Eagle

Are you sure? I know you have an '87, but some 87's were retrofitted with the ballast resistor under a TSB, and it may not be in the usual place. Does it start consistently and then die consistently after you release the key? If it does, you might try running a hot wire directly to the fuel pump just as a test, to see if it'll keep running when it's hot wired.

To make the conversion complete and correct, you will need: Grille Header Bumper Splash apron (not sure what it's called) Both fenders Both side marker lights Both parking lights Both flares ?? Both headlight bezels ?? What am I forgetting?

Does your truck have a fuel pump ballast resistor? If so, jumper the contacts and try it. The starting circuit bypasses the ballast resistor so when the key is turned to START the fuel pump gets a full 12 volts. When you release the key, the circuit feeds through the ballast resistor. That means if the resistor is broken, you can start because the fuel pump works, but as soon as you release the key you have an open circuit to the fuel pump ==> no power. The engine runs until it uses up the fuel already in the lines ... then it dies.

Are you asking about a "grille" conversion, as the thread title implies, or are you asking about converting to the '97+ Cherokee front end ... which is a LOT more than just a grille?

Have you ever owned a vehicle with a solid axle before? Death wobble is almost impossible in a vehicle that has independent front suspension, because there isn't enough solid connection between the front wheels to set up the destructive oscillation. And you'll virtually never hear of a Jeep with stock suspension, wheels and tires having death wobble -- the WJ export versions being an exception, and the factory fixed that quickly. So it isn't a case of selling a car with a problem inherent in the design, it's a case of owners making changes without understanding the potential implications. The biggest problem is bigger tires. A bigger, wider tire has a LOT more mass than the largest standard tire, which for an MJ (or XJ) was a 225/75R15. And ... the bulk of that mass is located farther out from the rotational axis than a stock tire even has material. So if the tire is slightly out of balance, that imbalance can play a much more significant role than imbalance in a stock tire would cause. I know others disagree, but I remain firm in my belief that 98% of the "cause" of death wobble is tire imbalance. Unfortunately, "But I just had my tires balanced" is not a sufficient response, because many of the minimum wage dopers running the balancer at Pep Boys or Joe's Tire and Liquor store don't really know how to use it, and they certainly don't understand that for a Jeep wearing El Humongo Terrain Destroyer tires "close enough" isn't even nearly close enough. Urethane is for on-pavement performance, where you want maximum steering precision. Think about how your control arms contort when one front wheel climbs a rock and the other one drops into a hole. The control arms TWIST. The rubber bushings help allow that twist by their flexibility. Replace them with urethane, which essentially doesn't flex, and you just twist the control arms more. If you're going to be going off-road, you really should be running after-market control arms with Johnny joints or something that's designed to rotate in more than one axis.

That suggests that your truck already has the bypass harness installed. so i can just splice my new cps into those wires and solder them or should i put the connector back in but leave it running directly to the computer and call it good? The CPS has to be replaced periodically. It should be good for about 100,000 miles, but the original on my '88 Cherokee (which I bought new, if you haven't been here long enough to know that) lasted 175,000 miles and the second one lasted ... a LOT less. If you hard-wire it, every time you replace you'll be cutting the harness apart. Plus, the test for it requires unplugging it and using an a/c voltmeter, so if you solder it you can't test it. I would get the correct connector and solder that to the harness, and keep the connector on the new CPS intact.

Death wobble is complex, but a loose component cannot initiate a wobble, and that's why I don't regard them as "causing" death wobble. All you're doing when you tighten or replace such components is help the system mask the death wobble. You haven't eliminated what makes the tires wobble in the first place -- you're just applying a stronger band-aid. The original WJ Grand Cherokees had a consistent problem with death wobble in the export versions -- stock. They resolved it by replacing the front springs with a different rate. That changed the harmonic, so when one of the P245/70R16 tires started bouncing, the spring's natural frequency didn't match the frequency of the bounce. No harmonic ==> no death wobble. Tightening or replacing components may alleviate death wobble; I don't dispute that. What I disagree with is saying that the loose components "cause" the death wobble. The fact that I could drive around for six months with a bad track bar clearly disproves that. If the track bar could cause it, I should not have been able to make it to work in the morning.

So, considering the fact that you can hold a wrench at about the age of 2, we can correctly assume that Eagle is at least 52 years young. :D "At least" :cheers:

Check the four bolts holding the flex plate to the torque converter. If they have gotten loose, they can make some strange noises. The other possibility is that the flex plate itself is cracked. The crack is usually semi-circular, around the outside of the reinforcing ring where the bolts attach the flex plate to the rear of the crankshaft. With the inspection cover removed from the bottom of the bellhousing you can usually see the crack if you pry (gently) on the flex plate with a pry bar, but you may have to turn it a couple of times to get the crack in a position where you can see it. It's not readily visible -- if it's there, you will have to look hard to see it. The clue for either of these conditions is if it makes a knocking sound at idle, but if you put the tranny in drive and apply a slight amount of throttle with the brakes on, the load dampens the noise and it goes away. However -- the noise for these conditions is more of a knock than a grinding noise, so I'm not entirely certain this is the answer in this case.

