terrawombat

I always go back and forth purchasing one of the old DRB II units since I own a couple of early 90's Mitsubishis that use the same tool. I've also tossed around the idea of the Snap-on MT-2500 unit since that claims it can do the same vehicles and years as the Chrysler DRB II tool, plus a heap of others (in general, it also costs less) - just want a clarification that it can do Renix-era Jeeps...

Running it under the XJ 4.0 mode is correct. If you don't mind me asking, how much and where did you pick that scanner up?

Sounds to me like he replaced the bearings hoping the knock would go away, but the bearings weren't the problem...

Yea, I took a look at that before. The problem is getting this truck back from my parents since they use it every day. Once the harvest season is over at the end of this month, I think I may confiscate the truck and fix some things on it.

A lot of the terminology he used wasn't made up and actually made a bit of sense the way it was used, but towards the middle of the video, he goes off the deep end ;)

Intake is easy - two external torx bolts on the top of the bellhousing are much more fun with the engine/trans in the truck :)

I picked this up for free from my uncle. He said it wouldn't run and didn't know what was wrong with it. Said when it did run, it wouldn't idle and would stall...said it was a POS and he didn't want it anymore. Just needed a $10 distributor rotor button (old one was fried) to get it to run and then it needed the EGR capped off to have it idle right. It was a great truck up until I gave it to my parents to use on their farm. Now the drivers door is falling off the hinges, the engine sounds terrible (might be flex plate bolts) and it has a few more dents. Poor thing only has about 78k miles on it. I need to rescue it one day...

Swapped the engine and transmission out of a '91 3000GT VR-4 in my rented house when I was at school. Took up a better part of the driveway for a few months - took some time to source a good, used engine and trans. I was even fined by the township for doing 'more than routine automotive repair work' on the car after being warned twice. I was able to plead it down to a $50 violation for having grass that was too tall. I think the original fine was $150 or so.

Why is it that all previous owners think they are electrical engineers :roll: :fs1: Nice project :thumbsup: -Gary 75% of electrical engineers can't wire something up, but they'll give you a hell of a drawing of how it's SUPPOSED to go together ;) Sorry to all of the electrical engineers on here that took offense to my comment (I promise you're in the 25% I didn't talk of!).

Absolutely. But more importantly, the injectors leaking after the engine has been shut down will cause fuel to enter the cylinders, trickle past the cylinder rings and wind up in your crankcase oil. Drain the oil and give it a good whiff - does it smell like fuel? This is something you don't want to happen as the fuel will wash the oil off of the cylinder walls after shutdown. This will cause a direct metal on metal contact upon start up until new oil reaches the walls. My '88 MJ did EXACTLY this and it went this way for a couple years. It was being used strictly as a farm vehicle and saw very little on-road use so we didn't care. End result - the engine is trashed. The bearings are gone, the cylinder walls are likely worn so bad that the piston ring endgap is huge causing the massive amount of blowby I'm currently getting. The oil pressure is always low (due to the extremely worn bearings) and it feels like it has lost a lot of power. Kind of sad considering the engine only has about 105K miles on it.

Hey qwk2race - thanks a lot for that information. In my research, I've always found little bits and pieces of how the 4.0L block changed throughout the years (as well as throughout the Jeep models), but the info was always very vague with statements like, "the accessory mounts changed" or "the heads are different." It's nice to get finally have someone with first-hand experience chime in on what they know - so thank you for that. I know for sure that the cylinder heads are different on the '88 motor vs. the '00 motor. The '00 motor has the undesirable 0331 casting, which has had more than its share of failures (it will crack between the 3 and 4 exhaust ports). I'm not quite sure what cylinder head the '88 motor has nor do I care since it's getting scrapped. The only thing I'm concerned about is that the bolt pattern for the intake/exhaust manifolds on both motors are identical - and I'm 99.99% sure that they are. The intake and exhaust ports may be of different sizes on both years, but I'm not too worried about that. I'll fabricate an adapter plate if need be - I've done it to my '01 XJ that now has a '98 XJ motor in it (the exhaust ports on the '98 motor were too large for the '01 header). One of my main concerns was the crankshaft - in doing my research I ran across a couple of fellas that believe the crankshafts changed throughout the years - specifically where the flywheel/flexplate/clutch bolts to the end. Also, thanks for the tip on the fuel injectors. I'll most likely stick with the ones from Precision Auto Injectors because they are cleaned and come with a certification of flow matching to within 1%. I struggled through months of trying to tune another car of mine where I took a gamble and bought injectors that may or may not have been flow matched. I could never quite get the proper mixture at WOT and I wound up tracing it back to the injectors. While I won't be doing ANY tuning on this particular engine, that whole ordeal has left enough of a scar in my memory to never travel down that route again.

