Megadan

Nice truck! Going to keep it 2wd or do you plan to do a 4wd conversion?

Have you pulled back the carpet up front to check the condition of the floors yet? My truck is nearly immaculate as far as rust goes, but even I found a small bit of rust through in the drivers floor board that actually rusted from the inside out. That is a really nice truck though, very clean. I really like the front amber turn signals too, I may have to look into getting a set.

lol, yea.... I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to materials chemistry and engineering. Working on my Mech. Engineering bachelors as we speak with a potential minor in materials engineering. To the OP. Sorry to stray off topic! I shall shut up now :thumbsup:

Well if people want to get technical, any urethane parts you put on your vehicle are more or less a type of plastic. Even polyurethane, which is polyol (organic chemical chains) joined by a carbamate. PVC is just a vinyl polymer chain instead of an ethyl or polyol carbamate chain. You would actually be surprised at how durable various types of PVC can be.

The push bar on the first one looks kind of like somebody took an old cop car unit and hacked a bit to make it work. It looks good, but weird. Nice collection though, and I am really digging that J-20.

Future tip, soak away, but get a MAP gas torch set from a hardware store, with or without oxygen (O2 is hotter though). I use my MAP torch a lot when dealing with rusty suspension nuts and bolts. Granted, I have a compressor and impact wrench, but heating up the nuts helps even when using a socket and breaker bar. Something that I do when installing new hardware with bushings that have inner metal sleeves is to put anti-seize on the shank that rests in said sleeve. Not really necessary, but it's a little added insurance to avoiding the bolt and sleeve seizing together and having to find a creative way to cut them from inside the bracket. Blue thread locker on the thread side is also nice insurance even with things torqued to spec. P.S. I really enjoy following your restoration. It tends to give me motivation to go out and do more work on mine lol

That would depend on how wide the 33's you have are. I've run a 10.5 width tire on a 7" wide wheel and it was perfectly fine. I wouldn't want to go any narrower than that, and 8" wide would definitely be better. Factory Jeep wheel offset is 5.25" I believe. With the current wheels I have on my truck with 235/75-15's, they are a 7" width with 4.25" of backspacing, and the outer edge of the tire sits nearly flush with the edge of the factory fender flare. To go an inch wider and fit under the stock wheel wells, it would require adding that extra distance to the inside, which would indeed put it back to factory backspacing. At the same time, I could probably run a 10.5" width tire on the wheels I do have and still fit, but that would be the limit. Picture of how the front looks with my said wheel and tire fitment from a slight front on angle

Greetings, MJ Newbie myself that's been working on getting my truck on the road. My lift and tire plans are close to your own, and what I have worked out may interest you. From everything I have gathered, to even out the ride height on the trucks the front has to come up roughly 1 1/2" If you want to keep a rake to your truck, then the following won't really apply. For the front I am going with some OME 2" lift springs (you can go with other brands if you desire) with half inch coil spacers to get a 2 1/2" lift up front. Out back I plan on using lift shackles that are designed to give 1" lift out back on the MJ. Then I either want to run 31 or 33" tires. 31's can be run with no lift at all, and 33's with a small lift do require cutting (or some flares designed to give more clearance). There is a good set of adjustable shackles to get more rear lift, but I think more than the shackles I have now will decrease the shackle angle too much and effect the ride quality. I also plan on getting a decent budget adjustable track bar for the front that runs about $100. I wanted some extra ground and tire clearance, but I don't want to have a ton of lift either because my truck sees road use, but I do take it down a few dirt paths from time to time for work or personal shenangans. With the OME Springs, the price works out to about $280 (380 with track bar). There is also the option of some properly designed rear leaf springs that give lifts in the 3 1/2 or 4 1/2" range from Hell Creek, but they are $188 a pop (roughly $340 for the pair). The upside is, it is less involved, and less lift, than a SOA. Inversely though, a SOA can be done for cheaper out back, but requires more money spent ( as others have pointed out. Oh, and then there are little costs to consider, such as longer brake lines (there are good budget solutions here if you search) you will also want to consider. Oh and my opinion FWIW, leave the rebuilt 88 engine alone and keep the HO head for building another engine to swap in later. You won't entirely notice the 10-13 extra HP enough to care, and having driven an HO and a Renix now, I like the way the Renix feels more down low.

