gogmorgo

You may be in for more trouble with those bellhousing bolts coming loose. Mine started making that knocking, but it took me a bit to realize why it was knocking, and I put almost 1000 miles on it before discovering there wasn't much holding the engine and trans together. Had to have the motor pulled to fix the threads in the block. 2000 miles later, another knock started. This time it was because the flexplate was cracked, more than likely due to all the extra flexing it did when the motor and trans weren't aligned. Trans had to come out to install another flexplate. 1000 miles later I parked it because of a severe bottom end knock, main bearings were becoming glitter. Sixteen months later I've only just put another motor into it. While you're down there, make sure everything else is tight and undamaged. Your bellhousing wouldn't be knocking unless it was moving, and it wouldn't be moving if all the bolts were tight.

The distance between the leaf spring perches is different between the Comanche and Explorer, so the perches need moved to compensate.

Okay, so I guess most of the pictures I took of it are part of the motor swap process. Ah well. Here are some more anyway. After the swap: Washing it for the first time ever... Yeah I've had it four years. I know I should have taken better care of it. It's honestly still not clean because there's so much crap on it. But I'd gone over the whole thing with the pressure washer twice and then the car wash's sump pump conveniently quit working and they had to shut it down before it turned into swamp. Yes I have an invisible boat. As for it not being done, well, I picked up this factory XJ brush guard for cheap this summer. It's too thin for severe bush pushing (not that I do much of that anyway) and it's pretty beat up, but still looks alright and is a better place to put lights than the bumper. I also kinda like the slightly bruised appearance... makes it look like the truck actually gets used. I installed it Thursday. I also got the factory mounting brackets with it. I wasn't sure how they'd play with my HD tow hook brackets as the two sets of brackets share the same bolt holes, but it turns out I didn't need them. The guard bolts in nicely right between the brackets and hooks. You can't see them in the above pic, but the hooks sit just outside the vertical plates of the guard, with a decent amount of space. I've also swapped in the door panels from the XJ. I pulled the "wood" dash bezel out of an XJ Country at a wrecker a while back and installed it, but I didn't grab the door panels because they were beige, but my donor had grey panels that matched. I poked holes for the window winders. The XJ's power windows still work, but they're slow and I don't expect them to last much longer. My experience tells me I don't want power windows anyhow. Crank windows are just more reliable. I've also been debating swapping the full centre console into the MJ. But it's missing the cupholder section (so the armrest lid doesn't latch) and it took up a lot of space when I experimentally set it in the MJ. Not convinced it's worth it. Further plans are to swap in the non-CAD D30 from the XJ. I'd switch across my much newer CV shafts and unit bearings. The main purpose of this is to prevent messing around with resealing the CAD axle housing for the single-piece shafts I've got in there, but also to take advantage of the gears with half the mileage, as the MJ's front diff has a lot of slop in it. This is of course if the XJ's diff isn't too rusted out. The same goes for the 8.25 rear axle, but this one is beyond my abilities... don't trust myself welding on new perches so I'll have to farm that out. At the same time as the axle swap I'd like to give it a bit of a lift. This may simply be returning it to stock height with new springs (all eight of them between both Jeeps have sagged pretty bad) but we'll have to wait and see. This likely won't happen until I move back to Stoon for the winter. I'm hoping I don't have to dick around with driveshaft lengths, but we'll have to see about that too. I've also got a rear bumper sitting in my parents basement in better shape than the one currently on the MJ that will likely go on in the next couple weeks. I also plan on getting a hitch built soon, as I'd like to be able to take my Niva back to Stoon for the winter without having to drop one off and take a bus back, or have to rely on someone else to drive/tow one of them up there. Another more pressing issue is the headlights. I made my own relay harness after the headlight switch caught fire, but I stole some pieces of the harness to make my horns work on the Niva when it was going through a safety inspection last summer. That reminds me that I also need to put one of those horns back on the MJ as I borrowed them as well.

