Pathkiller

12. Any tire which has been recut or regrooved except commercial tires so designed and constructed to provide for acceptable and safe recutting and regrooving. (Regrooved tires must be identified on each sidewall as a regrooved tire.) Apples and oranges indeed. Retreads are not recut or regrooved. Recut and regrooved is when the existing tread is cut to make the tread blocks deeper. Many commercial tires are designed to be regroovable, they can be recut as the tread wears down to provide more traction. This rule also seems to rule out siping of tires, which would qualify as recutting.

Furthermore, upon further investigation, it appears you are not only wrong about the legality of retreads, you are completely wrong. The State of Virgina commissioned a study on whether to regulate the use of retreads in 1999 and actually came out strongly IN SUPPORT of them. http://www.retread.org/PDF/Study_VA.pdf Some of the report's highlights: "All previous studies, including this study, have determined a small percentage of the rubber on the roadway actually comes from retreaded tires that failed due to production standards related to the retreading tire industry. Examination of the debris reveals many of the tires are new and have never been recapped. Careful research indicates that perception is not reality in the majority of the actual cases. New tires will fail the same as retreaded tires under similar conditions." The study recommends: "Based on the results of this study, this Committee does not recommend the development of state standards. There is a misconception that all tire debris problems are attributed to retreading operations, which is not factual. Furthermore, imposing standards would only affect the 3.5 percent of retreaders that operatei n Virginia. In lieu of developing state standards, theC ommittee recommended the following action: 0 Concentrate on public education concerning proper tire maintenance and the importance of maintaining recommended air pressure in tires. 0 Encourage key members of the tire industry to maintain strict industry standards and follow recommended practices and processing guidelines. 0 Forward all available information to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration for their review and consideration in developing Federal Standards for recapped tires designed for large commercial motor vehicles." Furthermore, the US Government uses and highly recommends retreads, and companies such as FedEx, UPS and the US Postal Service use retreads on their vehicles. If you are worried about my tires becoming "alligators and killing someone" you are entitled, but you might as well be worried about getting struck by lightning because it's far more likely.

As you can plainly see in the pictures above, they are mounted. Thus, yes, I have already ordered them. From the State of Virginia's Administrative code, which you can see below, there is absolutely nothing in there about retread tires being illegal. If you have information to the contrary I would appreciate seeing it. http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504 ... C30-70-130 9. – INSPECT TIRES, WHEELS & RIMS FOR: * Condition of tires including tread depth. * Mixing radials and bias ply tires. * Wheels that are cracked or damaged so as to affect safe operation.

They're on sale through Jan 31st for $55 each. Shipping for all four to Lorton, VA was about $75. The company is in Edgemont, South Dakota. Here's the website: http://treadwright.com/ Mine balanced pretty good but a couple of them took quite a bit of lead to balance. They drive smooth and straight though and ride great.

Getting my MJ back in shape, it's been in storage for 3 years on my parents' farm in Missouri. Drove it back to Virginia over Christmas and getting it back up to daily driver condition. I've owned this 1987 MJ since 1994, (14 years!) it currently has almost 175,000 miles. It has the original 4.0L engine, untouched, but I upgraded to an AX-15 and NP231 out of a '97 TJ a few years ago. It still has a Rough Country 3" lift on it I installed way back in 1994. Just added a new set of TreadWright (formerly Hi-Tech Retreading) retreads in 31x10.50-15. They came on BFG AT carcasses. I'm pretty impressed with these tires. Found a set of XJ buckets locally for $20. I installed them and a full center console today, pretty easy job and I'm very happy with them. Here are some pics: [[/img][/url]

My dad owned a camper shell manufacturing business for a few years. In the 70's and early 80's trucks were all standard, Ford, Chevy and Dodge campers all interchanged, the only difference was shortbed versus longbed (not counting stepsides, but no one ever put campers on those anyway). They were all square. The Chevy redesign in '88 created havoc because the new Chevy's had a pretty extreme taper from front to rear and wouldn't interchange with anything else. When he finally sold the business in the late 90's there was almost no interchange, every shell had to be made to fit the specific truck the customer had. It made it very hard to keep ready-made campers in stock for the walk-in customer. Toyota was the worst offender, they had about 6 different bed lengths that varied anywhere from 3/4" up to 3 or 4 inches, depending on where the bed was made. Very weird. So this longwinded answer is to say yes, most other trucks taper from front to rear.

