gogmorgo

XJ/MJ floor pans aren't the same. The front of them is close, but the section under the seat isn't. Replacement floor pans are available online. You might want to do a search on here, though, as some members have had issues with fit. Here's a decent starting point.

Count the megapixels usually leads to a lot of noise. I'm with GirsMJ86 on the size of the sensor. My Mom's ancient mid-level 1.2mp Canon (14 years old now!) takes much better pictures than the 2.2mp camera on my eight-month old Sonim, which was an afterthought stuffed into the phone, so far as I can tell. I was getting decent pics out of my PowerShot A1000IS until the telescoping lens jammed and stripped the gears last summer. I'm really missing it, as my Sonim really sucks for pictures. I'm watching this thread for ideas, as I'm going to be picking up a new camera this summer. I'm looking at getting an Olympus TG-2 if I can part with the money.

I get a fair amount of parts from RockAuto.com. The prices are good, but the shipping can be murder sometimes. Case in point, I just got in some tranny line connectors. Purchase price for two units was $12. I paid $18 in shipping. But then again I'm shipping between countries, so that drives things up a bit. As I'm sure you already know, most of the parts from the doors forward are identical to the 4-door XJ Cherokee from similar years.

Seems like it would work. Only reason I can think of would be retaining stock setup. Also, the internal pumps are mostly cooled by being immersed in fuel, which you wouldn't be able to do anymore, but any external setup worth its salt would have provisions for that. I am wondering why you'd need to go with such a high pressure pump if all you need is 15psi, but I suppose that's a cost thing?

Here's a picture of a brand new XJ tank sitting next to my '91 MJ's old one. Napa sent the wrong one, and wouldn't send the right one. The tank was returned, but it took a couple months to get the money back. My tank is the biggest an MJ came with, so yours may look different. I didn't take any measurements and this was around Christmas 2012, so it's been a long time since I've had the tank. But you can see how it's shorter and wider. IIRC height was roughly similar, maybe the XJ's was a little shorter there as well. I'm not positive, but you may run into clearance issues with the driveshaft if you try to stuff an XJ tank where the MJ's goes because of the extra width. You can also see how the filler neck mounts to the side of the MJ's tank, but to the end of the XJ's, as well as the difference in where the fuel pumps go in. The fuel pump location isn't so much of an issue, just run longer fuel lines, but the filler neck would require work. If you flipped the tank around to make it a little easier to route the filler neck, then you end up with the lock ring on the wrong side and right up against the frame rail. You also would have to work something out to hang the tank there, as the stock MJ tank hangers won't be wide enough. You might be able to put the tank behind the rear axle, where the spare tire mounts, but that's not ideal if you plan on wheeling. It would, however, shift weight backwards leading to slightly better distribution and road handling characteristics. Something a bunch of people have done is swap in the tank from a Dakota. I've never looked into it, but it's an idea. You may also be able to adapt the XJ setup to your MJ tank. I understand it's not an overly complicated procedure, but make sure you know what you're doing if you attempt it. Again, I never have.