I was planning on stripping down the donor to prepare it for scrapping today, but it's raining, so here's the story from the last couple weeks: Three Sundays ago, I drove into the city and dragged this thing home behind my Dad's Envoy: It doesn't look too bad in the picture, but it's pretty rotten out. A classic case of someone taking excellent care of the exterior of a vehicle but never washing underneath. The running boards likely didn't help with the rust. It feels like the driver's seat is about to fall through the floor, it's that bad. UHaul can't keep track of their $#!& so instead of trailering it back it wound up on a dolly and I was afraid it would break in two the whole drive back, about 180 miles. I was also going to visit my sister in the same city, so it wasn't that far out of my way. It's a '93 Country, so pretty spec'ed out. 243,000km on the odometer (150,000 miles). 4.0/AW4/242, D30/C8.25, full centre console, power locks and windows, etc. Complete except for the rear hatch's interior panel and the fog lights (but there's still a switch). Ran/drove good, trans and t-case shift alright, pretty well everything worked except the a/c allthough I haven't tried the radio. All still factory stock except one CV shaft swapped in in place of the U-joint on the passenger side of the front axle. All in all a whole lot of Jeep for $300. I guess the guy picked it up for parts, but then his wife totalled their XJ, so his buddy was going to take some parts and never got around to it, and then his landlord started pressuring him to get it off the property. Got it home to my place at 10pm that night and drove another 70 miles to my parents place to pick up my MJ. Got up at 5 the next morning to load it up (I was working at eight) and then dragged the MJ up here. Monday and Tuesday were busy, but Wednesday I picked up some plywood (for making backyard engine swap easier... floors are sooo underrated) and other things, and got started into pulling apart the MJ. By the time I ran out of daylight, I had the header panel and upper rad support out, and about a third of the accessories off the motor. I left the radiator in place because it's bolted to the a/c accumulator, and since the A/C is still working on good old R12, I didn't want to crack a line or otherwise compromise it. The next day, Thursday, I got home from work and went straight at it without changing out of my work uniform or even going into the house. I got the rest of the accessories off the motor, and everything out from underneath the transmission, with the drivetrain supported by the two motor mount bolts (minus the nuts) and a piece of unsplit firewood under the t-case. All the electrical and vaccuum connections I unplugged got tagged with red tape and a sharpie to make reassembly easier. On Friday, one of my roommates helped me pull the motor. This is where the plywood comes in, as it would have been impossible to roll the engine crane in the grass once it was loaded. As it was, it was still pretty tough. But wolla: For anyone wondering, a 5/16" chain link will slip perfectly over the head studs, and then the nuts off the motor mount through-bolts will thread on. It's almost as though AMC wanted to make it easy to pull the motor. I pulled the trans and t-case out as well, since the ones from the donor had half the mileage and I wanted to use the 242 and this just made it easier, and may have prevented the loss of some fluids (I live in a national park, so that's a bit of a concern). Also since I was going from a '91 to a '93, I just left all the sensors in place as I assumed they would all be plug and play and this made for less work. This wasn't entirely the case, but more on that later. I also just unplugged the injectors and left the fuel rain on the intake, which wasn't an issue. I didn't want to compromise the seals on the donor's injectors, as they were stuck in place but the MJ's spun in their seats. I had to take a break over the weekend because my baby sister was getting married, but I didn't loose much work time anyhow as we got a pretty severe storm and lots of rain. The following Monday, I started tearing into the XJ. Because I didn't have to go pick stuff up first, I got about half the stuff out of the way of getting the motor out. Again, with the red tape tags. It was a bit easier going as the A/C was completely discharged and I could just get it all out of the way. Tuesday saw the engine start to come out... except then I discovered I forgot to unbolt the exhaust and managed to kink it and wedge everything HARD in place. Even after separating the downpipe and manifold, I still couldn't move the engine at all because of the exhaust. It rustwelded itself together and I didn't have anything to cut it with, so I gave up struggling with it in frustration about an hour after dark and went to bed with all my tools still scattered around the back yard. The second Wednesday of the swap, I borrowed a Sawz-all from work and had the offending bits of exhaust out of the way in a few seconds. I got the motor trans and t-case out as a unit, and had them sitting in the MJ (with two bolts and a piece of firewood) by the end of the night. I didn't have anyone helping me pull this motor, and even though my roommate who helped get it out of the MJ didn't really have much clue what he was doing, it really made me appreciate how awesome that second set of eyes could be, noticing what I'd been caught on long before I'd even realized I'd been caught. So yes, the MJ had a motor back in it!!! On Thursday I had to make a run into town after work (well, a town with an Autopac place) right after work to renew my driver's license and the tags on the Lada, so I got three birds stoned at once and re-registered the MJ as well. This was also the day before about half the summer staff at the park left to go back to their winter occupations, so there was supposed to be a massive social gathering of sorts. So I only got about an hour of wrenching in that day between that and the insurance trip, and then none of the people leaving showed up because they were all packing to move. So that was a waste of a bunch of daylight. I still managed to get all the stuff buttoned up underneath the transmission and some stuff back under the hood, but not as much