terrawombat

I wish you the best with the closing. I didn't think mine was going to go through on time as I drove by the night before closing (like you did) and saw the previous owners on their couch watching TV with all of the furniture in the living room. They were really cutting it close to the wire. During my final walk-through of the house, the wife was in the kitchen packing up the dishes and the husband was out in the garage loading up his truck. It was a little awkward, but we got through it. Closing was pretty painless since the sellers needed to leave by a certain time to get their kids from daycare and my title agent needed to get to another closing after mine so it went pretty quick. I also got all of the closing documents the night prior and read over them so there wasn't really any surprises. I have basically moved the downstairs of the house in and got a ton of used furniture and garden equipment from my GF's father (good thing he doesn't throw anything away). Mower just needs a carb rebuild and engine cable which I've got on order and should be here Monday. Grass will be pretty tall by then...hope no one says anything. Also met my neighbors and got the low down on my house and all of its owners. My one neighbor is an older lady in her 70's or 80's who has lived in her house since she was 10. She showed me where our property lines are and what belongs to me. Turn out I have a 10'x15' shed on the property that is mine. Agent told me it was the neighbors when we were looking at the house so I'm pretty stoked about that. My other neighbor is a younger couple with three little girls ranging in age from 1-6. They told me why my garage is the way it is. The previous previous owners were getting a divorce but couldn't afford to get their own places so the wife and kids lived in the house and the husband converted the garage into a living area. I started taking the drop ceiling panels down and found a few nice surprises - like a pair of garage door openers still in place. Still missing the horizontal section of the garage door tracks and I'm not having much luck tracking those down at a reasonable price, but keeping my eye on Craigslist for someone getting rid of an old garage door.

I type this reply from my new home. Took a long time, hit a lot of road bumps, but it seems to be worth it in the end. Now it's time for the move...not looking forward to that. Only pic we got of it today...too busy moving stuff from my GF's Mom's place over to here (only about a 20 min drive)

They're much, much different - not quite as wide and taller than the XJ. I know this because I need to fit one into my 5.9L MJ project.

Check to see if the Cherokee radiator has a plastic cap in place of where the thermal switch is. You might get lucky - I've bought open radiators that still had the spot for the thermal switch.

Standard issue on the SE. Along with manual door locks/windows, no roof rack and some other things I'm probably forgetting. I've always wanted an SE for simplicity, but any one that I've found for sale has been beaten worse than a red headed step child.

C'mon man, I've been glued to the computer since Wednesday morning waiting for the pics.

I've built a home theater PC also. What software do you use on yours? Windows Media Center.

Two things for me - and I seem to go in phases. 1) Computers. I'm not the kind of freak that will drop $5,000 on a new machine with all of the newest components, I like to build moderately priced PCs that each have a very specific purpose. The two most recent examples are a home theater PC and a home server that I built for my new house (that I don't have yet). 2) Old, broken down motor vehicles. I don't intend on collecting these, but they're often handed down to me by friends, family, and co-workers. I like taking a vehicle that someone had deemed dead and unusable, fixing it and turning it into something that is used on a daily basis. My '01XJ is a good example of that. A $400 purchase from a friend of a friend that was certain the vehicle was dead because the engine had rod knock. $1000 in parts and it's been a solid DD for the past 3 years/50K miles.

Surprised he didn't paint the rear bumper white...

No one knows about those places outside of the state, nor do they care. It's not like popular media has portrayed with a positive image for NJ (see: Jersey Shore).

Looks like we'll be moving in on Friday, but the current owners may need to store stuff in my new shop. Oh well, I gotta spend a weekend getting all of my furniture first, anyways.

Switched lenders, went from USDA to FHA and got the new appraisal report into today. It was valued at the contract price so we're good to go, plus I'm now putting down 3.5% so I only needed the house to appraise at 96.5% of the sale price. As far as I know, we're all set to close this Friday @3PM. Since this home sale isn't allowed to go smoothly, I received the bad news that the current owner has not yet found a new place to live and that I may have to do a rent-back to him. Although annoying, I'm going to take the opportunity to do a large majority of the improvements to the house if he is going to be a tenant since I can write off the work for my 2012 taxes. I'll probably do the fence, windows, and electrical work that I had planned.