Well, there's not much to see. It's still almost entirely stock. The whole starving student thing has just about been a reality a few times, and time is also not always much more plentiful than $$ have been. But I've collected a bunch of pics from the last year and a bit and I'll try to state everything that was done. So here's for a very long post. Couple pics I found from 2012 that I liked. For Christmas 2012 my Dad got me a new fuel tank because mine's a bit rusty and seeps a little. It's never dripping, but there's always a wet patch on the side of it when it's got more than a 1/2 tank. This is what I found after dropping my tank and opening the box with the new one. It's an XJ tank. My dad ordered it through the local farm supply co-op who have a connection with Napa. He walked in there with everything he needed on a sheet of paper, everything checked out. The order that went out was for the right tank, with the Spectra Premium part number and all the info about my MJ. Someone at a Napa warehouse got the order and decided "Wrong part for application, sending this one instead". There was a note on the packing slip. Then when we contacted Napa directly after we returned the tank and the farm supply had no luck with them, they told us they couldn't get it. It would have been nice to let us know sooner, instead of sending us the wrong item! I still don't have a new fuel tank over a year later. It hasn't been that much of a priority because the leak really isn't all that bad. I posted the broken axle above. I swapped a single piece shaft into my CAD housing. The CAD still worked, but I was climbing over snow in the wrecking yard to get to it, so I just grabbed the first jeep axle shaft that would go in. I think it was from an early ZJ, but I don't remember. But when I was changing it, one of the most time consuming things was honestly getting this lug nut off: Honestly not much happened for the next few months. Put in new headlights, Silvania H6054XV's I think. I tried adjusting them properly when I put them in, but broke the adjusters. So broke me borrowed some zip ties and that was that. I eventually swapped in some adjusters I picked up off another MJ at a wrecker, but that wouldn't be until a few months later. I was still living in dorm at the time, so I wasn't driving much, and if I did, it was in the city so I didn't really need to see all that well. Oh, and this happened on my way home for reading week. I was following some econobox following a one-ton dually with an empty livestock trailer. The highway was glare ice, so not ideal conditions, and in hindsight I was following too closely. But a gust of wind comes and kicks the trailer over a little, maybe a foot. No big deal, the guy pulling it may not even have noticed, and if he did he didn't slow down at all. But the idiot in the econbox freaks out and stands on the brakes. Don't know how they managed to slow down as much as they did, because I barely touched my brakes and locked them up. No one was in the oncoming lane, so I took it, but overcorrected for the swerve, and went sideways and backwards into the ditch on the other side of the road. No damage to anything except my pride. Had to get a tow out because I couldn't get up the steep ditch due to the snow. I don't know how I kept it on the wheels... it was a pretty crazy ride. I was one of six vehicles in the ditch on a five mile stretch. A mile further on, someone had rolled over in the ditch. It was a pretty nasty stretch of ice. Come to think about it, a couple days later my tail pipe came off. The weld between the tail pipe and the end of the glasspack failed, and the front of it kissed the pavement at a buck twenty. I pulled over, wrestled it off the old mounts, and kept going. I still need to do something about that. I just never associated those two events until now. Few more pics from this period. I'd been parking like this a lot. Trying to keep my bumper from sticking out into the lane. Due to a small amount of melting, the road back there was pretty rough, and the snow was making it pretty narrow. I got the OK from one of the parking agents so I was in the clear. The last couple were taken to illustrate a point I was trying to make to people in my parking lot where the stalls are vs where everyone else was parking. There's a fairly narrow entrance to the back section, with parking on either side. People like parking there, because it's close to the path to my building, but there was enough snow drifted over the spots that they were parking halfway into the lane, making it really difficult for a vehicle as "wide" as my MJ to get through. And it was basically impossible to get a vehicle as long as my MJ out of the spots opposite because there was a 90° turn into the now very narrow lane. Also, if anyone's interested, those were taken in April. I started having some engine issues sometime between February and March. The engine would cut out during acceleration, and sometimes stall out and it wouldn't restart easily. It would also stall if I tried to climb a snowbank or otherwise push against something. Hornbrod helped diagnose the code 54 as a bad sync sensor in the dizzy. Because it was easier, and more importantly due to a Rock Auto closeout sale cheaper, I upgraded the distributor to a '95+ version in early April. Plug and play, but a better setup because the dizzy doesn't need pulled apart to change the sync sensor. This mostly cleared things up. I was still having a couple issues so I put a new fuel filter on. It didn't hep, but the old one looked really old, and when I pulled it off I poured out a cup of gasoline so dirty it looked like it a cup of overly rich hot chocolate. Fuel pressure was the same before and after. At some point in May, after having moved myself back home, the issues with the engine got worse. It was cutting out as before, sometimes being very frustrating to start, and sometimes making a nasty knocking sound while it was acting up. No codes this time, though. I put a Napa Echlin cap and rotor on because somehow a hole had melted in the side of the cheapo cap that came with my new dizzy. Still don't know how that happened. Also new Champion plug wires. But it didn't really fix the issue. I was still driving 70 miles to work and back every day, and it wasn't seriously affecting things, so I was kinda ignoring it. I eventually decided it must be the fuel pump intermittently cutting out, so I drove into the city to pick up a new one. I ran a couple other errands first, and then headed for the parts store, when suddenly the engine started making a noise like a jack hammer if I took it over about 1500 rpm. I poke around at stuff and figure out it's coming from the back of the engine bay, but didn't know enough to know what was going on, so I took it to a shop. The verdict? The engine and bellhousing are hanging together by three threads on a single bolt, and the noise is them pounding together. The dowel pins are trashed, two of the bolts was sheared off, and the threads on the other are stripped. The mechanic insists the only way to fix it is to pull the engine out. So this happened: As he's pulling it apart, it turns out both motor mounts are trashed, and there's something up with the water pump (don't remember quite what it was, but I had