gogmorgo

I've heard people say that you shouldn't reuse the bolts, although it apparently has been done successfully. Judging by the torque spec, (120lb-ft + 90 degrees, iirc) I'd guess that they are torque-to-yield bolts. I reused them after swapping my cracked plate out, but that motor only went another 5000 or so miles after that. About a month before I noticed my cracked plate making noise I had the engine out (a couple bellhousing bolts broke off/stripped the holes), and the shop must have hunted for anything they could possibly up-sell (they recommended an extra $1200 in work) in addition to inspecting everything for damage caused by driving without the engine bolted to the trans. They also missed my cracked plate.

The ZJ was originally intended to replace the XJ, and the design was started by AMC before they were bought out. Knowing how AMC was doing back then, it's not surprising that a lot of stuff wound up being the same. They both had overlapping drivetrain options, identical front suspension and also shared quite a few drivetrain and suspension components with the TJ. Heck, the ZJ even looks like a barely updated XJ when compared to the pre-'97 ones.

You'd have to hit the rear axle hard enough to deflect (or break) the rear springs/shackes, and the trans and engine mounts. I don't see it happening without leaving the truck pretty undriveable. There's about six inches between my 4.0's crank pulley and radiator, (going from memory) and I don't see that much give anywhere except maybe the rear springs. Also, I'd expect the mech fan to hit first anyhow. It could be that the frame got tweaked, like Eagle said, but if there's enough damage to bend the radiator supports from a rear impact (unless you were pushed forward into something) I would expect the windshield would have cracked from pressure in the frame.

The front doors on a four-door XJ. I'm pretty sure 84-96(? Maybe 95) will work without modification.

I can't imagine having to put up with that, heat all the time... I like this climate where I can snowshoe to work. ;) also, electricity's only about US$0.06/kWh up here. Gotta love hydro-electric. But I guess having the a/c going where you are, you really wouldn't want incandescents.

When your shop is heated with electricity, (as mine was) does it really matter whether the heat actually comes from the furnace or the lights? My parents in their house actually switched back to incandescent bulbs, because the power bill went up after switching to CFL's. Having lights that didn't put off heat meant they had to turn up the furnace and heat the whole house, but incandescents meant the house was always a few degrees warmer where people were doing things, and the rest of the house didn't matter as much.

I'm not sure you'd want anything other than the oem one. The flexplate is already pretty light, and there's not much material to remove. Since it is intended to flex a little (to make up for slight engine-trans misalignments, hence the name) I don't think you could switch to any of the common lightweight alternatives to steel, such as aluminum, because of the reduced fatigue life. Going up a a few grades in steel quality would reduce its flex and possibly decrease drivetrain losses by a smidge, but would also increase wear on the crankshaft and trans input bearings. Of course I could be completely off base.

The XJ and MJ were originally designed as 4x4's, and the 2wd's merely deleted the front axle (there's a solid beam in its place, all suspension is the same), driveshaft, and transfer case. It's pretty well a bolt-on swap, although you may find you have to drill and/or tap holes for the tcase shifter. You'll also either have to get your rear driveshaft shortened or find one for an MJ with your wheelbase and drivetrain, but everything else is shared with the XJ. It may be worth finding a complete donor to transfer stuff over from, that way you know you have all the little niggly things. Also, while it's technically possible to convert your 2wd trans to 4x4, you'd pretty much have have to get a 4x4 trans anyhow to get the parts to do it, so just use the 4x4 trans. There are many write-ups. For someone who isn't nervous about a complete frame swap, shouldn't be a difficult task.

Right. So it is still there. It connects from the drag link to the front axle at the passenger side, not to the frame. Not sure what I was thinking there, looking for it in the wrong spot. I'll fix my post above. I'm not sure why people think it's just a band-aid either. Dampers are legitimate engineering solutions for preventing and reducing vibrations and/or oscillations, and in some cases critical for preventing resonance.

Does it sound like a relay clicking? Do you have a trailer brake controller? My dad's clicks sometimes. Have you had anyone check to see what your brake lights are doing when it's clucking?

Mine wanders around when parked on level ground. Unless there's something swimming around in my tank... Old crappy wiring.

