jeepcoma

Just the bench-side mounting brackets.

Congrats!

My wife was driving the MJ (4.0, AX-15, internal slave) this morning and the clutch completely jammed up on her. She couldn't push it in at all to change gears or anything and managed to limp home in 1st. I get home from work and it's frozen up solid. She said it's randomly happened to her before, it would get real hard and be impossible to push in, but after a second or two it would free up and act completely normal. Any idea what can cause this? I looked in the cabin and there's nothing obstructing the pedal movement, what about beyond the firewall? Could something have gotten in the way in the engine bay, where the rod extends past the firewall (I can't really see it from the top and of course it's dark and cold out)? If there is water in the clutch fluid, could it have frozen from the cold snap we've had? A few small frozen particles of water floating around maybe clogging something? Any tips where I should look first? Despite having driven manuals all my life I've never had to actually do any maintenance on them and am a complete newb...

Your power numbers look a bit high, pre-emissions gross HP high. My '73 304 Javelin is rated at a measly 150 HP, ~235 torque. It gets worse in some years, 125/220 in early 80s jeeps. 4.0 specs: '87...... XJ: 173hp at 4500rpm, 220lbft @ 2500rpm, redline 5000rpm '88-'90 XJ: 177hp at 4500rpm, 224lbft at 2400rpm, redline 5000rpm '91-'95 XJ: 190hp at 4750rpm, 225lbft at 3950rpm, redline 5250rpm '96-'99 XJ: 190hp at 4600rpm, 225lbft at 3000rpm, redline 5300rpm '00-'01 XJ: 193hp at 4600rpm, 231lbft at 3000rpm, redline 5300rpm '91-'95 YJ: 180hp @ 4750rpm, 220lbft @ 3950rpm, redline 5250rpm '96-'99 TJ: 181hp @ 4600rpm, 222lbft @ 2800rpm, redline 5300rpm '00-'06 TJ: 190hp @ 4600rpm, 235lbft @ 3200rpm, redline 5300rpm '93-'95 ZJ: 190hp @ 4750rpm, 225lbft @ 3950rpm, redline 5250rpm '96-'98 ZJ: 185hp @ 4600rpm, 220lbft @ 2400rpm, redline 5300rpm '99-'05WJ:195hp @ 4600rpm, 230lbft @ 3000rpm, redline 5300rpm

We ended up with about 12-16", hard to tell because of the snow drifts but we got a good dumping. It was snowing pretty hard last night when we went 4 wheeling This morning cleaning up Having some fun in a parking lot.

What snow? Went for a nice midnight drive :D

How about a Comanche Club keychain? That would be cool. Or key blanks.

Ordered two rear shocks from rockauto the other day, the came in today so I figured it'd be an easy swap since I've had the shocks on and off so many times nothing was rusted up. (Sensatrack 37029) Broke the passenger upper shock mount :fs1: Just twisted it right off. Arg! The rest was easy. Went for a test ride and the results are great, finally restored ride quality (I was using XJ shocks 37027 which were at full extension with the truck just sitting on the driveway), but I'm not sure what to do to fix the mount. Only the threaded part sheared off, the solid mount remains so the upper eye sits fine in there, I just don't have a good idea to do a fix, either temporary or permanent. Maybe just JB weld it back on there for now and see if it will stick? As long as I don't tighten it too much it should hold. Ugh everything is rusty. When I crawl under there to work it just makes me sick. I was hoping to get the floorboards replaced this summer but ran out of time, now I have to hope they last the winter. Everything in the rear is rusting up. I think I'll buy a few dozen cans of rustolem and just spray everything. As soon as I fix one thing, another breaks. :fs1: :ack: Very disheartening right now when money is tight and I can't fix the truck up the way I'd like... maybe someday.

Between the spring rate and height yeah you should get around 1.5". I'm looking for a set to balance the lift I got in the rear with the MT springs. The ZJ springs looked like the best option.

I've got two, one was working when removed about a year ago, the other is unknown. PM me if interested.

I've got a grey one in excellent condition, not too far from you in RI. Can take pics if you're interested. Willing to meet a reasonable distance if you're in the area any time, I also travel up I-90 through Albany fairly often and could stop somewhere along the way.

Did you used to have them? Maybe I'm thinking of someone else. :dunno: Anyway, the XJ shocks I have on now are the 37027 which are 12.75/20 compressed/extended. They worked great with the regular 4wd springs, but as soon as I put the MT springs in the additional height I got in the rear from the higher spring rate put them at fully extended just sitting in the driveway. They're not lift springs but the bed rides higher without weight in it, so I'm hoping the extra 3" from the MJ shocks will be enough. The 37029 are listed as 2x4 rear shocks, but there doesn't seem to be anything specific for 4x4. Does anyone happen to know the specs of the factory shocks that came with the MT (or towing) package? They also had KYB5466 and 344090 shocks available but I can't for the life of me find any details about lengths and travel.

