kastein

Not to rain on your parade... but a hydrolocked motor is a ticking time bomb. You probably have a couple of bent rods, at the very least... it is only a matter of time till one of em decides to bust in half and it'll chew up the block and tear the oil pan up at the same time. Seen it happen more than once. Keep driving it, but pick up a new engine as cheap as you can, along with all the gaskets and tools (engine hoist! inverse torx size 12!) needed to replace it, so you're prepared when it blows.

Go after em in court? If you play your cards right I bet you can get enough money to buy a whole 'nother truck... :yes:

This is another reason why the 2.8L V6 is looked at as the red-headed step child. When there are options out there such as the 4.0L, AW4, AX-15, and D44, they make all of the other Jeep blunders (2.8L, BA-10/5, D35) look foolish. If Jeep had only offered the 2.8L with a BA-10/5 and a D35 we'd probably just come to terms with our crappy drivetrains. Although a 2.8L would make a BA-10/5 and a D35 look pretty stout ;) I have to say, an '84 with the V6, 2wd, BA trans, D35, 215 tires, and baby blue interior would make a fairly laughable/effluent 24 Hours of Lemons contestant...

That's the boat I'm in right now... I'm running a 4.0 that has run on 1.5 quarts of oil multiple times at highway speeds at the moment. Stupid thing keeps leaking it out the RMS and occasionally I forget to check the level for too long :dunno: also have a d35 in service that's got 227k on it (and counting), I have the replacement ready to go in and 3 other vehicles I can drive to work instead so I'm just running it into the ground. When it dies, an 8.25 is going in instead. The AW4 in the MJ also has no business remaining functional, it's got 227k on it with no rebuilds and was run low on fluid by the previous previous owner, when the previous owner bought it the fluid was so dirty and burnt it looked like way-overdue motor oil. Yet it withstood me hammering down and accelerating to 90mph going uphill through the mountains of Pennsylvania in 80-90 degree weather with 3/4 ton of junk in the back, and continues to run perfectly. I guess what I am saying is... if you have AAA, another car, and the parts ready to dump the busted junk as soon as it happens, more power to you, run known-bad parts till they fail. Otherwise, kick that V6, pukegoat, or turdy-5 to the curb before it kicks you!

These are mostly the same people who have dumped thousands into polishing their turd. I love watching them go from being all butthurt about people calling their axle junk to "help my axle blew up can someone sell me a better one for fairly cheap, gotta get to work" to "d35s suck" all in a few short weeks. There is one guy in particular on NAXJA who put like 1200 bucks into fixing his d35 for the second or third time simply because his mechanic fixed it without asking, instead of giving him a quote, and on top of that another 700+ for a disc brake kit, plus gears, and other stuff... after me and at least 3 other people offered to take him to a junkyard, get him a 29spline 8.25, and install it in the parking lot for anywhere from free to half the mechanic's price, the very next weekend. I wasn't sure whether to call him an idiot or feel sorry for him.

Legal mumbo-jumbo aside, e-bay still has wording that can, at the very least, be used to form some sort of case - if you even feel like wasting the effort/expense. You can also give negative feedback (yea, I know, big whoop), but to some (I wish it were more) people, having a good, clean record is very important - it is to me, at least. If these same defunct CL sellers were to put their stuff on e-bay, they would have such a crappy reputation that no one would purchase from them. It's almost come to the point where if a seller doesn't give out his phone number on a CL ad, I'll just move on to the next. Too many people out there that just want to see if their junk is worth anything. When I've put up CL ads, I will ALWAYS respond to e-mails, even if the item is long gone. I've also responded with a blatant refusal to sell one of my 3000GT's to a kid because the e-mail he sent me made him look like an irresponsible moron and I didn't want to be partly responsible for his death when he ran my car into a tree. Hey, at least I responded... Ebay/paypal are next to worthless with dispute resolution. I got completely screwed on something a while ago, fortunately only 50 bucks. A friend of mine got completely screwed out of a thousand dollars on a spectrum analyzer he sold, the guy didn't want shipping insurance so he packed it up and shipped it, of course UPS "reconfigured" it, guy took pics of it all smashed up and sent em to ebay, ebay refunded his money without even asking my friend (whose checking account was badly overdrawn as a result), they "resolved" the dispute by requiring that the buyer ship the busted thing back, he never did and my friend told them as much and they never did a damn thing to the buyer for it. I mostly have people bail out 15 minutes before they're supposed to meet up and buy stuff, or just plain never show or call at all. I always reply to emails (that aren't blatant scams) up till I take the ad down, and I take the ad down as soon as it's sold.

OMG, belongs on scary steering page :ack:

yeah this really pisses me off, I think it's because a lot of people who try to sell vehicles on CL are not exactly computer literate or even fully conscious. But hey, I'd be driving a total rot-box blazer on 35s right now if the seller (well, attempted seller) had enabled email reply or paid his phone bill... so I guess it's not all bad. Idiot disabled email responses and then gave a phone number that went to a message saying "such and such number has been disconnected due to non payment of bills".

Hmmm... I gotta find a yard like that around here! What kind of tread? I'm hoping to get some with a fairly decent allterrain tread at the very least. Of course, that kind of a price cut (2500+shipping+rims? to 1500+I drive there and pick them up) could convince me mighty quick...

