Dzimm

Got a little more done on it yesterday. Found the coolant overflow bottle a new home next to the brake booster. It's secured with some zip ties around the electrical harness and the booster cause why not? I also used some model car glue to reattach a couple vacuum fittings and used zip ties to hold them in place while it dried. I had no other glue and wasn't about to run into town so hopefully it holds up. I took the hood off, threw it in the ground, and stomped around on it to flatten it back out. It worked quite nicely and looks somewhat normal again. Finally got the windshield off so now I can start cleaning up the glass mess. Sent from my HTC U11 using Tapatalk

No mine was fine. As long as you don't start the engine, you shouldn't do any real damage to anything. When it's setup right, everything will just slide together nicely. You may have to do some pushing on the trans to get it to mate with the block but nothing crazy.

I hear about not wanting to pull the trans by yourself, that's exactly what I had to do when I screwed up the engagement myself and it sucked. You will have to do some wiggling and slight rotating to get it to engage. How easy did the bellhousing mate to the engine? Did it seem like you were using the bolts to bring it forward?

Yeah it's difficult at times. It takes a long time to find anything with a good body. It took me over 2 years to find my clean bodied MJ. This I don't really care about because it won't ever be a "nice" vehicle again.

Definitely pull it apart and check your torque converter engagement on the pump. You should feel/hear 3 clicks as it seats into the trans. This is by far the most important thing to check because you will destroy the trans if it's wrong. When I did mine, I actually had to loosen my bellhousing bolts a turn or two otherwise my engine was extremely hard to turn over. It helped immensely when trying to line up the flexplate. But again, make sure the torque converter is engaged properly!!

It was 61*F yesterday which allowed me to get some work done on the zuki. First thing I did was remove the airbag so that I don't end up blowing it up in my face. I went ahead and pulled the rear wheel off and filled it up with air. The rim is severely bent but luckily the axle is straight. I found a replacement on eBay and that should be here on Monday. I'm gonna try to do the tire swap myself since it doesn't need balanced. I've never done it before so we'll see how that goes. I did some yanking on the strut tower with the MJ and it looks to have come back mostly straight but it still has some negative camber to it. I also brought the tie rod end in some, which helped as well. I will try to adjust it more later but it is straight enough I can actually move it now. The glass going everywhere was annoying so I covered the windshield in duct tape to keep it contained and it is working quite well. Still not sure how to get the glass detached from the bottom of the windshield frame. It started right up when I turned the key but is running rough because of all the vacuum leaks and the trans acts like it has a stall converter or something in it. Revs up to about 3k rpm before engaging and taking off. I read that a similar symptom can happen on these with a vacuum leak so I'm hoping that is the issue. I spent nearly 2 hours last night looking for the right vsv for it and was able to find a used one on eBay for a decent price. It should be here Saturday. Next steps are to clean up all the glass shards, the vacuum and electrical mess, and start stripping the interior while I wait for the parts to come. Sent from my HTC U11 using Tapatalk

You could potentially see those things. Really it's more wear on the engine and trans because they aren't running at the Temps they were designed to. Colder is better but too cold isn't. But then again, how cold is too cold?

9 time out of 10 yes, however I've had it do the opposite on my 98 xj. Flushed the sludge out of the cooling system and it was fine after that. The only thing I could gather was that the coolant wasn't getting to the temp sensor.

If you have no flow or slow flow, you probably have air in the system. That's still a possibility if there is flow. Otherwise it could be a bad or stuck water pump or a clog somewhere in the cooling system. First thing I'd try, park the truck facing up a slope to get the radiator higher than the engine, open the radiator up with the engine running(make sure its still cold!) Burp any air out you can with the truck like this. My best guess is a bad tstat but it could also be a bad rad cap. These are cheap and good to have extras on hand but try burping air before spending money.

- Most likely cause is using a tstat that is not 195* these commonly come faulty out of the box, it's best to buy 2-3 at a time. - The next likely cause is a pressure leak in the coolant system. This usually is at the radiator cap. If those don't fix it, grab you rad hoses with the engine running and make sure you have water flow. If you are getting flow and nothing else seems to be wrong, I don't know what it could be. Do you have any upgraded cooling parts?

Gogmorgo pretty much hit it on the nose. You'll want to swap both axles as the MJ gear ratio is highly unlikely to match. The MJ leaf springs are spaced just a tad narrower. Replace the perches and cutoff the shock mounts on the C8.25 and it will bolt in. One other thing you'll need to consider is that you'll have to have a rear driveshaft made since the XJ one is too short, the front however will be a direct swap.