I'm a 35% disabled working student. I still manage to find time to wrench more often than you think. Although, admittedly there are periods where I can barely take the time to use the restroom. That's kind of how it works.

I gotta check that out! lol

Yea, actually, our new color is very similar. Yours looks to be a flat khaki instead of my semi-gloss Dark Taupe, but darn close in shade. My black accenting is going to be limited to grille, flares, door/tailgate handles and mirrors. What is your build goal/direction? Going for a more dedicated off-road toy or is this kind of a daily driver/ weekend excursion vehicle? My ultimate goal is to do a diesel swap, 6" lift, and 35's and turn my truck into a trail rig that can pull daily duty.

Bah, that little pin is a pretty straight forward fix. I wouldn't let it get to you too much. BTW, since nobody else mentioned it I figured I would let you know. A little bit of surface rust on a rotor is no big deal, even new. If you are worried about it causing problems with bedding the pads with the rotor, the next time you run into that, grab some steel wool and WD40 and clean it off. Putting an oil on the rotor surface is not a big deal either (someone will probably say otherwise), and they actually come coated with a light oil to prevent rust anyway. Clean with brake parts cleaner once the rust is removed to get rid of said oil and you're done. Concerning your brake flush, did you do a complete system flush and replace all of the fluid? "All of the nasty crap" is too ambiguous for my pedantic nature. If you didn't replace all of the fluid in the system with clean fluid, do so and get all of that contamination out of there. Still liking the truck and the work you are doing to it. This is probably going to be one of the cleanest ones on the site at the rate you are going. :thumbsup:

I meant you don't typically see a gloss finish on the "military style" paint jobs. Either way, looks good. Ahh I gotcha. Fun fact for you - True military vehicle paint finishes are actually semi-gloss lol

It's a semi-gloss paint, so it should look that way. Unless you mean for being a rattle can job. I'm really good with a spray can, and know a few tricks to help avoid spray lines and get good even coats. That doesn't always mean I am perfect, but I can only do so much with rattle cans lol.

I finally got around to coloring the rest of the body. In hindsight, I probably should have painted the flares, grille, and other bits I was going to paint black first, but oh well. Just a little more masking work for me later. Sorry the picture isn't the best quality, but I ran out of daylight right before I finished. I ran out of my last can with half of one front fender still un-painted and had to make a dash to the hardware store for a couple more cans. It's currently in a state of half-unmasked, so no I did not paint the door handle or other bits lol. With the whole truck this color, I do really like it a lot now. It has a very military or Utility Vehicle feel to it, but at the same time you can tell it's neither.

I do too actually. I actually wasn't sure if I was going to like it at first, but I wanted something darker than Khaki, but way lighter than Earth Brown that you find in the camo paints, plus I wanted it to be a semi-gloss much like true military paints. It's gotten a tiny bit darker as it has cured more, but it is more or less the same as the pictures show. Once I get the rest of the old spray paint stripped off I will get the rest of it painted and post up completed pictures. I only had a tiny bit of acetone left, but that little dribble and a couple of paper shop towels allowed me to get my hood almost 1/3 of the way clear. At least stripping it down won't take long.

Decided I didn't like the ugly many color green/black/ rust theme that the P.O. did to the truck, so I have slowly started to give it a color change. No, it's nothing fancy, just the Rust-O-leam touch. Satin Taupe Brown outdoor enamel paint. 3 coats so far on the bed. I didn't bother with any body work this time around, but luckily this stuff will strip off easy when I decide to go back and make it pretty. I am going to get back to stripping the cab and nose later on. I discovered by a happy accident that the paint the last owner put on was applied to an unprepped factory finish, and that straight acetone takes it right off without harming the paint beneath. The cab will be stage 2 probably sometimes next week if it is rainy on Saturday.

Yea. It wasn't the plug wires. At this point, I am thinking it is a problem with my C101 connector. I am going to go off the deep end and remove that stupid thing from my wiring harness completely. Although, I still haven't confirmed an issue with potential harmonic dampener slip, but from everything I can tell, my timing is fine.