progress as I would have liked. Part of this was my fault as I managed to get a LOT of stuff pinched between the head and firewall without an extra set of eyeballs around to watch stuff, and getting it back out was time consuming. On Friday I had the entire evening to work on it, so that was good. I had just about everything plugged in. I did run into a couple issues with sensors. The first was the oil pressure sender, which had a different plug on it. I just swapped out the newer sender for the old one. The temperature sender also appeared to have a different connector on it, a kind of blade in a size and shape I'd never encountered yet. But because of the inaccessibility of the sender, I just spliced the newer connector onto the older harness. After then trying to plug it in for a good five minutes, I realized the reason it was different was because the sender was broken in half, and I was trying to plug the broken halves back together. I put the MJ's connector back on and swapped in the sender there too. The third sensor was the crank position sensor. Completely different plug on it. I was going to swap the old CPS back in, but holy hell is it impossible to get to with the motor and trans in place. I tried for a solid hour with wobbles, u-joints, and all kinds of extensions, from both above and below, and couldn't get either of the bolts turned. Then I had a better look at the connectors, and the chassis side wiring was the same colour in both harnesses, so I chopped the plug off and spliced in the newer style, matching wire colours and hoping it would work out. (it did. :D ) There are no pictures from the second Thursday and Friday because I worked until after dark. On Saturday morning, I hooked up the battery starter, and fuel lines, and FIRED IT UP!!!! This video is the first start attempt: (caution, expletive of joy at end of clip): After the first failed crank, I realized the fuel pump wasn't coming on, and the knocking sound is me kicking the bottom of the tank. This was a problem/solution that I discovered when trying to move the MJ into the spot it was in when I pulled the motor. I attribute it to minimal quantities of 16-month-old fuel in the tank, as there were no pump problems when I parked it last year or any time I fired it up to move it over the winter. The second time I stop cranking is because I realized the coolant overflow hose was hitting the fan. Amazing what you can see with no hood. The squealing noise is a loose serp belt. I shot the more family-friendly video a few posts up after addressing this. After this moment of joy, I got everything bolted back on, except the hood because I needed a helper for that, the exhaust because it's a rusty piece of poo, and the rear driveshaft because I replaced the u-joint but misplaced my brand new strap kit and was waiting to find it. I also swapped the 242's shifter gate it. Unlike what I read on a few forums, this wasn't absolutely necessary. Both shifter gates allow for the same range of travel and I was able to get all the 242's positions with the 231's gate, but the shape of the 231's makes for awkward shifting with a 242 under it. I didn't drive it at all that day, but in drive and 2wd (without a rear driveshaft) I discovered the speedometer wasn't working. Turns out I forgot to plug it in, but that was the least of my concerns. The connector was completely wrong, and unlike the CPS, I couldn't just splice the newer one in because they had the wrong number of wires. I did a small amount of research and didn't really turn anything much up, beyond that the two speedometer gear assemblies should swap across, so I figured I'd try things with a clearer head the next day. On the second Sunday of the swap, I pulled out the two speedo gear assy's and discovered another point of confusion. The MJ's gear was green and the XJ's was orange. To make sure there wasn't another difference, I counted the teeth and discovered that they were one tooth different. I later discovered that the number of teeth was cast into the plastic and that was wasted effort. But then I did some research into which one I should use, and this is when I discovered why they weren't compatible. In '91, Chrysler changed the speedometer from a mechanical one to an electronic one... except they really didn't. They just split the traditional mechanical speedometer in half and put all the spinning parts down at the speedometer gear and then used wires to get the eddy currents to the gauge needle. This reduces inaccuracies caused by wear in the mechanical parts, and the jumping needle that old mechanical speedometers tend to have. It still wasn't the best setup, and in the middle of '93 they switched to a Hall-effect type, which is very similar in function to a traditional tachometer, working with pulses to provide a much more consistent reading that wouldn't be affected by a change in resistance in the wires. But enough theory. I still wasn't sure which speedo gear to go with (having no certain data on the rolling diameter of my tires and the very small difference between the gears) so I decided to stick with the gear that was in the 242, which meant swapping the gears between VSS's. Only after popping the gears out did I truly understand the difference between long- and short-shaft gears and why my choice wouldn't work, and why I'd been stressing useless over it. I stuck the MJ's speedo gear back into the MJ's VSS, and the MJ's VSS into the 242's hole, clipped and taped the CAD switch wires near to the plug, got rid of all the useless CAD vacuum lines, put the speedo wires in a new split loom, plugged in both ends of the modified harness, took the MJ for a spin (in 4x4 i.e. front-wheel-drive because I still hadn't put the rear driveshaft back on) and the speedometer now works flawlessly. I also got some assistance putting the hood back on (somehow it lined up perfectly in the first spot I bolted it down... score!). Monday morning I drove it to work. In FWD with an open manifold. My God is it loud. I found the missing u-joint strap at work (I took my driveshaft there to install the joint) and put my driveshaft in that night. Being able to drive my MJ again is the MOST AWESOME THING EVER. Although I'm not quite done yet. More on that later. I'm about to prepare a pic dump.

