rustybottoms88

Thank you! The work I have done recently has seemed to solve the oil leak problem. I have the orings for the OFA for when that day comes and it is good to know about the possibly dizzy leak. Its been pretty awesome seeing no oil spots on the garage floor under the truck. Although recently i have noticed the power steering leaking ever so slightly again. It maybe because of the colder weather we have had lately. I bought a Yukon CAD delete kit from a member on the PBB, its brand new. Other then that no new news. The wife has been driving the wheels off the thing. I am waiting on time and money to move further into the 4WD conversion.

The Comanche is all back together now. You know how I said I broke off that stud bolt for the timing cover? Ya.....i had to pull the cover back off and spent 3 hours getting the broken bolt out! Then I got to buy another timing cover gasket kit and put it back on. I then put on the new water pump. I then installed the new lifters. Prepped the engine block to receive the new head gasket and reworked head. I then stuck the head on and the rest of the valve train and then put on the exhaust mainfold. The welder found two more cracks and then he went ahead and cleaned up and rewelded most all the seams. It was twerked alittle but I got it to fit with alittle persuasion. You will notice he also welded up the EGR tube hole :) SO i cut the tube off and brazed the pipe shut. I had to use the cutting torch to braze because I do not have a brazing torch apprarently. lol Then I cut up a EGR vlave block off plate. Then I got ahead of myself and started up the truck before I primed the oil system and the lifters. It was kinda noisy but it quieted down once it got to operating temperature. Its running great. Seems abit more peppy. The gauge cluster works great except for the fuel gauge reads upside down. :doh: I kinda suspected that. Hopefully I will get another 100K out of the old 4.0L. Now once my pocket book recovers I can move on to other things. . :MJ 1: .

Ok so the head checked out straight as best I could tell and the bore in the cylinders all checked out just within the standard limits according to Haynes. That is a relief. So I figure if I came this far apart with the motor I might as well change out the timing set. So i pulled the radiator. Hello! The bummer is i had to disconnect the a/c lines. One of the lines was leaking anyway. Timing cover all cleaned up and new gaskets and seal installed. I managed to break one of the stud bolts that attaqch the timing cover but found one at local salvage yard luckily. This little green pad is amazing when it comes to removing old gasket material and leaving a nice clean mating surface for the new gasket. Its made by 3M. Works great in a angle die grinder. The little brown pads in the back ground are used to buff the surface after you go over it with this green disc. It doesn't take alot of material off just aggressive enough to get the gasket material off. Here is the bottom of the head all cleaned up. I also decided to take the heads apart and lap the valves and put in new valve seals. This tool my grandpa had hanging over in the corner worked great for getting the valves out. I lapped the valves using a drill. I just attached a piece of vac hose to the end of the valve stem, put a screw inside the hose so it would chuck up in the drill and it worked great. When I took the exhaust manifold off and was pulling the o2 sensor out of it i noticed a crack at a weld. So it is at the welding shop waiting to be stitched up. hard to see as its a hairline crack but I am glad i saw it before it was all put back together. I ordered and installed the new knock sensor. It cost.....$82!!! I have spent well over $500 in parts but its basically going to be all new under the hood when I am done. At the end of this ordeal I will try to make a list of all the new parts I put on. Left to do: Install new water pump, oil sending unit, replace oil filter adapter orings, remove old valve lifters, install new lifters and then put everything back together basically.

I need the longest one of the three. Despite my best efforts I manage to put it in the wrong hole and broke it trying to get it out. Shipping on 72687.

I need orings for a renix. Message sent.

In other news I tracked down a 3/4 gauge cluster over the weekend. The problem I ran into was this truck is a column shift and I wanted to retain the shift indicator. dummy gauges next to 3/4 gauges: Notice dummy gauge set with shift indicator has a hole in the bottom for the shift indicator wire and the 3/4 gauge set doesn't. So I tried to approach this from two different angles. The first was to swap everything over from the 3/4 gauge housing to the dummy housing. My first rodeo so I learned the hard way that, that doesn't work. Why? Because dummy gauge housing does not receive the gauges. See the difference? 3/4 gauge housing on top dummy gauge on bottom: Plan B: Cut hole in 3/4 gauge housing for shift indicator wire. I have no dremel tool so I drilled a outline of the square with a very small drill bit and then cut it out with my knife.....not the cleanest way to do it but it worked. Problem #2. The fuel gauge from the dummy gauge set has the window in it to see the shift indicator....I need this but the dummy gauge set fuel gauge is basically upside down when compared to the 3/4 gauge set. I did not get a picture of them side by side but look at this picture. Those resistors are on the bottom side of the 3/4 gauge set fuel gauge. This effects how it bolts into the housing and how it connects to the circuit ribbon on the back of the housing. So I just took the two screws out of the front of the fuel gauge and turned the unit "upside down". It then bolts in fine and connects to the ribbon as it should. Will it still work properly?? I do not know but time will tell. I also switched speedometers between the gauge sets as well so I could keep the original mileage. Finished product:

Things have gotten alittle out of hand. I put the new vac harness in and the new valve cover gasket. Then i top it off with rotella and drive to the gas station and back, about a 4 mile round trip. I get back and oil is all over the passenger side of the engine again. I had power washed the motor off just before the RMS replacement so it was fairly easy to see the source of the oil leak. The head gasket. So now the engine looks like this: I have ordered a bore gauge and bought a micrometer off ebay so I can check cylinder wear and then go from there. I also managed to break the accelerator cable and the knock sensor while I was talking everything apart. Oh well I probably needed to replace the knock sensor anyway.

