gogmorgo

Pretty sure the idler on my ZJ will last the life of the vehicle... With factory a/c delete the belt touches it just enough to keep the pulley clean, but it puts so little pressure on it that I can easily and comfortably slide my fingers between the belt and pulley, without it even coming close to pinching or squeezing. It it almost makes me think it's only there cause it came with the a/c/alt bracket on the assembly line. Reliability really does seem to largely be down to maintenance. Regular fluid checks, replacement, etc. The thing about Toyota reliability is that while yes there's a reputation, there are two sorts of people buying them. Type A is the owner who wants their car to retain as much value as possible. They may not be doing strict by-the-book every single item maintenance, but they are having them looked after. Type B is the people who don't want to worry about maintaining a car, so they buy a Toyota on their reputation and then expect it to last on near-zero maintenance. Almost all the "they didn't change the oil in 80,000 miles and wonder why it won't start" posts on r/justrolledintotheshop seem to be Toyotas, or other "reliable" makes. On the other end of the scale, Ladas weren't the best assembled, but they were simple and built out of reasonably solid materials. In Canada, they were dirt cheap, so they were mostly bought by people who didn't want to spend money on a car, and those sorts of people also don't maintain them. They built themselves a reputation for being terrible cars. In contrast, a friend of mine is Bulgarian, and her grandparents put 450,000km, 280,000 miles, on their Lada before passing it down to her brother because it's still a functioning car. In Bulgaria, Ladas were the good cars, and so people looked after them. Here in Canada, it's rare to see one with more than 100,000km/60,000miles because no one cared enough to look after them.

They seem to have done a decent job of making an SUV with an exposed cargo area, I'll give them that much. And yes, crewcab short beds are incredibly popular among people who want to look like they have a truck but don't need one... But seriously, eleven and a half feet of wheelbase and only a five foot bed? Every other midsize crewcab shortbed has six inches more bed, and a foot less wheelbase. The Colorado crew cab long bed has fourteen inches more bed but only two inches more wheelbase than the Gladiator. I didn't bother looking it up the others because car manufacturers websites are getting really stupid. I couldn't even find dimensions on GM's normal site, and got it off the fleet marketing page, which is a place where consumers are actually looking at data on vehicles and not ooing and ahhing over all the useless marketing fluff... Which is really telling about the manufacturers' target markets: people who just want whatever accessory will help them portray their image. But. Of course they're going to launch with the variant that will appeal to most consumers. Maybe down the road we'll see a 2-door long bed work truck sorta setup... maybe I'm just overly optimistic.

Thanks though.

A finely tuned set of knuckles and eardrum have done a reasonable job for me. My dad has a Craftsman that has to be almost as old as I am that works pretty darn good, although it doesn't have the fancy gadgets more modern ones do, like for finding wiring and stuff like that. I don't really have better suggestions, sorry.

People are seeing them go for that at Barrett-Jackson et al. and are getting bad ideas. Ultimately its your money. If you're paying full price it had better run and drive @#$%ing mint. I would be temped to start negotiating at half that price. But it's your money. If you think the convenience of this MJ is worth the money instead of the effort of searching for another, well, that's up to you. I also bet that if you run the vin, it'll come up factory 2wd. It's not a huge hassle to convert them, and hypothetically adds a ton of value if you don't know that it's a ridiculously easy swap. It really doesn't have many options. I don't know that I'm a fan of the bench, either. It's pretty, but I wouldn't say $9k pretty... especially not if it only has a Dana 35 under the back end. But for towing definitely add a receiver hitch. 3000 lbs is peanuts. I've hauled that much weight over 1000 miles in one trip with my 325,000 mile MJ on what I have nothing to suggest isn't original suspension, with no troubles. I've also got the same drivetrain in my ZJ and pulled 5500 lbs with that up and over a couple 6700' Rocky Mountain passes, which was slow going up steep grades and I wouldn't necessarily recommend repeating that but it did it.