I see I'm still all alone in my two big empty provinces... :(

The '91 ('92 and early '93 as well) speedometer is electric, yes, but it's more like a mechanical speedo with an extremely short cable and a huge distance between the signal pickup and the gauge. It uses the same gears as the mechanical ones. ChryCo didn't give start using the Hall-effect speedo in a XJ until the middle of '93.Either way, you can just pull the gear assembly out of the t-case and swap in whatever goes with the truck as they're interchangeable. Just put a late '93 XJ's t-case into my '91 MJ and had a bit of confusion when the speedo wouldn't plug in.

Rock auto currently has listed an entire tank and pump assembly. I'd get one myself but shipping is brutal to up here.

My family once destroyed a set of nearly new snow tires simply by driving through Wyoming in the summer. They wore perfectly evenly right down to bald on a roughly 3000-mile trip. Snows in the summer if you get heat is a bad idea. I would have recommended the General Grabber At/2's I have on both my MJ and my Niva, but they don't come in your size. I got them on the MJ because they were the cheapest brand-name AT's I could find. Got a set of five up here in Canada for $600, but that was four years ago. The Niva has them because they were the only AT's of any brand in the Niva's size. They're a hell of a lot better in snow than the BFG AT's that were on it when I bought it. Anything would have been better than what was on the Niva, so that's not worth comparing. I'm not sure I'm going to get the 60,000 miles out of them that they expect they'll last, though.

My Lada has an 86" wheelbase and a divorced t-case. How much difference could four inches make?

