gogmorgo

And accidentally on purpose put in a bid on this wreck, made a typo in my bid so it was much higher than intended and then won... Or possibly lost, depending on how you look at it. Either way I'm now the not-so-proud owner of this fine KJ. It's an '03 4-banger/standard with ~45,000 miles. That's all I know from the listing, but I'm already into it $400... I haven't seen it yet, but unless my research is wrong, I'm thinking the rear axle is going to be a 4.10 8.25 w/discs, which is what attracted me to it in the first place. My plan is to pick it up tomorrow (already had a "recovery" day booked off work, just not that kind of recovery...), grab the pos, drop the axle, and scrap the carcus. Is there anything else I should be looking at that would be useful on an MJ? Assuming there's anything useful left on it at all... In regards to my plan for the axle, I think it was JeepCoMJ put me on to it a couple years back. Not sure yet if I want to prep the axle for the MJ's leaf springs or prep the MJ for the KJ links (and I know which will be easier) but that decision is going to be put off until I have the rest of my lift &c planned, I'm just going to grab as much as possible out of it so I can leave my options as open as possible in that regard. And kids, don't get yourselves a credit card. It enables $#!& like this.

Keep an eye on craigslist, etc., for a Dakota getting parted out to get the tank, if that's the direction you want to go.

As cool as that would be, I can't see them justifying bringing it to market. It couldn't be priced competitively with any other full-size truck, and would mostly take away sales from the Ram line. And if it's obviously a Ram underneath, you won't be getting many sales from Ford or GM guys who want a Jeep. I was looking into this Renemanche a bit more today, and I think it's starting to grow on me. Ditch the retro step side bed for a proper-length (six or seven feet like the MJ's) one that matches the existing body lines, ditch the silly canvas hat, and I think you've got a decent little truck there. The fwd layout does cause me a sadness, but it'll be too much to rework it to a rwd layout for too little benefit.

I was pretty sure it's the same for an HO and Renix, but I'm not sure. It runs down along with the trans harness, as though it was part of it (but it's a separate loom) and I'm pretty sure it also has the vacuum lines running along with it. If you just got the tcase by itself, my guess is the harness got left with the trans. I've got some pics and stuff, also a 4.0/aw4/231 sitting on the ground out back. If I remember this weekend I'll try to get them up.

What all have you swapped? The OBD1 harness is incompatible with most of the Renix sensors, ECU, etc.

Why? Much more work. Sorry if I'm not great at explaining things without using lots of words. But it's easy to pull the handle. 1. Unbolt shifter gate (keeps it out of the way. 2. Unhook spring from lever. It's not a very stiff spring. 3. Slide lever forward so it slips out of the cylinder. (There may be a cotter pin holding it in place, if so pull that out first) 4. Slide the gate off the end of the shifter. Here's a pic of the shifter handle. You can see the hole the spring hooks into at the bottom of the flat section. There's also a hole in the tip that I suspect is for a cotter pin, but can't quite remember. No reason not to pull the handle. You aren't readjusting anything... It's just sitting there, and spins that cylinder deal. It just slides in and out if the hole.

How empty do you usually run your fuel tank? What Impulse is getting at is that your fuel sloshes around in the tank, and when you turn hard right, it all runs to the left side, and the pickup isn't on the left side of the tank. If there isn't enough fuel in the tank, you end up sucking air out instead of gas until the fuel settles back down. So if it doesn't do it with fuel in the tank but does when it's empty, that's probably the issue. On another note, it's not the greatest for the fuel pump to run on empty all the time. It's kept cool by the fuel in the tank, so with low fuel it runs hotter and wears out more quickly.

Okay, so my donor's too far pulled apart to be useful. But I'll steal Cruiser's pic from above. You can see the cylinder the shift lever goes through at the bottom of the lever. There's a spring around the cylinder that hooks around the lever just under the gate and pulls the lever back to the left. The hook on the spring also keeps the lever from sliding back and forth in the cylinder. If you unhook the spring from the lever, you can slide the lever forward out of the cylinder and then up out of the gate.

Short answer, yes. You take the lever out and slide it off the bottom. Once you've pulled the trim stuff off to where the gate is exposed, I don't remember exactly what all is involved, but it should be obvious once you've got it apart. The shifter lever is kind of a Z-shape, with the handle as the top bar if the Z. The bottom bar of the Z passes turns a cylinder. There are springs and/or pins that hold it in place, but they come out pretty easily, and once you've got them out of the way the handle slides out of the cylinder and comes right out. Then you can slide the gate off the bottom of the handle. Unbolting the gate and sliding it up the handle first will give you more room to see what needs done. If that makes any sense. I'll see if I've got any pics from when I did it this summer. It was pretty clear to me how it came apart once I was in there, and I don't remember having any trouble. The shifter and linkage are the same between the 231 and 242, only the gate is different. I mixed and matched components between the two sets (from my MJ and the donor) to get the better ones together. Edit: doesn't look like I took a pic, but I'm pretty sure my donor's still pulled apart. I'll see what I can get.

