88mancheman

Last weekend I went ahead and have her a tune up before I started moving onto bigger projects, new NGK plugs, new Bosch wires and cap & rotor aswell as finishing up my new fuel injectors, I bought some OEM rebuilt Bosch 746 injectors a while back from eBay for $65 shipped but was having some issues with the wiring harness so after figuring out the injector wiring she was running like a tot!

You could say I like to be a little different [emoji2957]

For real! I was about to tac weld a nut on there but I couldn’t even get the gun back far enough to actually make contact lmao

I know! In a way shows how bad AMC had to cut costs in the last few years to try and stay afloat. Also I’ve been looking into getting my windshield resealed but I have an odd suspicion that that its still good, but It makes me wonder if that the small seam just below the hood hinges that is packed with some sub par seam sealer is our culprit, only reason I say so is I had a tarp over the cab area while I was letting the paint on the floor pans dry because I was expecting rain through ought the week and I thought the windshield was leaking so I ran the trap from the front cowl area back into the bed covering the whole cab and when I checked on it midway thorough the week there was a small puddle in the driver floor pan again..... food for thought I guess lol

You can also see my motor mounts where looking pretty tired tooo which probably didn’t help the exhaust , but luckily I had some brown dog rubber mounts stashed away from a sale they had going a while back, I installed those while I contemplated how to tackle the broken stud I tried to drill it out and use a bolt extractor but the extractor bits where just too damn long to fit between the firewall and the head so I had a few brews and somehow it came to me to use a t20 and some pb blaster and it worked! Ill have to post a pic of my useless t20 in the morning but from there on out it was smooth sailing again!

Even thought refreshing the TPS helped it still seemed like the Jeep was a-little down on power compared to my buddies XJ that I rode in a few days prior so I started digging deeper and doing a much better inspection of the intake and exhaust and realized that my intake/exhaust gasket was fried. It was leaking in between all the cylinders intake and exhaust and the #6 exhaust was just blowing back against the firewall I was using brake cleaner to check for vacuum leaks (I know not the best to use around rubber stuff) but as soon I would spray around the intake/exhaust gasket area the Jeep would start to bog out or it would idle a tiny bit faster depending on where I was spraying on it.....so the madness began, I went on rock auto and bought the cheapest manifold they had which was a dorman manifold for $140 shipped to my door, i ordered some extra felpro gasket too because they where like $2.00 each and a new down pipe that I intent to weld a flex joint into and then started tearing it all down, everything was going smooth till I finally found out why the #6 exhaust was leaking soo bad......the stud was broke clean off...

After the interior was done I started to notice that my idle was kinda erratic and my REM kept telling me that my TPS voltage was too low at times even tho I had rest it 3-4 times in the weeks prior, I also noticed that on long drives that occasionally I would feel a lose of power for a second and then all as normal for quite a while. Suspecting the TPS was bad I was about to buy a new one when I remembered that Cruiser54 had a tip about the TPS ground so I went ahead and tore the harness down and found some duct tape covering 3 wires all just twisted together from the factory.. went ahead and soldiered those grounds and the Ohm on my harness went from being 3-20 ohms to .4-.8 ohms MUCH BETTER! That seemed to solve my erratic TPS issues

