mind was paying attention to what the traffic was doing. That just doesn't happen with cell phones.