gogmorgo

Do you need the manual column? I was hoping to swap it into the MJ with the rest of the manual stuff. But I've got a complete automatic column from a '93 XJ Country laying around, with key.

Yeah, I've read that. Actually a couple days before the ad for this ZJ went up. I tried to buy one about five years ago but someone else got there first, but something had me thinking how sweet it would be to find one for sale again. I did a few searches, but found almost zero of course, except that article and some other stuff. Then it popped up in a saved search for manual XJ's and I couldn't believe it. But the photos didn't lie, so there was no way I was letting it get away. The numbers bouncing around the forums are 600 in '93 and 400 in '94. More reputable sources don't quote numbers, but just say it was discontinued as an option in '94, but don't clarify whether that means before, after, or during the '94 production run. I wouldn't take a Doug Demuro article as gold... he's the sort of guy who thinks the standard pull-knob headlight switch is some crazy novel thing. My biggest problem right now is that with the long weekend there's extra cops out and the registry's closed till Tuesday, I can't drive it. Tomorrow it'll be getting full fluid changes and possibly the trackbar issue sorted... The XJ/MJ track bar is the same anyone know if they also use the same frame-side bracket? It's a double-shear one, but the PO left out a bushing sleeve and some washer, and the bolt's clearly been moving around so I'm not optimistic about the hole still being the right size... Or that it's not an unnecessary drop bracket. Still on the fence about keeping the lift on it or not.

Yeah. Pretty nuts. As far as I can tell there were only around 1000 of them built in total, at least that's the number going around the forums. I can't imagine how many are out there in Canadian market spec either. I'm pretty pumped about it, TBH. I jumped on the ad about six hours after it went up, and the guy selling thought I seemed like the best person who contacted him to sell it to. Because of how many memories they had with it they wanted it to go to someone who would take care of it, and I guess everyone else seemed to want to go nuts chopping it up to wheel or straight up part it out. I told him I wanted to keep it stock(ish) as a daily driver, which is true. It was about a five hour drive just to get to it, about 400km north along the "scenic route to Alaska" as the signs said, in Grande Prairie, AB. Not super far north as things go but still a solid 12 hours north of the 49th. But it was a pretty scenic drive for sure. Definitely a great trip.

Getting the carpet out of the cargo area did this one in. After soaking in PB for a week, the rear seatbelt bolts broke two brand-new 1/2" t50 impact bits. Got maybe two turns on each of them before the one stripped and the other started snapping bits. So given that it needs most of the lower sheet metal replaced, and that I only bought it to manual swap the MJ in the first place, I guess that's what's going to happen now. But to make myself feel better about parting out the XJ I picked up something that's better worth saving as a daily: '93 base 4x4 ZJ, pretty well manual everything... Including the locks, windows, and transmission. It's a one-family vehicle, 267,000 km/165,000 miles, a little rough around the edges but overall in pretty reasonable shape. There's a touch of rust in the rockers that shouldn't be too much to fix, and supposedly some "wobble" that I didn't notice going around the block a couple times but I'm hoping is due to the 2" spacer lift and adjustable track bar, which looks legit but I'm thinking I'll put it back to stock anyhow. The plan is for it to replace the Saint as my daily. Looks like I need to update my sig now.

Photobucket was frustrating to use before they did this. There were and are significantly better image hosts out there. Forcing users to pay was just icing on the cake.

Well I sorta forgot about this... But it's an old EZ-Go electric golf cart. I had the pleasure of taking two beat-to-$#!& carts and turning them into one at work.

FYI the general spring price is per side.

Where is said shed and would you be wanting it to go away? ...the topper, not the shed.

It is a transaxle, although the vehicle in question is rear-drive, with a solid axle. Er, solid transaxle..?

I never really understood this attitude until I took my Niva through the south. Frankly I still don't understand it. I think I've spoken to about three people the entire time I've owned the Lada, at least in Canada. Mostly it was people I know asking while we were drinking or whatever. Going through the states though... It was every other gas station someone approached me. And 95% of them would read BWA on the wheels, ask me what it was, and then absolutely not listen to a word I said. Seriously. If you don't care enough to listen to what I have to say about it, just leave me the f#%k alone. I have very little interest in talking to random people, and zero interest in talking to people who won't listen to anything I say. For the record the wheels say ВША, not BWA, but that doesn't stop morons either.

That's kinda getting the idea.

Lol. No.

It's neither a John Deere, Kubota, or tractor. I did discover a Dana-spicer tag on the housing today, so that's a small clue. I'll allow questions so it's not a straight-up guessing game.

Nope and nope. Second guess is getting warmer though.

Any guesses?

Almost makes me think whoever put the price in misplaced the decimal point. But you never know. A few weeks ago we ordered a door handle at work, for a 2009 Subaru. The colour-matched handle from the dealer was actually cheaper than the black plastic Dorman through our normal parts supplier, but we would've made up the difference plus some to have the handle shipped. But then we likely burnt that difference in labour dicking around with the shitty Dorman trying to make it fit...

Well I got the carpet out of the front half today. Can't really say either way if it was better or worse than I expected. On one hand I knew it was bad, but I didn't really realize how bad. While struggling with a very stubborn trim screw on the passenger's side lower door surround piece, I noticed that every time I shifted my knee sitting right behind where the seat would've been, I heard stuff hitting the ground. I set the work lights under it mostly for shits. And here it is with the lights on. I knew the driver's side was toast already, just didn't quite realize how absent the floor was I suppose. I'll need to pull off the firewall insulation to see the full extent of that. I'm surprised with how solid it is under and behind the seat though with how rusted the seat bolts were. But that's a tiny victory, it still doesn't look awesome underneath. The passenger footwell I wasn't expecting to be quite so bad as it was, I don't think. It's still there but not that far behind the driver's side methinks. The back portion of it though... Must have been a kid sitting in that spot pretty frequently. Makes sense I guess; it's on the curb side. It may not have looke so bad before I stuck my knee through it I guess. This was a much bigger task than I expected, pulling the carpet. The biggest challenger was definitely the one trim screw that did about 3/4 of a turn nice and easy and then stopped dead. I was able to tease it delicately back and forth (okay, not so delicately... I had to put so much force into the Phillips head to keep it there that I eventually bent the screw) but somehow I got it far enough out before it stripped that when it did I could grab the head with my vice-grips and turn it the rest of the way out. The other challenge to deal with is that my garage is so small that in order to get the driver's door open after I drive in, I need to have the passenger side as far over as I can get it, which means access through the passenger door is a no-go. Everything had to be done through the driver's door and hatch, which was much easier to manage with the seats out, I gotta say.

I got kinda lost in PG on my way through the first time. Google literally sent me in a circle. Going down the main drag along the river coming from the east on 16, it must've thought going all the way to the end of that and across the river was shorter than the signed 16 route and I blindly followed, but I got down there and I guess it must've screwed up which lane I was in and I never even noticed it was recalculating until I was driving down that same strip along the river again. It sent me across the bridge, back the way I came, then across another bridge and back onto sixteen. The next time as I was getting sent back around after crossing the first bridge at the last minute I made it into the other lane and got headed north out of town... or something. I eventually made it back onto 16 heading west out of town but I can't say that I could pick out the route that I took to get there for the life of me.

Yeah that's the thing. I don't really want to see it parted out, but if I don't fix the rust that's all that'll happen cause it can't be registered pretty well anywhere now as it is. Maybe like the NWT or somewhere that wouldn't care, lol.

I'd say you'd be better off finding a trans that Ford stuck behind a 302. You're basically looking at a custom rear driveshaft anyhow. The 231 or 242 tcase from the XJ would hold up, probably the ax15 would do reasonably well as well, but it's less work if you pick an engine/trans/tcase combo that already bolts together, plus you'll know it'll hold up.

Yup. I think my next move is going to be pulling out the carpet. It seemed moist, hopefully just from condensation while heat cycling in my uninsulated garage, but it seemed like there was a soft spot or two above the gas tank as well.

Well, slowly taking steps towards... somewhere with this. Pulled the parts horde out of the back of it today. As you can see, the seat's been flipped down with heavy stuff on it for... a while. Still on the fence about wanting to save it or not. Another factor that comes into play is a municipal bylaw against having "unsightly or disassembled and unregistered vehicles" in your yard. I mean, it is a national park and all, I suppose, but it does make it difficult to have multiple projects going at once when the garage is so small. Also my landlord doesn't seem super excited about my hobby. She came in when a roommate moved out and freaked out that I had a pair of mirrors on the coffee table. But that's neither here nor there. I've been leaning towards fixing the XJ but swapping the aw4 from the MJ into it after putting the AX15 into the MJ, then fixing and selling, just don't want to have an automatic as a driver for some reason. I'm also not interested in having the MJ sit around any longer than it needs to, but it also would need rust repaired and a shit ton of suspension work done before it'll pass the out-of-province inspection, so ideally I'd be doing the trans swap at the same time. This is why this is such a dilemma

I pulled a hitch off a Jimmy at Pnp once and at one point noticed that one their welded wheel piles of a jack stand was only sitting under the sidewall of the spare tire. Needless to say I hastily crawled out from underneath and was a lot more delicate with the removal after that. Despite yours being wrecked, it's still looking in much better shape than my completely original '92. Mine has lived a life of gravel roads and it shows. Currently debating whether mine is worth saving or not.

So the differences between an MJ cab and XJ "cab" are the floorpan, rockers, back of cab, and the roof. Rust wrecks the floorpan and rockers first. Rollovers wreck the roof and back of cab. I can't think of many situations where it might be less work to swap everything over than to just fix the damage to the MJ. You'd have to peel both the top and bottom off of the XJ "cab" to make it work out the same as factory. You'd be saving what, the firewall, a-pillars, and doors? One member here a few years back did do the '97+ OBD2 swap (I think?) by cutting the front end off an XJ right behind the firewall and welding it onto a similarly cut MJ... But many people have got the same result with significantly less work involved.

I agree. X literally just turns itself on which connects it's signal wire to the headlight. Almost makes me think there was an error in the diagram, and its only supposed to take its signal from the switched output of relay H and should just have the 12V from the battery applied as the power supply. Wiring it that way means relay H would only need to be rated for the current from the high beams, not the combined high and low beams, although that shouldn't be a problem on just the stock headlights and a typical 30A relay. Pretty sure you'd cook the factory wires to the headlight sockets before you exceed the capacity of a standard relay.