Now you just need to get a hose clamp with an external torx screw. That way when the tailgate is stolen, you can narrow it down to another Jeeper :)

I've run the engine with the valve cover off and things didn't get too messy. You definitely don't want to rev it up, though unless you like to live dangerously ;)

So did ya get it? I think I saw this same MJ on Craigslist earlier today.

My '88 MJ 4.0L will crank and crank and crank before it fires up. I lose fuel pressure to the rail at a steady rate once the engine is shut down. I originally had leaking injectors, but once I fixed that, the problem persisted. I'm almost positive that there is a check valve in or around the fuel pump that has gone bad and I'm going to install an inline check valve one of these days to see if it cures the problem.

Thanks for the excerpt from that article! I have the donor engine up on a stand and rolled it close to the MJ engine bay so I could do a back-and-forth check to make sure all of the mounting points are identical. From what I can tell - which is hindered by the fact the engine in the MJ is all bolted up and accessories are in the way - most of the mounting points are there. There are, however, a couple that I'm concerned about - one being the coolant temperature sensor on the Renix vs. the '00 XJ engine, but I think I can get around that by using the newer style sensor location on the thermostat housing. There is another sensor on the drivers side of the engine near the bottom by the oil pan. I'm not quite sure what it is or if it penetrates all the way through the block. If it doesn't, I think I'm fine as my '00 block has a threaded hole in that location, but it was never used by the newer '00 XJ electronics (as is evident by the rust buildup in the hole).

Cool! Thanks for the advice on the oil filter housing - didn't know that one. I'm definitely going to add the Ford injectors as I've heard nothing but good things about them and the fella that sells them.

Thanks for the tip. I have a junk '01 4.0L engine as well that I could steal a lot of the accessory brackets off of.

Because it was given to me from a friend and it ran great. Compression is solid all across the board and it passed a leakdown test with flying colors. His truck had about 85k miles on it before it got hit hard and was totaled by the insurance company. Now, the engine in my '89 MJ is tired...REALLY tired. It had a problem with leaking injectors after engine shutdown where fuel contaminated the crankcase oil to the point where the oil was coming out thinner than water when it was drained. The bearings are shot, the rings are shot, compression is all over the place, it FAILS a leakdown test, and it has more blow-by than I've ever seen. OH, the oil pressure isn't that great, either. There are plenty more reasons why I'd like to ditch this engine, but I think I've provided enough! ;)

Every sensor from the Renix system would be retained and used in one place or another, even if it means I have to modify certain components. I'd definitely reuse the old distributor in place of the camshaft position sensor/coilpacks - I see no reason why I couldn't get that to work. On the subject of the manifold ports. The 2000+ heads use smaller exhaust ports, but the bolt pattern for mounting is identical to my 1989 head. I haven't looked into intake compatibility yet, but I was planning on using the '89 intake manifold to retain all of the sensors. I also wouldn't be opposed to ditching the '00 cylinder head (since it's prone to cracking) and reusing the '89 head (after a rebuild).

In the coming weeks, I'm going to be swapping in a 4.0L motor that I have from a 2000 XJ into my 1989 MJ project I've been slowly working on. I plan to use all of the Renix electronics/sensors from the original motor so as to hopefully have a "turn-key" solution. However, upon reading some post about newer engines in older trucks, I realized that may not be so easy. So, I figured you guys could help me out here so I don't miss something silly. So far, I've read that I must use the original flywheel as the newer one will not be compatible with the older Renix CPS. Ok, fine, but will the older style flywheel bolt right up to the '00 crank? I thought I read somewhere that the crank dimensions are slightly different and require a specially machined bushing if they are to be interchanged. Also, at the time of the swap, I'm going to be looking to replace the original BA10 transmission with an AX15. I'll do my best to find the external slave cylinder bellhousing out of later model XJs. So, if there is anything else that needs to be addressed, please let me know so I can take care of it BEFORE I dive into the swap :) Thanks in advance!

Hello - I'm in Central NJ, on the western side by PA. Both of my MJs are down for the count right now, but I did just get my '01 XJ up and running.

I wasn't too certain since I thought I saw the 'Eliminator' decals on the side of this particular truck. I think it was around exit 32 or 34 that I saw this MJ. Whereabouts in Central Jersey are you located? I'm in the Princeton area - Pennington to be exact.

This truck looks awfully familiar. Were you traveling on I-295 (northbound) this morning around 7AM? Saw a truck just like this on my way to work. I was in an '01 silver XJ.

I spy an '07 Kawi Z1000 in the background of one of your pictures. Sorry, not related to the topic on hand...I just get excited when I see them :)