I just love this! I can just imagine some poor hippie type crying because of all the environmental damage youre doing! Not that I advocate enviromental destruction, but this is still a free country, isnt it, at least for the time being? Keep it up, drive it every day! :thumbsup: I would but I hate paying nearly 20 dollars for fuel to get to/from work when I can pay about $4.50 for enough gas to get to/from work in the 98 or the MJ :ack: So far I've driven it a couple days a week, when the weather is nice. I'm probably taking it tomorrow because I will be going to the metal supply shop and picking up metal to build ramps out of if I wake up early enough tomorrow. So nice to be able to just go and buy 12 foot long metal stock instead of scratching my head trying to figure out how to get it home... Soon as I get it running on WMO I will be driving it far more often... and I'm going to see if I can't figure out how to convert my Rockwell transfer case from sprag shifted to air shift so it is only in 8 wheel drive most of the time, that should cut down on tire wear somewhat. I think it's a Rockwell T-138, anyone have a manual for one of those or a mechanical drawing? If it was the size of an NP231 I would just pull it and open it up but it's a little on the heavy side... hmmm..... how much do those cost on rims? I'm looking at tires and I can pick up (before shipping of course :ack:) 46" Michelin XMLs @ 85-95% for $200 each, 49" Michelin XLs @ 85-95% for $250, and 53" GY AT A2s (brand new!) or 53" Michelin XZLs @ 85-95% for $250 each, all from 100dollarman. I'm not sure which I like the look of the most but the prices are killer... in both bad and good ways. I'd like to gain a bit of max road speed, too, the 46s look like they'd boost that a little and the tread pattern looks like it won't hurt gas mileage too badly.

Not likely :eek: It'll cost me about 2-3 grand for a new set of tires. And they only last 20 or 25 thousand miles since it's 10 wheel drive at all times... Oh, and fuel costs 60 cents a mile till I can get it started on waste motor oil. Right now I'm daily driving the red 98 XJ. The MJ has no muffler atm (new one going in tonight) and needs a new windshield really badly, and the 96 XJ has an overheating problem.

I did the driver side in about 30 minutes, easy way is to pull the air filter housing out... a 13mm (or is it 1/2"? I think it's 13mm since it's bodywork) socket and some extensions and suddenly you have plenty of room to work. Took one look at the passenger side and decided I could leave it for another day, since it was just stopgap till I do the trans swap anyways. Heck, I couldn't even find the new set of mounts I got so I ended up using a used one off my spare engine :fool:

does this apply to xjs to? ive got the rear end out of a xj that had a carbed 2.5 with an auto tranny and 4wd. wiould it have 4.56's? might, but it'll probably be a d35 so I wouldn't run it. FYI - the 20 rear axle is an AMC 20 not a D20. A D20 is a nifty twin-stickable gear driven transfer case, as I recall.

X2 on what wildman said - if you cut open a spare computer USB cable or similar, you will find the same thing. They do that because it is darn near impossible to solder well to the aluminum foil shielding, so they just stick a bare wire in next to it and solder to that instead when needed :thumbsup: The things you learn as a professional nerd...

Thanks for the tip on fuel blending - hopefully I'll be running waste motor oil by then, will probably still do better with a bit of gasoline. Saw a nice FSJ pickup (were all FSJ pickups J-trucks or were there some that weren't, aside from the M715?) for sale on my way to the NAXJA president's place yesterday... man... wish I had some money to spare and a spot to park it (though the parking space has never stopped me before...)! The rest of the fleet is currently keeping me from having any extra money. Ordered a camo softtop, new wiper blades, new tach cable, new temp gauge, new belts (since the ones on it aren't exactly right, will keep them as spares), and new hood hold-downs from erik's military surplus store... can't wait till they show up! He's got the best prices I could find anywhere, beat Idaho Motor Pool and others by $50 to $100 on the top and $20-30 on most of the other parts. TNJ wanted over a hundred dollars for a tach cable, got one from him for $38!

Empty Post

Put in new trans mount and exhaust bushing at the crossmember... pulled the muffler and tailpipe to put in the new ones I got from rockauto only to find out they sent me a muffler that wouldn't fit the cat outlet :fs1: hopefully a new one will come soon, did get a new rearmost exhaust mount welded up and installed though so the new tailpipe and muffler won't meet the same fate as the old one.

Nice! Sounds about like mine... yours didn't come with a muffler either I take it Gotta love those flip-up windshields! Where do you get your spare/replacement parts? I've found a couple places but would like to compare notes... so far erik's military surplus seems to have the best prices, TNJ / Idaho Motor Pool / White Owl / Boyce Equipment have some stuff they don't though. Ever find a way to get the windshield wipers to stop vibrating/flopping down to the center of your field of vision?

You can probably fix that yourself with junkyard parts for 3-400 dollars or less - especially if you are patient enough to wait for body parts of the right color. Where are you located? I'm sure some on here would give you a bit of cash for it if you decide to junk it, if I had the space right now and you were within range I would pick it up, fix it, and probably sell it for whatever it ended up costing me.

Nice! I haven't moved anything other than myself and a 5 gallon jerry can of diesel yet. Fixed the parking brake last night, just needed adjustment at the brake shoe bellcrank end. I LOVE not having to worry about whether a fastener is metric or SAE! Drove it to work this morning just because I felt like it, here it is in the parking lot at Intel Hudson, in the 3 spaces next to a blue prius: (click for big)

That bed looks real clean... ... any chance you wanna drive it over here and sell it? :brows: will give first born and/or right arm

Yeah but I didn't feel like going swimming on the highway again :rotf: I did that for 3-4 hours Saturday night/Sunday morning, and another few hours Sunday around noon. It was enough automotive bathing for a lifetime.

I've seen trucks with so much duct-taped-covered-rust on them that a thief would still have trouble finding the key even knowing this :rotf:

:brows: finally, a picture of the rare dana 30 TTB axle! :rotf:

2 copies... not one! Keep the original at home (else you end up with a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy... that only works when you turn it just the right way, while jiggling it and pressing it upwards), a copy on your keychain, and a copy on a flat blank (the ones without the rubber handle) in your wallet. That way if you lose your keys (happened to me at the junkyard once :eek:) you can still get home.