88SporTruck

Just a quick update! I put the rims and tires from my wifes old 90 Dakota on the Comanche today to replace the dryrotted old studded snow tires on it. They bolt right up. Some fresh gas got her running nice and smooth and I took her for a short ride. It was great! Just one question tho....When I had the rear wheels off I removed the drums to check things out. It all looks great inside and the shoes are barely worn but with the drum removed you can press the brake pedal and nothing moves at all in the rear brakes. (the fronts work fine) There is a valve mounted above the rear axle with a rod connected to the diff cover bolts that appears to change the amount of rear braking force depending on the amount of weight in the bed. Could this valve have gone bad? Can it be bypassed? I have never seen this type of brake valve on any other trucks before.

Yeah I know that the RENIX system is the fuel/igniton part but AFAIK when they switched over to the HO motors and did away with RENIX they also did away with the pressure bottle system so I associate it with RENIX. My Cherokee is a 93 with the H.O I6 so this 88 Comanche is my first experience working on older RENIX era jeeps and its a constant learning process!

In what year did they switch from a cable operated speedo to an electronic one? 1991?

While i was kinda disappointed not to see a 4.0 when i opened the hood the first time I was relieved to not see a RENIX cooling system!

its right between the airbox and drivers side fender. Its an open cooling system with a cap on the radiator and the bottle just appears to be the standard type of overflow bottle. also according to the manual the engine diagnostic connectors should be under the dash yet they are under the hood on the pass side inner fender.......

Here she is! sorry the pics suck there wasnt much room around the truck as its parked real close to the garage and the MG under the blue tarp. and the possibly wrong distributor thats in there: I still have to clean out the bed. That rusty metal box in there was an antique craftsman circular saw and the box could be folded out to turn the saw into a small tablesaw. It was full of water and looks like its wrecked but i might try to fix it up as it looked like a pretty sweet setup. There also are 3 jeep center caps that are not from this truck in there... its gonna be a treasure hunt digging through all the leaves in the bed.

SHE'S ALIVE!!!! Turns out it was just a corroded connector on the CPS harness. The gas in the tank turned out to be good as well. After sitting outside for nearly 2 years she fired right up and just smoked a little bit for a minute or so then settled down to a nice idle! Thank you all for all your help. Now ive gotta find out why I'm leaking something out below my intake manifold that is burning off on the exhaust and smoking like hell....... But now that I know the motor runs I'm willing to put in the time and effort to fix her up. The friend that gave it to me is even cleaning out his garage so we can bring it inside and redo the floorpans and he is going to help me repaint the whole truck!! (he used to paint cars for a living and has all the equipment) All I need now is a new door lock cyl and igniton cyl (key is broken off in the ign) and to glue the lens back onto the housing of the pass side rear tail and shes ready to go!

Tanks getting drained Wednesday. When i was cranking it the fuel in the TB smelled like 30 year old minwax! Hopefully The CPS solves the no start issue so i can get onto replacing the floorpan and getting this truck painted.

I've already done all the resistance checks on the coil and it checked out fine. I'll be sure to test the cps. Frayed wires are a good possibility as there were several mouse nests under the hood.

NAPA lists the CPS for about 34 bucks so I think I'll try that and see what happens. I don't want to throw a ton of money into a free truck........ Worse comes to worse I can get a JY engine delivered for under 400 with a 30 day warranty.

NO spark direct from coil. I plugged a brand new NGK plug into the wire direct off the coil and grounded it against the alternator casing and got no spark at all. I used the alt case as everything else was covered in dust and grease and it was the only piece of clean metal i could find within reach of the wire that had continuity to ground. I'm thinking more and more that this is just a bad cps. the cap on this wrong dist is def used as you can see some marks on the contacts inside that look like any other used cap so I'm assuming it ran at some point with this dist in it. The guy i got it from paid 50 bucks for it as it was not running when he got it and he never did any work to it but is helping me now. EDIT: NAPA lists a distributor pick up assembly for this truck....... Should I be going to the JY to find a correct dist?

Ok then I have some random dist stuck in there then! it def has a vac advance and looks just like the pic in my servce manual of an 84-85 carbed 4cyl jeep dist. I'm thinking somewhere along the line somebody just stuck any old random 4cyl dist in there! The CPS is plugged in but I'm thinking it may be bad. If everything else is working shouldnt this wrong dist at least try to give some spark? Is it hurting anything to have that dist in there even if the vac advance and internal electronics are not hooked up?

Well I was at a friends house a while back and spotted what appeared to be an XJ grill poking out from behind an abandoned boat on his property......I inquired about its status as i was looking for some small stuff for my XJ. Boy was I surprised when he told me it was a comanche and that I could have it for free! It's a 88 SporTruck with the 2.5/AX4/D35 (2WD) 122k miles. Only ONE tiny patch of surface rust on the drivers side cab corner! Bed and rest of body are mint besides the faded paint and cracked grille. Of course the drivers side floorboard has a large hole rotted through it tho..... :grrrr: Now this thing cranks right over and seems to be spraying fuel down the TB but has zero spark. I found a wire harness with a 3 prong plug hanging off the distributor but I cannot find anywhere to plug it into. Also the dist has a vac advance on it that has its line capped off and I can't find the vac line that is supposed to hook to it. The coil checks out fine and I can hear the fuel pump run when I turn the key on. Where does the 3 pin plug from the dist go to? IF anyone has pics of an 88 2.5 dist and how it hooks up that would be amazing. I'm thinking that these dist problems and some dirty old gas are the only things keeping it from firing right up! :hmm: