gogmorgo

Worried about heat? Make sure your cooling system is in good shape. How cold are we talking here? My daily driver has no insulation on anything except sound deadening on the floor. No headliner, bare steel except door cards above armrest height. I had to bypass the heater flow valve so I've either got all heat all the time or no heat at all. Even at -40 I have to open windows if I'm driving for more than a half-hour, and I'm usually down to a t-shirt if I'm on a drive over an hour long. That's an over-cooled 1.7L with a bad thermostat. Unless you spend a lot of time north of 60 or you've got an EV with electric heat, I wouldn't worry too much about insulating for purposes other than sound control. That said, good door seals do keep out cold draughts. I'm planning to upgrade my MJ's door seals to the '97+ XJ front door seals in the not-so-distant future.

I've got a bilingual one in decent shape, but I don't fancy my luck pulling it off...

The three-spoke steering wheel's centre cap either has a circle of fake bolts around the outer edge or else it's smooth. I was under the impression the early ones had bolts and the later ones didn't, but they may have been related to trim level. I guess they could have been swapped, but the '93 up country XJ donor had the bolts and my '91 MJ Pioneer didn't. I can't tell you much about the two-spoke wheel.

DRL's are and were legally required in Canada. Block heaters aren't legally required, but save for a few spots on the left coast, definitely required by climate. I've yet to see an XJ or MJ up here without a cigarette lighter. Haven't seen one without a radio either, but half of them have something aftermarket, so who knows.

If you look in the "testing" forum, there are a couple threads that should help you in posting pics. The gist is that ComancheClub.com doesn't host pics, so you need to use an external image host and link to it. I wouldn't discount the ignition switch right away. It could just be out of adjustment. While cleaning the neutral safety switch (NSS) can't hurt, is easy, and doesn't take very long, when mine was giving me problems, rocking the key didn't ever help. Sometimes shifting to neutral and back to park a whole bunch helped, but more often than not I wound up shorting the starter solenoid. Is your speedometer always out 10mph, or does it change with speed? There are speedometer gear charts out there that take into account tire size and gear ratio to find out which gear you need. They're cheap and it's a quick swap, but if your speedometer is a consistent 10mph out at every speed, a new gear won't fix it. My metric speedometer is a consistent 10km/hr out, has been that way since I got it, and in my mind isn't worth the effort to fix it. But then I'm the only one who drives it, and I know to compensate, might not be the case for you I suppose. I'd post links to stuff, but I'm on my phone. Sorry about that.

The "hockey stick" armrests are on the door cards, so they're the same as the front doors. There was also a centre console available, to go between buckets, pretty well the same as the XJ's as well. Don't think there was ever a centre armrest/console that went with the bench.

As was said, the wheel bearings aren't serviceable. Unless you've had it off recently, the 36 mm axle nut is a right @$#% to get off. If it's really stuck on there, and you don't need to replace the wheel bearing or stub shaft, you can get away with just removing the three bolts (12-point 13mm) holding the hub assembly to the steering knuckle. Also be careful when sliding axle shafts in and out that you don't jack up the seals.

Did you have a specific a MJ in mind? The steering wheel is like a two-minute swap.

I'm noticing that too... Officially I'm only in a "developmental" role, so really just an intern, and my term is until the end of March. They couldn't find someone for the position all summer, and they were desperate so instead they got me. But then they'll have the full five-year Project Coordinator position open again, and they say it'll be mine if I want it. At this point if it doesn't get better, I'm not sure I will want it, or any other public sector job ever again.

Don't hold the trigger on the pump nozzle all the way open. I used to work at a full serve gas station in high school. On a lot of vehicles where I grew up, especially ones that saw a lot of gravel road use (because the superfine dust literally gets everywhere) the fuel tank air vents will clog, which leads to having to trickle feed gas into the tank. The MJ and XJ however have a vide vent hose from the tank to the filler, which pretty well eliminates this issue. But I think it also means that when the fuel tank hits full, where air was just rushing out, a bunch of gas gets pushed up the vent hose, and some of it goes right out the fill neck and down the side of the truck. I also remember my MJ belching like that the first few times I filled it, but then I just started pumping the gas in slower, and it quit being an issue. As was previously said, holding the nozzle partway out can also make it easier to hear the tank getting full.

