jpnjim

I posted this on Pirate a while back: http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=639718 Looks like the website I posted has merged with another, and you can't directly punch in part numbers anymore (I couldn't atleast). I've gotten MJ rockers & XJ rockers from these guys, so I know they *used to be* good (hopefully they still are). If you can still get them for $80, here's what an NOS corner looks like (tucked away, and not for sale. :D ) Image Not Found

AMC used to post this stuff in their stockholders reports, I don't know if Chrysler continued that tradition, but with the old AMC stuff, it's the only reason some of the production figures are even known.

Build one. The gas mileage of those things can't get much worse. :D My first Jeep was a, 73' J4000 FSJ P/U 360/4bbl/Granny T-18/SF 35sp D60 rear (closed D44 ft) w/4.10's, on 31's. After alot of tweaking, I doubled the gas mileage (from 4 to 8mpg :ack: )

Sorry about the miscarrage, those suck, even when everything else is going great. The job will work itself out, one way or the other. Make sure the wife is OK, and good luck when you guys are ready to try again.

Wow, I just read your post to my 4 year old (Jacob). (he jumped when I got to the biting the hand part) but we're both glad Shelby's doing better. :cheers:

Could always make a beavertail ramp for the tailgate. :D Could do even more with that idea, if you wanted to invest the design time (like hinge beavertail in the middle, to use as bed extension when needed).

Best J-truck movies: Tremors series. :banana: Even better was the short lived TV show, that had an M715 in it. :thumbsup: :thumbsup: FWIW, "Point Break" had some of the "Red Hot Chili Peppers" as the Meth dealers driving around an M715. Best/worst real life: the North Hollywood Shootout, that ended with a Rhino Grilled 1960's J-truck being shot up. :( Edit: There was also M715's in that 'China Beach' Vietnam TV show about a million years ago.

Found a couple of pics: I guess it was a little closer to the right length than I remember. I think I split the difference when I put it on the trailer (~1.5" gap ft & back).

Maybe somewhere, but it's not an MJ topper, and didn't really fit. It's hard to tell in that pic, but it's too long for the bed. It was a better fit on the longbed MJ I had it on before (though it was about 4" too short, I bolted in a piece of diamondplate between the topper & the cab to fill the place). I never found out what the topper really fit, but when I was done with it, I put it in front of the house, with a sign that said "FREE", and it was gone within the hour. :D

The front of the seat has a forward facing bolt hole, that has to mount to a forward facing bracket. The left hand bolt is sitting in the bracket in this pic: (and that washer is laying on the floor infront of the other hole) The seat bolts to that location, so, unless you made a 90 degree bracket to make the mounting point face the floor (which wouldn't be as strong as using the late model XJ bracket), you'd have nothing to bolt the seat to. They made this change at the same time as the airbags (I've *heard 96's mount this way, but never checked) I guess, to get the front bolts out of shear, if/when the airbags deploy.

Added a couple more pics for another thread: Interior shot, w/2001 seats, console & doors installed (9/22/05), drives set back 2-3" from stock 2001 position)

I guess I never took any pics of the completed DS floor, Basically I welded in the chunk of 2001 XJ floor shown in the first pic, and moved the bracket back 2-3 inches. Here's a couple pics of the seats in place: FWIW, the seats are OK, but have the same seats in my DD 97 XJ, already wore a hole in the ft left corner (@62k miles), and had to weld the seat frame back together once (frame broke right in half, had to totally disassemble the seat to weld it back together).