him replace it because I'd been wondering about it, and heck, the engine was out of it anyway so why not). But this was quite a rather expensive saga that wasn't quite over yet. But all the running issues were sorted out. I'm attributing them to the crank position sensor, (mounted to the bellhousing) not being able to read the timing windows on the flexplate (mounted to the engine) because the two were moving in relation to each other. Also, the mechanic broke the plastic cover for the injector harness, which pissed me off, not so much because it happened but because no one said anything about it. The thing was broken clean in half when I got the truck back, and it obviously isn't in the above picture. It's not like you wouldn't notice doing it. The MJ mostly behaved itself for the rest of the summer, apart from the leaky rad (I was feeding it a gallon per hour of driving) and the buggery NSS. I also put in some headlight adjusters after driving 400 miles down one of the most important two-lane highways in western Canada with my brights on the whole way without getting flashed because they were pointed pretty well straight down. Something else which is almost completely my fault, during an oil change I bumped the switch to turn on those lights on the bumper. They've got covers on them, so I didn't notice they were on, and killed my battery. One of the covers melted, warped, and fell off, and I think the bulb may have burnt out. But that was the least of my worries. The battery posts got corroded and so I pulled them off to clean them. But when I pulled the positive terminal off, the ancient corroded bolt broke. I was literally in the middle of nowhere, by myself with very few tools. I couldn't get the broken bolt out because the PO, knowing the terminal was loose, instead of tightening it just beat it back down with the tire iron every time he couldn't start it. As a result, the metal had folded down and around the bolt head. I sat there with the nail file on my leatherman (which will never forgive me) until I'd dug the softish metal off the bolt, and then borrowed one from somewhere else to tighten it. I don't remember what the bolt is from, but it's still holding the terminal onto my battery. :oops: Some pictures I took over the summer. At some point my trusty old Canon quit, and I got stuck taking pictures with the terrible camera on my Sonim: That's the result of a game a girl I met at a folk music festival wanted to play when she found out I had a 4x4 truck that was also a Jeep, see how far you can get without driving on a road that doesn't have grass down the middle of it. At least that's what she was playing. I was playing "see how lost we can get" but was trumped by her impressive navigational skills. She got us back long before the sun was anywhere near the horizon. Then I found out her boyfriend is much bigger than I am, so that was that. :redX: I gotta say, though, I really like cruising down these "turkey trails". You get much closer to nature without serious discomfort, or much risk to your daily driver while still almost doing highway speeds. And they're public roads, just the lesser used parts of the grid. At any rate it was a decent way to kill an afternoon with a good looking girl. There's a video I'll post up here as soon as my carrier-pigeon speed internet gets it uploaded. Well, the video's finished uploading... not quite sure why I bothered. Took me six hours and it's really not all that impressive, just driving in a straight line on a not-quite-road-anymore gravel road down a road allowance. Unless you consider that the phone was just sitting on my dash and leaning against the windshield. Towards the end of the summer I started getting a clattering sound from the engine, but I needed money for school, so since I wasn't noticing any loss of power or driveability, and it was only intermittent, I didn't do much about it. I was also a little in denial having had just paid so much to have the engine pulled out and put back in not all that long ago, and didn't want to deal with it. An oil change showed no metal shavings, so I wasn't too worried. I did check that the engine and tranny were still bolted together, though. Moving myself back to Saskatoon for the school year. In September I swapped out the leaky rad for a new one. The reason it was leaking? It wasn't bolted down. Neither was the a/c condenser. The two had been pounding against each other, and the a/c condenser won. Punched a massive hole in the rad. I'm not really sure how I've still got a working a/c system given how much movement there was, but I'm not complaining. This was honestly the smoothest anything I've ever done to the Comanche has ever gone, to the point where I'm suspicious of how smoothly it went and seven months later still waiting for something to jump out and say "You @#$%ed up!!!". Closed course. Do not attempt. . :MJ 1: . Some say I push this old girl too hard... It's hard to tell, but that needle's pointed at 185km/h. 115mph. Don't know how accurate it is but there ya go. Top speed. Sometimes we need stats :dunno: Some time in September or early October, before the snow flew at any rate, a buddy and I went over the engine bay with a stethoscope trying to find the source of the mysterious clattering, which was decidedly getting worse. It was coming from the bellhousing area. Not good. A few days later I pulled the inspection plate off, and discovered a crack in the flexplate. Also not good. I ordered a new flexplate once I'd determined that I could afford it, with plans to install it over Christmas break. That didn't happen due to a family vacation, but I did get all the tools I figured I'd need to swap it out for Christmas. One morning in October, I split a heater hose on the way to class. It dumped right onto the fan, and then everywhere. I pulled over in the mist of ethylene glycol, discovered what happen, pulled off the clamp and cut out the offending three inch section of hose. There was enough slack that I could stretch it far enough to work, but I couldn't squeeze the oem clamp far enough open to get it back on with my hands, and my pliers had disappeared from my tool kit. I walked to the nearest farmhouse, borrowed a pair, and made it to class an hour late. I sat down, wrote a midterm in the remaining 20 minutes of the period when the rest of the class got the whole hour and a half, and still got 20% more than class average. :yes: First snow of the winter that started in 2013 and hasn't yet ended in 2014. I installed the HD tow hooks a few days prior. Good thing I did, too. I left about five minutes after my roommate did that morning, and found her in the ditch, halfway through calling her dad to figure out what to do. I pulled out her Honda, and she was able to make it to work on time. I was 20 minutes late for a lab I didn't want to go to anyway, so I skipped it, said I couldn't make it due to the weather, and arranged to go to a different session that a good friend of mine attends. My roommate's an elementary school science teacher, so it's thanks to people like her that there's anyone going to the lab in the first place, so in my mind it's worth it. Shortly after the first snow and nearly ending up with a Chevy Traverse as a hood ornament when some idiot pulled out of a parking