jpnjim

THIS is something I learned recently, and is a stone cold fact. Moments after you accuse someone of stealing something, it will magically appear in front of you. I pretty much lose everything now (part of the 'having one eye' thing), and have since learned to cut to the chase, and just accuse someone of theft immediately. Then I can find the thing I lost, and get right back to work. :yes:

Since I'm down to one eye now ( :( ) sometimes I wear safety glasses, AND a whole face shield. The shield is good for things like a grinding wheel exploding (safety glasses don't do such a great job at protecting the rest of your face), but have had stuff bounce around behind the shield, and try to pin-pong/pinball their way to my eyeballs. I might give the goggles a shot tho, maybe they won't fog up as much as safety glasses.

Great list. Since stuff doesn't just drip in your eyes & ears, but sometimes your mouth too........ I've 'learned' the best & worst tasting things on my Jeep. :ack: Worst: gear oil. maybe there IS a second worst, but compared to gear oil, the rest of the stuff tastes like ice cream. Best: battery acid. In some kind of mean trick of nature, your working on your Jeep, and (stupidly) put your fingers near your lips...... mmmm, what's so sweet? I don't remember....... :eek: run to the hose, and rinse off. :yes: #2 IMHO, is anti-freeze. Worst thing ever to accidentally land on me? either the weld slag that went into my ear (yes, you CAN hear ear wax siiizzzzzlllllllllleeee just as the pain hits.) or the weld slag that bounced around inside my shirt for a while. When I figured it must be a pretty big glob, and the pain wasn't going to stop (sometimes the ouchies only last two or three seconds)... I stood up, and the magic slag of pain found, and stayed inside my soft tender belly button. :eek: Then I figured protective shoes while just soldering wasn't anything a tough guy welder should worry about....... :yes: and soldered a bunch of electrical connections while wearing sandals. :no: So after all those rolls of wire have gone through the machine, my #3 most painful drip was the molten solder drip that found it's way between two of my toes. :doh:

The only light I can see at the end of the tunnel is this Health Care Bill might finally be the thing that wakes America up. If it doesn't, I guess we deserve it. :( Either way, I fly a flag on my home, and my vehicles, and couldn't bring myself to fly any of them upside down. I completely understand the intent of the CL post, and the one here, but to me I can't get beyond seeing it as disrespectful to the country, and the flag. I never served, and I respect your service to this contry, but I would take my flag down before I could flip it upside down.

If it makes you feel better, go with 33's, but I vote to lower it & keep the 35's. You already have them, and a D30ft 'can' survive on them. Get some decent alloy ft shafts, ditch the disconnect & welded ft.\ Personally I'd skip the $electable ft locker, and just go with a lockright tho.

I supplement this with: a) a bigger dog, she's 70 lbs and seems to scare strangers pretty good B) I'm pretty good at scaring strangers too. :) A few 3am trips outside in my BVD's to discuss the effect beeping cars have on people that have to work for a living has done a good job of alerting my neighbors to exactly which house on this street the crazy person lives. :D and c) my crappy house, with crappy Jeeps parked outside seems to have deterred any fortune seekers so far. They probably feel bad for me, and would be more likely to drop off some ill gotten goods out of sheer pity.

More pics, and a good read here: http://www.txfsja.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=11 Notice it's a factory SOA ft (same as my old 73 J4600): Too bad it has thin 1.75" wide leafs. 1974+ FSJ pickups went to the Waggy suspension (SUA 2.5" leafs) FF 70 rear is a true 6 lug (no 5 to 6 lug adapter)

M715's weren't 8 lug. (6 lug on 7.25"). 76 J20 axles would be pass drop D44ft /30sp ff D60 rear. Drivers (left hand) drop FSJ axles didn't start till the 1980 model year. 3.73 was the most common J20 ratio. 1973 & older FSJ's were available with a DRW D70, but the fts were closed knuckle D44's (except for the M715). This adapter: was used upfront to match the D70 width & patturn. J10/J20 designations started in 1974 (J300, J3000, J4000 etc were the designations were used before that). I've never seen a 'real' J30, but if they did get ft 60's, it would've likely been an open knuckle 60, since FSJ's dropped closed knuckle ft ends after the 1973 model year.