We're only legally obligated to run winter tires if we're climbing mountain passes where I live, although in some jurisdictions (Looking at you, BC) the legal minimum "winter" tire is pretty laughable. I wouldn't bother with studs unless you do a significant amount of miles on winter roads. Not winter conditions on regular paves roads, I mean roads that really aren't passable without a canoe in the summer. But Nokians are definitely the way to go if you're getting dedicated winter tires. I was pretty happy with my Grabber AT2s on my MJ. Unfortunately they've been discontinued, and replaced with the Grabber ATX. I'm looking at picking up a set of those for my ZJ. Just need to stop forgetting to order them while at work.

Yup. 100%. I don't really understand how they thought it would be better that way. You pay initial shipping costs to get it to Cincinnati, then you pay their middlemen to stick another label and a sticker on the box, then they pay a courrier to send it from Cincinnati to wherever you want it to go. Cincinnati really isn't on the way to most of Canada from almost everywhere in the US. And just so people know what we're ranting about: That kit in the middle, sure there's a bunch of stuff in it. 2x carrier, ring and pinion, install kits, and diff covers. But at $25 per box, that would still only add up to $200, not $465. $200 to ship it once, $200 to ship it again, and then I guess $65 for the totally unnecessary middleman. Someone's getting rich off that, and it's not the idiot who agreed to pay it, that's for sure. And that's before exchange rate. I'm looking at $2700 all in to get it to my door, $620 just in shipping. I could buy three more running, driving ZJs for that.

Frankly the shipping costs thing is ridiculous. eBay themselves straight up make it worse. When I got the NOS Ecodes for the ZJ, I couldn't source both sides from the same seller, but by coincidence the cheapest options for either were both in the Milwaukee area. I bought them the same day, they both shipped the next day. One cost about 50% more to ship than the other. One went with USPS, the other with eBay's "simple and convenient" Global Shipping program. One of them made it to Fairview, AB, in four business days; the other took two whole weeks. Would you believe not using the stupid global shipping program was both cheaper and quicker? And half the time they don't even tell you what courrier they used which is a major PITA for me because almost none of the carriers actually drop packages off at my address, and they keep changing where they drop packages to make things worse... And now the post office is on strike, which was the only reliable way to get $#!& here. I'm only a little bitter. Jegs and Summit both have eBay listings at US$440, and magically only like $25 shipping, which just slightly undercuts what I'm getting semi-locally, but I don't think it's worth enough to merit trying to chase the shipment around when 4wheelparts.ca will use a courrier I know to be reliable.

You're probably the only person I've encountered said "packed up the shed to move" and wasn't only refering to the contents. That said I've prebuilt a couple similar buildings in the shop and torn them back down again for a trip under a helicopter. Several trips, that is. But they never seem to go back together quite the same way they came apart once they're out in the backcountry, no matter how carefully you mark everything. New management has meant the crew quit doing that after I left, and is just flying all the raw materials out, spending a few nights up in the mountains, and building them on site.

If it's anything like 50% of the other custom utility truck bodies I've seen, they ran the filler neck totally horizontally so that you start pumping gas onto the ground long before the pump kicks off.

Awesome, thanks. And yeah that's the one. It's always worth a shot. Jegs and Summit were the best prices I found at about $US450. I'm still almost expecting to get that $625 billed in USD because its like $800 from any other place I found this side of the 49th.

Looking for the D35 in my ZJ. 3.54&up carrier. Pickings be understandably slim. Clearly the correct answer is to put a better axle back there but I want to keep a pretty factory appearance on this one, and factory for a '93 means I'm stuck with the Turdy5. I didn't see one listed at Yukon's website for the d35, although it's not the easiest site to navigate. The other options I've seen for helical style gears are from Nitro, which is a bit of an unknown and priced competitively with the Truetrac which is a known factor; and the Powertrax Grip Pro which looks exactly like the Nitro down to the silly single red fastener on Powertrax's site but claims to be the most skookum choice despite being priced lower than the others (so I'm skeptical) while also having no reviews, poor supply, and somehow all the retailers have photos of a very different unit than what Powertrax has pictured. And I guess there's one from Torsen themselves although they list it for a Ford SLA IFS application (supposedly not compatible with TTB) that I haven't confirmed is going to work. I'm definitely open to other options if they exist. Looking at CAD$625 to my door... or at least a local business's door. Shipping so far has been the big killer on US suppliers. Not that 4wheelparts isn't just a Canadian extension of a US supplier anyhow, but I don't need to deal with exchange rates and $10 shipping isn't awful. Looking at $470 US which is only more than the going rate until you factor in US$75-150 for shipping, depending on retailer.

