Eagle

Nope. When you add load to the bed, the axle stays where it is and the truck bed drops. The link rod pushes the arm on the proprtioning valve UP. If you shorten the rod, you pull the arm on the valve DOWN, which reduces your braking. If you want more brakes, make the rod longer.

31x10.50s will fit with no lift ... IF you use factory rims. The backspace on OEM rims is 5-1/4", which allows 31s to tuck inside the front flares when the suspension is compressed. There are NO aftermarket rims with that much backspacing, so any aftermarket rim will place the tires farther outboard. Which means they will hit the flares in the front when the suspension compresses. 31x10.50s on stock rims also sit very close to the rear leaf springs and inner fender walls. They clear, but not by much. Note that for both situations, lift is NOT going to make a difference. The only way to make bigger tires on aftermarket rims clear in the front is either trim heavily, or radically extend the bump stops (which doesn't do much to improve your articulation. A bit less backspacing in the rear gets the tires away from the springs and inner fender walls, but again you have to worry about the flares, and again a lift doesn't solve anything unless you also extend the bump stops to reduce travel. Personally, I prefer 30x9.50s on factory rims, but I have run 31s with no lift.

That was what I suggested that you check. Yeah, if it's an '88 you have a short, and it probably is draining the battery. You might start your search with the ignition switch, since that's what SHOULD turn the guage off. The actual switch isn't in the steering column at the key, it's mounted on the base of the steering column.

Broken ring on #1? How many miles on the engine? Could also be a sticking valve, but that shouldn't contrinute to massive oil consumption. Those are rather poor numbers across the board. #1 being the worst is a surprise, though. Usually #6 is the worst.

Ballast resistor. The grey/white ceramic thingie on the inside of the left front fender, by the air box. Two wires coming off it. Jumper them and see what happens. Yes, you can drive it jumpered. The 87s didn't have it. The only reason to drop the voltage was to reduce the noise of the fuel pump -- which was more noticeable in an XJ than an MJ.

I can't tell from that pic if it looks to have 4WD or not. I don't know what you guys are seeing. And that grille is the same that was in my 1978 Cherokee. I didn't think Jeep used that grille as early as 1972. I would definitely get the serial number and run a CarFax on it.

Dynamite works. That's one of the dumbest setups I've ever seen. Yeah, AFAIK you have to remove the a/c compressor. If you find a trick to avoid that, let me know.

It can't work. You must have gotten 6-cyl clusters. Either that or you don't know how fast your engine is turning. The tach gets its signal from the negative terminal of the coil. That's upstream of the distributor -- there's no way it can read only the #1 cylinder. Plus, I've been through this with a friend who put an 89 6-cyl cluster into an 84 4-cyl XJ. He had to adjust the potentiometer to calibrate the RPMs to the 4 cylinder engine. It isn't a case of "there are supposed to be different pulses/frequencies ..." There ARE different pulses. I explained it above. A 4-cyl engine has two pulses per revolution, a 6-cylinder engine has three n and a V-8 has four. That's why aftermarket tachs (such as my Sun Supertach) have a 3-position slide switch on them.

Did you replace the oil pressure sender and the temperature sender in the head? The senders for the idiot lights are nothing but ON-OFF switches. The senders for the gauges are variable resistors. In your 86 the gauges don't receive input from the ECU, so forget the computer. Just replace the two senders. Be sure the new ones are for an XJ/MJ with gauges.

The "name" in heavy-duty aftermarket alternators is Mean Green. I just went to Auto Zone and got one of their NEW (not remanufactured) house brand alternators. It has a lifetime warranty, so if I ever wear it out I'm covered. The one in the MJ is about 4 years old now and seems fine. The one in the XJ is about a year old.

$270 labor to replace the clutch in a 4x4 is a bargain.

Is it staying on, or not returning to the left when you shut off the engine? What year is your MJ? I believe the 84 - 86 models had gauges that didn't zero when shut off. It's easy to check. Shut off the engine. If the gauge stays pointing at whatever your normal voltage is (around 13.5?) -- disconnect the battery. If the gauge still reads 13.5, it's not staying on, it's just not returning to a "rest" position when not energized.

Are your front rotors cast, or composite? If you don't know the difference, look at the outer edges/corner of the "hat" section that fits over the hub. If the outer corner is square(ish) and sharp, you have cast rotors -- which are the old style. If the corner is sort of rounded off, it's sheet metal "hat" indicating composite rotors, which would need the 90+ hubs.

I paid $500 for one a couple of years ago. It was complete with tailgate and lights.

