B430

i'll take some when it finally rolls outside, hopefully tomorrow.

after 5 months of having no time/money my wheels turned under their own power today! though the truck was sitting on stands, i'm still pretty proud. still have the brakes to hook up and pinion angle to set, but it getting close to actually leaving the garage since it drove in with a broken D35. anyway, i'm excited

well i've finally come to a final decision. it's going to be black semi gloss. I painted the inside of the bed in OD and decided it's not for me, too flat, and a little too "rough" looking, though if it was for a trail rig i'd need to reconsider. right now i'm in the process of discovering just how much rust is really under that factory paint and previous owners bondo :cry: so far not so encouraging.

all i really want is one color over the whole thing i've decided, so i think i'll give the OD a shot, the more i look at the truck the crappier the paint on it now looks.

my concern with trying to do it in 1 coat is getting runs, i picked up a can of paint a few days ago to see how the color looked and i've found it seems to take 3 coats. that was without primer on bare metal though, so maybe i'll get a can of primer and see what happens. i was also thinking of starting with the fender that's already spray painted, that way if it looks bad i'll just spray it black again and i'll be back where i started.

I just bought an 88 (or 86?) MJ and i'm trying to decide what to do with the paint. right now it is black, and the parts that are still factory paint look pretty decent, but... the passenger fender has been replaced and spray painted black, so it doesn't quite match, and the lower 9" has been painted in a flat black but not very well and it looks pretty crappy. Also there is some rust around the rear wheel arches. so what i'm trying to decide: do i just leave it as it is? or spray paint it black and do my best to get it shiny? or spray paint it olive drab i've seen a few truck on this forum in olive drab and i think it looks really good, i'm just afraid it's gonna turn out ghetto looking. Twisty's MJ is the one that is really inspiring me to go in that direction, i'm really liking the military/utility look. so anyone got any opinions to help me decide? also the title for my MJ says it's a 1988, but it had a 2.8 and AX-4, so unless it was swapped shouldn't it be an 86?

got my 8.8 today, it's from a 93 explorer so unfortunately it's got drums, but the pick n pull yard didn't have any 95+ and the price was right at $89. It has an LSD too which since i plan to make the truck a daily driver should make it a lot better on snowy roads and in the wet. i looked at the part #s for the u-joints of various ford vehicles and i found a 4.0L ranger or aerostar have the same u joint as the MJ. so i plan to go back and get one of those, didn't have time today. i have the explorer adapton as well right now so i'll see how it fits, maybe it'll work.

so if i take the one from the explorer driveshaft i'm ok? it will fit the driveshaft of my 86 mj 4x4 with an ax-4 and d35?

so just to be clear i need one of these? currieenterprises.com/cestore/productsRE.aspx?id=1043?

I just bought an 86 MJ (my 1st MJ) with a broken D35 in the back, and since no local junkyards have an MJ d35 with the correct ratio, it seems that installing a explorer 8.8 would not be a whole lot more work than making a non MJ D35 fit and then i wouldn't need to worry about a broken rear end again for a while. first off on this site they are able to use the flange adaptor from the explorer to mate to the jeep driveshaft. it says "Cherokees with 8.25 rear ends (and '94+ YJs) used 1330 rear u-joints, just like the Explorers." but my thought is if they were able to use the D35 with that u joint could a stock MJ driveshaft also be made to work? second question. i plan on going SOA eventually but i don't have the budget to do it at the moment, so would it be possible to weld spring perches to the top and bottom of the axle and then later cut off the bottom ones when i go SOA? that's all i got for now, but i'm sure to think of more later.