I think that linked topic only covers early seats. I put 2001 seats in my MJ, You have to grab the floor bracket, since they mount directly to that in the front. (marked 'take' in this pic: Drill out the spotwelds, and weld to your floor. Only problem in an MY is there's already a bracket on the floor running the length of the 'frame'. I removed that bracket, when I did my floors (It kinda removed itself), the MJ support bracket is a moisture/rust magnet anyway. Here's a pic of the late model XJ seat bracket on my passenger side floor (cut section is for a crawler box, I ended up not doing :doh: , ignore that. :D ) I set that one at the stock (late model XJ) setback. Late model XJ's have less leg room than the older ones, so I set the bracket on the drivers side back 2-3 inches from the stock position. I don't have any pics of the drivers side on Photobucket right now, I'll try to post some later. So, for late model seats: 1) Get late model floor bracket 2) cut, or slot either the XJ bracket, the MJ bracket already on the floor, or remove MJ bracket all together. 3) weld it in 4) think about setting atleast the drivers side bracket farther back than it was in the XJ 5) the MJ rug's not gonna fit so great over this new hump (late model XJ rug will fit, but you'll have to move it back if you moved the bracket back) < I slit the late model rug in half, under the console, so I could keep the passenger side in the stock position, and move the drivers side rug backwards. 5) get 2 door seats, or you'll have to modify the 4dr seats to fold forward (I modified my 4dr pass seat to flip, but there's no latch to secure it). 6) FWIW, late model MJ buckets don't sit up as absurdly high as early XJ buckets, with the XJ brackets. I think that's it. :D

Nice job with the adjustable linkage & handle. I did something similar: Eliminating the original pivot point, but I never got past bootie-fabbing/tack welding the stock linkage to get the length right. (Decided to swap the 231 for something else). Mine also worked smoothly for me, but I didn't get to try it twisted up, offroad. I welded the shifter post to the stock L shifter pivot, but I didn't snap any pics when it was all apart. :doh:

wolfpack is right, V8ZJ's will lift you, unless you cut them. Cutting is easy, just need a cutting wheel on an angle grinder (& safety glasses) I understand if you don't want to do it. I don't have any experience with Ranger coils, so I can't comment on those. As far as the blocks go, packs would be better, but if you're gonna do blocks DO NOT get aluminum blocks (cheap ones that most carry as lift/drop blocks). I had a pair of Summit Racing brand aluminum blocks way back when. Both cracked in half within a couple months. Glad I noticed it, before they broke free from the Jeep. Superlift always had nice cast iron blocks, that's what I replaced the broken Summit's with. Info is 15 years+ old now, so YMMV. Good luck :cheers:

Lazy, slow, didn't have a Photobucket account till last year. + no one likes to take wheeling pics anymore (have plenty of 35mm pics from 10-15 years ago).

Wow! Flat metal caps at the end of the bed look WAY better than I would've guessed they would. Definatly add's an early J-truck look to it. :cheers: Are you gonna brace the inside & put the tailgate back on? FWIW, this would look GREAT with a cut down J-truck tailgate (not that you could find one). Nice work.

It's pretty subjective. 2.5L's were based on the existing AMC L6 (of course). In that development, they redesigned alot of parts, for more durability, ligher weight, improved the ports, combustion chambers, etc, etc. When they finally got around to freshening up the L6's design, they used the information they gathered, and parts they developed for the 2.5L. Does that mean the 4.0L was based on the 2.5L. No, or mostly no I guess. Alpar usually has pretty good info, but parts of this article seem misleading. They metion the Chrysler rear axle, but I don't know of any MJ that ever got one of those. They don't mention the AMC M20 used in 86' MJ's tho. I'd guess they meant 'load' capacity, and not towing capacity here. I found this part very interesting, I never heard that before (wonder if it's true).

Mostly RE stuff, 5.5"XJ coils (same as 4.5" ZJ) in the biggest pics (gave ~6"), 3.5" ZJ coils when I lowered it the first time (~5"). More recently, it's sitting on 2" spacers + 3.5" REAR ZJ coils (up front), for ~2.5" lift, atleast till I finally get an inspection sticker. I'm using RE upper & lower arms (tho the lowers are ancient RE Heim jointed arms), RE HD track bar + bracket. Rear are usually SOA MJ packs (w/o the overload), but right now it's SOA, with an MJ main leaf, and XJ leafs below it to bring the height down some. It's been unregistered for a while, and the inspection shops get extra nervous about putting stickers on lifted trucks that don't already have a current sticker. I'm only looking to run ~4" eventually, so once I get it back on the road, and stickered, I should be able to bump it back up, without worrying next time.