Mine is 56 3/8" in front and 55 1/4" at the tailgate. Almost a 1" taper front to rear. You're right, the bed is not square, the whole thing tapers front to rear. Are you building a cover or buying one? I've never seen a retractable cover, but I know from personal experience that camper shells are built to match the taper.

There's an old thread on this topic. Essentially an S-10 or Ranger is a close fit if you can't find one specific to a Comanche. The height of the cab is not an exact fit, the S-10 and Ranger are shorter, but it's close. The bed dimensions are the same, both short and long beds.

Measure from the inside lip of the bedrail, not from the outside. The outside follows the body contour and tapers from front to back. The inside is square.

One of Jeep's stupider ideas. Even my 98 TJ has one. Amazing how quickly your brain completely ignores it. I shift when I want to, not when the idiot light tells me to.

Meh. So many "competitors" have come and gone, but Jeep remains. Scout, Bronco, Blazer, Samurai, all dead...

Punctuation is your friend. I'm not sure I understand your run-on sentence. :???:

Like they say in the article, if the tranny ain't broke why replace it? Sure it might (probably will) go out eventually but until it does why not use what you've got? I put up with a horrendous noise from mine for a while until I got a very low mileage used Peugout for free and swapped them. Ran that one without any trouble at all until the transfer case crapped out. Got a good deal on an AX-15 and NP231 out of a TJ and made what is hopefully the final swap.

No offense, but from the nature of your question I think the rear main seal is beyond your skill level. It can be a tricky job and you should have the correct tools to do it right (do you have a torque wrench?). If you decide to try it, get a repair manual that shows photos and step by step instructions and allow yourself plenty of time for the job. Good luck.

Mine did that when the throttle cable wore out. The cable itself started wearing through the outer shroud and would stick. Very dangerous, fix it soon. It's a dealer item.

Maybe, but what's more rare? An MJ or an early Isuzu? I don't recall seeing many Isuzu's running around with camper shells.

Your 2.5L is not a "rice burner" unless you've somehow converted it to run on rice-based ethanol. It's a 100% American engine, designed by AMC (AMERICAN Motors Corp), so there's nothing ricey about it. With AMC's history with Renault you could maybe get away with calling it a wine burner, but rice? No way. :USAflag:

Hi Eagle! I'm the former ComancheGuy. Long time since those early NAXJA days. My MJ has been in storage in Missouri for 3 years since I moved to DC for work. I'm driving it back here in 3 weeks at Christmas. Regarding camper shells (toppers, caps, whatever they are called locally), Eagle has a great memory. Dimensionally, the shortbed MJ is the same length and width as an S-10 or Ranger. I ran a camper shell from an S-10 on my MJ for a while and it fit perfectly everywhere except the height was about 1/2" or 3/4" shorter than the back of the cab. Still looked fine though. Some Toyota's have the same dimensions as well, although back at the time my family was in the industry Toyota had about 5-6 different variations in bed dimensions and we pretty much had to custom fit each camper shell to each truck. They varied in length by as much as an inch or two. If you measure your truck for a shell, measure outside to outside width of the bed rails, then measure length from the front edge of the front bed lip to the back edge of the top of the tailgate. Oddly enough, since this topic originally asked about Dakotas, the longbed Dakota camper was a perfect fit on fullsize Jeep pickups J-10, etc. My dad ran one on his 73 J-4000.