gogmorgo

There are a few members who have apparently successfully installed a section of XJ headliner in an MJ. I can't vouch for the results though. I finally got fed up and tore the saggy headliner out of my MJ. Next payday (wait... Tomorrow :D) I'm going to order an SMS headliner. I've seen nothing but good reviews so far.

There's no comparison between the loose fiberglass chop mat used in the construction of boats, ladders, etc and the carefully laid fiberglass cloth used in the making of springs. Boats, ladders, etc are made by taking something very similar to that pink fiberglass insulation, pouring resin into it, and letting it cure. Springs are made with many many layers of finely woven glass-fiber cloth, carefully arranged, and let to cure in a vacuum bag, keeping the glass fibers pressed firmly together, with only enough resin to hold the glass together. Glass is one of the most elastic substances commonly available (i.e. it perfectly returns to its shape after deforming, doesn't sag or creep no matter how long it's flexed) and the resin holds it together and overcomes the brittle nature of glass. It's a perfect material for springs. They also save quite a bit of weight over steel leaf springs. Corvettes have been running fiberglass rear leaf springs at least since the early 80's, if not the 70's, and I challenge you to find an example of one that sagged or otherwise wore out from use. The current Volvo XC90 also uses a fiberglass rear leaf. Some 90's GM W-bodies also used them, as did mid-90's Volvo S/V90. They're also very common in motorsports applications. In terms of wear life, GM testing showed equivalent steel springs to what they use in the Corvette fail spec after 200,000 complete cycles, but the fiberglass ones show no loss of performance after 2,000,000 cycles. Fiberglass is a good material for springs. It just comes in many flavours. The stuff they use in canoes is cheap and yes, would be terrible for springs. But when done properly, fiberglass makes for a much better spring than steel does. They're just much more expensive than steel springs (much more labour involved in their manufacture) which is why they aren't common among production cars.

Just for clarification, a motor cranks when it's being turned over by the starter motor. It fires when it starts running under it's own power. Sounds like yours is cranking but not firing? Sounds like a low/no fuel pressure problem. Have you tested the fuel pressure? Could be caused by a weak pump... Such as one that was laying around cause it didn't work well... What did the rubber hose that goes onto the fuel pump in the tank look like? Also, have you checked the ballast resistor? Try just connecting the two wires together to bypass it.

Obviously some "designer" got at it. It's a concept car, what did you expect?

I was thinking the purpose of this is to reduce load on the ignition switch, in particular the brown wire, yes? So you would stick the relay ahead of the speed selector switch, and use the 12v feed from the ignition to trigger it. Not using a relay would mean your fan was getting constant power. Just sticking in a bigger wire for the 12v feed wouldn't reduce the ignition switch's load, and power would still be getting bled off by all the other circuits getting power through the ignition. The increased voltage (and subsequent reduced load) to the fan switch when using the relay is only a happy coincidence.

http://www.quadratec.com/jeep_knowledgebase/article-46.htm You want the older style long shaft gear for a stock MJ, not the short. 4.10 and 33's is pretty close to the factory final drive, so your stock gear should be fine. If not, I'd think you want a 34 tooth, maybe a 36.

What's the up arrow?

What's the part number on the late '95 dizzy? I've also swapped one into my '91 and the connectors were the same. 100% plug and play. Only thing I had to do was rotate all the spark plug wires one position on the distributor cap to get the timing correct to the housing position forced by the newer style hold-down. Don't remember which direction it was, but I remember finding it in a forum post saying the firing order in the Haynes manual is wrong. I'll see if I can find it. Edit: Don't know if this is the same one, but a quick search showed a whole bunch of folks got mislead by the Haynes manual. http://www.cherokeeforum.com/f2/distributor-cap-rotor-78168/

The ball joints are mostly unrelated to the axle shaft, although I'm pretty confident you need to pull the shaft to get clearance to replace the ball joints. If you look at your front axle, there's a C-shape at each end, where it attaches to the steering knuckle. The ball joints are in the tips of the C's, and allow the wheels to pivot when you steer. So while yes, in some ways if you needed to replace the shaft, it would be better to do it while it's already out, instead of having to pull it all apart again. But at the same time, in order to do a proper job of replacing the two-piece shaft with the one-piece, you need to pop open the pumpkin and remove the differential to install the correct seal, into a surface that may not be properly machined for a seal. You can for sure just shove the single-piece shaft into the housing, but you'll be constantly losing oil out of your diff, and you open it up to water and crap getting in. The permanent CAD lock DIY on the other hand requires no new parts or seals, doesn't require pulling the differential and is just as reliable (if not more so) than your current setup. It's definitely less work. You don't even need to pull out the shaft. Edit: just read your last post, guess you got it out before I started typing mine. The two-piece shaft is only on the passenger side. But in order to put in the correct seal, you would still need to pull both shafts to get the differential out. Here's a link to the permanent CAD lock. Super simple. Pictures help. http://comancheclub.com/topic/17377-cad-fix-1/

Looks like an old hockey net. Specifically I'm referring to how it seems to be made with seven pieces of pipe pushed together... like an old hockey net.