Elijah, definitely go through as many of Cruiser's Renix Tips as you can before you go replacing stuff willy nilly. You may just fix it along the way, and most of them can be done for free, or very little cost (A few bucks for a can of cleaner, or a small ground strap). Once that is over with, if you still have no spark even with all of the grounds in spiffy condition and connections cleaned up then I would look to the other side of the electrical flow. Start with small parts like double checking the cap and rotor. I had a brand new rotor on my 88 4.0 and I started to have problems with it running rough, and when I took off the cap I had found that my rotor end had literally smashed itself off on one of the cap terminals. This along with finidng oil in the bottom of it,lead me to understand that my distributor was badly worn. l If all of that is kosher, move down the line. My next step would be a coil. If you have the money to replace the coil, I would honestly just do it. Coils have a lifespan and will often get weak, or simply die, after a while. Mine wasn't the main problem I was first having, but it was contributing to the problem and making it worse. After I put a new coil on, it ran a million times better, even if it didn't solve the initial problem. Plus, coils are actually pretty cheap for these engines. I got mine for $25 off Rockauto with no complaints so far.

Your truck being an 87 means it doesn't have the ballast resistor for the pump as far as I understand it. If you truly do believe it is a fueling issue, and the filter is new, then I would start off with a pressure test on the system. Oh, and as far as the relay on the drivers side inner fender. Supposedly that is the electric fan relay.

That's not a bad idea. I was mainly wondering about the spot welds, but that makes sense. I was thinking of something similar to what you did above, with removing the paint/POR15 where the welds go. I did think about removing it just at the spot weld sections, but that would be a long tedious process to be sure.

Made a discovery while trying to fiddle with the parking brake cable (that was annoying too, but ill gloss over my rant on that) about the front corner of my floor pan next to the rocker. decided to kind of sweep up and vacuum the floor up and suddenly discovered I could see daylight through a "crack" looking rust section in my floor about a quarter inch wide and 3 inches long. Seeing as the undercoating is intact under the truck except where it fell away with parts of the floor board, I can only assume it rusted out from the inside. Anyway, I'm not fazed by that fact, and replacing the floor pan doesn't scare me as I have a full welding setup and it's not my first rodeo with sheet metal and rust repair. I could probably get away with making a small patch for that section, but since the PO ran without carpet and put his salty wet winter boots on an uprotected floor it got inside the boxed in section that runs fore and aft, and there is significant surface rust that I cannot gain access to to treat. With that in mind, I might as well just replace the whole front pan section and call it a day. That being said though, after searching through various write ups and how-to's and other threads related to this subject it left me wondering about a few things. 1. I noticed that nobody seems to reinstall the upper frame section inside the truck when they put new pans in. Is that section not actually that important? If it is, has anybody found a solution to treat the floor pan that would be inside that section so as not to rust? With having to weld it all back together, the only thing that would be there to stop any rust, at best, is some weld through primer. 2. Slightly related, my seat studs/bolts are also insanely rusty and I have a suspicion that I will have to cut/grind/torch them out, or that they will break in half. How difficult are they to replace, and where do I gain access to them to replace them. I don't know if I was just no looking very hard while I was stuffed under my truck for a few hundred years while doing the trans swap, but I never noticed anything under there resembling stud heads or bolts for the seats. Luckily it only seems to be the drivers side that is like this. The passenger side is relatively pristine by comparison and could just use a little cleaning up.

Is it a plug, or just a hoop electrical terminal? I don't know if the 87's are any different, but my 88 has two wires that go to the dipstick tube along with the big ground cable. Those two other wires are the ignition and ecu grounds. At least as far as I know they are.

A rusty stock truck with a bad engine. That's worth less than a grand for sure. In the last 2 months here, 3 different MJ 4x4's have gone up for sale. All of them rusty to some degree, and one even had a lot of restoration work already done. All three ran and drove, and were in decent enough shape to be daily drivers/project trucks. The most expensive one was $2200, which was the one that already had a lot of work done like new floors, rockers, and fenders. My opinion, keep looking, because if he is asking that much you won't be able to talk him down to what it's really worth, and there are plenty of other trucks out there in the same shape, that don't have a bad engine, for less.

Unicorns do exist too. I tell ya. :D If it was the cleanest example of an MJ I had ever seen with low miles, lots of goodies already on it like Stroker said, or already had good restoration work done on it with said goodies, I could then maybe justify spending $2000 for it. Then again, You and I live in the rust belt, where rust free cars are....well Unicorns. That's why I did say it really depends on where he lives, because it seems like out west and in the south they don't seem to hold their value as much as they do here for having a good body/chassis