89 MJ

Can’t answer the other questions, I believe the flywheel is different between Renix and HO. I know that’s the case for the 4.0 for sure.

Nice! That’ll be a nice building.

I suspect it might be a reused XJ diagram. There’s a rear sway bar too, plus the shock mount.

It shouldn't really matter if the 4.0 is from an 88 or a 98. You could quickly look towards the rear on the driver side of the cylinder head next to the valve cover and know what the cylinder head is from, which would probably mean the engine is the same vintage. Somewhere there is a date code cast into the block too, but that's not as easy to find. The Renix (87-90) head is 2686, the OBDI HO (91-95) head is 7120, the early OBDII HO (96-98, IIRC) head is 0630, and the 99-01s used the 0331 head. Here is as thread on identifying the engine year: Renix is not as smooth as the later fuel injection systems, in my experience. It is a very early EFI system, but it does sound like you've got some issues. The audible air leak needs to be found and fixed, that is likely a large portion of your issue. How clean is your new IAC?

I would guess it would last if you scuffed the surface first, but I can’t really sale for sure. I was going to try some over the summer, but ran out of time. That is the same problem I have. You make it nice and then you don’t want to drive it into towns with lots of traffic or you don’t want to drive it in the rain in case it turns to hail. I think you’ve got the right idea for what you want to do with it. Make it nicer, but don’t make it too nice to use.

That looks beautiful! You just can’t beat AMC blue.

I think keeping it the factory color is a great idea. If I ever paint my Eagle, it will go back to the original colors for the same reasons you mentioned. It also prevents the project from spiraling. As soon as you disassemble it all the way, its hard to stop. Pretty soon, you've built a truck that's almost too nice to use. For parts that won't be seen, I've had good luck with Chassis Saver. Similar to POR15, but it is only a 1 part product and seems to work better. Otherwise, some of those rust converter sprays like the Eastwood stuff seem to be okay. You might be able to get away with that on the parts that you see. I think it will look great all polished out. Have you seen that VGG has a wipe on clear coat too? That product is intriguing to me. I get why you don't want to paint it now. It is a huge investment, both in time and money.

Doing away with the climate controls then? Or will you still keep them behind the iPad? Not that you really need them down south.

Wow! Talk about an upgrade!

