Eagle

And it didn't cost me a dime. My buddy, Erich, has been looking for an MJ to do his household chores, now that he's a homeowner. But the ones I had available were 2WD 4-cyl, and one needed an engine. He just found an '88 shortbed Chief, 4.0L, AW4, skid plates, tranny cooler, gauges, tow hitch, bucket seats, full console, sliding rear window, a/c, tilt wheel, 10-spoke alloys -- and he just called to tell me he bought it for $1300. There is virtually no rust on this thing, the tailgate is straight, and it even has floors! Some guys have all the luck. I'll try to get him hooked up on here once he takes delivery.

The 5.9L Grand is a really nice vehicle if you're super rich. Using that as a daily driver is asking for bankruptcy. Those things don't drink gasoline, they chug-a-lug it. For the difference in price, you could easily buy the MJ and convert it to automatic. Jeep never offered the AW4 with 3.07 gears, but I expect in your part of the world the terrain is fairly level and open, so you could expect really good mileage out of that combination.

I guess 3.55s make sense if you have them already, but with 31s 4.10s would be the ideal choice and 3.73s would be much better than 3.55s. Running 31s and 3.73s in mine I found that the overall final drive ratio works out exactly the same as stock tires with 3.55 gears.

A box out of an old Jeep J20 truck will fit, too, and is an upgrade. The J10 boxes, though, aren't any bigger/better than the XJ/MJ boxes. Most of the parts stores are selling rebuilt J10 boxes for the J20 application.

A worn track bar cannot cause death wobble. Been there, done that. I drove around most of one winter with a horribly loose track bar because it was too cold and snowy to change it. The only symptom was excessively vague directional control. Tier balance CAN cause death wobble. And a shake that starts at 55 MPH is typically due to tire balance.

Maybe someone did, and he ignored them. Several years ago my ex-wife and I were on an interstate and saw an empty lowbed trailer (the kind that hauls bulldozers and such) screaming down the road, throwing up a rooster tail of sparks about 15 or 20 feet high. We spotted it just as we came to an exit, so I did a u-turn, caught up to the truck, and tried to flag him down. We received a rigid digit in response, so we got off at the next exit, found a pay phone (pre-cellular) and called the state police. We found out later that they caught the guy about 25 miles up the road, stopped him, and impounded the truck on the spot for being unsafe. The guy really should have paid more attention when we were trying to help him, but some folks don't think like normal people.

The Jeep 2.5L engine was engineered to use the same bell housing to block bolt pattern as the 2.8L GM V6, which is the same block as the GM 3.4L. So you can swap in a 3.4L and use your existing transmission. An early (1987 through approximately 1990) 231 transfer case can be used instead of the 207, because both are 21 splines on the input shaft. About 1991 Jeep changed to a 23-spline input shaft, which will not mate up with your tranny.

A fuel cell is more than just a tank mounted in a non-stock location. It has a bladder in it that acts like a sponge so that if you roll over, the fuel doesn't spill out and cause a fire. You can buy fuel cells at any decent speed shop that caters to racers, or on-line from www.summitracing.com

Isn't that an oxymoron? As to the photo -- I can readily understand the tire getting shredded, but what happened to the spring?

Burn-through is a real problem with sheet metal. That was one reason for choosing the heavier of the two gauges Lowe's sells for patch panels. My friend's father mentioned that he had some problems preventing burn-through. If you have access to someone who can MIG it, that would certainly be better. Otherwise, crank it down as far as you can and practice on a test piece before you go live action.

What engine? 258? That's a 4.2 liter, and was not offered in the MJ so if that's what is in it -- it ain't the original (or the correct) engine for the truck. A few years ago I paid $500 for the '88 shortbed, Comanche Chief, 4.0L, 5-speed, 4WD, a/c, tow hooks, 4" Trailmaster lift, 99,000 miles on the clock and the engine runs like that was the truth. A year later I bought the '87 Pioneer shortbed, 4.0L, a/c, 5-speed, Dana 44 rear axle, for $1200. The truck you are describing sounds like about a $500 project, not a $1750 vehicle. [EDIT]I missed the part about the blown tranny and missing transfer case. Last year I bought a running longbed 2WD in good, solid condition for $100. I then bought an '89 2WD longbed Pioneer with the 5-speed locked in reverse for $200. If the truck you're looking at has a blown tranny and no transfer case, $200 is about what it's worth.

I bought a 16-gauge patch panel from Lowe's. I think it was 8" x 20" and it was just about a perfect fit for the area I needed to patch -- from the "frame" rail outboard to the sill. I'm not a welder but the father of a friend in NAXJA is, so he welded it in for me. It came out perfect.