SO I'm back... and this totally didn't happen this summer. Things got a little weird with my internet (stealing unsecured wifi from your neighbour only works wen your four other roommates, and all her other neighbours aren't all trying to do it too) and I kinda dropped away from some stuff. Like this entire forum. But my other summer projects are coming to a close and the summer staff is starting to leave the park, so things are quieting down and maybe I'll have time to get started on this. I was surprised by how quickly they had seasonal staff on... usually they don't start showing up until June or July, but this year I had a full house as soon as I moved in. Lots of stuff going on. But excuses, excuses. Maybe I'll get started on this. Maybe not. I may be in an empty house until the end of October. But I don't quite know.

It's back!!! Just got done swapping in a much lower-mile 4.0 HO, AW4 and NP242 out of a rusted out '93 XJ Country I picked up for $300. Eventually more parts will get moved across, non-CAD D30, 8.25, a few trim pieces, etc. The Niva's been pretty good to me, but it's really awesome to be driving my MJ again after 16 @#$%ing months. Pics to follow.

It's not too difficult to calculate back spacing from offset. Just divide the overall width of the wheel by two and then add the offset. Offset is the distance between the mounting surface and the centreline of the wheel. A positive offset is where the mounting surface is closer to the outside of the wheel, and a negative offset is closer to the inside. A 9" wide wheel with a -1.5" offset will have 4.5 + -1.5 = 3" backspacing. A 10" wide wheel with a +2" offset will have 5 + 2 = 7" backspacing.

Also true.

I kinda like that idea, Hornbrod. In fact, I actually had it independently some time on Saturday I think. I didn't look back to this thread until today to give everyone time to add thoughts over the weekend. I got three replies... Oh well. I just moved into a new place last night, but once I've got my stuff set up, I was going to start putting everything into an excel sheet, a line to each thread, with a column for categories and whatever else I throw in. I was thinking for categories, I'd just go with the stuff on the MJOTM posts, so engine/performance, drivetrain, cooling, electrical/ignition, interior, exterior, suspension/steering, brakes, lighting. Maybe splitting up the slashes. I'm still thinking sorting into mods vs repairs (I don't think there are many repairs), and a flag for pictures. I'd like do include a skill level, but I'm not sure how to do that. Right now I'm thinking three levels: 1. Basic, i.e. can be done with a good socket set, screwdrivers, voltmeter, soldering iron... stuff most people are likely to have around. 2. Intermediate, i.e. requires specialized tools. This one I'm less certain about. My thought was stuff like pulling a motor or dropping a transmission, things a typical shade-tree mechanic might not be so comfortable with. 3. Advanced. i.e. requires fabrication. This is everything beyond bolt-ons. Cutting, welding, etc. I'm not sure trimming for larger tires counts, but you get the picture. Once I've got my categories established, and all the flags and things sorted out, I can stick it all into a big excel sheet and then have excel do all the sorting for me. But I want to run it by someone else to make sure the categories and things are well appropriate before I start, cause it'll be a pain in the @$$ to change stuff once I've started indexing... I'd pretty well have to start all over. I don't know how convenient it would be to have a big list of everything sorted out for moving threads into separate forums under the DIY one (it would still have to be done one at a time, right?) but I don't see it hurting anything. There's a few days before I'd get started, and all input is appreciated. I know pretty well what I'd like to do with it, but what works for me isn't always a thing that makes sense to everyone else, eh?

It also doesn't help that so many of them were special orders, so god only knows what the person could have ticked on the options sheet. If you email Jeep with your VIN, they might be able to find your original build sheet for you.

Although if you let him do it, you'll end up with a very smooth running engine...

This. I tried the "loosen side bolts and tilt it" method when I was patching up my dash harness after my headlight switch caught fire. I saw it in a heater core replacement thread. I don't know who came up with it, but I'm reasonably confident it's impossible. It wasn't enough space to get at the wires behind the dash, let alone pull the heater core or box. And eight hours for the first time r&r'ing the dash probably isn't too far off the mark, either. That's about what it wound up taking me. Finding a decent write-up (with pictures) will be a huge help.

