The86manche

89 2.5 5 speed 2x4 short bed. Says pioneer but the trucks been sprayed over so no clue if its true. Sadly forgot the grab the vin. Will tomorrow when i go back. Grabbing the roll bar, got tail lights already and other obvious odds and ends. This yard is litered with renix parts! My friend tipped me off to this place. Which is actually a service center that amassed cars in the back. And this was one of them. Talked to the owner and hes allowed me to wander the back and buy whatever parts i want :) Bunch of renix cherokees, two door and 4 door all of them late 80s I'm just excited because i never find them!

Not a bad idea. If i had one to get dimensions off of i probably could. As of right now i don't though..

So a while back i had this idea for mini console swaps to add cupholders to the open space they have. My brother has a 3D printer and I finally got my hands on a mini console that had the shifter plate so i took measurements with a micrometer and took to CAD modeling! Even as a delete panel its not bad. This was trial print 1 without cup holders just to see if demensions were right. And they mostly were. Tabs were placed wrong and weak. Went back did more adjustments, redid the tabs and added the cup holders! ...and tried to add "comanche" but i was tired and accidentally did "comane" instead... hahah All in all took me about a week, designing, trial printing, tweaking and this is the results! Was a lot of fun but still needs some tweaks. i had to do small amounts of trimming to the edges of the console but nothing that ruins the look. And since i have multiple templates saved from going step by step i can add or change other designs too! Single cup holder with pocket, just pocket, or even delete panel!

AN UPDATE! a long overdue one at that.. I finally found the issue! And now i need to figure out why!? The headgasket popped on the motor with only 116k miles on it! And the heater core too.. greaaaattt... I picked up a combustion chamber leak detection kit and it gave me my answer. That and when the tstat opened the coolant violently bubbled out.. This motor was good when purchased and was good for a while after installing it. And not once did it overheat.. My confusion and aggravation now is.. WHAT THE MADE 3 ENGINES POP?!?!?!?! Could the cats be clogged and causing excessive backpressure out the headgasket? Thats the only thing i can think of thats caused THREE different motors to pop.. But what do you guys think could have caused this motor to go too?

What about using a zj power mast for parts?

Hows $10 sound?

Did you end up finding any? I saw your post and knew i had one somewhere and found it. Only have one side though. No cracks just scuffs

can't recall if theres steam honestly.. Ill do that. I almost feel like letting it run with the cap off and letting it dump into a bucket to see what it does

Its slow, it takes a few weeks before it says low coolant. Time stamp on the photos on my phone say march 27th actually. But she told me since covid she only drives jt once a week. Rarely twice. I can't see anything drop while its running or cooling off honestly. Its really mindboggling to me.. And i appreciate any and all ideas at this point. I can't really say about the freeze plug..

180/185 something like that. Its bellow the 195 temp rated tstat because i wanted it to try amd run cooler. Which it has

It is quite a stretch. It had some coolant left so i filled a gallon with water and poured it in and into the overflow. And thats the weird thing, thats one of the few things i am looking for but it never bubbles. With the cap off with it running the coolant wants to just flow out but its not bubbling out.

Well temp gauge reads about 190 and never past that, and cooling fan kicks on too But thank you for the info pete

The engine runs like a top though, no sputtering or backfiring at all. The motor came out of a junkyard but a reputable one and its only been driven about 5k miles since installed. It was a tested good motor before it was sold to me. And that would leave her down a vehicle and my pockets empty..

Passenger floorboard was dry. And i have checked it many times in the hopes that is it. It also doesnt smell like coolant in the cab. That was how i found out the tank was clogged. Couldnt blow into it. Fixed the clog and i could easily blow bubbles into the tank. This was a couple weeks ago i did this. My grandmother said it was running great with the new plugs but the other day she told me it was low on coolant again. I had checked the oil and still no milkshake so i topped the cooling system and scratched my head.

I myself don't see it leakiing on the ground. However there is signs of weaping from hose ends with clamps on them. Like one of the heater hoses into the water pump. I didnt see a crack in the cylinder. And they are known to crack between cyl. 3 and 4 Its a tuppy head. It never passes 210 and when it is hot the exhaust doesnt smell like coolant either. No white smoke and i even checked in the cab but not wet spots or smell of coolant in the cab. The motor only has about 117k miles now since i put it in last year.. my grandmother down not drive it much at all. So I'm baffled as to how the head gasket could fail in 4k miles? That would mean the motor was bad from the get go from the yard. And they test their motors before they sell them they don't just yank them out of cars randomly. And i don't think oil goes up the dipstick honestly. The only thing i noticed is the hoses get a little too pressured when its hot. Or maybe its me but the hoses seem a little to stiff. Oh yeah, it also has a new radiator cap But i can try doing a hot compression test. That won't be fun though lol