When I reinstall I will take a pic of where it goes. It helped me see it by removing the lower plastic piece that goes along the bottom of the entire dash. I took my dummy gauge set and a 3/4 gauge set and cut a hole in the bottom of the 3/4 set for the indicator wire to go through. So now i have oil pressure, coolant temp, voltage gauge and shift indicator. More details in my build thread.

Found it thanks!

I am trying to remove my instrument panel and the little wires for the shift indicator a preventing me from doing so. Can someone give me instruction on how to remove this safely with out damaging them. Thank you.

I found one. Thanks.

I am looking for a 3/4 or full guage cluster for my 1989 MJ with the 4.0L and automatic transmission. Let me know what you have and price shipped to 72687. Thanks.

That is the info I was wanting to see! I have not had one of these motors apart before so was not sure where oil passages were located or where the potential for oil leakage could be. Thank you

Worn piston rings will cause a head gasket to leak oil? It not coming out of the exhaust manifold its coming our of the side of the engine (passenger side) where the head and engine block meet.

I have a bad oil leak. I jumped the gun and I replaced my rms. In the process of doing that I power washed the engine. Upon driving the jeep after I now realize it is leaking oil from the head gasket on passenger side. Any advice? I guess I will pull the head and check the head for cracks/ straightness and replace the head gasket. Do I need to replace head studs as well? Engine is a 4.0 that just turned over 170k.

This weekend I jacked up the front of the comanche to set suspensoin at full droop and dove into the rear main seal replacement. It was a tight fit getting the oil pan out but it finally came. My parts cleaner. When i pulled the rear main cap i noticed a pretty bad gouge in the bearing. I pondered on this far awhile and decided it ran fine when i took it apart we will see how long it last. (think OM617 Swap) hehe. OIl pan all cleaned up and gasket mating surface cleaned. PB blaster seemed to work great for removing RTV. I used a 95 cherokee rubber oil pan gasket. The only complaint I have is that the little strip that goes on the rear main would not stay in place so I put a dab of RTV under it bolted the two rear bolts onto the pan to hold it in place and let it sit over night. The next morning it was ready to go.....and then it got knocked loose when squeezing the oil pan back in. oh well i think I got it where it needed to be. I also bought a new oil fill cap and front vac harness. The Vac harness should be here by Wednesday. I am going to order a rubber valve cover gasket as well. I should of used the rubber gasket the first time but I guess I like doing things twice. BTW if your oil fill cap is leaking oil just buy a new one they are only a few dollars from the auto parts store. Thats it for now. Once the vac harness and valve cover gasket make it here and are put on I think it will be ready to go and mostly oil leak free......if i did it all right.

The rear main leak has gotten ALOT worse. The fresh looking oil spot is after idling for about 10 minutes. I could literally watch it drip drip drip. The front PVC gromment spits oil(has been for awhile) and the oil fill cap is leaking like it always has. I am going to get a few parts and possibly tackle that tomorrow. My 2005 Ford Powerstroke is for sale and I need to get the comanche back to DD status.

Ok The IAC valve was getting worse so I opted to return it for a new one. Its the first Standard Brand part I have had to return. I had to pay for the shipping back to Rock Auto's warehouse in CA. Granted shipping was not much for an IAC but I would not of had to pay that if I had bought local. The transaction is not finished yet so maybe they will make it right. For the time being I put in a old IAC I found in the box of parts that came with the Comanche. It idles alittle low at cold start but its working good enough to keep the Comanche in DD duties. It now has 170K miles on it.

Om617 kit and other accessories. http://www.mercedesdiesel4x4.com/

Jeep 5257478 ® crosses to Dorman 703-235. Ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/10-DOOR-LOCK-ROD-CLIPS-FOR-GM-FORD-CHRYSLER-AMC-5-RIGHT-5-LEFT-SIDES-/121770289781 Just what I was looking for. Thank you to all who responded.

Does anyone have a part number for the plastic door lock Rod clip for a manual door ...passenger side. Apparently one off of a electric Cherokee door I got will not work. It's to fat so I whittled on it and then I broke it. I was hoping to find a dorman part number or something I can pickup at lock parts store.

We sold the car. At this rate I figured it is going to be awhile before I would need AT tires so I put some new light duty steer tires on the front. One of the used tires I had bought to limp around on was starting to look pretty bad and was causing a front end shimmy. I did rough pricing of all the parts I could think of to do the 4x4 conversion correctly, meaning replace all bearings seals, chains and clutches on all 4x4 components and it came out to roughly 2k I think. Possibly less if I rebuild the transmission myself. BTW one bottle of Lucas stop leak did not fix the power steering leak but I do think it helped to slow it down. I plan to change the ATF and filter soon since the MJ is seeing more miles on the 2WD transmission then I had planned. I have a high idle problem and I think its the idle air control valve. It does it right after starting. Sometimes it idles down sometimes not. I may need to call in the warranty on my IAC valve.

Not much to report. The wife has been driving the MJ on a daily basis as we have her car up for sale. Once her car sales I am hoping to move forward with the 4x4 conversion as I think I have most of the Gremlins worked out now.

SOLD!!!!

Sold to a young man in Mo. With a wrecked Cherokee.