lot and cut across three lanes without looking so he could immediately turn left, I felt the need to fix my non-functional horn. The horn cam had vanished from the steering column, so I got one from a junkyard XJ. I also had a couple horns sitting around that I'd pulled at a different yard during the summer, and I wired them both in. So I've got a three-tone horn now. It's very useful. There are some people in this city who really shouldn't be driving. Aaaaandd... Parked. Yes, I left those tracks. It was only slightly an accident. :teehee: A couple silly decisions on my part lead to me blowing three hoses on one day I think in early November, dumping $70 worth of antifreeze onto the highway, and overheating the engine enough I got a code for the temp sensor malfunctioning when it wasn't. But it meant I had an excuse to replace all my hoses which I'd been intending on doing, and there was no permanent damage. When I got back after my two-week Christmas vacation, my battery was completely dead. I'm not sure what caused that, but that's the longest I've ever left the MJ without starting it, and I've never had a problem before or since. Despite it hitting -40 while I was away, the battery seems to have survived. The day after refusing to start, the MJ set itself on fire. In a very specific location. The headlight switch connector. I was able to blow it out, but a new switch was in order. So I got the new switch, and put it into the burnt up harness with bare wires. I made my own headlight relay harness upgrade out of 10awg wire to unload the switch, and put that on as quickly as I could get it together. It took a bit longer to track down and install a new connector for it. Until I was able to do that, I avoided using my headlights, and left the dash bezel off for easier extinguishing of fires. Fortunately there were no more. The old headlight switch. Notice the charred nature. It still worked, which I found surprising, but I guess it was mostly the melted connector burning. Either way, though, I didn't trust it. Also the coil for the rheostat was mangled so I kinda wanted a new switch anyway. Ice racing camping in January. On Blackstrap Lake. Predominantly we were out there because racecar, but some of us just wanted to go camping. Don't park this close to a camp fire... inevitably some jackass will park in front of you when the fire's being expanded for the evening. But it made for a decent picture. Or at least an artsy one. Relevant video with the MJ in the background, but only if you know where to look. More engine troubles in January and February. Stalling on the highway, intermittently running like $#!&, completely bizarre refusals to start where if I walked away for twenty minutes and tried again it would catch on the first crank, that sort of thing. Everything checked out, despite a collection of engine codes. I attributed it to the broken flexplate. It was very broken this far on, to the point where I was shifting into neutral when stopped in order to avoid the clatter. It could be quite loud at times. Discovered this guy on campus while out for a rip in fresh snow. :drool: The want is over 9000. Don't know what I'd do with it, though. Reading week 2014, the week of the major repairs: Technically not reading week yet, as it was the evening of the last day of classes before the break. Valentine's day. I spent the evening with my one true love. The jack stands were a little excessive, but I got them for Christmas and hadn't used them or my new jack yet. The jack and stands came as as set, Michelin branded, 3.5 ton. Pretty decent stuff. At any rate, I changed her oil and put on a new harmonic balancer. The rubber in the old one had degraded and the pulley had walked back far enough the belt was cutting into the timing cover. Belt's fine though. The whole operation was hampered by the girl I'm renting a room from who was very tipsy, and in hindsight probably feeling very lonely that night, but at the time I was completely oblivious and was wondering why she was being so annoying. It took a week of her acting like she was mad at me before I even realized what might have been going on. And sometimes I wonder why I'm single :shake: But you don't $#!& where you eat. I also had an idea to fix the broken plastic strap that keeps the glovebox lid from over extending: Ring terminals crimped onto 10awg wire. Heat shrink tube to make it look pretty. I had the stuff sitting around from making my headlight harness. I just cut the strap off the ends, slid the ring terminal over the round part, and used the ends of the original strap to keep the new one in place. I initially made it a little too long, but I just cut one of the ring terminals off in a place for a decent length, and put a new one on. Not sure why I took this pic, but whatever. It was taken that week, and it's kinda cool. And part of this post's purpose pertains to posting pictures. I was busy with Racecar the next few days, and a couple assignments I needed to finish, but on Wednesday I tore my dash apart to put in my new headlight switch connector. This didn't go as smoothly as I expected since for some reason I decided I didn't need to pull everything apart in the right order. Also, I tried to do it outside at -10°F, which just makes things miserable when doing delicate work that gloves impede. But I got it in, and now don't run the risk of the bare wires in the dash setting things on fire. It looks a lot nicer with the dash bezel on. Amazing how much cheesy fake wood trim can class up a ride. Thursday I collected the last few bits to drop my tranny and change the flexplate. Friday morning, as soon as my roommate left, I had the MJ in the garage up on jack stands. I went about it very slowly so I didn't screw anything up, and it took me four days. This is the first time I've removed such a major component of a vehicle. I did screw some things up, but only the ancient brittle plastic clips on the tranny cooler line connectors. By the end of the day Friday, I didn't manage to get the tranny unbolted, as I was having trouble getting at the top bolts. Friday evening's pile of parts. After some time on the internet, I just dropped the tranny far enough to make it easy. And it was. I had the tranny down by Saturday afternoon. I figured out I'd put the tranny jack in backwards when I went to put the tranny back up, and had all the angle adjustment in the wrong direction. Sunday was spent trying as best as I could to get the flexplate unbolted. Eventually I gave up and borrowed a buddy's impact gun. Unfortunately I could only get a hold of a 3gal compressor, so it was pretty slow going. The last bolt was very stubborn, and after an hour of the 10-second bursts I could get out of the compressor, I gave up again. The last stubborn bolt and how I got it out. You can't see the crack in the old plate because the load spreader disc is in the way. I wound up using a ratchet strap between one of the flexplate's timing windows and the lower control arm mount to prevent the engine from turning, and muscled the last bolt out with a breaker bar. I used the same method when torquing down the bolts for the new one. The old flexplate had cracked all the way around, with the centre of it being a separate disc from the outside. The crack was jagged, so