There really ought to be a decal made to resemble this. :yes: :yes:

Add one of them thar water to hydrogen converters...... ought to become a rocketship that gets 50MPG. ;)

In 1987 literature (AMC's last year :( ) the D44 was listed as part of the Off Road Package, part of the HD Towing Package, part of the Metric Ton/Big Ton Package, and as a stand alone "HD rear Axle" option. Things were good, for one year atleast. After that it was officially dropped from all, but the Metric Ton/Big Ton option (tho some non-MT MJ's did seem to come with them after 87', 87' is still the most common year for XJ & MJ D44's). AMC M20 vs D44: 8.875" ring gear (same size as a 12 bolt Chevy) vs 8.5" 29spline (but bigger than 8.25's 29sp) vs 30 sp shafts. There are other strength comparisons, like the M20 using less ring gear bolts, and a crush spacer for pinion preload (vs an XJ/MJ D44's solid shimmed pinion). M20's have been known to spin tubes in the axles, and parts can be less common, but they're fairly close to a wash strength wise. All that said, I would not pay $500 for an MJ M20. I would consider it in the $200-$250 range, but only because the 4.10's MJ 20's came with are decent, and it's a pretty good swap into an AMC car.

My 25k mile (1992) 4.0L came out of one of those. I never found out why the guy stripped it, just figured he was putting it out of it's misery :D.

What did one snowman say to the other snowman? Do you smell carrots? :D

I had very bad luck with Rusty's 3" coils (about 8 years ago now). They were warped, and down to ~1.5" of lift within a couple of months (really!). When I took them out they were both noticeably bent. They were also very soft, and crossed the line of 'too soft' for me (I am running soft shocks, prob would've been OK with stiffer shocks). I had very good luck with: Rancho 3" (been in one Jeep, or another for the last 15 years, and have not sagged much at all, they are still stiff tho). RE 4.5" (XJ) great coils, took the abuse, gave more than advertised lift, were probably 1/2 way between the Rusty's & Rancho's in stiffness (almost perfect, if slightly too soft for me with the soft shocks). RE 3.5" ZJ coils. Slightly stiffer, and slightly taller than the 4.5"XJ's. IMHO the 'perfect' 5" XJ coil. I like my ft coils somewhat stiff, to balance out with the stiffer rear leaf suspension (stiffer ft coils tend to make the stiff rear leafs do more of the work than soft fts) RE 5.5" XJ coils, Stiffer & taller again than the 3.5" ZJ's. I've had these since 1999, they gave me 6.25", and never seemed to sag much below that.

I hope the hard part is over as well. Need to reinstall the rear drive shaft, dash, and all the other little stuff. The confusion on the flywheel was Hornbrod's description that I failed to read properly. Once I went a re-checked the flywheel that was sitting in the corner, talked to Wildman on the phone, and looked at the pics of the Renix vs. the HO flywheel online, I knew I screwed up. I posted a pic of the two side by side a few years ago on JU, not much help now :smart: , but here it is :D : http://www.jeepsunlimited.com/forums/sh ... p?t=431928 If it helps, I *almost* made the same mistake when I put the engine in my MJ. :doh:

:cheers: I'm glad you got this figured out, sorry I tapered off after trying to help, I've been scratching my head here trying to troubleshoot some other stuff myself (the 'sidejob I mentioned involved $30k worth of pizza ovens that wouldn't start). It's easy for me to say now, but the wrong flywheel was my very first thought, (easy mistake to make and it won't run with the wrong one) I even bolded it for emphasis in the original post :smart: : Renix 4.0 - Yes Renix flywheel - yes (looked at the HO flywheel and determined it was an HO flywheel from Eagle's description) Renix Distributor - Yes, never changed by me Renix Sensors - yes, no swaps to anything newer; tested and tested again Replacement Harness from an 89 MJ ECU - Tested in friends 87 and it fired his up I'm glad it's running, hopefully the hard part is over now :thumbsup:

Thanks for the pics :thumbsup: After the abuse that little Ford four held up to at our hands, it ought to laugh at the turbo. Cool ride tho, I can't remember the last time I saw one.

Jegs has good prices on prebent you-weld-it cages, but nothing listed for an MJ. I've always wondered what they have in a similar size (Ranger, Dakota?), and how well they would work.

x2, I've had some laying around for a while, they look cool, but never ended up doing anything with them. The bolts look small because the things are so huge. The bad part is building the brackets to the frame is the tough part of doing XJ/MJ tow hooks, and starting with an oversized/oddball hook isn't gonna make designing the bracket any easier. If your not building a custom ft bumper (with long, well thought out mounts), using the standard bracket design, patterned after the OEM brackets is probably still the best way out there to put hooks on an XJ. I'd start with some of those brackets, and go from there.