Top one is my old MJ (37" Boggers were on the ft for picture taking purposes only :D ) more pics of it here (last post). :USAflag: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14951&start=15

For the front, I'd start with some ZJ V8 coils. I'd use the V8's, to get thicker spring to start with. Cutting them down stiffens up the ride further, but as you lose up travel, you'll want the higher spring rate. I've trimmed XJ/ZJ coils down before, cutting off that slight flat section at the bottom hasn't effected me negatively at all, YMMV, but I didn't have any issues with it. You could even start trimming your stock coils, to see what height you like, before taking the knife to the ZJ coils (in case you cut too much). I don't know how much is too much. I'd probably try to figure what the minimum up travel I'd be happy with (depending on use), and set my ride height to allow that. For the rear, try keeping the MJ main leaf, and swap all the lower leafs out for (flatter) XJ leafs. They're shorter, but should still be OK, and they're not up to the same load carrying either, but I'm guessing you're not building it to carry heavy loads. Again, I'd try to trim the bumpstops as much as I could, while keeping hard parts away from each other, and set the height at the minimum up travel I'd be comfortable with. You might end up looking for some thicker, flat leafs to replace 1 or 2 of the XJ leafs with, to keep the ride height down, while firming things up. Overload coils on shocks, or air shocks could be bandaid fixes, but I'd try to dial the pack in for my needs. FWIW, you could build shackles shorter than XJ's, if you wanted to. Would have the side effect of being stiffer than the stockers, and you could use poly/graphite bushings too. I didn't have any stock XJ shackles, so I made these little guys up to drop my XJ at inspection sticker time (compared in pic to unknown lift shackles): Image Not Found Image Not Found I didn't bother to bush the upper mount, since they only go in for a short time.

Last few pics dedicated to old MJ that gave up it's life for this one. :cheers: Sometime in 2000: 6.25.00: a CJ-5 had just Hi-centered taking this line, so I wanted to see how bad it would be in the MJ. :clapping: 5.22.02 somewhere in Mass: 2001, on the ramp. Pics of the rack loaded up (6.11.00): Bolted the 37" Boggers up front (for driveway pics, D30 was :eek: even at that :D ) I miss this one, but it was way worse than the pics show. :(

Couple pics of the 231 reverse shifter lever: I tried something different, & took out the bellcrank pivot between the 231 & shifter. Also swapped the L-lever for a conventional post shifter. I don't know how it would work long term, but it seemed to do fine for the limited use I put it through. Couple pics of the flat x-member: X-member isn't meant to support T-case/tranny by itself, skid underneath would be beefed, bolted under the frame, and add to the strength: I also plan to beef up the MJ-only brackets on the inside of the framerails that the X-member bolts to. Prefabbing & comparing to stock (2001) X-member: Gains about 2 3/4" over the stock X-member (less once the underskid is in place). X-member bolted in (still need to grind these rails & POR-15 them :ack:

Couple other projects done along the way: 9.20.05: Renix TPS to HO TB: Cut up an old HO TPS & used as an adapter to fit the Renix TPS: Replaced the air box with an air tube some time later (6.20.07): XJ HO vs YJ HO (decided not to use either): Side view: FWIW, clean the pipe before you let your engine breath through it. :ack: Started with some nice U-bends: to make something that would get the filter away from the grille & higher up under the hood (bettwer for water X-ings) Finished off in some 1987 Jeep grey I still had around from my first XJ

Thanks guys :cheers: I added some more pics, I'll start with the rocker swap: 'Before' cab corner pic (8.25.03): 9.29.07: Rot was mostly limited to rocker itself: Just kept drilling & chopping: 10.20.07 finally had time to get back to it. Didn't look bad under the rocker: Even better after hitting it with the wire brush: Primed (painted before final fitting): Straightened & clamped together Burned in: Good as new: