Smokeyyank

And they can, obviously just starts to defeat the purpose of the entry price. Might as well get JJ or similar at the start. Yeah it's definitely more of the mall crawler crowd it's appealing to.

Gothca, thanks for the info.

I don't know a lot from the XJ side, but from talking to people in the WJ group that actually wheel. The arms just aren't the beefiest. Few have dented them with little contact on rocks. Cost has to be cut somewhere and it's those two areas they do it in. Yes their flex joints fail early. Just get super sloppy and since they aren't rebuildable you have to buy new ones. Their urethane ones do not last they get chewed up easily. Most get maybe 10k miles before needing to replace them. Some don't even get that. Rather spend the little extra ~$200 and go with IRO and get 3 link vs radius arm.

Group 65. I'm not finding a Mopar one though.

Is it a AGM battery? I'm done with the lead acid types.

Wasn't sure if this would be pub or here so move if needed, but I need a new battery for my WJ. I had one of the Costco interstate but I've gone through three of them in less than 3 years. While it's easy to replace them I'm getting annoyed pulling the battery to swap them. I'm considering bending over and getting an odyssey but damn they're expensive. I do want to get a AGM battery. I know there are some cheaper options, Costco, Walmart, Sams. But I want something that I don't have to worry about. I will be adding a winch and some lights in the future. So any insight?

Thin steel on the arms and junk joints.

XJ's are better from a utility stand point. Really they are the greatest SUVs ever made. Super capable, 4 doors and decent MPG. MJ's are limited being a 2 door and really not a lot of people have any clue about them. I didn't know they existed until I had one. I do think a lot of the XJ values are insane, especially these people with low mileage ones asking $25k+.

Just to follow up on this. I swapped the ECU yesterday and have been poking around in the MJ. Here are my thoughts. -Start up idle is improved. -Overall it has more power through the power band. Just a lot smoother. -Low end torque is improved For the 1ish hour it took me to do it not a bad little upgrade.

Thanks! Not sure what's next. I really want to work on building my WJ, but we'll see. So far my thoughts on this are a repaint, new XJ axles with 3.73's, little lift with bigger rubber and just keep it simple and clean. Found his old build thread. I still don't regret my choice..... although I think it would be cool to have a build like it.

Thank you, but can't take the credit of docs, nurses and everyone else patient facing. I'm removed from the trenches. Just figured I'd share what I deal with daily and not from the news. For the most part correct. The goal is just trying to eliminate the large spread, not the entire spread. Virus can't survive without a host so in narrowing the ability to infect you curtail the ability to mutate.

I work in a hospital and have been on COVID meetings almost daily since this all started. We are a small rural hospital but we have a very high tourist rate because of being in a ski town. Several weeks ago our county was one of the highest incidence % per 100k in the country. What I can say from seeing it on the front line has been this. -Deaths are unvaccinated or due to severe comorbidities that COVID exacerbated. We have a small number of deaths ~500 since 2020 but total population is about <20k. That number is very fluid because of people owning multiple homes. I'd say there is closer to 10k full time in the county. Vaccinated deaths are 0. Yes a low % but honestly no one has been able to put out clean data. -Children are getting hit hard right now. My wife used to work in the PICU at Children's Hospital in Denver and has several friend that still do. They are at capacity in the PICU with pediatric covid cases as of yesterday. Several of those kiddos won't make it, but a few also have other issues. In my hospital they are having to divert every single hospitalized child because the cases are so severe and we do not have the equipment. Since Denver hospitals are at capacity it's not looking good for where they are able to go. We had a 6 month old triaged and airlifted out. -We lost some staff due to a mandatory vaccination requirement it was about 2% mainly support services, not clinical. I lost a few staff, one was going to retire and didn't believe in COVID. Other was either going to be fired because of issues or this. There was a nurse that refused and ended up getting it and passed within a week. She was in her 30s no comorbidities. Other wise no clinical people left. -We had went from not having any hospitalized patients (we had 8 through all of 2021) to being at capacity. Before we would divert majority of the patients we had mainly because of our resources and availability at the larger the hospitals. -Almost 10% of our clinical staff is out due to being sick. For a week our ED was almost non existent until the state provided us some travel nurses. People are being turned away unless it's emergent. -This is no longer a pandemic and needs to be treated as an epidemic. COVID isn't going anywhere. -Long term affects are still being studied but the trend is long term affects are more prevalent in unvaxxed. -Everyone will more than likely get it regardless of vax or not. Symptoms are going to vary and so are outcomes. Personally, I'm done with it and beyond frustrated with people thinking they are medical professionals getting their news from Joe Rogan's dumb @$$. Really I don't care what people want to do, but if you don't want to listen to modern medicine don't ask to use it when the time comes. Go to Joe's house. I also don't think the government need's to meddle with it. I hate politics and really they can all F off. To Pete's point hospitals are limited and it really is sad that it's starting to be a pick and choose scenario but I guess that's cost of freedom?

