Eagle

One of the early NAXJA members tried driving with out his front sway bar. He had to swerve to avoid a dog a couple of blocks from home, at 30 MPH. He rolled the XJ and totaled it. Driving an XJ without a front sway bar is scary, and I think due to the lighter weight an MJ would be even worse. It is exceptionally dangerous, because in an evasive maneuver at highway speed the vehicle will be virtually uncontrollable. Further, if you are ever involved in an accident involving loss of life or serious injury, you can bet there will be accident reconstruction specialits going over both vehicles with a fine-tootheed comb. If they find (and they WILL find it) that you were driving with a piece of factory safety equipment disabled -- in liability court you will be toast. IMHO it ain't worth the risk, and it's very foolish. I value my life too much to take the chance. I've survived three serious accidents in my life, two as the driver. In both of those in which I was driving, I survived because I could control the vehicle at highway speeds. Without a front sway bar at least one of those incidents would certainly have resulted in a rollover. (I did a 360 in the middle lane of the Schuykill Expressway in Philadelphia, in rush hour traffic, to avoid a moron who locked up his brakes in front of me FOR NO REASON.)

I think I see the problem. The speed sensor itself mounts into a housing, the piece I refer to as the quill. (The 2000 FSM refers to this as the "speedometer adapter.") The sensor is held in the quill by a bolt and can only fit one way. Then the quill mounts into the transfer case and is held in place by a forked retainer. For the vehicles with mechanical speedo, It is the quill that has the markings for tooth count; for the electronic speedos, the speed sensor has RANGES of tooth counts marked: 32-38, 39-45, etc. You are supposed to install the housing so the range that includes your speedo gear is at 6:00 o'clock, then install the locking clamp so the bent tips LOCK in the nearest slots in the housing (adapter). Installed correctly, the speed sensor cannot rotate in the adapter because it's bolted, and the adapter can't rotate in the transfer case because the tips of the clamp arms are engaged in the slots of the adapter to lock it in position. If you are trying to position it because you think it needs to line up exactly on a tooth number, you're probably not locking it in one of the three correct positions and it's not staying in place because it's not being retained by the retainer.

I don't think those are the only modern pickups to use something similar. I think most trucks do today. I didn't slice the height-sensing valve. I sliced the front distribution block, and I found that the orifice that should feed the by-pass circuit was totally blocked (had not been drilled out). With this defect, the rear proportioning valve would have functioned normally under normal conditions, but it would also NOT be able to provide full-power (unproportioned) braking to the rear in the event of a front brake failure, due to there not being a viable by-pass circuit.

Except there is a special procedure for bleeding the rear brakes when you have the height-sensing proportioning valve in the circuit, and if you don't have a factory service manual I'm sure you didn't follow this procedure. Which means if you lose the front brakes you may have NO brakes. Not good. I transcribed the bleeding sequence from the FSM on here awhile back. I don't have it bookmarked but I hope you can find it with a search. If you're going to retain that "thing" in the back, you really have to be sure to bleed the system properly.

I don't think it can jump off the proper setting. The quill is held in the transfer case by a retainer bracket. It's such a tight fit that I can't imagine how it could rotate. Are you sure you're talking about what Pete's talking about?

Monroe Sensa-Trak.

Your description probably makes sense to you, but I know how the system works and it confused the hell out of me. Here's how it works: There are two lines from the front to the back because one feeds the rear brakes through the height-sensing rear proportioning valve, and the other is a by-pass circuit that is supposed to deliver full (unproportioned) braking power to the rear in the event the front brakes lose pressure. Okay, so which is what? Start at the front junction box (combination valve), directly under the master cylinder. The two ports on top are inlets. The outlet ports at the rear of the brass block feed the front brakes. The port at the "nose" of the combo valve is the normal circuit feeding the rear brakes. The line from that is plumbed to the height-sensing proportioning valve. The forward outlet on the bottom of the combo valve is the bypass circuit. Nothing should flow in this circuit unless the front brakes lose pressure, in which case the slider that actuates the brake system warning light also opens a port to allow fluid through the bypass circuit. The two lines at the rear come together again because both circuits need to feed into the brake lines on the axle. One is proportioned output from the height-sensing valve, the other is unproportioned output from the bypass circuit. Having blown up a rear height-sensing valve in a panic stop, I no longer trust them. You have to do what you're comfortable with. I'm old enough that I grew up with vehicles that never heard of brake proportioing valves, so my preference is "keep it simple, stupid." That valve is one more thing to fail. I can live without it, very happily.

