Eagle

Nope, it is not an urban legend. It's another proposal by El Presidente Jorge to turn the United States of America over to anyone EXCEPT Americans. :nuts: :mad:

Any possibility that you got the wrong starter in there? You changed the starter, correct? Do you still have the one that came out? If so, how do the teeth look? If it was grinding a lot, you should see the teeth being chewed away. If you don't have the old one, when hubby gets home (or yourself, if you do your own wrenching, but I always like a witness to call 9-1-1 when I'm working underneath) pull the new starter and look at the teeth for evidence of damage. At the same time, get a good strong light and maybe an inspection mirror and see if you can get a view of the teeth on the ring gear. If you replaced the starter, is it safe to assume that the new starter included a new solenoid with it? The 87 - 90 MJs used a starter relay AND a solenoid. Either one could be stuck. Try disconnecting the small wire from the solenoid (tape the end to avoid shots) and then try to push/pull start the vehicle. In fact, try first with BOTH wires disconnected but the starter in place. That'll help establish if you have a physical problem or an electrical problem.

The problem is, you have three possibilities -- the tranny, the transfer case, and the rear axle -- NONE of which should allow you to push the vehicle by yourself up an incline if that was the problem and it was severe enough to bring you to a screeching halt when driving. Before you go out buying axles and/or gearboxes, you really have to zero in on which is the culprit. I think what I would do is jack it up and put all four corners on jack stands, invite a couple of pals over to help watch and listen, and then go through the motions to try to isolate what's hanging up. First things is you want to be sure the tranny isn't locked in multiple gears. That's easy to check -- put it in neutral with the t-case in 2WD (engine not running) and try to turn the driveshaft by hand. To check your transfer case, just shift it to each position and rotate the rear driveshaft by hand. Have someone help you listen for odd noises, and be alert as you turn it for any grittiness or "catches" in the movement. In 2WD only the rear driveshaft should turn. In 4WD both should turn. To check neutral, remember that in your year the neutral position disengaged from the tranny, but did NOT unlock the drive shafts. So, with the tranny in neutral AND the t-case in neutral, both shafts should rotate when you turn the rear. Then put the transmission into gear. If you canNOT still turn the driveshafts by hand, your t-case neutral isn't disengaging. While it's up on jack stands you can also spin the rear tires and listen for odd noises coming out of that round thing in the middle of the rear axle. Even better (except it's freakin' COLD out) would be to pop the cover off the rear diff and take a peek inside. I'm honestly not sure what sequence I would follow to trouble-shoot this one. Maybe just keep trying things, one after another. Keep a notebook so you don't lose track of what you've already tried. Last oddball suggestion for the night: We know that the brakes on XJs and MJs get a bit ... "eccentric" ... when cold and damp. And the drum brakes are what's called "servo-assisted," which means that when you're rolling forward the shoe geometry is such that they help apply more force once the shoes contact the drum. The servo-assist geometry does NOT work in reverse, which is why the parking brake is more effective when you park facing downhill than it is when you park facing uphill. Is it possible that you got some ice stuck in your rear brakes, and they basically applied themselves? But not so hard that you couldn't push it backwards? You were going forward when it locked up, yes? Did you push it in reverse? If so, maybe try pulling the rear drums and UN-adjusting the brakes as an experiment.

Is the noise a grinding noise or a scraping noise? Could it be the outer ring of the harmonic damper (on the front of the crakshaft) rubbing against the timing case cover? Alternator bearings?

Your major problem will be cooling. Did I mention "MAJOR" problem? Personally, I'd do an AMC 360 to keep it all in the family if I were to do it at all, but I'm really more interested in a stroker version of the 4.0L. I can't believe anyone would claim a V-8 is "easier to work on" than an I-6.

From what I am reading here, you don't know and we don't know if the problem is actually the transmission or the transfer case. The original description of the problem sounded like when you shifted the tranny slipped out of an operating rod as you went for the next gear, leaving it in two gears at once. That would explain the sudden stop, and the inability to make it move after that. However, if that's what happened (and it does happen, not only with the Peugeot tranny. I have an '89 here with an AX-15 that's permanently locked in reverse) you should not have been able to push it back into the parking space. How hard was it to push? Did you have someone inside holding the clutch peddle down while you pushed? In fact, that wouldn't matter, as I think on it. The clutch only divorces the tranny from the engine. The tranny is ALWAYS connected to the rear drive shaft, unless you put the transfer case in neutral. Something here isn't adding up in my little brain. Like #5 said in that goofy robot movie, "Need input!"