it was still able to transmit torque. But it still seemed a little miraculous that I was still able to drive around. I didn't think to take a picture of the broken flexplate, but I keep meaning to see if it's still sitting in the scrap bin at school so I can. I also cleaned up and resealed the NSS while I had the tranny off. RTV FTW. The tranny was back up Sunday evening, and everythign else (crossmember, tcase skid, starter, driveshafts, exhaust) went back on Monday morning. The "quick" connectors for the lines, as I mentionned, were pretty badly damaged, but I was able to shove the lines in and get them functional, if leaky. Unfortunately, the lines were leaking not only directly onto the exhaust, but directly onto the cat, which lead to a James-Bond style smokescreen going down the road. Not sure how I never got pulled over for that. But the new flexplate not making noise was weird, but awesome at the same time. After the swap there's way less drivetrain vibrations, and all the running issues are completely gone. :banana: But the next issue, which is actually still the same issue... I confess I wasn't the greatest at keeping my atf levels topped up, despite knowing the connectors were leaking. This lead to the transmission falling out of gear and/or not grabbing the gear unless I was pushing the engine at 1500-2000 rpm or higher. I've finally (last night) put new connectors on. I had to wait for them to ship from New York, as I couldn't find them locally. I went to a couple parts stores in town, and was met with glassy looks from the counter drones. No luck with the parts guy at the dealer either. He honestly recommended going to the two parts stores I'd been to, so I gave up on locals. And I can't ever call them "quick" again, as I had to unscrew them, shove them onto the lines, then screw them back in before they would stay shoved in. The tranny still isn't shifting great, but I still don't have quite enough dex-III in there yet. Last week some time I unplugged the tranny computer so that once it was in gear it would stay in gear, which helped a bit, but I'm really missing second gear. Third is great, but first is just too damn low. That reminds me, up at the beginning of the thread I mentioned the tranny was a 5-speed... well it's not. It's a regular aw4, and as far as I can tell, original. What I was thinking was the tranny grabbing a 5th gear was just the torque converter locking up. What can I say, this is the first automatic I've driven that has a tach. :dunno: And while I may have forgotten one or two things, I think that's about it. This thread is now up to date. What modifications have I done? Well, back when I bought it, there were ugly round orange lights in the front bumper, bolted to where the plastic nudge cap things should go. I've replaced them with some cheap parts-store lights, with square black plastic housings. I feel they match the truck a lot better, but mostly they're just there for show. They aren't even hooked up right now because some drunk decided to point them both down last summer and the wires got torn out. So that was replacing ugly aftermarket with not-so-ugly aftermarket. I think that happened around November 2012 In the engine bay, I've got the '95+ distributor and that's it. I've got a headlight relay harness that I made myself that will support 180W bulbs, and with a couple quick and cheap mods that I didn't bother with because it was unnecessary for barely more than stock lights, it'll do 360W. I pulled a wood-grain dash bezel out of an XJ at a wrecker. It looks good. I've also got the HD tow hook kit installed. Don't remember which brand it is, but it's the typical style. Got it off eBay. What plans do I have? I'd like to get one of the SMS headliners. I'm sick of having to wear a hat so I don't end up like Quasimodo when I'm driving. Also the General Spring deal on here, as my leaves are shot. Lift a little in the front to match with new coils, new shocks all around. Maybe eventually bigger tires, but not till my Grabbers need changing. Beefier (and not bent!) anti-roll bar on the front, something on the rear if I can swing it. A quick ratio steering gearbox is also in order. Mine grinds when it nears full lock and it's cold, so it needs something done anyhow. I'd also like to get some headlights to match the harness up there... it's currently at around 35% of it's rated capacity. I'm thinking Hella e-codes and 100W h4's, maybe add in some lesser lights to the brights circuit. One more thing, I'd like to get an NP242 tcase, or some other full-time 4x4 setup. Being able to turn the front wheels on pavement would be nice. I'm also partway through building a hitch for my MJ. I've got all the parts cut out, I just haven't got around to welding it up yet. I definitely need to do something about my exhaust. Oh, and I need a new fuel tank, and battery cables. And a tool box would be nice so I don't have to stash so much behind the seats. And get my spare tire hanger working. That's pretty much the sum of what I consider "short term" plans, as in things I'd like to do as soon as possible. But I'd also like to put a canopy (maybe canvas) and brush guards on it. I really like the safari or overland appearance, but this would still be mostly a daily driver, and road going characteristics are more important to me than heavy wheeling. But keeping it able to do light offroading and not being afraid to keep it on the roads all year round are important as well. As well as not having too much of a non-stock appearance. That said, I'd like to swap the D35 out, and in it's place (still looking into if it's feasible) putting in an AMC20 with the Torsen diff from a HMMVW. This would put a heavier axle and Torsen in with factoryish parts. I've got a fair amount of experience with the Torsen T1 unit in racing and like it a lot. I'd like to swap out my front axle as well. There's quite a bit of play in the gears, and some of the bracketry on it is rusting. It would be awesome to get a Torsen in there as well, but I don't know if that'll happen without one-off parts. More than likely I'd find a non-cad D30 to replace it and do some kind of "normal" selectable lock/lsd setup though. I'm also watching the TorVec stuff to see if there's something useful to me there. I'm a big fan of superchargers, and would like to get one going, along with a custom equal-length runner intake fed by a snorkel, and custom exhaust header, going beyond the tuning abilities of the stock ecu. Individual cylinder tuning, and all that. I'd also like to do something about the front suspension, and by that I mean getting rid of the track bar setup. It's always seemed silly to me to have a centering link that shifts the axle sideways as it moves vertically. It leads to bump steer, and moves the roll center around in two dimensions, albeit predictably. I'd likely set up a Watt's or Mumford link, but I really haven't given it all that much thought except going to an a-arm setup, which doesn't work with a solid axle. I'd like to keep the solid axle as it's part of Jeep's heritage, but I really think panhard rods are the wrong choice for a vehicle with so much suspension travel, especially in the front. But that's all a long way off. My budget is very limited, and I'm mostly dreaming at this point.