I was scouring the interwebs trying to find a deal on an Eaton Truetrac for my ZJ. Haven't found anything that beats regular price + shipping from 4wheelparts.ca.

That looks pretty good, yeah. I changed one out on my MJ with similar mileage. No paint left on it, covered in surface rust. I didn't cut it open, but the mud puddle that poured out the back end of it was the colour and texture of overly rich hot chocolate. Crazily changing it didn't affect the way the truck ran at all.

Should be a round tag on the tcase with numbers on it indicating build date, etc. Otherwise the big indicators for year are going to be whether its internal slave, what speed sensor it has in the tcase (if it even has one) and whether or not it's got a sealed output on the tcase. There may or may not also be differences in the pilot bearing size, so the tip of the input shaft. But I'm not too sure. I'm not sure I'd want to run a transmission when the yard couldn't tell me what it came from, and left it sitting open for a few years collecting who knows what inside. I definitely wouldn't be exciting about exchanging money for it. As to getting those bolts out, you can use modelling clay or silicone/RTV to form a ring around it to trap penetrating oil and let it soak for a few days before hitting it with the vice grips again. WD40 also isn't the best option out there. Personally what I would do though is get some nuts that just barely slide over the ends of the broken bolts, and weld them on, effectively creating new heads for the bolts. Fill the whole nut up with weld. Wait until it's fully cooled The advantages of this are that you've firstly created a new head to turn the bolt, and secondly the act of getting the bolt cherry red and then cooling it back down might just be enough dimensional change to break the bolt loose. But then not everyone has a welder.

Yeah. It's a lot of little fiddly bits.

Tough to say really. The sunrise and set times quoted by various sources are when it hits the horizon, which is a couple hours removed from when it pops up over the mountains. It's not totally dark yet by 5pm when I'm leaving work, but we've already had the sunset colours come and go by then. I'd say it starts getting light about 9-9:30, with the sun up over the mountains by 10:30 for sure. My memory from last year at the beginning of January was the sun cracking over the mountains at 11:30 and dropping back below right around 3. So yeah, 4, 5 hours, somewhere in there.

I pulled the dash to replace wires with the seats in place. They give you somewhere to sit to work, lol. If you've got a full console I can see that getting in the way, though.

The view out the filthy shop windows. It kinda sucks being stuck inside all day, from dawn till dusk.

It's surprising to me as well that it's rated that much for towing. I'm pretty sure the JL is rated for 3500lbs just like the JK was. But that's in the ballpark if they're actually trying to be competitive with the current offering of midsize trucks. I expect that'll only be with proper equipment, a "metric ton" package so to speak, with beefier axle, etc. The much longer wheelbase over the JLU would lead to more stability as well.

Yeah that's pretty much where I'm at on that. It looks like probably it'll work but after shipping and exchange rates it's a $750 wager so... Yeah. Its a ZJ not an XJ? Not sure if you missed that or not. I could do the swap I suppose but because it's a factory five-speed part of me wants to at least visually leave it stock(ish... Within how the PO left it with the 2" lift) That's part of why I'm looking at gear-type diffs. Not that I ever expect to save money by not having to use friction modifier or replace clutches, but just that it's one less thing to have to worry about. How long have you had your TrueTrac? Years/miles? I've seen claims that it'll last the life of the vehicle but I'm always a bit skeptical of the marketing wanks.

Seems to me like it's for whatever this crowd was.

Well considering it's a harvest festival, traditionally we celebrate it around harvest time, on the second Monday of October. And we definitely don't celebrate it by staying up all night waiting in line to get trampled to death at Walmart.

https://www.cherokeeforum.com/f51/dash-removal-35444/ I followed that one years ago. The only thing I would add is that you have to unbolt the parking brake release handle from the lower dash panel in step one.

Depends on how the pump dies. Mine was making noise when it was dead, even with the ballast resistor in the loop. It just was worn out and wasn't pumping worth a damn. But because it was making noise I knew it wasn't an electrical problem.