Thanks for the link. Just bought two rear shocks, Monroe Sensatrack 37029s to replace the XJ sensatracks I have installed. With the MT springs I'm riding around fully extended, hopefully this is a good replacement. Hard to find specs from manufactures about lengths and travel, but I think hornbrod is running these with his MT springs too without problems. Also used discount code 23733171326659 (enter in the "where did you hear about us" section) and saved some more bucks! Came to $52.49 shipped for the pair.

Lockers for the win. I absolutely hated driving in the snow with the open front and rear, even in 4x4. Locked 2x4 works better than the old open 4x4 ever did, and the rear end is controlled an 100% predictable in its movement. That doesn't mean that you can drive like an idiot in the snow and not lose control, but I much prefer having control of the rear wheels together with the throttle and clutch and steering than having one or two wheels lose grip and spin up. I have never felt like I am in more control in the snow with open diffs than limited slip or lockers. It takes a different driving style for sure, smooth steering throttle clutch and brakes, but I'll take two rear driving wheels over one any day of the week.

How's the timing on it, as well as the advance mechanism? A few degrees here or there you might not notice when cruising but can make a huge difference when starting, especially when extremely cold. Also a sticking EGR valve that doesn't close all the way could cause "sometimes it starts sometimes it doesn't". You also need to rule out the obvious ignition problems like bad plugs, wires, cap, rotor, battery, etc. If you're noticing weak spark, it's possible to get good cranking speed from the battery but not enough juice to run the rest of the ignition, this also would be more of a factor in the extreme cold.

FWIW my '91 HO runs great, exactly as you described, and has the same noisy lifter problem. Once it's warmed up, and I mean really warmed up enough to get the oil pressure down around 20-30 psi at idle, the ticking seems to go away. You could try some miracle additive like marvel mystery oil, or a cleaner like seafoam, and see if it goes away or lessens. One other common issues is a cracked exhaust manifold, which will tend to be louder at first startup when cold and lessen as the manifold warms up (how much it quiets depends on the size of the crack). If the overheating really caused some serious damage you'd be burning coolant, so if you're not loosing any it's probably nothing serious (it easily could have been ticking before the overheating incident and the guy just never paid attention to it until after when he was listening for problems); take a long wooden rod or dowel and stick one end against the engine and another against your ear to probe around the engine to determine where the noise is coming from and you can probably narrow it down to one cylinder or lifter which you can then inspect. A compression test never hurt either if overheating damage is suspected.

If you don't want to pony up for the MT-90, Penzzoil Synchromax is also supposed to be synchro safe. I used it in my last change to flush what the previous owner had in there (smelled like ATF coming out), I had lots of grinding and difficulty getting it into first. It's smooth now. In the future I think I'll try the MT-90 to see if it improves further.

They are complete brand new springs with bushings. Literally, just unbolt the old leafs and put the new ones in. You might of course need to replace your ubolts. I put some pics up here and more in my build thread here. Good stuff.

Last week I finished wiring up the trailer lighting, and added some of those license plate light/bolt things for my new bumper. Got everything ready for towing so hopefully I can take the sailboat out before winter :roll: Then, when I went to open the tail gate to put stuff back in, broke the handle right off! :fs1: Just the Jeep's way of saying that there's always something more to be done... Any good ideas for a replacement handle I can get?

Looks like good stuff. I'm loving my MJ bumper!

Gee wish that'd been available when I bought my MT springs :doh:

I've installed my nice new JCR bumper as a "temporary" install until I replace the original crusty bumper bolts that hold it to the frame, but then I got to thinking, why not just weld it to the frame? Besides the obvious fact that it would make removal a PITA, are there any negatives to welding my bumper as a permanent install and forgoing bolting it to the frame?

Someone say swap in RI?

Well it was dark when I finished, but got my JCR bumper installed Crappy night pics until later Need to fix the rust behind the bumper now since it's so glaringly ugly.

Someone local is parting out a '95 V8 ZJ. He says I can take the coil springs for $25, front suspensions pieces for $25 (for everything, but mainly I want the swaybar and will grab anything that swaps), and the steering box for $50. So for $100 I can pretty much take all I need. I have to go yank them myself, but do these seem like fair prices or would I save a bunch of bucks at the junkyard? I've read the steering boxes are getting hard to come by, but I'm not sure I want it $50 bad.