Did you put the same amount of fluid in as you took out, or did you just go by the dipstick? If you did, sometimes it takes a bit for the atf to work itself into around, so it may not be as full as it once was. Check to make sure it's full with the engine running, after driving. Make sure you're looking at the right side of the dipstick, one's for cld, the other for hot. Also, Jeep die-hards say to use Dexron-III, despite Chrysler currently recommending ATF+4, but I don't know what you're running. That's not a debate I really want to get into, but I can say that the two probably shouldn't be mixed. Something else that's quick, easy, free, and can't hurt anything if it's not the issue: http://www.allpar.com/SUVs/jeep/cherokee-transmission.html I've been dealing with similar symptoms with my aw4, but my issues are caused by low fluid. Just changed out my cooler line connectors which stopped the total-loss atf lubrication of the cat. Have you tried unplugging your tranny computer and shifting manually?

Power Take Off. It's basically a setup for running power accessories off the engine but with the strength of the drivetrain instead of a belt on the front, which means you don't need to make room under the hood for a beefy accessory. Common PTO accessories are winches, hydraulic pumps, air compressors, farming implements behind tractors, etc.

Blue88Comanche has this link in his signature. It's for an 88, but it's mostly XJ and general stuff, not much is MJ specific. There are XJ wiring diagrams, though, which I have found useful. Some of the wire colours are off, compared to my '91, but most of the body wiring (with the exception of the taillights) is the same. It might be helpful if you need something urgently. Otherwise, though, you're probably better off with the shop manuals.