Painting tips, rust repair tips, or bodywork tips? I suppose I'll go over all of them. I know you've done floors in this and have your CJ, so you've got some experience and I'm sure you know quite a few of these tips already, but I'll go over a bunch of body repair tips, from rust repair all the way to paint work. For rust repair, I’ve got a ton of tips. I’d recommend you get a sandblaster. Don’t use it on large, flat panels that you plan on reusing, like the bedsides, centers of the doors, hood, etc., because you’ll warp them from the head (you can do it, but you need to hold the nozzle for the blaster nearly parallel to the panel, it’s just tricky). It is super nice for something like your inner wheel wells when patching the bedsides, as it allows you to quickly get rid of the rust. Same with suspension parts, door jambs, rockers, cab corners, and it’s a good idea to lightly go over your welds with it to find pinholes in the welds. It will probably result in you finding a lot more rust though, so you might be cussing me out if you do this haha. You also need to expoxy prime any sandblasted spots because the metal will be very rough and porous. When cutting the rust out, go at least 1” farther out than the rust than you see to make sure you cut all of the rust on the inside out. When you’re welding new panels in, butt weld everything, don’t overlap your panels because the line can be seen in certain lighting. It’s also a spot for rust to start again. It is more work, but will leave you with a better final product. You want roughly 1/16” gap between your new panel and the old panel you’re welding to so that the weld will penetrate. Similarly, weld the whole panel in. It’s fairly common to tack a panel in and then either seam seal or spread body filler over it to fill in the gaps. Don’t do that. It’s quicker, but it’s not a proper fix. Might as well fix it properly. Hang on a second, I’m going to switch to my laptop and keep editing this. Ok, I'm back, whether you like it or not. I recommend radiusing the corners on your patches. It's a little bit more work, but it will help spread the heat out a little bit when welding the panel in, helping to prevent warping the panel. Also, don't do a solid bead welding the panel in, start with a couple of tack welds, then do the entire perimeter as tack welds, roughly every inch to 1.25" apart. Then go around and do a 25-50% overlap on your previous tack with a new tack. Repeat this until the whole panel is welded in. It is also good practice to use a blow gun on an area with a 1" radius around the weld right after welding to help prevent warping the panel. It's also good practice to use weld though primer on the back sides of the panels you're welding in. It pretty much will just add longevity to your repair. Sand/lightly grind/lightly sandblast the back side of your panel and then hit it with the weld through primer to make sure it sticks when you weld the panel in. Now I'll start rambling about bodywork. Good bodywork starts with good metal work. Take your time on rust repair, otherwise you need to learn how to either live with warped panels or learn to shrink panels. This also applies to the quality of panels you're starting with. If you're doors, fenders, or hood are beat full of dents and dings, consider replacing them to save yourself time and money worth of product. If you have any large dents, a slide hammer and stud welder for pulling dents will be your friend. Smaller dents should be hammer and dollied. You don't necessarily strip the whole truck to bare metal, but you do need to make sure that there is no cracked paint or crow's feet in the current paint, otherwise that will come back. If the truck has been painted one time, other than the original paint, you should be fine, but if it's already been painted at least twice, I'd strip at least the panels that have several layers of paint. There is always a chance of a reaction happening between the old paint and the new primer, so talk to your local paint shop if you need help figuring out if the product will react. They should have people that can come out and help you figure out if you will have any issues, or they can help find what caused certain issues. When it comes to spreading bodyfiller, it should never be thicker than the thickness of a credit card once it is sanded, otherwise it won't hold up. It will crack and come off over time. When spreading filler over welds, you really should use a fiberglass reinforced bodyfiller, then go over than with regular filler. You also need to go larger than the size of your dent to make sure you get the whole dent smoothed out. And when I say dent, I really mean low spot. In terms of bodyfiller, I really like the Evercoat Rage Xtreme and Evercoat Rage Ultra. The Xtreme is more for your main bodywork and the Ultra is for the finer stuff, but you can get away with the Ultra on the whole truck if its fairly straight. The Ultra is more just for filling in the tiny little pinholes in your other filler. Be advised, its expensive, but it holds up. My dad has been using this stuff for at least 20 years and is yet to have an issue with it. At the very least, do not use Bondo branded bodyfiller, or any of the really cheap stuff for that matter. Also make sure that the filler will work fine with both bare metal and primer. Always use a tack cloth followed by a wax and grease remover after sanding before applying more primer or filler to remove dust and any oils from your hands. Something like a DA will save you a lot of time sanding, but you have to make sure you hold it flat, or you'll dig low spots into the panel. To be honest, only my first coat of primer was DA'd on my truck. The rest of it was hand blocked using various lengths of Durablocks. Use the longer blocks on large surfaces for the best results. It sucked, I had several weeks in blocking my truck, but the truck is pretty near to laser straight (other than the hood because we were almost out of primer, so I had to decide whether I wanted the hood primed again and I could get it straight, or if I wanted to use the primer as sealer and then paint it. I chose the latter because I was trying to get the truck done. I also may have warped my driver's bedside when doing rust repair because I was learning. Stripes hide that well...) I think now we are onto paint and primer. Now this is really where it depends on how nice you want to make the truck. I'm going to recommend going with a basecoat-clearcoat as opposed to single stage paint because I think it is a little more forgiving and will hold up better to UV rays, but it is more expensive. I really like PPG products, but Akzo-Nobel are good too, and a little bit more affordable. A paint and primer gun can be the same paint gun, but you'll need a larger tip for primer. Something like whatever the purple Harbor Freight paint gun is works fine for primer. I'd talk to your paint supply company about a good, entry level to middle grade gun to use for paint and clearcoat. No need to go crazy with something like a SATA. My dad has been using the same middle grade paint for at least as long as I've been alive and he has had cars in books, magazines, and place in national shows. I'm not bragging, this is just to prove that you don't need super high end products to have good results. He doesn't even have a paint booth, just an exhaust fan, floor to almost ceiling plastic sheets for the paint area, a filtered air line to keep water out of the gun, and covers the floor with a plastic sheet. Between your final block sand and your paint job, you should always use a sealer. This will help for when you get your first rock chip. It will help prevent that spot from rusting. When you're spraying, make sure you go all the way off the panel to ensure even coverage. Also keep your gun roughly 12-18" away from the panel and keep the gun perpendicular to the panel.2-3 coats of primer should be fine. I'd do at least 3 coats of paint, you might need more if you're going with metallic paint, and then 3 coats of clear. Be careful not to get any runs in your sealer or your basecoat, as you don't need to sand either of those before moving on to the next step, whether it be paint or clearcoat. Your last coat of clear should be a little heavier than your first two so that it does not look dry when it is dry, but not so heavy that you have runs in it. I don't know how crazy you're planning on getting with this, but I'll tell you what I'd do for a paint job and ways you could get around that. First, pull all of the glass. At a minimum, pull all of the trim for the glass (find something to hold the rear window trim off of the body to get paint behind it). Remove door handles, tail lights, front end trim, any badges, and bumper end caps. I'd also pull the hood, header panel, fenders, fender flares, doors, tailgate, b-pillar vents, cowl panel, and bed off of the truck in order to get everything painted. It also makes it a little easier to paint it, in my opinion. If you're going with the stock color, you really don't need to do the door jambs, the sides or bottoms of the hood or worry about the front of the bed and back of the cab, so you can get away with leaving the truck together, but you then have to live with either tape lines or overspray. You can also do the jambs of everything, then put the truck together and paint it, which reduces the chances of scratching the truck on reassembly (like I did on the driver's side b-pillar of my truck), but then you have to worry about overspray and tape lines again. Make sure that you spray the panels the way they will sit on the truck. In other words, paint the hood parallel to the ground and the doors and tailgate perpendicular to a wall, the way that they would sit on the truck. This is especially important on metallic paints because the metallic will lay differently based on whether the panel is horizontal or vertical. If you paint a panel that lives vertically, like the hood or tailgate, parallel to the ground, the metallic will "flop" making the color appear either lighter or darker. This isn't as much of an issue with a solid color, but it is still good practice. For basecoat-clearcoat, you can get away with a little cheaper paint, but you need to use a good clear coat. PPG Omni paint is fine; its what was used on my truck, but I did use a higher end PPG clear coat. In my opinion, a perfect paintjob looks like this: Entirely disassemble the vehicle Rust repair Strip/sandblast vehicle Epoxy primer Fix any spots sandblasting/stripping found DA or block sand epoxy primer Do bodyfiller work Prime again Final block Sealer Paint Clear coat Reassemble the whole truck Sorry, I got a little long winded there. Feel free to reach out to me via PM or I can give you my phone number if you've got anymore questions. My dad has been in the bodywork and restoration industries for the better part of 40 years and he worked in an autobody supply place for a couple of years, and I can reach out to him if you want direct suggestions of products to use, such as paint and primer part numbers. Also, pages 1 and 2 of my MJ build thread cover a lot of the rust repair and up to page 4 covers the whole repaint process.

