Dzimm

Agree with Shelbyluv. Keep your factory tails and either cut and solder the old plugs to the new wiring or do some dremel work on the 97+ XJ bulb plugs to fit the MJ housings. Not only is it waaayy cheaper, it looks much better on the truck IMO. On mine I just dremeled the newer XJ plugs and they fit great.

To expand on my thinking, I'm imagining a simple go-kart but on a slightly larger scale with more power. Something I can thrash on like a quad or go-kart, but also have a practical use with the ability to haul things around. Similar to yellaheep's pictures above but more tire clearance and much more stripped down. I'm looking to gut the thing like you would do when building a race car and only keep the essentials. Less crap to break and less crap in the way when the important stuff does break. I am also in the thinking of a tracker/sidekick or an s10 but they are hard to come by around me and are usually on the expensive side. There is one Tracker for sale near me that is only $450 running and driving but the guy hasn't responded at all today. Luckily I heard back from my buddy who talked to the autoshop he signed his wrecked sidekick over to and they are willing to sell it back for $200. The body is absolutely demolished and there is possible suspension damage (his daughter rolled it into a cornfield at 55mph and somehow walked away totally fine). We are going to go do a thurough survey of the damage tomorrow to see if the drivetrain and suspension are in good enough shape. I'll report back with info on what I come up with and pictures.

I'm looking for ideas for a new project. I'm looking to turn a running driving vehicle into an offroad/mixed terrain go kart. My buddy's daughter rolled his Sidekick and he signed it over before I got a chance to ask about it.. Any ideas on what vehicles I could look for? - I'm looking for cheap: like $500 - Smaller the better - body on frame is a must - independent suspension at least up front would be nice - 4wd/AWD would also be nice I plan on cutting the top off, adding a roll cage, and making it like a small truck for use around the property as well as have some fun offroad without caring if it breaks. Think better/Slightly bigger John Deere Gator.

Congratulations man, you've got life's most fulfilling project ahead of you now.

It got me too.. Had to click back about 7 times to get to the pub. Lol

Get the larger tank. You'll have no problem getting it to fit in a LWB truck.

Was there any reason for this you know of or was it China just being different?

You'd have to look at wiring diagrams to see if the right wires are even there. I'm positive the sending unit will make the gauge useless no matter what you do. I'm also not positive but I believe the fuel pressure will be wrong for the Renix. I suppose you could find an aftermarket or other oem pump that works with the truck and attach it to the Dakota assembly body. You could also try to find a way to attach your MJ sending unit (if it still works) to the main body of the Dakota assembly. There is just a ton of custom work involved here.

The 97+ swap is a full replacement of the electrical system, drivetrain, interior including dash, doors, fenders, front clip, etc. from a 97-01 XJ. Read through some of the 97+ swap build threads (Alexia has a very detailed thread on the swap and there are a few others on the build thread front page right now) for more info. It's definitely not worth it if you are just having an issue with your fuel tank. I was asking because the Dakota tank is usually only used when doing a 97+ swap because the Dakota fuel sending unit/pump wiring works with the 97+ wiring harness and gauges. Edit: That being said, I'm sure you can make the Dakota tank work with an older style MJ or XJ assembly but you'd have to cap the top of the tank and have to figure out where to cut the whole in the side of the tank for the older assembly but as said above, this will be a lot of work. Otherwise the tank itself physically fits under the MJ very well (15 gallon Dakota tank fits no problem, 22 gallon Dakota tank comes very close to the rear diff on SWB MJs and I'd only recommend that combo if you modify the tank slightly or are lifted in order to avoid contact).

I just saw this XJ clip a couple weeks ago. It's quite impressive what a stock XJ can do! I've always wondered, did XJs in other countries all come with the taller roof in the rear?

This is coming together very nicely. Hopefully the coolant issue isn't serious. Could you possibly go into some detail on how exactly you lowered the seat? I'm a tall guy myself and struggle to fit in my 97+ MJ. My knees are in the dash and my head only inches from the roof..

I put the newer style plugs in the MJ housings. Just a little work with the dremel and they fit prefect without hacking up an MJ taillight housing. Sent from my HTC U11 using Tapatalk

I need to bring some of these to my next snowball fight....

I've never had issues with mid-priced aftermarket sensors I've gotten from autozone. I have always avoided the cheapest aftermarket options. Saying that, there are a lot of people who insist on Mopar sensors and I would use them if I could afford to use them every time. You will get tons of opinions both ways but to me it really boils down to how much you can afford/want to spend at the time. Mopar is best but the aftermarket options do work.

Times are showing up this morning for me too. Very strange.

I noticed today that the site now only shows the date of the most recent post on the main page where it previously showed the time since the last post. Notice under the avatars on the right side of the page. Showing Dec 31 instead of how many minutes since the last post. Sent from my HTC U11 using Tapatalk

This is genius!