Figured I’d do another update since I haven’t been keeping this very up to date... about 2 months ago I lifted back some carpet while cleaning the interior and found a little rust underneath the carpet, I had no intention of doing any floor pan work so I set it off for a few weeks until it bugged me enough to to rip out all the carpet and see what the damage was, it wasn’t too bad mostly surface rust but there was 2 pin sized holes on the driver pan, I bought a 5 pack of wire wheels at Harbor Freight and went to town stripping both floor pans down (I actually found those fiber disks work 10000x better but of course not till the end lol) after it was all bare metal I primed it with a combo of bare metal etching primer & rust inhibitive metal primer, I let that dry for a week before I scuffed it with 400 grit and painted it with an acrylic based white paint that was custom matched to the exterior of the Jeep.......BUT....it didn’t occur to me till I was spraying the second coat that the Jeeps been repainted a few years back and the exterior is slightly more of a pure white than the original Swiss coffee type color that the factory used.....OOOPS... I guess thats why we have carpet right lol, I let the paint dry for another week before I shot some enamel clear coat over top and then buttoned everything back up, I ditched the old carpet and had every intention to buy a new one from rock auto since they are only like $200 after shipping and all but as soon I went to order it I found an old roll of rubber cut to fit floor matting in the back of the shop and decided for the sake of budgeting that the rubber flooring will do till I have the windshield resealed. Unfortunately all the pictures of the process where on my old phone that broke a few days after I finished so I don’t have many pictures of the process when when I get that phone recovered I will post proper pics of what I did, this seems to be the only pic I have, this was right after fist coat

Awesome thank you for the quick response!! Kind of a un successful yard run both the Cherokees here where pretty far picked over Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Are cruise control throttle body’s special? I’m pulling a factory cruise control at the JY right now and was curious if I should snag the throttle body to go with it? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I’ll shoot him a PM in a bit and see what he says it would be awesome to get him on here! Is starting a vendor thread something he can do on his own or do I need to point him in the direction of a moderator?

Definitely something to add to your list it’s a godsend to be able to see & verify your live data against your predictions/ diagnosis and just to be able to keep and eye on things without having a massive & expensive mt2500 and even those are hard to readout and not as portable lol :) And I’m curious why he hasn’t started a vendor thread here yet too! He’s extremely talented and has an extensive knowledge of the renix systems & not to mention the technology he’s bringing back to our era of Jeeps! I think he only owns an XJ (I could be wrong) but that’s no reason not to get him on here I’m sure we would all love to have him contribute to our community and help keep our rigs on the road [emoji106]

After I got the REM I was able to keep a constant eye on both the coolant temp from the head on the dash and the coolant temp from the block on the rem and decided I wanted to have more control over my e fan for hot days when sitting in traffic or on some trails, as the fan didn’t like to kick on till around 210-220 which I almost never hit, so I took it upon myself to replace the tiny 5” ac fan that came stock on the driver side of the MJ and out in a larger 7 or 8” fan I can’t remember the size but here the part number I used: 620001 I managed to find it for $35 from rock auto on discount, it mounted right into the stock location and plug and played, I then ran 12v to a relay, which was controlled by a switch in the cab to be able to override the fan and turn it on manually while still having the capability of having the ecu control it aswell (if the switch is manually turned on in the cab the fan will stay on, then when/if the ecu triggers the fan with the switch still on in the cab the fan seems to go into a 2nd speed and run a little faster, not really 100% sure how this worked out but it seems like something I did worked correctly lol) I used a stock switch panel from a XJ with the fog lamp switch and a rear window defroster switch, I figured the rear window defroster switch label looked enough to like a fan so I wired the e fan override to that switch and the fog light switch I wired up to a small 20” light bar on the front bumper that I have still neglected to install as I’d like to install my winch bumper before the light bars lol but the provisions are there for when I’m ready ;)

Waiting for paint to dry on some current projects on the MJ so I figure I’d try to get this thread a bit more updated today, I had got tired of trying to diagnose odd things with a DVOM so after a few months of talking to@NickInTimeFilms he released his updated REM II+ and I finally bought one and let me say WOW! what a difference it makes being able to see live data when diagnosing or even just keeping things in line on the trails! I ran the cable through a small hole in the firewall right next to the Speedo cable all I had todo was poke a small hole in a factory solid grommet to run the wire through and stick the Velcro on the dash, I like how it it’s in your eye line when driving but not quite distracting and it makes you feel like a race car driver with your live data constantly reacting!