Since I've had it back I've done a few little things to it. I installed the headlight harness upgrade, swapped in the 89 ECU and put the Azzys design gauge overlays on. I need to reinstall the rear bumper and also put the ACOS back on. But other than that nothing really planned. I am going to part out the other MJ and I have a few parts I'm keeping but still undecided on the rest. For now I just enjoy driving it.

I had chipped away at a few small things on the project MJ but we moved.....again. So I've been doing remodel work and we welcomed another baby girl. So time was slim but it was fine. We had finally moved to a house that had a three car garage which was much needed. Then one day as I was aimlessly scrolling through Craigslist for Jeep stuff I noticed a MJ that looked really familiar. The guy I sold it to was another NAXJA guy that was always asking me about selling my MJ. So when I sold it I wanted to make sure it went to someone who know what they where doing and not making it a clapped out $hitbox. He had it for about a year and did a few small things, rear frame stiffners, fixed some little things and added new shocks. He was awesome enough to sell it back to me for about the same price I sold it to him plus a little more because of the upgrades. Which in this MJ market was HUGE. He ended up hitting the same wall I did and not wanting to cut it up because it was nice.

After a while the truck just kind of hung out. Where we lived I didn't get to drive it as much especially with my daughter. I didn't want to wheel it as I had the WJ. So I eventually made the choice to sell it, big reason was I found another project MJ and I really didn't want to chop up this one but I couldn't keep both. After realizing how few and far these are in decent condition I just couldn't bring myself to chop up a clean example. The project MJ was already really well built and just needed some finishing. It was also beat to crap so I didn't feel bad about cutting it up.

I ended up getting a new job up in the mountains so all plans to build pretty much got put on hold while we moved and everything else. Other than some basic maintenance I never really had to do anything to it which was nice. Was just fun to cruise around in.

I drove it around for a bit and the more I drove it the more I started to really like it. Originally, I was going to lift it and swap in newer XJ axles and some other stuff. Then it switched to snagging a HP44 and 9 and building a crawler. Then life and other stuff happened and it just stayed about the same with the exception of putting on ACOS to level out the rake. I actually liked the look and just left it.

Well guess I should create a "build" thread for my manche. I originally got this from @yellaheep back in 2017. I wasn't looking for a MJ and really had no clue about them. Just wanted a small truck, but this being a Jeep and plain cool was enough for me. The truck had change hands through other MJ fanatics over the years in CO. Lived a while down in south CO before coming up to Denver. At the time it was lowered as I believe Troy wanted to build for autocross but never happened. I couldn't live with a lowered jeep, it just felt wrong. So it was returned to original height. 88 pioneer, 4x4, 5 spd.

Great, thanks.

Quick question, I snagged a ecu from a 89. It's a 428. Can I swap it in my 88? I have a 5 speed.

Trutrac rear selectable up front is a nice combo. I have that in one of my MJs. Others prefer selectable in the rear and trutrac up front. When I build my WJ axles I'm going zip lockers front and rear. If budget allows I'd go selectable. If you can only lock one do the front.

4.10s with a manual will be fine for ~32ish and mild wheeling. 4.56 would be an all around great combo. One thing to keep in mind is the 8.8 is fairly large and on 31's you're killing your ground clearance. 33's+ is really a better combo. It is nice having factory disc and a LSD on the 8.8 though. I ran one on my XJ with 33's and was great. With 31's it would dig a trench on occasion.

In case you've forgotten Festivus is upon us today. Please take pride in your airing of grievances and your feats of strength. These are traditions we must continue to uphold. Happy Festivus and may your Festivus pole be the most unadorned object ever......