Check your flexplate. There's an inspection cover on the bottom of the bellhousing, right behind the engine. It's also a good idea to check that the bolts between the flexplate and tranny are tight as well... do it by tightening them. I recently replaced my flexplate because it had cracked. Occasionally I got a sound I might describe as a rumble from it, but usually it was just a clattering sound. I think the incident that lead to my flexplate cracking may also have trashed my torque converter, because I still have been noticing a rumble on occasion. The incident in question was the bolts missing between the bellhousing and engine. If you do decide you want to swap out the torque converter, go over the flexplate really well while the tranny's out. They don't often crack, but when they do, they like to do it around the crankshaft flange bolts. Don't go out and start swapping parts based just on my post, though. I have relatively little experience in this area.

I'm almost wondering if this might be a PTO option of some kind. I've seen references to XJ's having factory PTO's in other markets, but they're all couple-sentence forum posts that are backed up by "I saw a picture on the internet somewhere but can't find it now". Although I don't remember seeing anywhere in the case that a PTO might come out, unless it's a t-case thing, which would make sense for the tranny output to be turning. Possibly one position for each direction, with output regulated to a certain speed (with the right computers hooked up, which I doubt you'd have even if they exist somewhere other than in my head). But this is all me proposing ideas that are based purely on my imagination, and don't necessarily reflect reality at all. :dunno: Also, keeping the massive tangle of french electronics, or swapping the later Chrysler electronics will result in a much better engine package than swapping to a carb, but to each their own. At any rate, this isn't the place for that discussion.

In the hole of the harmonic balancer, probably. It unbalances it, which may lead to premature failure. In the hole of the crank, yes, cause you won't be able to get the HB retainer bolt in. I recently replaced my harmonic balancer because the rubber between the two sections was failing and the pulley was walking backwards. The balancer itself wasn't rubbing anywhere, but the belt was cutting a groove into the timing cover. Also, the pulley had some serious wobble to it.

The vents working tells me the vacuum ball is probably fine. The temperature is controlled with a blend door, which is cable driven by the temp slider. Check for things disconnected in the passenger footwell.

Got mine like the above off ebay back in September or October. The brackets sit under the stock front bumper brackets (the three holes on the fat end , and the hook bolts to the two holes on the welded on part. The hole at the end of the long thin part lines up with a hole in the frame from the factor. The ones I got came with all the mounting hardware necessary, so I just used what was in the kit. I want to say I had to reuse the factory bumper bracket bolts, but I don't remember. You may want to find (or make) a big flat washer of some kind for the long bolt that goes through the frame at the back hole, as the hole in my frame was only slightly smaller than the stuff provided. The tow hooks included are just some made-in-china cheapies, but they're not bad. Otherwise, the fit was excellent, although I did have to cut out my lower valence (the bit of plastic under the bumper) but that was to be expected. With a stock bumper, you'll have to unbolt the brackets from the bumper itself so you can spread them apart a little for the extra room the tow hook brackets take up. A 1/4" on each side. If I remember at some point when I'm parked somewhere dry I'll snap some $#!&ty low-res phone pics of them. For whatever reason I'm having trouble finding decent illustrative pictures with google. I don't do much offroading at all while I'm in school (can't really afford to break things) but so far the hooks have been great. Over the winter I've pulled out two Hondas and a Toyota, an S10, and a Chevy Avalanche. The hooks have also helped me get off the highway a couple times when things weren't going so well for the MJ. I might eventually replace the hooks with shackles, as I've cut up a couple straps when they've partially slipped out of the hook, although now I know what not to do next time. But the brackets could support shackles as easily as they support the hooks.

