Eagle

When you have the head off, be sure to degrease it thoroughly and get rid of any baked on oil sludge. You didn't mention it, but taking it to a shop and having it hot tanked and then checked for flatness is a good idea. Don't let them cut it too much, though, or you'll raise the compression ratio and then you'll need to do a rough combustion chamber cc'ing to get the compression back down to regular gas territory. Also be sure to clean the emissions tube (CCV system) ports in the valve cover. Much of the cause for the 4.0L's notorious blow-by is that the ports in the valve cover get clogged with oil residue. You can buy the tubes from NAPA for about half the price a dealer will charge you.

It may be either the rubber fill tube connector, or the smaller rubber vent tube connector.

Cherokee tank are completely different and will not fit. The problem may not be the tank, and may not be the O-ring. Inspect carefully where the two hard lines enter the fuel pump mounting flange. They are brazed or silver soldered or something where they pass through the flange. A fairly common cause of leaks is that this joint cracks with age. Yes, I have been there. I bought a NEW tank for my '87, installed it, went to fill up with gas ... and washed down the apron around the gas pumps. The moral: eliminate other possible causes BEFORE dropping $150 on a tank, not after.

5-speed makes it easier, there's no need to swap the flexplate. The 88 tranny is a Peugeot BA 10/5. The '95 will be an AX-15, which is a stronger tranny. The 95 will also have an external clutch slave cylinder, which is a HUGE improvement over the combination slave cylinder/release bearing in the '88. Just be sure to use the '88 crank position sensor. It bolts to the bellhousing, so you will have to swap it over when you put the "new" tranny in the vehicle.

And a guy named Frank (from the Strokers e-group) made his using a single 6-position rotary switch and a couple of connectors. Clik-clik-clik-clik up through the gears, and one more click to lock the torque converter. If I were doing it, I'd use a separate toggle for the torque converter. That way you can flip it off before you come down through the gears at traffic lights and such, as well as lock the converter in lower gears for engine braking on hill descents.

www.huskyspring.com

I would like to find a source for those rear fenders. There used to be an old Ford Ranger in the next town with fenders that looked suspiciously like those, but I never found it with a driver inside so I could ask where they came from.

I ran my '88 XJ on 10W40 from the day it was new. I switched over to 15W50 synthetic at 175,000 miles. That was Mobil-1. I later changed to Castrol and they don't have a 15W50, so now I run 5W50, or 10W40 if I can't get the 5W50.

No relay, but there is a bank of resistors under the dash that controls fan speed. The resistors, I think, only drop the voltage for the slow and intermediate speeds. High speed doesn't use a resistor and should work even if the other two won't.

It certainly sounds like a lifter. If it was either a rob bearing or a wrist pin, it would be worse/louder when warm because the oil is thinner. It wouldn't go away. Be sure you use an oil filter with a good anti-drainback valve. Whatever you do, don't run Fram oil filters.

Don't let it get away. For an Arizona truck, that presumeably has virtually no rust, that's a bargain.

Check out the 5th picture from the top. They TOTALLY screwed the rear load-sensing valve!

I'm going to call a technical foul on that. When talking about motor vehicles, there is only one "sense" for the term "factory." It means produced by the original manufacturer in their own facilities. It also generally means on the regular assembly line, and any "factory" vehicle that was built as a one-off styling prototype should be identified as a styling prototype. These concept vehicles that Jeep has had made up from time to time by REV or whatever that company is called were styling prototypes and the company even sells some of them on a limited basis, but they would never (properly) be termed "factory" vehicles.

You are providing data unrelated to the reported problem. Compression has little to do with oil pressure, and nothing to do with rod knock. First point: are you sure the noise you heard was a rod knock, or could it have been a valve lifter tapping until it pumped up with oil pressure? You have two non-adjacent cylinders with compression that's below what it should be. Was the compression measured with the engine hot or cold? Did you try squirting some motor oil into the low cylinders are checking the compression again? If they stay low, you need rings. Rod bearings can be replaced in the vehicle just by dropping the pan. If the noise is a wrist pin, however, the pistol and rod have to come out. All of which is unrelated to compression.

The big reservoir on the master cylinder is for the front brakes, and on the combo valve block it's the fittings at the rear that feed the front brakes.

The AX-4 and AX-5 are the same transmission. The AX-4 just has a bunch of empty space where the 5th gear parts go in the AX-5.

You can check the sender with a multimeter, a pot of water on the range, and a candy thermometer. At 100 degrees, the sender should offer 1365 ohms resistance. At 220 degrees it should be 93.5 ohms. At 260 degrees it should be 55.1 ohms. To my surprise, this applies to all years. I thought they reversed the polarity on the instruments from 1990 to 1991. Turns out they only reversed in on the fuel level sender.