A couple of years ago I saw some nice aluminum checker plate rail covers at my dealer's parts room. Don't remember the circumstances, but they were the wrong thing -- maybe length? They were for an early Dakota, though, and I looked at them and said, "Hmmmm ..." I took one outside and laid it up on the MJ. Profile was perfect, but they would have needed trimming for length (I had a shortbed that day). The ones I saw bent down on the inside of the rail about 2", covered the top of the rail, and the outer flange was maybe 1/2" wide and turned down. Trim the length and they would have looked custom-made for an MJ. S-10 stuff might work. One of my shortbeds is wearing a commercial cap I bought off an S-10.

My 88 Cherokee has the BA 10/5. It's now at 253,000+ miles. It has been to Paragon several times, and run Old Florida Road and a number of other trails in the Mohawk Trail region of Massachusetts. If you gear appropriately for 32s and go easy on the throttle, it'll be fine. I certainly wouldn't pass on a nice Comanche for that reason. I have a Cherokee and a Comanche with BA 10/5s that work fine. I have an MJ with a blown AX-15, another one with a 4-cyl and a blown AX-5, and my friend's 19914 XJ just blew the AX-15 in that. (No, I didn't beat on the two AXs that I have, I bought 'em cheap because the trannies were blown.) Either the BA 10/5 isn't as bad as everyone says, or the AX trannies aren't as good as everyone says.

Both the 86 and the 88 use a mechanical speedometer, but the cable connection at the speedo is different. You'll need the speedo cable from the same vehicle you get the cluster from.

All TJ front axles are low pinion. Your best bet would be to find a front axle out of a 97, 98 or 99 XJ. That will still be high pinion (the XJ went to low pinion in 2000) and will have the larger u-joints. XJs from about 92 and newer will also have the larger u-joints if they had ABS.

Leaning in at the top would be negative camber. It should by zero, of course. First, visuals can be deceiving. If you haven't had it checked on an alignment machine, you should do so. If you don't want to spring for the cost, park your vehicle on a surface that you know is 100% level, then put an angle finder or carpenters level on the wheel rims (not the tires) to check. Camber is not normally adjustable in a standard alignment, but they make offset balljoints that will correct it by replacing the ball joints.

It's a good strong tranny and the bell housing bolt pattern will bolt to the 4.0L block. The AW4 overdrive ratio is, IIRC, 0.75:1. That means on the highway your RPMs will be approximately 25% more than if you ran an AW4 auto or AX-15 manual tranny with overdrive. If that's a problem, you can run less gear in the axles, but that hurts your crawl ratio off-road.

All TJs use a one-piece shaft on the right side. YJs used the disconnect. XJs with Selec-Trac (the 242 transfer case) and from 1991 and newer are also one piece shafts. You can use any of them, but only the newer ones have the larger u-joints. The disconnect has a seal at the disconnect, which you have to remove. You will probably find that the differential housing on the right side isn't machined to accept a stock seal. If you do enough searching on the Internet (try NAXJA first, I think), there are rumours of various seals that can be made to work. One NAXJA guy pulled his carrier and used a Dremel to machine the right side to accept a stock seal. The shafts are the easy part -- lots of choices, and you don't need to go for expensive aftermarket stuff. The tough part is getting the seal worked out.

Hmmm ... Listing cancelled. Wasn't this the guy who said not to bother asking to "buy it now" because he follows all e-Bay rules? I wonder what happened? I'm betting it wasn't factory. I've never heard of the factory producing any duallies. Could have been a styling studio prototype, but the add-on wheel wells were not integrated with the style of the truck and I cannot imagine the factory having produced something that looked so obviously home-made.

Sounds great. Are those pressures just after a cold start, or after the engine is fully warmed up?

What models are your MJs? And are these rivets and screw holes on the driver's door only, or on both sides? Sounds like driver's door only. If they are just below the window, that sounds like the location where the base for the "flag" style mirror would be. I have an '88 with that style mirror, but I have never removed it to see what's under the base.

I have a pair of stock MJ springs out of an '87. I just measured the one that doesn't have the broken leaf -- 51-3/4" eye-to-eye. That's measured straight line, not along the curve.

Harbor Freight doesn't sell tubing benders, they sell pipe benders. One is specified by inside diameter, the other is specified by outside diameter. The Harbor Freight benders don't work on tube because the mandrels aren't the right size.

An MJ could have come from the factory with any of three styles of mirror. The most common is the one that fills the little triangle at the front corner of the vent window, just like on Cherokees. Except on most MJs this mirror wasn't set up with the little joystick for "manual remore" adjustment -- to adjust you open the window, reach out, and adjust. The real base models came with a single "flag" style mirror on only the driver's door. This mounted just beneath the window with two screws to the sheet metal. There was also an option for "west coast truck" style mirrors -- the big chrome ones with the shiny stainless steel brackets that stand out about 6" beyond the side of the vehicle. These have an upper and lower mount, two holes for each. Sounds like that's what was on your truck at some time in the past.