@Pete M I can’t agree with you more! but hey it’s called a Jeep for a reason right!? Just empty every pocket [emoji23]

It was again another few months until I did any major work to the manche but this time it was a little scarier, I had gone out over the weekend on a wheeling trip with a whole bunch of pretty heavily built YJ’s and a few XJ’s I kept up pretty well and thought I made it out without any damage until Monday morning I went to drive over highway 17 to go drop off some paperwork with the wifey and as soon as we crested the hill and started the decent there was a huge pop and bang and then a grind from the rear end.....I thought it was the rear brakes starting to grind or something and didn’t think much of it and kept on driving, about 3/4 the way down 17 there was another huge pop and I lost my engine braking...thats when I realized something was really bad.. after pulling over I saw my rear driveshaft had just been dragging under my truck the whole time I was pulling over, somehow on my way up the hill the rear pinion nut managed to work itself completely out and let the yoke slide off the splines of the pinion gear itself....not really thinking about how bad it was I shoved it back in place, threw some duct tape around the slip part of the driveshaft to keep it in place and went on our merry way,there was a little howling from the rear end the whole time but eventually I did pulled the cover there was a tiny but of damage to the carrier in one little spot but I somehow managed to get her home in one piece and gave me more reason to want to do an axle swap ;)

It was probably another month or so till I did anything else to the manche, but eventually the radiator decided it had enough and sprang a leak right in the middle of all of the cores spraying right back onto my new water pump when it built up pressure , I managed to score a CSF racing radiator from rock auto for $180 and that was the end of that, I also got to say the CSF radiator keeps the 4.0 much cooler than the stock and it was a perfect time to upgrade my original “hack job” of a open rad install its been about a year since I’ve installed it and even on a hot 110 degree day I rarely ever see temps above 200-205 and thats when wheeling at low speeds!!

Thank you guys for the responses! I managed to find this on RockAuto for $138 plus shipping https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.php?pk=14197&cc=1181584&jsn=9 so I think ill go with @Dzimm idea of using the cheapest ones and welding in a flex pipe on the the down pipe to help the exhausts flex without cracking hopefully, I would much prefer to use @schardein idea of using the later 91 up exhaust because of the bellows on the tubes but I live in CA where we have these dumb smog laws and that would require me welding new bungs on the tubes myself for my 02 & EGR to keep my smog guy happy and I'm not a huge fan of welding headers they seem to crack right next to my welds every time.

I know this is a widely discussed topic as I've spent the past few days going through the search function trying to find a recent answer but what is the general consensus on the "best" exhaust manifold for our Renix 4.0's? Reason I ask is I'm getting ready to replace the cracked exhaust manifold on my 4.0, I choose brown dog motor mounts to install while I'm in there to try to mitigate this whole cracked exhaust situation but I'm having a hard time deciding between manifolds.... I've done tons of research and I've kinda come down to 3 options unless someone can point me elsewhere I see these "OEM" replacements but I feel like why replace a cracked stock manifold with another "stock" one when it will quite possibly do the same thing https://www.quadratec.com/products/917622_07.htm I also see these Dorman ones which if I'm going to buy a stock one I'm leaning towards as its the cheapest option & they claim a lifetime warranty and that seems to tickle my fancy, but I'm not sure about build quality and have the same concerns as above... https://www.dormanproducts.com/p-5607-674-170.aspx (the link I want to buy from will not post so this is the closest one but I found but I found it for about $145 shipped) then comes kind of my biggest question because the above seems pretty straight forward, I also see these pacesetter headers for our renix jeeps, I really like the idea of upgrading & hopefully a tiny bit better performance even tho thats not really too realivent to me as its a jeep not a sports car lol but I'm really curious if anyone has actually ran them recently with success? I see tons of forums on both sides of the spectrum, some saying they are junk,leak,crack, egr doesn't fit, just doesn't fit in general, while others seem to be super happy with them and say they had no issues... but they all seem a little over 10 years old, and even the recent posts nobody has done a true update on them) now and I've read that they have apparently made some alterations to the design lately to make them better... is there any truth to this? Are they really worth the extra coin or should I just toss that Dorman in it and hope for the best? any other options or thought would be warmly welcomed https://www.summitracing.com/parts/psm-70-1191?seid=srese1&gclid=CjwKCAiA6bvwBRBbEiwAUER6JSV9Iai8nrBUXuMe5oxyJA76VHfA2H1FplZT4D7nN1KtxOPUEbu4-xoCRaIQAvD_BwE

