Eagle

What about doing the page(s) in Microsoft Word and then choosing "Save As HTML"? I've never used that to actually create a web page, but the option is there and should work for simple pages w/o frames or complicated content.

It's really pretty simple. If you have an 86 with any engine, or an 87 or newer 4-cyl, the 4-speed is an AX-4 and the 5-speed is an AX-5. For the 4.0L engine, 87 thru mid-89 is the Peugeot BA10/5, and mid-89 thru 92 is the AX-15. If you have an '89, the BA10/5 case splits lengthwise along the vertical centerline, so look for a line of bolts along the centerline on the bottom holding the two halves together. The AX-15 has a front section, a short middle section, and a tail section.

Can't be adjusted in the truck. The "linkage" isn't an external, like the old 60's vintage muscle cars with their Hurst shifters. The shift handle goes into the top of the tranny and any adjustment has to be made internally (and I don't even know if there is any "adjustment" possible, other than assembling it correctly).

The fact that the synchro "burned out" should be a clue. A synchronizer is not a clutch, and it can't "burn out." It's a splined collar that slides onto a splined shaft, much the way the front axle disconnect works. If a syncro failed in a freshly rebuit tranny, it's most likely because the linkage isn't adjusted correctly and the synchro is not engaging fully. That would initially put extra stress on whatever percentage of the splines ARE engaging (meaning what percentage of the length, not how many), and as the stress begins to wear at them, that's when it begins to pop out of gear.

Remember it's a 4-stroke engine. Each cylinder hits TDC once on the compression stroke, and again on the exhaust stroke. Are you certain you had #1 on the compression stroke when you set up the distributor? If it was on exhaust, the distributor is 180 degrees out of synch.

The window riser is a fiber cable wound with wire that engages the crank. After awhile the wire spreads and the crank can no longer engage. The solution is to replace the riser.

But the XJ 4-bangers didn't get the AW4 at all, and I don't know if the MJs all got it. When I asked the parts guy at my dealership about the bell housing, he didn't believe me that it might exist until he looked. This is a good parts man at a good Jeep dealer, where virtually all of the techs and parts guys drive some kind of Jeep. For Todd to never have heard of it suggests that it was a rather rare bird. So ... this is why I wrote about good luck expecting a yard to know what tranny is behind a 4-cyl MJ. Most of them are going to be Chrysler 904/999s. If they say they have what you need, make sure they go back and triple check that the tranny is an AW4 before you give 'em your credit card info.

There was a bell housing to mount the AW4 to the 2.5L engine, but it was discontinued many years ago. Junkyard is your only hope, and good luck trying to find a junkyard that would know what tranny was in a 2.5L MJ.

Dunno about the uppers, but the WJ lowers are wider at the bushing than the XJ/TJ/ZJ. Length is okay but you'll have to file or mill the ends of the bushings and sleeves to get 'em small enough to fit the MJ pockets.

The Dana 44 was the axle used with the optional Metric Ton package from 1987 thru 1992. That was a function of weight capacity, not 2WD vs. 4WD. Dunno what the chances are of finding one, but it's theoretically possible.

Not super difficult, but difficult to accomplish without trashing the arms. The bushings are a press fit, and the arm is (as you must already know) a 3-sided stamping of heavy-gauge sheet metal. To not destroy the arms, you NEED a spacer that's the exact thickness of the space between the two sides of the arm. Without that, if you don't trash the arm getting the old bushing out, you will trash it getting the new bushings in. If you buy compete arms from Crown or Quadratec, you won't pay much more than the bushings will cost you at NAPA.

Spray it with silicone spray before inserting it into the hole. Makes it a lot more slippery.

To follow up on an idea I tossed at Pete after he got this under control, this forum software doesn't have the best security features in the universe (duh!). An awful lot of sites seem to be happy with vBulletin (that's the one used by NAXJA and something like 500 or so other forums around the Internet). You have to buy or rent vBulletin, but it isn't that expensive. I'd be willing to send Pete a few bucks to buy a copy if he wants to migrate to vBulletin. How do other folks feel about that? This is a new idea, so we need to investigate if we'd be able to migrate the existing psosts & threads over, or if we would have to keep this forum on-line as an archive for the old information. First things first: how many agree that vBulletin would be an improvement, and how many would be willing to chip in to buy a copy?

