Eagle

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.

Diversity training? These days they train us for everything except doing the job. When it appeared recently that I was going to be appointed to a position working for a municipality (it later got sabotaged by politics) I was told that I would have to attend a seminar on sexual harrassment. Under the circumstances, I didn't think I should ask (a) why they thought I needed to develop any additional expertise in sexual harrassment, or (B) what the taxpayers would say if they found out the town was training us to sexually harrass our co-workers. The office manager is actually rather attractive. Since I'm sure as a full-time employee she has attended this seminar, I keep waiting for her to try out her training on me but, alas ... it hasn't happened.

Pull the fuel pump/sender assembly. Remove the two wires from the sender (they should be slip-on spade terminals) and reverse them. Reassemble.

Welcome. You'll find that this is a pretty laid back and well-behaved group. We're all here to help each other, so stick around.

http://www.babelfish.altavista.com/ You can use this to get the basic vocabulary. It is NOT perfect. I used it to translate an e-mail from my wife when she was in Chile taking care of her mother after a stroke. The message translated to give me the impression my wife had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Turns out she wrote "mama" and the idiot translation routine interpreted that as a reference to the female mammary gland. If you're near a Barnes & Noble book store, they have a section devoted to foreign languages. You can buy a traveler's Spanish phrase book that will handle rudimentary grammar, and use Babelfish for the technical stuff. Keep in mind that South America has more regional accents and dialects of Spanish than we have regional accents and dialects of English in the U.S. Some of it is not intutive. Wrench is "llave" -- which also means "key" for example.

Take the wires off the ballast resister and jumper them together, then try it. What you are describing is the classic symptom of a failed ballast resistor. (That white ceramic block.) The start circuit bypasses it when the key is in the START position, then when you release the key to the RUN position the power goes through the resistor. Quick check -- after it runs and dies out, there's not much pressure in the fuel system. Turn the key to ON (RUN, not START). Do you hear the fuel pump running? It should run for about 5 seconds, until the fuel rail is pressurized. If you don't hear the fuel pump -- the resistor isn't allowing power to the fuel pump.

Hate to break it to you, but the Comanche and the Cherokee are exactly the same front chassis, and the shocks go into both exactly the same way. I've found it's easiest to drop a box-end wrench over the nut inside the engine compartment, then reach into the wheel well and turn the shock.

I believe the factory connector was an 'L' shaped rubber push-on. The last one I remember working on was so oil-soaked (old '84 4-cyl) that the rubber was too loose to maintain contact, so I cut it off and used a conventional crimp-on ring terminal on the wire. The sender is threaded, so I was able to run a nut down on it. On the Renix stuff, the gauges run independent of the ECU so you should be able to feed them right off the senders. And you can run a 4.2L distributor out of an older YJ Wrangler or any AMC 6-cylinder 199/232/258 all the way back to about 1966.

All the way to the back of the head (not block), driver's side. Screws into a hole in the top of the head, so it's vertical. It has a single wire coming off it. What'cha doin"?

That's "olde" pharte, with an 'E' I think the revised version is a lot better. I'm a lot like Pete. I grew up when cars were over-engineered -- you could buy a Ford or a Chevy and (within reason) just drop in a bigger motor and take it to the drag strip. Today, cars (vehicles) are so precisely engineered to keep costs under control that if you add 5 horsepower you risk blowing a tranny or axle. There are no "frames," so the structure is engineered to be only as strong as necessary ... and to crumple in a pre-determined way in the event of a collision. None of this is geared to the kinds of stresses a vehicle might encounter under real off-road conditions. Example: When AMC/Jeep offered the hidden winch option on the mid-80s XJs and MJs, they used a 5000 or 6000 pound Ramsey winch. Today, nobody would even think of putting less than an 8000 pound winch on an XJ, and I've seen estimates that the force needed to extricate a vehicle of around 4,000 pounds that's in mud up to the floor may be as high as 12,000 to 15,000 pounds. That's why we want to overbuild. We're not concerned with CAFE (unless our trail rig is also our daily driver), but we are concerned with staying alive and not hurting one of our trail buddies.

How badly do you want a 1953 Willys pickup? That's the ONLY criterion. I enjoy looking at them ... when other people own them. I love my Cherokees and Comanches, but there's no way I'd actually BUY one of those old Willys things. I've driven them.

I mis-read the original post. I thought you were saying that you put 500 foot-pounds on the used crush sleeve when you reassembled.

Which coolant temp sensor, the one in the head for the gauges, or the one in the block for the ECU?

I can't say what Yukon gear includes for instructions. Personally, I only use Dana-Spicer gears. Here's what the MJ FSM says for pinion setup: ------------------------------------ Tighten the pinion nut only enough to remove bearing end play using Tool J-8614-01 and a socket. Rotate the pinion when tightening the nut to seat the bearings evenly. Continue tightening the pinion nut to collapse the spacer and preload the bearings. When a very slight increase in pinion turning effort is noted, check the pinion rotating torque using an inch-pound torque wrench. The rotating torque must be 2 to 3 N-m (15 - 25 inch pounds). CAUTION: Do not exceed the specified preload torque and do not loosen the pinion nut to reduce preload if desired torque is exceeded. If the specified preload torque is exceeded, replace the collapsable spacer and seal. Install the yoke and the replacement pinion nut and adjust preload torque again. ------------------------------ Note that this adjustment is performed WITHOUT the ring gear being installed. All this is checking is the torque needed to rotate the pinion gear in its bearings. My tech friends tell me that it takes around 300 foot-pounds to crush the sleeve. Since you aren't supposed to crush it too much, when replacing a seal (since they don't want to open the diff and remove the ring gear for an otherwise external job) they use 275 foot-pounds on the pinion nut because they're pretty certain that WON'T crush the sleeve any more than it was originally. I would be very uncomfortable about 500 foot-pounds. That sounds way excessive, unless the crush sleeve they supply doesn't match factory specifications.

500 foot-pounds? :eek: The spec on a crush sleeve isn't in foot-pounds. It's in inch-pounds, and it's based on tightening (crushing) until it takes 10 inch-pounds (I think, or is it 15?) to turn the pinion. That's when the preload is set. My shop tech pals tell me it usually takes about 300-foot pounds to achieve that. One Jeep dealership (no longer in business) used to re-use the old crush sleeve when doing a pinion bearing. They would torque the pinion nut back to around 275 foot-pounds, and it seemed to work okay. 500 foot-pounds? Be sure to let us know how long your pinion bearings last.

The crush sleeve is what controls the preload. You're supposed to use a new one even when replacing the pinion bearing or the pinion seal. You definitely need a new one when re-gearing. What torque did you use when trying to set the new crush sleeve, and what torque did you use on the old one when you put it in?