I didn't notice the EXP in your sig. In 1991 a buddy of mine had one. I don't remember the veh year, but the thing was beyond a beater. I got laid off from work, so him & I drove from Boston to Florida in it, with the temp gauge PINNED to hot the whole way. :rotf: (and we drove 24+ hrs straight though :rotfl2: ) I asked about the gauge before we even left Mass, he said it did that all the time, neither of us had anyplace to be, so we kept going. :dunce: We switched off driving every 7-8 hours, and tried to see who could do the fastest/furthest hour. I won. :thumbsup: On my fastest hour I was able to keep my foot planted to the floorboard the entire time, never lifted even once, never touched the brakes. The little car covered exactly 85 miles for the hour. :rotfl2: Other exciting parts of the trip were when we lost the oil fill cap somewhere along the way. It started running *really* bad (worse than it already was), when we finally pulled over it was down almost 3 quarts. :clapping: Filled it up, capped off the oil fill with 'something', and it was back to it's slightly less slow self. Fun little car, the only bad part was when we picked up a pair of Florida's finest ;) and I rode in the back next to 'mine', sitting on that chrome cross bar where the seats should've been. Oh, and no AC, in Florida, in August, wasn't so great either. :D

I got sucked into buying my first AMC in 1987 when a friend of a friend was selling an 'AMX' for $100. (I had no idea what an AMX was, but a $100 bought a strange 74' AMC with a grill that looked like they bought it at the hardware store, and a glove box that you could stand a 5th of JD up inside :cheers: ) A string of other Javelins followed, then in 1992 a buddy was selling his 73' J4000 FSJ for $500. (rebuilt 360/4bbl, T-18 4spd 4.10 gears & a D60 rear). Even with 4.10's & a 4spd it was a better daily driver than any of the Javelins, & I was hooked on Jeeps after the first snow storm :D Found a high mile XJ for the gf a couple years later (87' Laredo, power everything, 4.0L/5spd 160k miles for $2500 in 1994). 8 mpg in the FSJ got old as my DD, so a rust free 2wd 89' longbed MJ with 79k miles replaced that in 1997. The guy wanted $2500, I asked him "how close to $1500 can you come?", and he said "OK" :rotf: Not bad for a 7 year old MJ with a 4.0L/5spd (BA again :doh: ), no A/C & roll up windows. Every deal should go so easy. I bought my 2nd MJ, an almost mint 87' red shortbed (4.0L/BA again) in 98' for $1000. :thumbsup: GF got upgraded to a 96' ZJ in 1999 for way too much $$, and I stopped daily driving MJ's in 2001 when I bought a 98' XJ (33k miles for $11k). I don't know where all the rust free MJ's went by 2003, but when I went looking for another one, they were no where to be found, so I bought this one for $500, and started the never ending Jeep build. :yes:

My MJ got hit 7-8 years ago :( Crackhead smashed the wing window with a rock, grabbed my (cassette!!!) stereo, and pried open the dash to get the faceplate. :fs1: I had run RCA cables behind the seat for a (future) amp, they were sure to pull my seat forward looking for that too. F'in thing was 6+" lifted, on 35's, parked on a main street in Boston, in the middle of the day. :ack: I'm still not happy about it.

Used D35 lockrghts are usually pretty cheap/easy to find, if you could get one cheap enough, I could see doing that till you can upgrade the 35 to something else. 12-15 years ago we had the "April Fools Blizzard" dump 2-3 feet of heavy snow overnight, my 2wd MJ made it through 15 miles of buried sidestreets to work that day, 2wd/open rear, 4" lift/soa, old junk 31" tires, but the back bumper practically dragging the ground, bed filled with cinderblocks & snow/ice. :D Edit, for anyone not in New England in 1997, this was the storm :D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fool ... y_blizzard My 2wd Comanche didn't fail me that day. :thumbsup:

They should put this on the forum sign up page ;) Name: E-mail: Screen name: Did you know MJ tail lights DO NOT interchange with anything else: (y)__ (n)__ :smart: :D

MJ M20's are ~60" wide, with a 5 on 4.5" wheel pattern. FSJ Waggy/NT Cherokee M20 rear's (narrow track) are ~58" & 6 on 5.5" Wide Wheel Cherokee/J10 (wide track) M20's are ~62" & 6 lug. WT CJ's are 54.5" & 5 on 5.5" NT CJ's are 50.5" & 5 on 5.5" I don't know why the Yukon catalog would list the same PN for WT CJ & NT FSJ, but there's atleast a 3" difference in overall axle width, and the wheel bolt patturns are different.