Purolator 14619. Be sure some well-intended (but dumb) previous owner didn't "upgrade" to use the new filter, but not change the decal. On an '88 4.0L the oil filter should mount upside down, with the top leaning slightly outboard toward the passenger side fender. The newer SAE-thread filter mounts horizontal, with the top of the filter facing back towards the firewall. Whatever you do, DON'T use a Fram oil filter.

Interesting truck, but I wonder what makes them think it looks like an Army truck. The trucks we had when I was in didn't have alloy wheels. That thing is a mixmaster. It is a 4.0L, not a 2.5L. It was a base model truck -- notice the idiot light cluster. But it has a sport steering wheel and hockey stick armrests, which may have come from the same vehicle as the engine. It does appear to be pretty solid, though. It's probably worth the current bid, but I don't think it's worth $4,995.

Yeah, the 2.5L is a somewhat different animal. They mostly came with 3.73 or 4.10 gears, they have a narrower torque band, and the torque peak is higher than with the 4.0L. For a direct comparison, if my 4.0L 5-speed with 3.07 gears turns 1750 RPM at highway cruise, a 2.5L 5-speed with 4.10 gears would turn 2337 RPM. 1750 is below the torque peak for the 4.0L, and 2337 is below the torque peak for the 2.5L. I would expect a 2.5L to run at higher RPM. BUT ... it's a smaller engine. 37.5% smaller, to be exact. So at the same RPM, it's pushing 37.5% less gas through the system. I'm not sure what came stock on the later 2.5Ls with multi-port injection, but on my '86 XJ and MJ 2.5L and the '88 MJ 2.5L, the stock exhaust is either 2" or 1-3/4" -- it's definitely smaller than the 2-1/4" on the 4.0L vehicles. 2-1/2" exhaust on a 4-banger is massively oversized and isn't helping you at all. You're giving away torque, and the 2.5L needs the torque a lot more than the 4.0L does.

Too funny -- I was thinking about making such an adapter just last Saturday and Sunday. Now I don't have to.

Unfortunately, the rears will NOT work. I had that idea for one of my beaters. Took a decent pair of used XJ shocks and trashed them by removing the upper cross pins. THEN I discovered that, fully extended, they were 1/2" too short to fit into a 2WD MJ sitting with maybe 100 or 150 pounds of junk in the bed. I could have force-fit them by adding weight to the bed, but they would have been fully extended and putting constant pressure on the pistol against the extension stops unless the truck was loaded down. The ride would be terrible and the shocks wouldn't last long. You can get NEW Gabriels from Pep Boys for $10 each. Not the best shock in the world (that model, nothing against Gabriel as a brand), but they'll do the job.

There was CONSIDERABLE debate about that flat spot on the NAXJA forum back maybe four or five years ago. It became quite ... "agitated" ... at times, because people on both sides of the argument were so sure they were right that they became unable to look at the question objectively. The key issue is, none of us know why the dent is there, but it WAS designed in from the factory, so it must have a purpose. Keep in mind that the pipe that dent is in is a 2-1/2" down pipe. The amount of metal making up the pipe wasn't changed, so flattening it slightly certainly doesn't reduce the cross-sectional area down to the equivalent of a 1-3/4" pipe. The other thing to consider is a concept from Physics that my grandfather used to talk about: the Bernoulli Theorem. Basically, it says that in a long pipe/tube/duct of a given diameter/area, if a short length is reduced in cross-section, the fluid (or air column) flowing through the pipe or tube will not be affected because at the area of localized reduction, it will simply flow faster. This lends credibility to the notion that the dent is there to provide physical clearance rather than performance. On the other hand, we know that the 4.0L needs some back pressure to develop low-end torque. Many of the people in the great dent debate on NAXJA swore that running a header or custom down pipe without the flat spot resulted in less torque. I have never tried it, so I don't know. What I DO know is that a 2-1/2" cat back system with a turbo muffler very much cost me torque and gas mileage. I have no reason to believe that a header wouldn't have the same effect. Like I said -- all that high flow stuff is intended to handle ... high flow. The stock engine operating at less than half the stock redline RPM doesn't produce high flow and does NOT need additional exhaust capacity. You would need high flow components if you built a drag race truck, like Bob Salemi in Rhode Island, that routinely sees 6,000 RPM and up. To cruise down the Interstate at 1750 RPM, or to crawl over rocks at barely more than idle -- tell me again why the Hell you *NEED* a high flow exhaust system. Randimal: If your leak is the stock down pipe, I would just replace with another stock down pipe. If your leak is the exhaust manifold, since you already have the header by all means use it. But skip the 2-1/2" stuff down stream. Stay with stock replacement components and you should be okay.