Send me a PM with your e-mail address, and I'll send you an Excel spreadsheet that will tell you more about tire sizes and gear ratios than you want to know. The short answer is that, for stock tires, 3.54 is the optimum ratio. The 5-speeds came with 3.07s, but they are geared so tall that 5th gear isn't usable except on the highway, and even at 55 you're well below the torque peak of the engine. 3.54s are a better balanced choice.

i was starting to wonder if anyone would notice that. now if that is the real problem or not it is hard to tell without being around the truck to see what else it might be i think. Alex Well, at least I read the symptoms correctly. So what if it was the engine that was swapped rather than the tach? By the way -- the '88 tach is adjustable. Take out the gauge cluster and look at the back of the tach. You should see a potentiometer. In rough terms, all the way to one side is the 4-cyl setting and all the way to the other side is for 6-cylinders. If you have access to a good idle tach or a professional scanner machine you can fine tune it, but just turning the pot to the opposite end of the range from where it is now will put you in the ball park. I don't know if your '87 tach is the later style, like the '88 and adjustable, or the early style (like the '86) and non-adjustable. You'll have to look at the back of it to see if it has a potentiometer.

You can use the XJ panel. I did. Just use your Dremel to remove the four plastic welds that hold that dummy panel into the dash bezel, and the opening will be exactly the same as an XJ. I did mine that way -- I have an XJ panel in there with one switch wired to my home-brew dome light, and the other as a spare for whatever I decide might be interesting that runs on 12 volts. Just remember that the XJ panels are not the same for the right and left sides of the steering column. You need a switch panel from the right side, but the switches will probably be for tranny power/comfort and rear wiper. You may need to replace the actual switch with an XJ/MJ fog light switch to get a simple SPST function out of it.

The fuel pump ballast resistor on an '88 isn't on the firewall, it's on the inside of the left front fender. Between the fender and the air filter box. It's a greyish-white ceramic block about 2" long with a push-on terminal at each end.

I want to know what model MJ, because I think the tach was swapped in from a 4-banger.

Yepp, probably 4.10, maybe 3.73. If it's a 4-speed rather than a 5-speed ==> 3.54.

31x10.50/15s will fit on stock Jeep rims, but they won't play nice with your front flares on aftermarket rims. I think 3x9.50/15 is a better overall choice, especially if you don't want to get into regearing. Even with 30x9.50s there will be some slight rubbing against the lower control arms when the steering is cranked over to full lock. Aftermarket rims with less backspacing cures that, but at the expense of eating your flares. I run 30x9.50s on OEM Jeep alloys.

It should idle at around 650. Are you certain your tach is accurate? What model is your MJ? If it's a model that didn't come from the factory with a tach, the previous idiot (err, "owner," yeah that's it) may have dropped in a gauge cluster from a 4-banger. Think about what that means. In a 6-cylinder, there are three firing pulses for every revolution. For a 4-cylinder, there are only two pulses per revolution, so if a 4-cylinder tach sees three pulses, it reads 1-1/2 revolutions insteal of one. Which means it'll read 1500 instead of 1000, 4500 instead of 3000.

aemsee has a good point. Even if a previous owner swapped gearing, the most common swap is 4.10s from a 4-banger. The gearing doesn't make as huge a difference in RPM as some people think. Even with 4.10 gears, and no overdrive, 70 MPH would only be 3500 RPM. The highest (numerical) ratio available for the D30 is 4.88, and that would only run at 4150 RPM at 70 MPH. Methinks you need to have a bit of diagnostics run that we probably can't do for you by remote control.

I'm currently down to only five MJs. Two are 4WD and stock (one was lifted when I bought it and I took out the lift), the other three are 2WD and stock. I may convert one of the 2WDs to 4WD but I don't plan to lift any of them. I'm not into extreme wheeling, and the short wheelbase MJs wheel pretty darned well in stock form. I enjoy wheeling, but there are plenty of Cherokees to chop up for that. When it comes to MJs I'm more interested in preserving them than I am in destroying them. Hence my sig line ...

I think we have a winnah! They need the shoulder to accurately index the CPS.

The MJ never came with 235s, so let's assume that your speedo thinks you have 225/75x15 tires. Stock gearing with the automatic was 3.54:1. With that gearing, in 4th gear and torque converter locked up you should be seeing about 1615 RPM at 50 MPH, and about 2250 RPM at 70 MPH. It sounds like (a) you're not getting 4th (overdrive) gear AND your torque converter isn't locking up. Assuming you only have 3rd gear, the RPMs would be about 2150 RPM @ 50 MPH and 3015 RPM @ 70 MPH. If you're seeing more than that, the tranny is slipping and/or the converter isn't locking. Or ... a previous owner changed the gearing.