2wd suspension is identical to 4x4, as was said, just with a solid beam instead of an axle. The issue that happens with lifted jeeps is that the track bar and drag link don't end up parallel, which means that things are constantly binding, flexing, and releasing. Any worn bushings, ball joints (especially at the tie rods or track bar) or bent components could cause something similar. Then there's the matter of the vibration that goes into harmonic resonance, which could very well be caused by a simple tire balance issue. The steering damper is a solution to reduce the vibrations, and/or prevent them from going into harmonic resonance, although some view it as a bandaid solution and leave it off. As such it's actually missing from the above photo present and accounted for it the photo, unlabelled and hiding behind the drag link. It mounts between the eye in the middle if the drag link (right below the adjustment) and the frame passenger end of the axle. Not all vehicles originally shipped with one, I don't think, but I can't confirm that. I should add as a disclaimer that I have never fought this issue myself. My limited knowledge comes from stuff I've read on the internet and a basic understanding of suspension geometry. And like all things on the internet, there's pretty serious debate about it every time it comes up, and very little consensus on a specific individual cause for the problem. But I'd start by rotating the rear tires forward to check for tire balance problems, then start investigating the components themselves.

Check your calliper bolts? Re: the speedometer issue, the gear assembly has to be clocked depending on what gear you have. There's a mark on the hole, somewhere around the 5 o'clock position, and there are sets of numbers around the edge of the assembly. The numbers are ranges of gear teeth, so if you have a 34-tooth gear, you pick 32-36 (can't remember actual ranges and too lazy to look them up), or if you have a 27 tooth, you'd pick 27-31. The speedometer gear isn't centred in the assembly, so changing the clocking moves it further into or out of the output gear. If it's too far out, it won't mesh, if it's too far in, Well, I don't know for sure what would happen, but I don't think it would be beneficial. The assembly hold-down fork sits in notches in the assembly, so there are only about four positions it can go in.

I'm actually heading back out to Port Alberni for my grandparents' 50th anniversary in a little over a week. Posting pictures can be frustrating. The gist is you don't really upload to this site, you have to upload to a third party and then link them here. I generally recommend imgur.com, but lately I've been using Facebook out of convenience.

Sounds like the Death Wobble. Relatively common Jeep issue, or really anything with a solid front axle. Basically a vibration gets transmitted to the other side and they go into harmonic resonance. Often triggered by a bump, could be caused by worn components, poor tire balance, bad suspension geometry, a change in the weather, a rise in gas prices, low blinker fluid, depends on who you ask. Do you have a lift? If so what all has been changed from stock?

That's one area we were seriously held back, testing. Getting the car done by early march? Easy. Except by the time the snow's gone and there's decent(ish) weather for testing, everyone's taken off to their summer jobs, so we don't get much testing in until the last possible minute. Sure, we've taken the cars out on lakes a few times, but that's more for fun than anything else. With so little traction you can't get any useful suspension data, and while it's hell on the cars, which should be great for durability, it's honestly too rough for pre-competition cars. So I guess the new formula the team's settled on is to build in March, test all summer, and then hit competition the next spring. Hopefully it works out.

Island nut... Seems to be I remember seeing a dizzle ad not too long ago from somewhere on Vancouver Island...? They're all pretty nutty out there. Before you hit me, I lived there for six years, and some of my mom's family still does :thumbsup:

Mine also does that. I'm assuming it's just old corroded wiring causing the problem. While it seems reliable, about a third of my parents' vehicles had malfunctioning gauges, so I've always just used the trip meter to keep track of how far I've gone between fill ups. Haven't run out of gas in the MJ yet, even after having gone 175km with the low-fuel light on. Based on known tank capacity and how much I put in, the light consistently comes on around 1/3 tank. The needle does give a general idea of what's in there, as in it starts around 3/4 or so and wanders down towards empty, but it wanders kinda drunkenly, going up or down by as much as a 1/4 tank seemingly randomly. I blame it on the old wires.

Lol, a mariner's license for sure. I've been cruising around at work in a 3/4 ton crew-cab Chevy with an 8' bed. Took it home once with a 20' trailer behind and had to make the world's most awkward and jack-knifey 3-point turn to get around my cul-de-sac. Took it home a few days later without the trailer, and discovered the trailer had nothing to do with me having to do a 3-pointer. That thing's turning circle has to be well over 50 feet. It's wheelbase alone is longer than my Lada's total length. I see the occasional later (rounder) S10 four-door, and they don't look too bad with a short bed. Same with the first-gen Canyolado's. The latest ones are getting a bit big though.