Don't really see the Duke engine being all that reliable. Too many complex parts moving in too many directions. But what do I know.

I'd expect the arm in the nss to prevent ever getting beyond park without some serious input required. Are you sure you had everything lined up properly? I had my tranny out a month ago, and experimentally shifted through all the gears because I mess around with things like that, but didn't notice any "extra" positions. But then I didn't have the tranny hooked up to anything when I did it, and I wasn't looking for extra positions either. Needless to say, I was curious, and skimmed the thread on NAXJA which I've run across a couple other times prior, but didn't see anything. Doesn't mean I didn't miss it within the 26 pages. Also, I always use four axle stands, for the exact reason you found out.

In the early 70's, AMC was looking into getting Wankels for their cars and trucks. They'd signed agreements with Curtiss-Wright, but then switched to one GM was developing for use in the Vega, designing the Pacer around it, with plans for use in "Jeep-like vehicles" as well. GM canned the project though and AMC was forced to hastily redesign the Pacer to accept the straight six to be able to launch it on time. So it's not the first time someone's brought up something similar. Had GM not "postponed" the project, there could have been factory Wankel Jeeps. A Wankel would definitely be a unique, oddball, eccentric swap. And you wouldn't see too many of them around (or any), so it would have it's own cool factor just for having done it. I personally see that as the only advantage to it. Sure, you can get decentish power out of them, at high rpm, but they suck fuel and don't make all that much power to show for it. And the ones Mazda runs, you'll be very lucky to get 50,000 miles between rebuilds, a common issue among Wankels due to the apex seals which no-one really has solved. Would it be cool? Yes, definitely. Practical? Not so much. I personally wouldn't do it, because I like my stuff to be a little more reliable, but I would be very interested if I saw someone else had. I like odd-ball things.

Just gonna leave this here...

The cause of the crack was the bellhousing bolts falling out and/or shearing many moons ago. As was stated above, if not in so many words. I followed the fsm putting it back together, and everything is there that should be there.

Yeah, there are a bunch of places like that up here. Some grocery chains also do a "buy $XX save y¢/L" thing. Typically around 5¢/L, although I've seen as much as 11¢/L. Which I guess is much more in savings than 5¢/gal.

I'd be more than happy to pay that much for gas... I got gas on Monday and paid US$4.22/gal, and was happy because the price went down from US$4.36 last time I filled up. I've always kinda wondered, for you guys down there, buying gas by the gallon, what does the price usually change by? Up here, it typically goes up or down a couple times per week by 1-3 ¢/L, which would be roughly 4-12 ¢/gal.

Do you let your truck idle to warm up? Getting zero mpg for any length of time can hurt the numbers quite a bit. My mpg takes a hit in winter in part because of that, in part because of the cold (leading to richness), and in part because the lower traction leads to a bit of... we'll call it friskiness.

Most of the time you will get away with it. Sometimes, though, you don't. It's not really a matter of getting lucky and having things work out, so much as you may get unlucky fry something. Recently manufacturers have started including protection system that shut everything down if the battery disconnects. The regulator won't protect things from such a massive spike. It's barely capable of cleaning up the flow from the alternator without the battery in there. It's a voltage regulator, not a surge protector.

The alternator works by inducing current in wire windings... lots of them. The amount of current supplied to the battery when it's charging is huge. If you suddenly disconnect the load, it takes a short time for the magnetic fields to collapse back down to the level that runs everything else, and all that extra current goes to whatever the alternator is running.

Great BAD idea. If you disconnect your battery and it quits, you may have just fried something by hitting it with 100+ volts. ECU's in particular don't like high volts. Load dump is a real thing. You might get away with it a few times, but you're still poking a sleeping bear. Not a good idea. If you can get it running again (not sure why you'd be waiting under an underpass till rain stops if that was the case), most auto parts places will be able to test your charging system safely for you.