Now that she had some new shoes and I was starting to take her everywhere I decided I needed to get some keys for the truck since the only keys I had where a screwdriver for the longest time.... doing the ignition lock was a breeze, when I when to use the puller on the wheel I was able to turn it my hand and it made the whole job super fast, the harder part was doing the lock cylinder on the door as for some reason nobody seemed to carry the correct one for a Comanche everyone kept sending me or trying to give me ones with no tabs that must have been for later model Cherokees or something, kinda shows being cheap doesn't always pay off lol I ended up buying new ones from the dealer and it cost me like $40 if I remember correctly but even after I bought them both I only installed the driver side because the clips on the lock part broke and it look me a while to find new ones and I didn't wanna go through that fiasco on the passenger side till I absolutely need it

As y'all can see the tires on the truck where balder than bald the rears where starting to show wire in a few areas so I threw a cheaper set of 31" mud tires, I found the tire I desired and then price shopped it online and managed to find it from a Walmart distributor for about $480 all together went and picked them up the same day from there warehouse and went and got them installed and balanced for $100 at my local tire shop all on a Sunday non the less Last picture here is after many many many burnouts & tons of wheeling and probably 15-20k miles later and I'd like to say they have about 50-60% tread life left and are actually super soft believe it or not

This was the weekend after I did the Water pump

After a few weeks I was working on a job on a steep hill and was going in super early to meetup with my boss for coffee and a walk around(the beginning to every great jeep story lol) everything seemed fine up the 3 mile steep hill until I pulled into the driveway and Boom my temp shot into the red zone and a huge puff of smoke engulfs my jeep.... my water pump had just checked out and deiced my super Rusty coolant belonged all over this customers brand new driveway at 6am after a bit of power washing the driveway came out clean but now I was stuck stranded...but on a hill! After work I coasted down the hill to our shop which thankfully was located at the bottom of this super steep hill and left her parked for about a week until I got a OEM water pump in the mail from a Mopar parts place online. My dad happened to be in town that weekend and helped me with the water pump replacement, it all went well but somehow when admiring our work and drinking a few cold ones both of us got red RTV on our hands without realizing it and manged to wipe it on the front grill area and now the manche has two little memory mark from when we did the water pump......ah good times

The next few updates may not have many pictures as they where the first "modifications" I ever did to the ole girl as they needed done. Once I had gotten reg I started using it as my daily driver, after about a week I realized why cars need shocks as every time I would hit the brakes the whole bed would come up and the truck felt like it was going todo a somersault , and she was a little swirly on the freeway I went and bought some el cheapo shocks from auto zone they where like 8.99 a piece, needless to say i had to go back 3 or 4 times before I got a decent set of them or ones that wouldn't blow out as soon as I drove around the block...I soon figured out the real issue there.... these are also the same shocks I've managed to get away with still to this day so you could say I got my moneys worth out of them lol. after the shocks we gave her an oil change with some Castrol 10w-30 high mileage stuff, I'm not sure when the last time the oil was changes and to be 100% honest it didn't seem like there was any in there to begin with.... and gave everything a "once" over and it all seemed great and I drove her for a few weeks, no turn signals, manual shifting aw4, and no exhaust Top picture is a little later in the year than the bottom pick but better picture of el cheapo shocks

I bought these a few weeks back and have had nothing but great things to say about them they seemed to be pretty quality remans https://www.ebay.com/itm/200902253274