No 20" TV's have built in power inverters (except for old CRTs) due to the small size. A lot of bigger TV's are starting to have external power bricks as well because they are getting too thin to house the large coils and capacitors. OP, just to clarify, the power brick for the TV says 120v AC input and 12v DC output correct? Either way, I would still recommend using a proper power inverter and the cords that came with the TV.

In short, Yes, but not recommended. You can cut the plug off your TV's power inverter and wire it directly to the battery and get power as long as the TV does in fact use 12v. The problems you will encounter: - voltage drops and spikes in a running vehicle can have radical effects on the TV, potentially even frying it. - as the battery drains with the vehicle off, the voltage won't stay a consistent 12v and likely the TV won't stay on long - the amperage likely will be different than the TV requires. If it is close, it will work but again, the slight variation in amperage could have ill effects on the TV. - I'm sure there is more potential issues I'm not thinking of. Your best bet is to just get a power inverter. The more expensive ones are much more capable, some even run power tools with no issues so it may be a worthwhile investment for you to research some of those. Otherwise the inverters can be had for as little as $15 on Amazon that plug into the cigarette lighter in the truck and require no hardwiring. No gurantee on the quality of the cheap models but this will be the easiest and safest route for you. If you do choose you want to take the chance and run it straight off the 12v power, check out some boating forums. This kind of stuff is done on boats all the time using dedicated batteries.

I finally braved the cold and got the leaking rad hose fixed as well as lubed up the hood latches in preparation for late muzzleloader season. The 4-wheeler won't start when it's this cold so I will be using the truck to haul the deer up to the barn. In the last 4 days I've counted 53 deer total, all too far away to take a clean shot. I did however get to enjoy the truck in the snow! Started off with some donuts at the bottom of the lane a few days ago. It was quite a bit of fun but didn't compare to driving down in the bottom. Yesterday I finally got time to drive it around and have some real fun. There is a steep embankment near the burn pile that is fun to climb. I didn't realize there was big rocks in it until the snow made them extremely slick and I struggled to get up it until I found the line, then it went right up. After that we crossed the creek and went up the back side of the valley to the edge of the beanfield, where there weren't any stalks, and did a few donuts before coming back down to take another run at the embankment. Picked a steeper spot this time and made it up easier since there was no rocks. We went back up and over to the other side of the property and down the sledding hill. My gf was freaking out the whole time going down it because her uncle got his silverado stuck down there last year and couldn't make it back up without the help of the tractor, which also struggled. At the bottom, near the creek there is a hill that's super steep but short and has a narrow passage between 2 trees. Had to take 2 runs at it but it made it scraping branches all the way. This is where the real fun began, rather than heading straight back up the sledding hill, I have a path between a bunch of cedars that I like to climb back up the hill. Problem being that it's a fairly steep hill and driving up and across it when there is snow gets a little sketchy. On the way up I went between a couple cedars going across the hill while trying to turn up the hill. Traction wasn't good and the drivers rear about dumped into a cedar. Took a different line on my third try out of the tree and made it up around the slick spot. The only casualty there was some branches, short cedars, and maybe some scratched paint. Sounded like I was knocking whole trees down going through it. After she was done freaking out thinking we were gonna roll down the hill or crash into a tree, we finished up going through the wooded trail and coming out behind the silos and put the truck away. She took some videos from inside the truck I'll try to post later. I'm extremely happy with the truck but will have some work to do come spring. I tried to shift into 4lo a couple times and it didn't act right. At first it just didn't want to shift into 4lo at all, then it wanted to grind like crazy trying to go into 4lo and continue to grind back in neutral. I also had to shift the transmission into park to get the t-case to shift back into 4high because it wouldn't do it in neutral!??! After trying a few times it finally went into 4lo and seemed to work fine but I didn't use it more than a few minutes because I didn't want to get it stuck in 4lo or something. I know I was doing everything correctly and the engine was at idle so I'm not sure what is going on. I'll be doing some research and any ideas from you guys are welcome! Sent from my HTC U11 using Tapatalk

Best way I've found to upload from my phone is using Tapatalk. Phone cameras nowadays have high enough resolution that the images usually exceed 2mb. There are apps to shrink the photos at the cost of blurry images. You might as well save some time and upload straight from Tapatalk until the auto-resizing works here.

Are you doing a 97+ swap? The Dakota tank is usually used for the swap because the 97+ XJ wiring works with the Dakota fuel unit by swapping a couple wires around. You can use a 97+ XJ fuel unit as well since the hole is the same size, however it won't reach the bottom of the tank so you lose some capacity. It would take a lot of work to make the tank work with the older style fuel units and wiring and is probably not worth it.

If your images are too big, use imgur or some other photo hosting site (I'd stay away from photobucket if I were you). The image auto-resizing doesn't work here yet. More info on posting images can be found in the Forum Probems page.

Posting some pictures would be good so if we see it elsewhere on the web we can report! Hopefully it's back home soon!

I don't think you can torque on a bushing like that. For my rubber mounts I just tightened until the metal ring around the bushing just barely started to bow. Someone else may have a better way of doing it. Maybe contact Ironman 4x4 and see what they say.