Generally insurance write-offs end up consistently at the same auction place, probably depending on the insurance company and the location. It likely wouldn't hurt to try to find out where it'll end up, and then keep an eye on the listings till you see it. The owner at the time probably wouldn't have to poke too hard to find out where it went. I'm currently watching the local listings for a co-worker's '99 XJ that she just wrote off. Only needs a bumper and header panel, she drove it for a couple weeks before the insurance company got back to her. I had her down to $700 for it but insurance came back with $3700... she paid $3600 for it, four years and 50,000 miles ago. I think it'll go for ~$600, and clear $2500 if I want to flip it, leaving a decent chunk of profit after all the inspections it'll need. Also a note on the inspections, in many jurisdictions the rebuilt one is more an inspection of your paperwork to make sure you didn't steal it, strip parts, and then put all the parts back after "legally" obtaining it at auction.

I've also seen complaints about this for Rangers and a few other small trucks and SUV's. My MJ is in line for new springs. It doesn't lean, but it's got a helper spring on the shock on the driver's side, so I imagine it would without it. Between the fuel tank and the driver sitting in that side, with me and a full tank of fuel, that's approaching an extra 400 lbs that the passenger side isn't carrying, which will wear things out faster. And that's the explanation that always comes up. But that said, my broken coil spring was on passenger side, so ?

This is interesting. Usually I wouldn't care about sacrificing another vehicle to keep a rare-ish one like an MJ going. But for something as uncommon as a 5-speed ZJ, I'd need to think long and hard. Even it it's already started being parted out.

The reason you lose it is because your MJ's part-time light is switched by the CAD vacuum stuff. The later tcase harness (sans CAD) should plug in where the older one does (connector at the trans dipstick / passenger side rear head) and you should regain that function.

Something like that. The aggravation of the 231 shifter gate overcame my fear of mouse $#!&. I've found three nests in it so far, one under the radio, one under the centre console, and one behind the gauge cluster.

I ran the 231 gate on my 242 for a couple days, and it was manageable, but not optimal. I particularly had trouble getting it into full-time 4x4, as the part-time spot on the 231 gate isn't quite deep enough (and if you adjust the linkage to make it work, you start having problems getting back into two-wheel), and it's pretty easy to go past into neutral (or part-time depending on which way you're shifting). But it did work. I got an entire XJ with my 242, so I had the proper shift gate. I just didn't initially want to pull the interior apart any more than I had to due to serious hantavirus concerns.

Fuel pump is still available. Same as an XJ pump. The sending unit assembly that the pump sits in however has been out of production for a long time. You might be able to find someone to rebuild it, and they do show up on eBay, Craigslist, etc. every so often.

Yeah, I know what you mean. They're on my '91 and '91. My guess is they just modified the stampings to save on materials. I had the wiring for my bumper lights going through there until I moved them when I put on a brush guard.

I want to say I've seen those wheels on a Ranger.

CJ: YJ: MJ: Umm... Sure... There are some bedside replacement panels out there if you look hard enough, but I don't know if they would have the whole corner. Your best bet is likely to cut one out at a junkyard. That way you can get everything you need, and you know it'll fit.

I pulled it from my sig cause it's not up to date at all, but in mostly city driving I was averaging right around that 13 mpg mark. On the highway I was getting 16-18, but that was back when I was still trying to drive everywhere at 80 mph, which I eventually realised was pointless on two-lane highways when traffic's doing 60. The swings are especially obvious at first as I was going back and forth from school (300 miles on the highway, the range of the tank so I filled immediately before and after) and my driving while at school (in the city) was minimal. I've now adopted a more relaxed driving style, adhering to speed limits and so on. Purely highway I'm getting around 20 mpg at ~60mph, and the odd time I run into the city for more than a couple hours, I'm back down towards that 13 mpg mark.

Simple explanation, you use the most fuel when you're accelerating. On the highway, you accelerate once and sit at a reasonably constant speed. You require minimum power, you're at minimum throttle, and minimum fuel. Around town, you accelerate, decelerate, sit at idle for a bit, rinse, and repeat. You require lots of power to get all that mass moving, using far more throttle, and far more fuel. And then you hit the brakes, scrub off all your momentum, and sit for a bit burning fuel and going nowhere.

If you take the headlight bezels off, you'll find two nuts on each side holding down your header panel. One's behind the bottom of the parking light's lens, the other's up near where the chrome trim strip sits. As to those two holes, don't know. They wouldn't be bad for lights mounted on the bumper.

I kinda like the Renegade. That thing? Dunno. The Renegade's pudgy roundness doesn't really lend itself to a truck.

I'm not talking Renix vs HO, I'm talking early HO ('91-'92) vs later HO ('93+).

Usually these sorts of things are hacked into the map/maf sensor wires. If they do anything at all, they might be a resistor that messes with the signal and then hopefully the car runs a bit richer. In theory it works, except the O2 sensor tells the ECU something's up, and it will pull fuel to correct the mix. But it might just be an LED. Best case scenario, you wire it in and nothing happens. Worst case, it screws with your ECU, leads to overfueling and burning out of the O2 sensor, or just does something else stupid and undesirable.