Confirmed -- XJ rear shocks won't work. I tried. I had a decent set of shocks out of a wrecked XJ so I punched the cross pins out of the rear shocks and tried to put them into my '88. With the truck sitting on it's tires, unloaded, the fully extended shocks were about an inch too short to connect the upper and lower mounts. You could get them in by weighing down the bed with some load, but the shocks would be topped out all the time and probably self-destruct in a couple of weeks.

Out of the question? Are you joking? The O2 sensor is the sensor that reads the percentage of unburned hydrocarbon in the exhaust and controls the amount of fuel the injectors squirt. A dead O2 sensor results in an engine that runs super-rich, all the time. I'd say that's FAR from being out of the question. It is, in fact, a very likely suspect.

I don't think the starter is going to be an issue. The problem is going to be, as you originally postulated, how to trigger the CPS. Depending on whether or not you can fit the 727 torque converter to a Renix 4.0L flex plate, HESCO may be the only game in town.

There is no tranny lockup switch. The switch sets the tranny in "Power" or "Comfort" mode. Basically, comfort mode makes the transmission upshift at lower RPMs. Later year XJs and MJs eliminated it and hard-wired the tranny in the "Power" mode. Put it there and leave it, the tranny will thank you.

Those are all valid reasons, and it should bolt right up. AMC started using that tranny in (I believe) 1970, and they reengineered the bolt pattern on the block that year to accept a Chrysler bell housing. They never changed the bolt pattern again (except when they came out with the 2.5L 4-banger). Going in reverse, a friend of mine recently got around to doing the street rod project he's been threatening for over 30 years -- a 1949 Hudson coupe powered by an AMC 390. He wanted a 5-speed, and the AMC 390s came with a T-10 4-speed. After we discussed it, he bought an AX-15 XJ tranny and bell housing, found a pilot bearing that fit the crank -- and it bolted right up. Your primary issue is going to be that the 727 wasn't used in any vehicle that had the same CPS as an MJ, so you'll have to use the MJ flex plate and probably redrill it to accept the 727 torque converter. OR ... you can get the conversion bracket used with the kit to change the older 4.2L Jeep engines to fuel injection. This puts a bracket at the front of the engine, uses a special harmonic damper with the trigger teeth, and relocates the CPS to the front of the engine (where, incidently, you can replace it without being a contortionist). If those parts aren't still available from the Mopar Performance Catalog, you should be able to get them from HESCO. A caution, however: The Jeep EFI conversion was to a 94/95 compatible Chrysler system, not Renix. If your MJ is the 88 listed in your signature, you'll need a different trigger tooth pattern. Chrysler won't have that in a front-end conversion, but HESCO might.

The 727 may be one of the best transmissions Chrysler ever put out, but that to me is like saying the Edsel was one of the best engineered cars Ford ever put out. I don't hold Chrysler transmissions in high regard. Rating it as being even close to a TH400 is IMHO delusional.

The 727 didn't have an overdrive, did it? I guess if you have it there's some logic in trying to use it, but the AW-4 is really a much better transmission.

This happened to me once with a 1939 Hudson I was restoring -- but that had a mechanical fuel pump on the block and the internal diaphragm ruptured. I can't think of any way that much gasoline could get by the rings in a fuel injected system, unless the injectors aren't functioning right and the system is pumping way too much fuel. How old is the oxygen sensor? Have you had the truck scanned to see what kind of readings the O2 sensor is sending to the ECU? The only thing I can think is that it's running in open loop mode and sending too much fuel, all the time. It isn't safe to drive it that way. Get it checked.