Not an expert here by far, so do your own research. But: When I switched out my harmonic balancer, there was no spacer in front of it. Also, the timing cover sits between the timing sprocket an the crank pulley/vibration damper/harmonic balancer, so you definitely wouldn't want to push the two right up against each other.

The Pioneer package was a trim level, and doesn't affect the rear axle. More than likely you've just got a Dana 35 back there, definitely not worth regearing. The D44 came with the Metric Ton and tow packages, possibly an offroad package, but could be special ordered as well or swapped out. Only way to know which axle the truck has is to check. If it's in fact a Dana44, it's worth hanging onto, but the 8.8 is definitely the better axle if you've got a Dana 35 underneath.

Last summer one of my co-workers was driving a similar vintage Elantra with around 250,000 miles on it. Frankly, I was shocked. But she drove it all the way out here from the GTA (about 1500 miles) and then made it back there at the end of the summer. It wasn't much to look at, but it ran well enough. But beyond that one experience, I would tend to stay away for much the same reason you are. But no real reason, just the name.

That's what he said.

Not to exacerbate Shelbyluv any further, but I'm going to say check your state laws. "Neither does this section prohibit the removal of a metal vehicle identification number plate from a vehicle part that is damaged when such removal is necessary for proper repair or matching identification of a replacement vehicle part, but such removal is only allowed if the proper matching metal vehicle identification number plate is immediately and properly secured to the repaired or replacement part." That's from PA, in several places (§ 7102, 7103, etc) in the Vehicle Code. A brief search also showed it might also be legal in NC, but I never checked that one out. Again, check your state laws before attempting. It may be legal, but it may not. As Shelbyluv pointed out, it's not legal in California... But then, is anything legal there?

Okay, cool. The more you know :)

It would be a bit odd to put a Peugeot trans behind a Renault engine, in my mind. A bit like putting a GM trans behind a Ford motor.

Maybe the speedometer interprets the different signals the same way, I don't know. But there very definitely is a very significant difference in the VSS. I just swapped a late '93 drivetrain into my '91, and there was no way the later VSS would have worked with my '91's harness. I guess the only way to find out is to plug in the gauge cluster and find out?

The speedometer won't work with the '91 speed sensor. The '94's is a three-wire hall-effect sensor, whereas the '91 uses a two-wire setup. You could in theory swap out the VSS for the correct one, but then you'd have to pull the main wiring harness apart to add a wire and new connectors. The tach I don't know so much about, but I'm pretty sure the six-cylinders won't read accurately with a four-cylinder. Some of them might be adjustable? It would probably be easier to pull another cluster from a '91 to early '93 XJ/MJ four-cylinder for plug and play.

We have a couple of those vans at work. Identical in that mauve colour. I don't know about the other one, but the one I had to use was a total turd. Nothing worked. The only reason the wipers worked was because of a crude switch on the dash that one of our mechanics put in. They finally replace it this year. If any of you happen to watch the Canadian gov surplus site, and see a couple minivans from Riding Mountain, trust me, they're only worth their weight in scrap.

A few love taps from a BFH will fix that.

You can pull a vin tag off for restoration purposes, provided you put the same one back onto the same car. At least this is true in Canada. I can't imagine it's any different in the US... How else can you do a proper full restoration of a collectible car if you need to repair where the tag sits without massively decreasing the value of the car?

So if anyone's interested, at some point I'll be getting rid of my Lada's engine and trans, so someone could have them for their Buick project... Kidding of course. I didn't know this show existed. Will have to check it out.

A couple weeks ago, one of the higher-ups in management at work came up to me and completely out of the blue offered me a role on the project management team. So now I'm a project coordinator for Parks Canada.

Well, in some ways I'm better off only knowing the wife of the guy who worked on it. I know the people I got it from weren't the kind who would do their own work. I'm pretty positive at least that those two aren't responsible for the engine nearly falling out (any more than I am for not noticing the missing/loose bellhousing bolts (those things don't just fall out), or the hackery that was done to the rear bumper, or the galvanized glasspack that was welded onto the cat, or the CB antenna mount screwed directly into the back of the cab with sheetmetal screws with no attempt at rustproofing them of any kind... Mind you, at least I could change the oil, not like my Lada where I'm pretty convinced the PO tightened the drain pliug with a 7/16 hex and an impact, stripping out the 12mm hexagon while hammering it so far down that even a slightly larege torx bit pounded into corners of the hex wouldn't turn it...