You just opened the floodgates for everyone to chime in about raw sewage, concrete medians (apparently called "Jersey" walls everywhere but in NJ), toxic waste, and nuclear power plants. No one believes me that I grew up on a 350-acre dairy farm in NJ. Oh well, ignorance is bliss, right?

Truck had somewhere around 223K when the idiot cluster was pulled out. New cluster had around 155K when it was put in and is now at 168K. So, if my math is correct, we should be at 236K. One of these days, I'm going to pull the new cluster and make it show the true mileage.

I have bought two radiators from them in the past and everything went very smoothly. Shipping was very quick and their prices are some of the best around. I had an issue with the fitment of the transmission cooler line on one of my radiators and e-mailed them about it (the paint made the diameter too large). They offered to RMA the radiator with pre-paid freight, but I told them it wasn't necessary and that I just took a piece of sandpaper to it and that I was just informing them of the problem. They appreciated my input and the next radiator I ordered for my XJ looked as though they're asking their painting vendor to mask off the piece in question. I was happy to see they took my suggestion seriously and did something about it.

I did the swap on one of my MJs that has been retired to "farm duty." I didn't want to spend a lot of cash on the swap so here is what I did to get it done cheaply, but reliably: Kept the original closed system radiator (it wasn't leaking) Install an aluminum (the plastic ones are generally junk) inline filler neck: http://www.amazon.com/Moroso-63730-Radi ... sbs_auto_1 Install an overflow bottle (pick one up from a JY out of an open system XJ) Remove the heater valve and run new lines straight from the heater core to wherever it is they go. The ID of the hose is slightly different on each of the heater core connections, so know that before you go to buy new hose. Install a new 16 lb. radiator cap The total cost for my conversion was less than $50. I searched around on the internet to find the inline filler neck and I wound up getting it for less than $20, but I can't remember what vendor that was.

Scosche and Metra still make the harnesses, but they're getting harder and harder to find in store. I used a Scosche JE01B harness in my 1992 Comanche.

I assume you mean 87 since you renamed your thread to "Hate-E-Seven" (doesn't have the same ring to it, though). No shortbeds in 86 - first year for those was 87. Truck looks great, though. Glad you stuck with it.

I'm assuming you're going to keep the amber lights on the roof to act as a "seal?"

I like that they used the older style XJ transfer case shifter bezel.

Don't worry, you're not alone. When I crossed over the DE-NJ border yesterday in my MJ, the right front tire blew out and the truck veered to the right, went through the Delaware Memorial Bridge guardrail and is now sitting on the bottom of the Delaware River. Luckily I was able to eject myself from the vehicle and do a several barrel rolls to avoid from being hit by on-coming traffic. I think that NJ no longer wants me so I hitch hiked back to MD.

I have an Interstate battery in all three of my DD's. The one in my '01XJ is dated 6/2006 - which likely replaced the original battery that came with the truck when it was bought new. This past weekend, I drove back to NJ to swap vehicles (MJ with two dogs in the cab isn't working out so well). The XJ has been sitting for about 5 months and the battery is nearly 6 years old so I expected it to be dead. Nope - cranked the engine over and fired right up. Optima's went to crap when they moved the manufacturing plant to Mexico. I used their Redtop battery when I was cruising around in my 3000GT back in the day. I had warranty replacements on three of them because they would completely die and were not able to be recharged. Tried all of the tricks I found floating on the internet and nothing worked. Saw LOTS of complaints from other Optima owners that were having the same problems. I have never had a battery, besides the Optima, where I couldn't get ANYTHING out of it. It wouldn't even turn the interior lights on in the vehicle. Optima. Never again. I'll stick with Interstate and Diehard Platinums. I have also heard a lot of good stories about certain Duralast and Napa Gold batteries.

This. Use SearchTemptest.com and make sure the 'ANY' option is selected and then run a search for "comanche commanche comanchee commanchee camanche camanchee"

Well, can't say I didn't warn him... http://www.comancheclub.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=34900

My favorite line was "my tires are pretty flat so they may not move as fast as a policeman's tires that are full." I know a couple girls like her and it's a lot of fun listening to them talk about any topic where they'll take a side and defend their themselves. You eventually just learn to bite you tongue, pat them on the back and accept them for who they are.