The follow up question would be "does it still have any?" Tell us more about what it does when you try to start it. See my last post.

Yup. The two-piece axle. You can use a strong magnet on a stick to pull the other piece of the shaft out. The new one will slide right in and work fine... except that you'll leak gear oil out of the tube. And if you even end up in water deep enough to get the axle tube wet, water will get into your diff. There are a few threads on here talking about what seals you can install to fix that.

What happens when you turn the key? Does it crank the engine over without starting, or does it not crank at all? Does it make any unusual noises? And forgive me for sounding like a fool, but when was the last time you checked the oil?

Clean cars have a weight advantage over dirty ones. :)

Instead of disconnecting wires, you could pull fuses and/or relays. With the amp meter connected like Jim describes. Seems like it would be easier to me. Possibly less conclusive if the draw is upstream of them, but still easier in my mind.

Bear with me here, as this might be a bit rambling before I get around to my point. So I've kinda stopped looking at the DIY and Tech Write-up forum. This is because I was getting increasingly annoyed at scrolling past all the pinned threads. I'm the kind of guy who gets really frustrated with minor annoyances. In my mind, this is somewhat justifiable in this case because out of the 30 threads displayed in the first page, 24 of them are pinned threads, which after having looked through them once, don't really offer me much new information. I'm also the kind of guy who starts thinking up sometimes major solutions to minor annoyances because in my mind it's preferable to fix a problem, even if it's not a severe one or even something anyone else sees as a problem. So to this goal, I though about having sort of a master pinned thread, an FAQ so to speak, of the pinned threads. I'd actually started making one a couple months ago, but was interrupted by a power outage, and lost interest. But a couple weeks ago, I kinda wanted to redo it. Except then I had another idea. What if the entire forum was indexed? With one master post with all the links in it? I think there's sound reasoning for such a thing: There are 300+ threads in the section. They date back to 2007. There's no organization beyond the 8% that were pinned. Some of them may have been forgotten, despite containing useful information. There's probably also some reduplication of topics. For a new member looking for ideas on something specific, that's a bit of an overwhelming haystack to find a needle in, and it would be quite annoying to discover that there may be a better needle than being relied upon. The site's search function works, and Google works well, but a single place where someone could see all that's there in an organized manner would be very helpful in my mind. Basically what I'm suggesting would be a list of all the DIY threads, sorted into affected areas (i.e. engine, suspension, brakes, interior, etc). There would also be room for: -differentiation between repairs and modifications -classification into skill levels (i.e. can be done in the driveway with a socket set and some screwdrivers vs requiring welding or specialized tools), -whether or not there are pictures, -??? what else would be helpful? This would also require continuous work after "completion" to keep it current. I have no idea how long such a project would take, but it wouldn't surprise me all that much if it ended up being 40+hrs of work just to compile the index. I'm 100% willing to do the work myself in my free time, and then stay on top of keeping it updated, but it would end up being a lot of work for nothing and a huge waste of time if no one else wants or sees the need for something like this. So Yay or Nay? Is this something people want? Or does anyone have any other input?

Do you have a lift installed? If your suspension is modified in any way, take a picture so the experts on here can give you some suggestions. The only other thing I can add is that you should get underneath, with the front suspension unloaded if it's possible to do so safely, and make sure all the suspension and steering joints are tight, and there's no play in anything or any bent or otherwise damaged links.

The thing about the "power-sapping emissions equipment" on these early-emissions vehicles (70's and 80's) is that it's not just stuff that got bolted onto the outside of the engine. It's the entire fuel and air system, in many cases right down to the head and cam. Like Jim said, if you've got a better carb sitting around that you can slap on it, you'll likely see some benefits, but frankly, if you're tight on funds, it's best just to leave it alone. It's unlikely you'll be able to do enough to improve fuel economy to see short-term financial benefits, and once you start messing with it, you may find yourself digging a hole lined with dollar bills.