So what happened to the one I GAVE him? If he junked it or sold it I will be highly pi$$ed off. I donated it to be a prototype bed, not for him to make money I could have made off it.

Synthetic brake fluid (which I think is DOT-4) mixes with and is compatible with conventional DOT-3 brake fluid. Silicone is a different animal. It is "compatible" with conventional brake fluid, but it doesn't mix with it. Think oil and water in the same container. They don't interact chemically, but they also don't mix. The same thing occurs when you combine conventional and silicone brake fluids. They'll sit in the same system and not cause any problems ... but they are not miscible (don't mix), and with even a little bit of conventional stuff in there you lose the benefits of the silicone. Replacing with silicone is easy enough. Use a kitchen baster to remove as much of the conventional as you can from the master cylinder, fill with silicone, and bleed until you see blue (or yellow, depending on brand) juice coming out of the bleeder port. When you see that ... you're done.

Maybe the law covers "cars" but not trucks? I know Canadian XJs have them, because there have been numerous discussions on the NAXJA forum about trouble-shooting (or just shooting) them. But I don't know what year they first showed up in the XJ.

You don't have to drain the system. Just pull the old stuff out of the master, refill, and bleed normally until you see the new stuff coming out the other end. But ... I don't know if synthetic brake/clutch fluid is any less corrosive than plain old DOT 3 or DOT 4. I didn't say "synthetic," I said "silicone." It's rated DOT 5, it doesn't attack paint or electrical contact, it's non-hygroscopic (doesn't attract and hold water molecules) ... and it's expensive. But the clutch system doesn't hold a lot. Since I use it in the brakes anyway, I don't worry about the cost.

Worst case, add a relay. If the lead coming from the switch puts out enough to operate the relay, then you'll get full power to the pump motor. If that doesn't work, then just add a toggle switch to operate the relay.

Right. A standard vehicle-mount CB, even the compact models, puts out a full 5 watts. That's the maximum they can legally use. The hand-helds, depending on brand and model, are either 2 watts or 1/2 watt. My first was a compact Radio Shack model. I took it along on a cross-country trip about ten years ago and in the mid-west I was getting out a verified 13 miles using a Radio Shack gutter-mount antenna. That's good enough for me. Sure beats not being able to talk to the big rigs 200 yards away from the Wally World parking lot.

So, Rob, when did DRLs become mandatory in Canada? Your truck is an '89 -- I thought they were mandatory by then. Was your module removed by a previous owner, or did the requirement kick in later than '89?

Consider everywhere it sits to not be pretty, whether it's electronics or paint. True enough. Paint can be repainted. It eats away the copper on the contacts and leaves the entire fuse panel essentially toast. Not a major PITA to replace (if you happen to have a spare fuse panel on the shelf), but certainly a PITA of some order of magnitude when the problem can (and should) be avoided.

I am confused. What do you mean it "chugs but won't turn over"? Turning over means that the starter is making the engine go around. Do you mean it turns over but won't fire? If so, have you checked for spark? Have you checked to see if the injector is squirting gas into the throttle body? Basically, you need three things for it to run: fuel, air, and spark. Air is usually not the problem, so investigate whether or not you have the other two.

Comanches never came with daytime running lights... Rob is in Canada. DRLs are mandatory in Canada, going back to slightly after the Big Bang.

The one you need to watch, though, is the clutch master cylinder. When they leak, the fluid runs back along the operating rod and drips onto the fuse panel. What brake fluid does to electrical contacts is ... not pretty. That's just one of the reasons I run silicone brake fluid in my clutches.

Is it cast, or is it forged? (I'm asking ... I don't know. If it's forged, it's gonna be a helluva lot stronger than that stamped POS on the non-disconnect axles)

Nope, there is no adjustment. Bleeding might make the pedal better, but after sitting for ten years it may need a new master and slave cylinder.