Then you should have everything you need.

This is a bit of a known problem. The sockets rotate inside a round housing, and the contacts eventually wear out and/or get dirty. Mine work but can be finicky sometimes. If they don't work, usually when I put a bit of pressure on the housing, they'll come on. Wouldn't surprise me if the tester probe put enough pressure on them to do the same.

I have yet to see a quad-cab XMJ that doesn't make my OCD twitch. While some of the photoshops aren't bad, it's the ones that have been done in real life that bug me. The problem is that the angle of the back of the MJ's cab (and the b-pillar vents) matches the end of the front door, and it's window. The back of the rear XJ doors and their windows are an intermediate angle between the near-vertical rear edge of the front door windows and the slope of the back of the XJ, which is much steeper than the back of the MJ cab. So if you add material to the back of the XJ rear door to match the MJ door's opening, then you end up with an awkward V of material between the vent covers and the window, as with the one above. Same as if you modify the door opening to match the door, then the awkward gap is just in the pillar instead of the door. One guy on here cut the door down the middle and added the back of the front door to the front of the rear door, which should work, except the front edge of the rear doors is slanted forward, resulting in an awkward trapezoidal window opening that's wider at the top than the bottom, which is incongruous with the general profile of the cab, also a trapezoid, but one that is wider at the bottom. What I think would be better would be to leave the rear door alone (except for filling in the wheel opening), modify the rear pillar to match and adjusting the angle of the back of the MJ cab to match the XJ rear door window. You'd likely have to leave the vent covers off (and find a new solution to the cab pressure vent) or else create new vent covers to match the new angles. Or I guess you could do the retro thing like older crew-cab trucks did, and just use two sets of front doors? I know a lot of work goes into making a four-door MJ, so I don't want to criticize people who've gone through with it, but at the same time it doesn't sit right with me to do all that work and have a finished product that doesn't match itself. It's a bit the same as the '97+ conversion that leaves the rear flares and tail lights mismatched with the front of the truck. Sure it's your project and you can do it however you want, but I know deep down in there somewhere you'll have to suppress the twitch as well. I guess it's just easier for some than others. The extended cab that just adds material to the pillar or that expands the door opening to accommodate the longer two-door XJ's doors? Spot on. No twitch there. :thumbsup:

^this. The vacuum on the old tcase controls the CAD. Lock the CAD in permanently and forget it. Make sure to plug the vacuum harness where it hooked up. The electrical bit on the new tcase turns on the 4x4 light. You can leave it unplugged if you aren't bothered by not having the light. The 4x4 light for a CAD-equipped model was triggered by a switch on the cad itself, but the newer switch's harness should plug in where the old one did.

Nothing significant. With minimal research (five nmminutes with google) I was able to overcome them all. In swapping a '93 motor, trans, and tcase into my '91, these are the differences I remember: CPS has a different connector. I just swapped the harness side across from the XJ to my MJ, matching wire colours, and it worked just fine. Oil pressure sender was different. The one from my '91 was a direct swap. Speedometer gear assembly is different. The one from my '91 was a direct swap. The tcase harness didn't quite work. My memory's a little foggy here, but I think it had to do with the '91 being a 231 with the CAD, and the '93 being a 242 without cad. I was able to somehow combine the two to make for a direct swap with fully-functioning shift lights, just don't remember exactly what I did there. I don't remember having spliced wires, but I do remember cutting them off, I think the ones that ran to the CAD (I already had a one-piece shaft in it).

Ooh. I also wanted to get forced induction going. I'm excited! :) It's nice that you have the option if being able to modify your motor. All we really could do with the big Honda is high-compression pistons, or higher-lift cam (but not both at once because tap-tap-tap-boom) before running into illegalities. We were also right around the flow capacity of the restrictor as well, so forced induction would only have helped a bit at lower rpm. Judges like when you do things... Big engine means big power, sure, but the main scoring events are design and build quality (endurance) and the big engine kinda hinders both of those a bit.