Sir Sam

Congrats man keep it up!

Stock XJs don’t adjust volume.

Damn, RIP Jim. I wish I had the chance to meet him. I missed out at the recent meet n greet. Please no one take this the wrong way: Jim used to say "When I die she's just gonna scrap all my cars." I think he was serious, and I also think he would not want that. Anyone know if he still had something at risk of being lost? I know he had sold a few vehicles but I don't know what he had these days.

The ones I’ve had for 96 or 97 were both like that but had the bumper bracket welded to them. I think I need to dig them out and look at the holes to understand better. I’m thinking that I never realized these could be moved forward 4” for this hidden kit.

Back in the fall while I had the engine out I bought some used lines to replace the missing ones, cleaned, flushed, reflush, purgued, flushed the whole system, refilled with proper amount of oil, and vacuum check the system. It held vacuum as expected but since it was already getting cool out I put aside the AC work. AC lines held vacuum up until a month ago when I charged the system. Unfortunately after charging and getting the low pressure side hig enough the compressor did not kick on. I bypassed the relay(jumpered) and the compressor kicked on and I started getting some cool. So I had to break out the FSM for wiring and start figuring why the pressure switch wasn't causing the compressor to kick on. After digging around I found the pinouts needed and was able to verify I did not have wire continuity from the relay coil to the switch, but I did have continuity from the switch to the ECU sink/ground trigger. I ran a 12V jumper from the relay coil to the AC switch for testing, the AC system kicked on like it should so I verified a wire break between the relay and the switch. I also knew I had a wire break from the Intake Air Temperature(IAT) sensor which is behind the pass turn signal on the factory air inlet duct, both the supply and ground side wiring for this sensor had a break going up to the connectors by the fuse box, which is where the pressure switch wiring runs. (As a side note I installed a 2200 ohm resistor down at the ECU to trick it to read correct and turn off the CEL so I could pass an emissions test. So with at least 3 broken wires I figured it was likely they were cut in the same place. I spent quite a bit of time with my fluke wire toner and pulling around on the main wire harness: And got a rough idea where it might be, which was under the pass headlight. I started checking and pulling off tape and found this: Since under the pass headlight is a crappy place to work to solder I cut zip ties on the passenger harness and managed to get enough slack to pull it through into the engine bay: Then looking at it closer I found this: So I soldered them back together, and then heat shrunk over them, and double wrapped some with tape or a second later of heat shrink. With that done I put everything back together and test ran it, AC was making cold! Watching pressure at idle in driveway with redtek R12 replacement instead of R134a: Then I took it for a drive and noticed a repeating number on the odometer when I pulled back in the driveway. One thing I noticed is that the cooling fan doesn't cycle for this setup, even when its really hot. The ECU will turn on one fan relay when the engine gets warm, but I'm not sure what turns on the other relay. Both windings work and the fan turns on, for high or low, but without the fan running and crawling in traffic or sitting at a light there is not enough airflow to get proper cooling on the condenser. Not sure if thats the way its supposed to work or what should kick the fan on for AC cooling purposes. I could run a jumper from the clutch relay to one of the fan relays so that anytime the AC clutch is on a fan relay is on, which would keep some airflow all the time, but that seems unnecessary.

Interesting.

Gave the 96- hooks to a buddy and the 97+ are buried in a box somewhere. The rugged ridge tow hooks are basically a copy of the factory tow hooks with the exception that the factory hooks had the bumper bracket welded to them, this meant the 96- and 97+ tow hooks were not interchangeable. When rugged ridge copied them they let the user reuse their factory bumper bracket with the copy of the original bolted to it. I don't think there is any added strength from the tow hooks bracket being welded to the bumper bracket. If you really cannot find a reference pic I will go digging around for them, but I think you can find decent pics of the rugged ridge or OEM around online.

I had both 97 and 96 tow hook brackets side by side. Neither had a provision for forward mount. They had a 96 or 97 bumper bracket welded to the two hooks with extra support that run back along the frame. I have never seen OEM tow hooks/bumper bracket combos with a provision for mounting further forward.

Reproducing the "factory" hidden winch isn't a bad idea, I'm just not sure of the market or if its the best design. Might be able to make better by just engineering new. FYI Boostwerks makes a hidden winch setup which is not trying to be a "factory" setup. http://www.boostwerksengineering.com/

I agree, its someone going - "Ok, everything else is too expensive, oh look a wagon, I'll do that."

Is anyone from the Loveland area going’s down? I need some parts from yelleah but haven’t been able to get by his place. Sounds like he is going and could hand them off to someone that might work out. Let me know, thanks.

I like what I like without regard for what others think. If other people don’t like them it doesnt affect me.

Scored a set of 5 TJ Moabs off on an XJ. I couldn't believe it, the Jeep had been in the yard at least 2 weeks and I got 5. Then I found an XJ Jeep freedom with the Ultrastars still on it, I took 2 of em and left the other 2 since I have 5-6 vehicles worth of them.

Not sure who’s 7pm, but if you want something it’s probably 20% off a single order.

Where are you getting your fuel? Only time I have ever heard pinging on an XJ the fuel came from the same station, at Cameroon AZ, and years apart. Ethanol has a higher octane than gas, so higher running blend ethanol fuels will help, but at the cost of lower MPG.

Saw the truck for sale but I missed the CC club sticker. Not anyone I recognize.

Not shown on that map is poughkepgpsie to california pass to animas forks. Or poughgepsie to mineral to engineer. Or engineer. Or cinnamon, or Stony pass, those three also all cross over from the lake city side. Imogene, black bear, and ophir all cross over to the telluride side. I haven't run some of the above passes in years, so I don't have GPS map data for them.

Your timing for the ouray area gives you lots of time to spend going slow and sightseeing. Not a bad thing, but you could potentially cover a greater area while you are there to see a few more roads and passes. I have put together a downloadable map, you can open in google earth, or your map program of choice, it will show you some more of the spider web of trails in the area: http://colorado4wheel.com/content/trails/Ouray_tracks_Jul_2017.kmz Please feel free to use it, but please do not share with others outside of here. I continue to map the region and intend to commercial the map information in the future.

I really like my 05 KJ CRD. It gets driven at WOT several times a day and pushed hard whenever I can. Seems to be running fine at 180k.

You bring up exactly why I wouldn’t want them hosted and why I wanted to know what the TOS would be. I have my own hosting service, which has been online longer than Comanche club has, which I know and control the contents of my photos and their location. I prefer to use my own hosting solution for reliability and and control over IP.

So after this is implemented all future posts with an img /img tag will automatically be archived? If something is posted with a URL tag will that avoid the archiving? What is the new TOS? I am concerned about copyrighted information being hosted and stored elsewhere. Granted copyrighted pictures can be easily copied and used without permission but I am not a fan of IP being stored elsewhere.

Wait so my picture links are getting hijacked - downloaded and reposted to a different server I have no control of? Can I opt out?

96 ECU is unique since it is OBDII but is also pre facelift. You might be complaining about the fact its a one year only ECU, But I would remind you that more XJs were made in 1996 than in 1994 and 1995 combined, more were made in 96 than in 97, or 98, or 99, or 00, or 2001. In fact, more XJs were made in 1996 THAN IN ANY OTHER MODEL YEAR.