I beg to differ. Track bar, control arms and tie rod ends are NEVER a "cause" of death wobble. I drove around for six months with a very badly worn track bar (like more than a quarter turn of free play at the steering wheel) and never had a hint of death wobble. Same with worn tie rod ends and LCAs. What causes death wobble is whatever sets a tire to "wobbling" -- usually that's poor tire balance, or it might be warped brake rotors (in which case you get DW only when braking) or a bump in the road. Loose steering components cannot "cause" death wobble, they are just less capable of damping it out once it starts. However, it's also important to be sure we're really talking about "death wobble" and not just plain old, garden variety wheel shimmy. The term death wobble gets used so often on Jeep boards that many people assume ANY wobble in a tire is death wobble. Not so. Death wobble is when the shaking in one front wheel gets transmitted to the other side, that wheel also starts shaking, and the shaking is of a frequency that each wheel harmonically reinforces the shake in the opposite side until it gets so bad that you literally cannot control the vehicle. I mean exactly what I wrote -- with death wobble, you cannot control the vehicle -- you can only slam on the brakes and pray you slow down before you run off the road or hit something. That's why it is called "death" wobble -- 'cause if you don't fix it, you're gonna die. Anything else is just wheel shimmy. Shimmy is not a good thing, but it's limited to one wheel and is almost always caused by tire balance. You can drive with one wheel shimmying -- I've been beside cars on the highway and you can see one front wheel jumping up and down, and the driver just keeps motoring along as if nothing is wrong. That ain't death wobble. The reason most balancers only spin to about 60 MPH is that 50 to 55 MPH is the magic window where balance causes shimmy. If a tire will spin up through 55 without starting to shimmy -- it's balanced. The front tires on my '88 XJ are slightly out of balance right now. I get a slight shimmy at 55 MPH. I do not get death wobble, and at 65 it's as smooth as silk. This is not peculiar to Jeeps -- 50 to 55 has been the window for shimmy for as long as I've been playing with cars, and that's about 50 years.

That suggests that your truck already has the bypass harness installed.

They were never hard wired. The CPS has a pigtail about 10" long that terminates in a 3-connector weatherpack connector.

Is this for the '87 MJ? Go to the dealer and get the replacement CPS with the bypass harness. That'll give you both connectors, and the new wire that goes direct from the CPS into the ECU without going through the main harness and the C101 connector. If that upgrade hasn't been done on your truck, it's a "must have" upgrade.

Normally death wobble kicks in at around 45 or 50 MPH even if you don't hit a bump. If you can roll up to 75 MPH on smooth(ish) pavement, you're winnning. Definitely replace the other LCA -- they're cheap. Then check the balance on your tires, or just rotate the rears onto the front, and see if that makes a difference. By the time a tire is spinning at 75 MPH it should have enough gyroscope effect that it takes a LOT to make it wobble.

CPS That's exactly what happened the second time I had to replace it on my '88 XJ. (The first time it ran perfectly right up to the day it wouldn't start.)

The '86 hood is different, too. Same size, same shape -- but has a single latch at the center rather than two latches at the ouboard corners. Adaptation is possible but getting an '86 hood for an '86 vehicle and any other year hood for an '87 or newer MJ is much easier.

One other factor -- does your '89 have the C101 connector on the firewall or not? The early Renix XJs and MJs had a problem with the signal from the CPS having to travel through too much harness and too many conenctors, so you could have a situation where the CPS tested good at the first connector, but there wouldn't be a usable signal by the time it got to the ECU. The factory released a fix, which consists of a new CPS packaged with a bypass harness that runs straight through the firewall and directly to the ECU, bypassing all other harness and other connectors. If the other tests (coil and ICM) don't show a problem, I would seriously consider installing the CPS bypass harness.

The A-Team, can't remember the characters name, George Peppard played. Colonel Hannibal Smith.

Simple answer -- no. Adjusting the drag link is how you center the steering wheel. It will not affect the stops.

Well, the reality is that what I could lose is the rusty section of hard line from the rear hose "banjo" fitting to the left rear wheel. However, I suppose it would be better to lose that in the driveway than when a deer (or child) darts out in front of me.

"I love it when a plan comes together."

^^^ That's good info, but it's discussing the crankshaft position sensor, not the camshaft position sensor. The cam position sensor (if the 4-cylinder has one) would be inside the distributor. The 6-cylinder Renix models definitely have one. However, the above testing procedure offers NO information on how to actually test the CPS (crankshaft position sensor). That seems to be a more general procedure for trouble-shooting a no-spark fault. The verbiage doesn't sound familiar. Is that by any chance from a Chrysler tech manual for a '91 or newer Jeep? This thread is about a Renix 4-cylinder. Let's not confuse the issue with information about testing the newer Mopar systems.

The rocker style buckets will still bolt to the MJ pedestals. But you'll be sitting a couple of inches taller than normal. Fine if you're less than 6 feet tall, not so fine if you're tall.

1991 was the first year for the Chrysler electronics and the OBD-1 on-board diagnostics. I'm still not sure the brake warning circuit goes through the ECU, though. The switch is exactly the same as it is on the Renix models. Why would they route it through the ECU? I thought OBD-1 only monitored engine functions, not chassis functions.

The pedestals are the same. For the bench, instead of a release handle for the fore-and-aft adjustment there's a wire running from the driver's pedestal to the passenger pedestal. You'll lose that when you ditch the bench, which is why you then won't be able to adjust the right side seat. Unless you get creative and make your own handle for the release. The mechanism is there, it just needs a piece of steel rod welded into/onto it.