Not urban legend. Bad ju-ju.

Those Comanches weren't Comanches, anyway. I used to spend time in Arizona, where the Navajo reservation is located. Many of John Wayne's early oaters were filmed in and around Monument Valley, which is mostly in northern Arizona. The "Comanches" were played by Navajos. At least they were really Native Americans, but it was amusing to hear "Comanches" speaking Navajo ... which is a totally unrelated linguistic group.

Got a part number? My parts guys are usually on top of things, but they told me the paper edition was discontinued and it was only available on-line. If there is a 2007 paper edition, I want to get it before they really DO stop printing it.

Not roller lifters. They had roller rocker arms.

The adjustment is the same as the power steering box. There's an over-center lash adjustment screw. Look down at the top of the steering box and you'll see a cover/access plate. There should be three bolts holding it in place (if it's like the power box -- might be four on the manual), and then a different screw with a locknut in the approximate center of the cover plate. That's the adjustment screw. First, be absolutely sure the steering is aimed straight ahead. There needs to be more lash off center, so if you adjust it while off-center, it may bind and/or damage the box when turned across the center. Loosen the locknut. Using a screwdriver of Allen wrench (whichever your adjusting screw requires), use your right hand to gently rotate the steering shaft back and forth while you gradually take up the slack in the box. If you get it too tight you'll damage the box, so don't go nuts. Try to take out "most" of the free play, but don't try to take it all out. Once you have it adjusted, hold the adjusting screw while you tighten the locknut. Be aware that the manual steering ratio is something like 24:1, which is unbearably slow. Even a fully adjusted box is going to feel sloppy, simply because it takes a lot of steering wheel motion to make anything happen at the tires. The stock power steering ratio is 14:1.

Somebody misconstrued something. There should not have been any splicing involved. There was a TSB regarding signal strength, and the factory still sells a kit that includes a CPS and a two-wire replacement harness that completely bypasses the main wiring harness and goes through the firewall directly to the ECU. It is installed by removing two wires from the ECU connector and plugging the two wires from the new harness into those terminals on the connector. The new harness has a weatherpack on the engine compartment end. If your harness has been spliced, somebody was doing a bit of shadetree mechanic work. I would strongly suggest that you get the factory kit and do the job correctly. Splicing doesn't improve on the original installation. The problem is that the original harness is either too long or too small in gauge, and doesn't transmit the signal efficiently. The kit with the replacement harness corrects this. Just splicing to bypass the weatherpack connector doesn't do this.

Your concern is valid. Some years ago, when the original exhaust went in my '88 XJ, I took it to my brother who at the time was managing a Speedy muffler shop. He talked me into upgrading to a 2-1/2" system with a turbo muffler. I was always sorry, and couldn't wait for it to rust out so I could justify getting rid of it. It sounded great, I admit ... but I lost torque, I had to downshift more for hills (5-speed), and I dropped about 2 MPG. When it did finally rust out I replaced with OEM-replacement muffler and 2-1/4" pipes, and got my torque and gas mileage back. No more aftermarket exhausts for me.

That's fairly typical. To do the splice properly (and legally) you will need a DOUBLE flaring tool. If you only make a single flare, the tube is likely to crack at the edge, and leak. Either spend a few extra $$$ and get a good double flaring tool, or rent/borrow one from the store. The cheap ones don't hold the line tight enough to make a flare.

Yes, the valves are in the head. As long as you don't remove the valve keys ("keepers"), when you remove the head everything stays together.

There are two sets of holes in the unibody ("frame") rails for the cross member. One set should be 10" back from the LCA mounts, the other set is 14" back. Whichever set was NOT used by your original engine/tranny combination probably is just a hole, with no threads. You can use thread inserts to create a thread that will hold up the cross member. The "frame" isn't thick enough to try threading that and expecting it to hold any weight.