Cylinder #1 and its respective spark plug. I left compression in each cylinder for at least 20 minutes at a time Cylinder #2 Cyl. #3 Cyl. #4 Cyl. #5 And stupid me i forgot to take a picture of cylinder number 6 I don't know how this engine ran on these spark plugs but somehow it did.. After the compression test i threw new spark plugs in, champions of course. I also discovered the overflow tank was clogged. Fixed that too. Now my problem is.. its still making coolant magically "disappere!" I'm stumped! I have no idea what else to do.. I'm thinking of putting another new thermostat in, replacing the waterpump and flushing the system but does anyone have any suggestions where i should look? Everyone on facebook says blown motor but its clearly not with everything ive done to prove its fine so i can't trust them lol S.O.S. HELP WITH SUGGESTIONS GUYS THIS JEEP HAS BEEN THE BANE OF MY EXISTANCE SINCE I TOUCHED IT (I can't make this photo go away lol)

Okay so so far this jeep has eaten two good engines.. and how? Why? I had no idea. It was on to engine number 3. This engine i got from a reputable source. A local yard that is very nice and does not scam. They sold me a nice 4.0 from an 03 with 113k miles with a 90 day warranty, had it on their shelf ready to go. Took me 3 weeks of off and on work to go there yank the motor, put the new one in and finish it up, with the help of two other people. I put a 185 tstat in to decrease the chance of it overheating and poured seafoam down both downpipe cats(it was a lovely smokeshow) That was fall last year, the engine is still in it and running really good! ...except coolant keeps "disappering" I'm not sure how or where but its been plaguing me since the engine went in.. Its not a blown headgasket. The motor has not overheated. Theres no sticky sweet smell of coolant in the exhaust. The oil was not milkshake. And i even ran a compression/leak down test of each cylinder. And while doing that found out the spark plugs were all fouled. The dipstick looked the same, dirty but not milkshake.

About two months go by and i get a call that the jeep had broke down in a parking lot. Coolant exploded everywhere. Where it sat in its coolant puddle of shame. The upper radiator hose had ruptured. Replaced it and topped off the cooling system and it started bubbling steaming and sucking coolant into somewhere. Headgasket had blown again! On a different engine! I decided to try and do a head swap instead to keep the repair cheap and because doing a motor swap on a wj is a nightmare... its not fun or easy. I domt have any photos but needless to say the head swap was a failure..

Sadly i don't have any in progress phots of the passenger side.. just finished product And then i found some good parts in the boneyard to replace the rust holding the gas tank and trans in place as well I really don't know how the gas tank was being held up.. Things were going well. I was pretty much all done with patching up the jeep, ready for my grandmother to get behind the wheel! And then.. i pulled the jeep out of my driveway so that i could sweep and clean all the rust and crap up, and in front of my house and let it run as it had sat for a while when it was being repaired.. and i heard a loud bang.. and ALL of the coolant was suddenly running down the street. The motor had blown. Somehow. and it took the radiator out with it. Blew out the side of the radiator in a way ive never seen before.. So it went from rockers to a motor swap Out with the old And in with the new(used) What made this engine swap even greater was the fact that i had to get it done in one night as the very next morning i was on a plane to disney! And i did it. But i never want to do that again. Engine ran great! Got it all buttoned up at 12am and drove it to my grandmothers house, down the highway about 20 minutes away. Everything checked out fine except for a loose clamp on a trans line. Took care of that and i was on my way to disney!

Sometime last year or the year before my grandmother had a saturn vue that was on its last legs.. literally. Leaky sun roof, failing electical and the motor shook bad at idle.. She loved the looks of the grand cherokee and asked me to find one for her to replace her old saturn. And so i did. I like the zjs myself but i figured id look for slightly more modern with a few more creature comforts the zjs don't all have(or work) for my grandmother. Ended up finding an 03 grand cherokee laredo. 173k miles 4.0 auto selectable 4x4 No 4.7 crap and no all wheel drive. The one i found had some nice options for a laredo too which i found surprising! Heated seats, tan leather, and a sunroof. PERFECT! The only issue it had was rust. It was a jeep that spent its life in maine by the ocean... It had plastic rocker covers that had enough sand to make another beach! And no rockers behind them.. The unibody was solid otherwise though. But small details for a running, driving, clean titled jeep with a tall stack of service paperwork for $600 right? ...right... I domt have any good photos of the jeep but i have tons for the work i did starting with the rockers! The rockers were rotted all the way through So slowly stitched together the back, center and fromt halfs of the rockers starting on the drover side. Ill say it went well. There is only one company that makes factory like rockers for this jeep unless you wanna empty your bank account for factory ones.. Anyway, driver side went quite smoothly and came out great! I did not leave it grey and i did not have any intentions of putting the plastic rocker covers back on.

ill leave it off here but this is where it really starts getting fun! it comes off the jig!

fitting the cowl to the firewall and seeing how everything fit. still not ready to burn in the firewall though

progress was made, burned in the unisides and dry fit the roof braces. started looking like a car! the firewall was still not welded in at this point.

from there it just seemed like smooth sailing. at least for the unisides. we even purchased a spot welder to make our lives even easier!

And so! The new floor pan came in! And we threw that on the jig. And everything fit so much better! And my dad in the background giving his thumbs up for approval of everything and my older brother off to the left