The primary issue when doing a "budget" stroker is that you need to use the 4.2L connecting rods with the 4.0L pistons. The journal and wrist pin diameters are the same, so they bolt together. But ... there is a minor difference in overall deck height, which results in slightly excessive compression if you use all stock parts. Various people have looked at ways to overcome this without spending a ton on money on what started out as a low-bucks rebuild. This is one area where the Renix shines, because having a knock sensor really helps. You need larger injectors so you can run rich enough to not make things worse due to a lean-burn condition. The old Strokers e-group site had a bunch of people looking for aftermarket stock replacement pistons with enough meat on the top to allow milling out a dish to reduce the compression ratio. You can also help it along by cc'ing the chambers in the head to a larger (and uniform) volume, also reducing compression ratio. And it works better with an RV type cam that has enough overlap to bleed off some compression pressure.

Not all years used a hub/bearing unit for the 2WD fronts. At least one of my 2WD MJs (I think the '88, maybe the '86 as well) uses a conventional spindle and wheel bearings, just like a (ugh) car.

If it is similar to the one used in the '94 XJ, you can cobble together something using brake line and standard fittings. We did it at Paragon a couple of years ago when one of the guys had his plastic clutch line pop from too much low speed crawling on a hot day. Having said it can be done ... I don't remember what fittings were needed. He got a ride into town, caught a local parts store just before they closed for the day, and basically bought a bunch of stuff that looked like it might work, then came back to the campground and we used the ones that fit. How different is the new MC from the old one? On the old XJs and MJs the line was a separate part. I think I'd be inclined to stay with the odrl MC (unless it needs replacement) and just look for a way to adapt the connection at the slave cylinder end.

Dummy me! If you haven't yet done what that idiot Eagle suggested below -- DON'T. Pull the fuel pump/sender assembly. Remove the two wires from the sender (they should be slip-on spade terminals) and reverse them. Reassemble. I was thinking about this last night as I drove the wife to dinner. The fuel tank sending unit is nothing but an in-line variable resistor. Reversing the terminals will do NOTHING to correct for the fact that Chrysler chnged the polarity of the gauges from 1990 to 1991. Does the gas gauge work at all? If so, what does it do? Try this -- first, unplug the connector for the fuel pump and sender -- it's in the wiring harness about a foot or 18 inches from the tank. Turn on the ignition and see where the fuel needle points (it should either on 'E' or on 'F'). Then go to that connector you unplugged. On the body side of the connector, jumper the fuel gauge power wire (the thin, colored wire -- the heavy one is for the fuel pump) to the ground. Then turn on the ignition and see where the needle points. Let me know what you find.

J C Whitney used to have MJ quarters. Dunno if they still have them, but if they had them, somebody must have manufactured them and probably still do.

Dakotas don't use a 5 on 4-1/2" lug bolt battern, though. Not a good choice.

The difference between 4.6L and 4.7L is how oversize the pistons are. I think (but it has been awhile since I did all the math) if you take a stock 4.0L and just drop in the 4.2L crank, you get 4.5 liters. If you bore it .030 over you get 4.6 liters, and if you bore it .060 over you get 4.7 liters. I rebuilding an old (used) 4.0L block it's unlikely you can clean it up without boring to at least .030 over, so in all likelihood if you plan to build a stroker you'll be looking at 4.6L or 4.7L no matter what you try to do. the practical limit is .060 and 4.7 liters. The blocks can be bored larger ... sometimes ... but only of they have been checked to verify that the cylinder bores are prefectly centered in the cooling jackets. If the blcok had "core shift," going larger than .060 may punch through the wall. Cooling is also a problem on the vary large bores, because the walls are of uneven thickness and you encounter problems with heat transfer and hot spots. The basics of this are that the 4.0L is an AMC engine built in the same engine family as the older 4.2L and the even-older 199/232/258 cubic inch in-line six engines. This engine family all use the same crank journal spacing and the same crank and rod bearing journal diameters. So it's just a matter of using a 4.2L crank (which was a longer stroke and smaller bore) in the 4.0L block.

The only difference between an XJ and an MJ is that the MJ has an extra bracket with two more bolts to hold the cross member to the frame on each side. Clayton's cross member is a 3-piece affair, with a heavy-duty outer end for each frame rail (welded on), and a drop-out center section for doing neat stuff like changing the transmission or transfer case. Those add-on brackets are probably in the way. They could easily be cut off, since the Clayton's cross member doesn't need them anyway. Due to differences in transmission length, there are two possible mounting locations for the STOCK cross member. Look at the frame rails, and you'll see an extra hole, either ahead of your cross member or behind it depending on which setup you have. These are referred to as the "10-inch specification" and the "14-inch specification." The distance, I think, is measured from the frame LCA pocket back to the cross member. Those would be the same for an MJ as for an XJ, since they used the same transmission and transfer case options. If anyone knows for sure that Clayton is still looking for an MJ for prototyping, we should find out what happened to the MJ I turned over to Detours for prototyping a longbed rear bumper. If he's not doing anything on the bumper, the truck should be passed along to Clayton.