Can you get a video with it running? A "slight tick" could be anything from a twig tickling a fan to an exhaust leak to the worst-case scenario of internal engine damage. I would be inclined to believe it's something small. A freeze plug is a thin metal cap pressed into the block or head at the factory. It's generally plugging a hole than allows the casting of coolant passages. At any rate, as the engine gets older, especially if someone was running a bad choice of coolant (like tap water), they can corrode and lose their seal. Freeze plugs are cheap, you can probably find enough change in your couch to pay for the plug itself, but they're often tricky to get at with the engine in the vehicle, and so generally can be labour intensive. The first thing I would do is drain the oil out of it, make sure there's no coolant or glitter (metal shavings) in it or the filter. To me it sounds like you just ran it low on coolant and it got way too hot. Possibly compromised the head gasket. Compression test isn't the worst idea, either. Also a good idea is to find out for sure where the oil's spraying from... sounds to me like it's dribbling onto the fan. The people on here are pretty helpful, and there are a few people here who know your truck and it's motor so well they could tear it down and rebuild it blindfolded. But when you come in asking a million questions, it's sometimes difficult to find the right answers. So my advise is to do the couple simple things suggested, come back with the results and take things one step at a time. I'm not trying to be hard on you, but we see people come on here often enough and ask a million questions in their first post and we never hear back from them or else they don't really wait for answers or solutions before they come back saying they either took their truck to a shop and paid way too much money to fix something that wasn't the problem, or else they tell us they sold their truck super cheap so they didn't have to deal with it. We don't want either of those to happen to you.

Hit them with a good penetrating oil, like Kroil or PB'laster a day in advance. If you're in a salty area, like I am, it might be better to hit them a few times through the week before trying to pull them. If you do break a bolt, it's not the end of the world. They're only tacked to the frame rail, so you can take a long punch and knock them off pretty easy. Trick is getting the nut onto the bolt after you've done that though...

I'm almost at the point where I'd pay $300 for one... Nearest junk yards to me (60 miles for the closest and the rest are 200+ miles away) on car-part.com are quoting closer to $600 for a 25 year old axle... Typically they go for around $150 on Craigslist etc, I'm just waiting for one with 4.10's to pop up when I have the budget.

Just making sure we're on the same page. :thumbsup: Also, if anyone happens to know how to tell the difference between columns, I'm all ears. It's sitting in the basement, so as long as I don't need to do too much disassembly, I can check pretty quickly.

Just to be clear, I was saying that even though they changed in '91, (and my '91 has the newer style) the '93 XJ I got for parts happens to have an older style ignition key, but it's got the newer key for the doors. Whether the entire column or just the ignition cylinder was changed, I'm not sure how to tell.

My '93 parts XJ has the older style lock cylinder in it. Can't guarantee it's the original column, but it looks the same as the one in my '91 with the newer key. Given that it's a GM Saginaw column, depending on the year of your GMC's, you might even be able to get those two on the same key as the Jeeps...

Considering every single manufacturer sells a diesel in a small truck overseas, and that emissions standards are pretty similar between here and Europe, and that every North American manufacturer has been selling diesels for longer than I've even been alive and has had to get them up to emissions spec too, they shouldn't even have to do huge amounts of development. You're right, there's no excuse.

It's the spade terminal to the right of the main connector. Can't speak to where exactly the wire goes from there, but I suspect it's the main dash ground. Should be pretty easy to check for continuity.

It's actually a little surprising Toyota doesn't have a diesel, considering how common they are overseas. Given your strict import laws it might be less common down there, but I have yet to see an imported Japanese truck or SUV without a diesel. I see three on a fairly regular basis out here, and given the fact that I'm in a rural area with a small population, I'd say that's pretty telling as to whether or not there's a demand. I've for sure seen more diesel Hiluxes out here than I have MJ's.

A friend has one of the diesel Canyons on order. They look pretty nice. I hope it proves more reliable than the Dodge Ecodiesels we've got at work. To be fair the issues we've been having with them are electrical and not the motor itself and the last one was operator error (ignored the regen warning) but two of them have taken a trailer ride back to the dealer and the other two are booked in for a recall that caused the second trailer ride, with one of the other two showing the symptoms. Three outta four ain't great.

Having the CAD permanently locked won't cause you to stick in 4x4. If the lever moves around and doesn't seem to grab specific spots, probably the linkage has failed. You should still be able to crawl under the truck and shift the lever on the transfer case itself.

Better yet, use a fuel pressure gauge, and minimize the amount of fuel you spray everywhere. Also make sure you have the right amount of fuel going to the engine.

Teehee. I like that sticker.

Here's the switch I'm talking about. This is looking forwards at the back of the CAD on my '91. For reference you can see the upper control arm and mount just above it. I have no reason to believe this isn't the original axle, housing, but the truck had almost 300k miles in it by the time it got to me, so you never know. The hex nut looking thing is the switch, the round black piece sticking out of it is where the wires would go if they hadn't been torn off long long ago.

They must have changed it for HO's I guess. Mine's a '91. I'll take a picture when I get home. But at any rate, the bulb should have constant power to the socket, and the switch opens/closes a path to ground, wherever it is. Here's the MJ electrical troubleshooting manual for '88. Should be something useful in there I hope. I'm at work now so can't dig too far into it.