Dickinson County Comanche

Figured I’d give it a bit of an update: got a radio from a late 90s Dodge Avenger (93-95 ZJs have rare radio mount, 96-98 share it with almost every single Mopar product, caravans, cars, trucks, etc) Clutch is all broken in now and I’ve put a good 2,000 miles on it since the swap and it’s been good, minus what I think is a dirty heater core cause I have no heat (which on a 20° day, is not fun) and a pretty good oil leak at the filter adapter, but other than those little things it’s been pretty good all things considered, I actually really like the ZJ. No complains with it other than just age-related things that can be fixed, and it’s much better than the TJ I had.

Snagged some old AMC/Jeep mudflaps while getting an AX-5 for my other truck. The brackets are rusted off but the rubbers are like new other than the paint. The best part was the price: free.

1986 Jeep Comanche 2.8, AX-5, NP207, HP D-30, D-35 w/Trac-lock, LWB No idea, but probably fall of 85. Eastern Kansas Parted out. Manual w/cruise, factory mud flaps. Maroon exterior, red interior. Trac-lock rear end.

Got an AX-5 to slap in, just need a flywheel/clutch

Every time I’d go to put it into drive, it immediately dies. I can bump up the idle so it runs, but in park it idles at like 2,000 rpm, + it just doesn’t run quite as well as I’d hope it would.

Well, as much work I’ve put into the auto & Duraspark conversion, a Comanche near me is getting parted out. 4x4 AX-5, so I think I’ll be manual swapping it, the 2.5 will be much happier that way.

Got the transfer case all reassembled after having to install a “long” shaft in leu of the “medium” shaft that it originally had. Not a terrible job, but having to tear the entire case down does get a little annoying, but at least it’s pretty simple and I have it down to an art now, but luckily I had the “wide” bearing in a parts case or else I would have been stuck for a little bit.

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I got it all done and running pretty good tonight. I gotta get the transfer case back in tomorrow and I’ll take pictures of how it’s all set up. For just eyeballing the distributor in, I think it’s actually set in perfect, revs are snappy and there’s no backfiring or missing at high rpm’s.

It did. 82 GL that looked like it had been on the receiving end of a .50 cal. Diaphragm was good and put it in the dizzy.

Just taking a quick and dirty look at pictures of the ford d-spark advancements look almost the same. I might just go tear that dizzy I have apart real quick just to make for certain it’s good.

Ford ones would be easier to find around here. My local yards only have 2 AMCs, a Concord with a 258 that looks like it was on the receiving end of a .50 machine gun, and a Hornet hatchback that’s sitting on top of a panel van.

Well, I got the distributor. The vacuum advance diaphragm seemed almost like it was blown out so I might have to see about getting a replacement. I’d imagine all Durasparks have the same one.

I’ll make an in-depth post about it. Need to go to the yard this week and grab the distributor. I have an event this weekend at the college so I won’t be able to do it this weekend, so hopefully next weekend I can get it all buttoned up.

Unfortunate but not the end of the world. Thankfully those 2.5s don’t have any important sensors in the distributor so swapping it to that Duraspark/HEI configuration should be pretty painless

Nope. I’m guessing they didn’t put them in since the 2.8 didn’t need them.

It is, this truck didn’t have a transmission in it when I got it. The transmission is originally out of an 86’ with a 2.8 and is missing the original cps press-in mounts. That’s what I cobbled up to make do.

Here you can see the CPS that is cause the ignition issue, due to how close the rear of the engine sits to the cps holes, I can’t get the cps close enough to make it build enough voltage due to the head of the bolts physically hitting the block.

A lot has changed with CJ since I’ve last talked about it, for starters, the ignition system has, for all intensive purposes, died. I have a solution, but I can’t get all the parts I need to fix it until next week, and it won’t be at least another 2 weeks before I can get to it. I’ll probably do a more in-depth post once I get it all done. I also pulled the transmission back out to do that pesky front seal that seems to always leak on these TorqueFlites. It’s back in and like a charm, no more leaking. When the transmission was out I tore apart the NP207 to figure out why it lock up when in neutral and 4-low, I found lots of wear (low range planetary was locking in at the same time as the direct drive, causing it to bind up) I decided rather than repair the t-case (one in which I know nothing about) I decided to just replace it with a 231 unit. Fun fact: a “medium” input shaft length case from a mid 90s auto XJ doesn’t quite reach the rear seal in the transmission and will not seal. I have a long input shaft on order to fix said issue, but only after it left a murder scene on the garage slab. That’s where we sit currently. Should be just about sorted once those 2 things get done + a small coolant hose leak.

After diving through some YJ/CJ-7 Forums, you can convert the 84-85 Duraspark distributors to work on the 4-pin HEI controllers to circumvent the sup-par Duraspark controllers + they’re pretty easy to wire up too.

I would just pull the whole carb assembly and everything to but I don’t wanna deal with swapping everything over + having to buy a new carb cause the OE ones are $#!&

I’ve finally had it with my TBI’s CPS not being perfect on the flex plate and was curious if the 84/85 Duraspark distributors would work on the TBI with little modification. I can get the whole system at the parts yard (dizzy, cap, rotor, and module) I know it’ll need a 12V source and a vacuum line for the advance, but I don’t think that’ll be too hard, just don’t want to waste money if it happens to not work with the EFI.

Yeah, I can’t wait until I get my shaft back so I can actually go down the highway faster than 60mph.

Pfft, spoke way too soon on that. Almost immediately after making this post I had not only the radiator violently fail on me, but my clutch also broke while in traffic. So while usual college students are getting black-out drunk over the weekend, I’m taking out, repairing, and replacing the transmission in my Jeep. Release bearing ended up locking up and wore the ends of the pressure pad fingers off, allowing the release bearing to slip through the fingers and up against the clutch disk itself. During this carnage, it broke off the front snout off of my AX-15, so I was delayed for a week or so trying to get parts all back in. I used this time to source a good used radiator to replace the shot unit with. It went back together quickly and easily enough and for the 60ish miles I’ve put on it since putting it all back together it seems good. Unfortunately the rear shaft was damaged in the parts yard so I haven’t been able to highway test it due to a vibration at higher speeds. Getting a shaft made this week since I’m pretty sure the only 5-speed ZJ in a parts yard in the state was the one I got. Otherwise it’s pretty good! Driving it like a granny during the clutch’s break-in period and other than a non-functional radio, it’s been perfectly fine (Sidenote: I do still have the fogs and they do work, I removed them because I need to find lenses for them so I don’t accidentally damage one of the bulbs. IMG_0957.MOV

Too late already. The rockers are rotted and the bottoms of the fenders are too.