I’ve had an HP Spectre for school for a few years now. It’s been fine, other than randomly shutting itself down in sleep mode and the fingerprint scanner rarely working. I know a few people with Dell laptops and one broke and the other seemed flimsy, but the warranty fixed it.

Yeah, same with me

Gotcha, that makes sense. If you want to plant the truck at some point, it definitely makes sense to keep oil off of the paint.

Just an idea, instead of polishing it, you could do a 50-50 mix of acetone and boiled linseed oil to shine it up. It’s a lot quicker and easier than polishing and the oil will help slow rust, but you will need to reapply it every 6 months to a year.

You can do it in your garage just fine. Need to pull the a-pillar trim and b-pillar trim and the stuff that goes along with that. Not difficult, just takes some time.

There is no bell housing adapter for the Peugeot. There is one for the AX-15. You’ll need motor mounts, headers/exhaust, a car intake and accessory drive, the ECU tuned, plus the adapter for the bell housing. You’ll have a few thousand in just those parts. Then there will be stuff like the clutch and flywheel, miscellaneous seals and gaskets. Plus you might need to get driveshafts made. Probably plan for $5k if you can do all of the work yourself. Whether or not it’s worth it is up to you. I personally wouldn’t pull a good 4.0 for an LS, but if the 4.0 ever has issues, I’ll strongly be considering an LS.

They were 84 and 85 XJ Wagoneer only.

Thank you! They make a great companion to MJs.

Looks like a good project. That 21 slot grille is a hard to find piece.

Interesting, thanks for the info

He picked up a set of 2004 Ram 3500 axles for the yellow 83 today. D60 front and an AAM 11.5 for the rear. They both have 4.10s and the rear axle has a limited slip. Overkill? Definitely.

Very cool! I never knew there were Orvis XJs, I only knew about the ZJs. Is it 4.0 powered? What’s up with the ZJ 5.9 hood vents?

Those emblems were just stuck on, no studs. I’d probably try a putty knife first, then apply heat if needed. Those holes should not be there. Could’ve been any number of things, really.

I’d recommend checking out either of @Gjeep’s threads. He put black interior in both of his trucks.

So do you have lines from each item going to this breather, or does each one have its own breather?