It isn't just the shafts that are different. The newer hubs have a different spacing from the face of the disk mounting surface to the surface where the hub mounts to the knuckle. This is due to changes in the rotors and calipers between 90 and 91. You can't run the newer hubs on the older knuckles and vice versa. The above is copyrighted by me and by posting it here I am NOT granting anyone permission to re-post it anywhere else. Each member here may print ONE copy to stick in your technical notebook. That's it. It's part of a book I've been working on, and I would appreciate your being honest and ethical enough to not give away my intellectual property.

You can't use the XJ spring perches -- the spacing isn't right for the MJ. But ... if you're doing a 3" lift in the front, you don't want to go spring-over in the rear anyway. That's going to net you a MINIMUM of 5" in the rear. You'll be better off staying with the MJ rear axle and doing a combination of full-length AAL and maybe a small shackle lift.

If you put a 4.0L tach into a 2.5L vehicle, the tach isn't reading correctly. Not unless you adjusted the potentiometer to correct for the number of cylinders. The tach will give a reading, it just won't be anything close to the actual engine RPM. Lemme rethink how this all works: Okay, for a 6-cylinder engine, three ignition pulses is one revolution of the crankshaft (which is what we want to measure -- engine revolutions per minute). So 3000 pulses equals 1000 RPM. For a 4-cylinder, 3 pulses equals 1-1/2 crankshaft revolutions. So 3000 pulses equals 1000 x 1.5 = 1500 RPM. If you have a 6-cyl tach in a 4-cyl vehicle, the engine is turning 50 percent faster than what the tach is telling you.

XJ and MJ bump stops are interchangeable. There are four heights -- it helps to know which you need. Crown Automotive makes them (and is probably QuadraTech's source). If you can't get 'em from QuadraTech, call Todd at Bradshaw Jeep (860-274-8834, Ext 3 for Parts) and he'll fix you up.

Some of the tachometers have a potentiometer on the back, some don't. I went through that with an XJ buddy in Greece. It was a few years ago and my recollection is fuzzy, but I believe the first generation (84 - 86) tachs are the ones that are not adjustable, and the second generation (87-90) are adjustable. Also not sure, but I think 87 may have been a transition year on the gauge clusters.

Merry Christmas, y'all. May Santa Claus be good to you, and let's hope the proverbial "Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men" becomes reality. And don't overdo it with the egg nog!

I don't know how they have it set up in Iraq or Afghanistan. When I was in Viet Nam, our "post office" was a conex container. The "postmaster" stood on the open door and read off names at mail call. Ain't nothin' lonelier than standing in the crowd in front of that Conex container and not hearing your name called ... again.

The problem is ... the kids DON'T learn when their friends get splattered. We had one here in CT just a couple of months ago. 17-year old kid. Had his license for a year and half. In that time he has TOTALLED six cars. One of the accidents put him in the hospital for several weeks and almost killed one of his friends. Plus he had multiple DUI citations and innumerable speeding tickets -- which his mother (an attorney) was able to get fixed. So with a record like that, mommy went out and bought him one of those Subaru rice rockets -- the fast one, with the spoiler that's bigger than the vehicle. So the dork picks up his younger sister and her friend at school. He's flying up a 2-lane suburban road at about 85 in a 40 zone. There's a dump truck stopped, waiting to make a left turn across on-coming traffic. The dork slams into the back of the dump truck, vaporizes the Subaru, and kills himself, his sister, and his sister's friend. You would not have believed the comments the newspaper quoted from his friends. Not ONE of them thought he was a lousy driver or that he was in any way at fault for KILLING two teen-age girls. Kids today are in total denial. They have no concept of reality, or responsibility. "It was the road's fault." "How could he have known there was a truck there?" :nuts:

If you had to back off on the caliper mounting bolts so they're not seated all the way, then everything is definitely NOT cool. I was thinking about your problem on my way to church this morning. I assume you bought the truck used. Suppose the previous owner had put the wrong rotors or the wrong calipers on? That could explain why your pads and rotors were so trashed.

A year or so ago I was able to buy a new winch assembly from the dealer. I'll bet the factory still has some,

What year is your truck? And what year rotor did you get? Did the bolt bottom out on both sides, or only the side with the new rotor? Jeep changed the hubs and rotors between 89 and 91. I think '90 was the first year of the "new" design, but I don't remember exactly. If you got the wrong rotor, it has a slightlky different offset and won't work with your original hub and knuckle and caliper. See if your new rotor looks the same and has the same thickness at the "hat" section that fits over the hub.