There is a video of one of these launching on YouTube. Pretty cool vehicle.

With the release of the Jeep Crew Chief concept truck ("Canis Camacho" in game), I got back into playing Grand Theft Auto V. It's a pretty fun vehicle and offers lots of customization options like removable top, tube doors, and the proper front grill. The only downside is you can't remove the damn light bar... Anyway, I then realized that one of the main character's main vehicle is a Kaiser Jeep M715 ("Bohdi" in game). I also realized that in GTA San Andreas, there is a Jeep Comanche! ("Bobcat" in game). Man I forgot how fun this game was. This got me thinking, where else have you guys come across cool Jeeps in Video games or other places you wouldn't expect? Sent from my HTC U11 using Tapatalk

Factory location for the axle breather is tied to the main loom by the brake booster. This is a 98 XJ but you can see it just under the firewall ground cable.

Good luck finding a factory 4 switch panel, they are harder to find than MJ Lund moonvisors. There have been some black door panels pop-up in the classifieds section here but I believe those have been 96- ones. I currently don't have a lead on any black 97+ door panels. 3D printed 4 switch bezel (I cannot speak to the quality, also read the description on this one) - https://m.ebay.com/itm/97-01-Jeep-Cherokee-XJ-Switch-Panel-Fits-4-OEM-Switches-Police-Package/222817092232?hash=item33e0ef0288:g:jrgAAOSwighZhLN4 Factory ext idle switch - https://m.ebay.com/itm/97-01-JEEP-CHEROKEE-AUX-EXT-IDLE-SWITCH-XJ/192451175417?hash=item2ccefbe3f9:g:QKcAAOSw5nxafSBR Repro ext idle switch (I've used these switches and they are good quality for the price) - https://m.ebay.com/itm/Rocker-switch-3C34-12-volt-EXT-IDLE-Jeep-Wrangler-97-06-spot-driving-rock-ATV/262933259151?hash=item3d380b238f:g:Y1QAAOSwokJaX~QO

I would have loved to do this twice now and for legitimate reasons. - On my XJ I replaced the idiot lights with a full gauge cluster and obviously the mileage was innacurate, though I was lucky it was only up 14k miles almost exactly so it's easy enough to keep track of. In reality here, it's more fraudulent not to set the cluster back the extra mileage. - My MJ is a full 97+ swap with a dash and engine coming from different XJs so the mileage isn't accurate. I however don't know the true mileage of the engine so zeroing it out after my build would have been nice to keep track of the miles I have put on it. In this case it isn't the original engine anyways so the mileage should already be assumed innacurate.

Yeah that looks to be your issue there. Try to clean up those wires and get them hooked back up properly. If you can get them clean enough to see the color, someone will know what it does, otherwise use a testlight or multimeter to test each wire to see what they do. If a wire or two don't get power when cycling your signals, brakes, and tails, then you gotta follow it up and find the next problem area.

Oh... Maybe that's why my headlight switch makes the car louder..

You sure it's not a muffler bearing?

Performance pizza cutter. Handle not included.

That info answered my questions, thanks.

First thing you should do is clean the ground behind the drivers side taillight. That is the number one cause for taillight issues. After that you'll want to try to undo anything "backyard Bubba" did to the wiring. Report back here after cleaning up the ground on whether that made any difference or not. One thing I will say is don't hardwire anything. You should fix it the right way not only because it's the right way but also because you can cause more issues by cobbling something together, similar to what the PO did to your truck. It also makes it harder for others to help solve issues when the wiring isn't setup the way the factory did it. Also a voltmeter will be your best friend right now.

This is interesting and I'm surprised a company is just now making a product for these trans. I will be following your updates on this to see if it would offer any benefits going on a truck built for racing. I have a few questions for you that you may not be able to answer quite yet but I'll ask anyways. - What are the benefits of the deeper pan? - What do they expect it to do for the trans? - How do you use that fill hole that will be on the bottom side of the trans? - Is the pan itself thicker to withstand some impacts? - Do you know yet how far down it will hang?

This is actually incorrect. My 98 2dr SE XJ came from the factory with 4.0, AW4, 4x4 and 3.07. It's really slow. The Liberty C8.25 would be the cheapest and easiest swap, followed by a C8.25 from and XJ with a Liberty disk brake swap. You have lots of options tho.

These didn't sound bad to me at idle. If I had to guess I'd think it was a diesel. When it revs though it sounds like a rice rocket. Lol