pizzaman09

The later computers have a more refined tune that improves idle performance and supposedly is good for a few extra horsepower. It's worth the swap.

I had a spark plug look like that on my project car. I'm not sure what the cause was but I know it experienced excessive vibration, lots of oil in the cylinder, and maybe no power to it. I could guess maybe it hydro locked in that cylinder on fuel?

That's awesome!

As seen on the first page of this post, I have towed a lot of weight with my AX-15 truck really without any fanfare. I do have a Dana 44 thought it has 3.08 gears which means you are usually using the lower gears. I am running the stock diameter tire. Really I have had zero issues towing with the setup, even getting going first gear is short enough that one doesn't need to slip the clutch much. What I find it comes down to is just being smooth and giving lots of space. Nothing good comes of racing around when towing trailers.

Been a while since I had a minute to work on this project. I reflashed the ECU today with the factory original BMW tune, turns out it runs very well on that tune. It might be worth pulling back out of the garage for some driving tests again. There have been many refinements since the the head was first installed in the car years ago. The biggest change is changing the port geometry for less aggressive valve timing. The original timing would have been at home in a NASCAR engine spinning at 9,000 rpm, waaaayy too much overlap. Other notable refinements was switching from a timing belt to a roller chain to drive the valves, larger hotter spark plugs, sorted cooling system, a breather box from a Cummins X15 for crankcase ventilation, and fixing all of the vacuum leaks in the homemade intake plenum.

I've been told by several people that I need to have an old school key grinder cut the door lock key for mine. The read it and cut machines that the big box hardware stores have can't copy the profile. The ignition key was easy, they did it right there with the automatic machine and a generic square GM style key blank.

How's the crank position sensor?

We got down to about -5 deg F here in Erie, PA. Lucky for us the wind is sending the lake effect snow to Buffalo. Unfortunately, Buffalo is getting slammed again. Only about 5 inches of snow here, though it is the finest driest snow I can ever remember as it's so cold.

Myself and most of my friends would agree. My brother and I represent the timeframe well with a 90 Comanche, 99 Oldsmobile Eighty Eight, 99 BMW M3 coupe and a 99 BMW 328is. I have a good friend with a first gen Toyota MR2, Suzuki Samurai, and Porsche 944. Another friend has a first gen Mazda RX7, and another an 86 Ford F150 which we recently dropped a later five speed stick into. I have almost zero interest in an newer vehicle.

The bracket.

I can say that my Comamnche gets far more attention than my other classics. The only one that gets close is the 62 Austin Healey Sprite. With the Comanche I've had people slow down and yell up my driveway saying they love it. Lots of people say they had one or knew someone with one and they loved it. I personally bought mine to use as a truck but I take very careful care of it as I know it's rare. I welded up the rusty driver's floor pan, and now it's basically perfect. To keep it perfect, as soon as salt started getting spread on the roads I parked it and switched to driving my 99 BMW M3. It's a lot less rare and a little rusty, however it's appreciating fast in the classic car world. The Comanche is probably the better winter vehicle but the M3 does well and I'd much rather keep the Comanche clean.

Actually, someone sent me one with a bracket. I'll grab a photo when I get a chance. I've been cleaning up the parts as they were pretty crusty and the switch button was half worn away.

I'm impressed. The Teflon tape is a good choice as PTFE has a dielectric strength of about double that of most plastics. Glad you made it home.

It was good fun stacking some gears on the side of the old lathe and turning the piece. For those interested, the hole is a standard 5/8-18 which fits on the speed sensor. The outer thread is an oddball 7/8-18 which the speedo cables fits. I made it exactly 3/8" long and skipped the drive slots.

The adapter is probably in the cable of the jeep someone on ebay pulled it from. I guess I fire up the lathe and sort it out.

Is there supposed to be a thread adapter between the speed sensor and the short cable? The short cable I have ordered is identical to the one you have pictures, however the threaded connection on my speed sensor is the same diameter on both sides. Your speed sensor seems to have a different thread on each side.

Upgraded the front shocks to some Rancho RS5000X. I'm at all stock ride height. The one front shock that came off had zero compression stiffness and just a little rebound. The other shock had a small amount of compression stiffness and a slight bit of gas charge. I expect this to be a noticable improvement.

Probably the easiest thing you can do is have your alternator checked by an auto store, most have tools that can perform a load test. Also high on the list is the check that you have good grounds to the chassis and alternator.

Cool! Please include those, when you get around to pulling together the parts for my kit. 🙂

I would appear that I should also need the vacuum reservoir and vacuum harness. The guide I was looking at for cruise 🎛️ control parts completely skipped the vacuum system. Do you have the reservoir and vacuum harness?

That's a very pretty truck, I wish I had those eliminator graphics instead of the simpler ones on mine. As far as I am concerned, that was a $15k truck before the fender bender, maybe worth a bit less as it's an automatic. I spent the last 3 years looking for Comanches before I purchased mine, any 4.0L 4x4 truck that is clean and has less than 100k miles is worth over $10k. Also I found that there are a lot more clean automatic trucks than clean manual ones.

I'm not afraid to make brackets, I have a mini mill, lathe and welder. I may figure it out or I might skip it. Thanks for all the info!

It would appear that I need: Servo Wire Harness Brake Switch Clutch Switch (which I'll find if you don't have)

To put things in modern perspective, my 90 4.0L 4x4 5 speed with 251,000 miles on it back in May 2022 cost me $9800. It was freshly painted by an amateur, needed a hole in the driver's footwell welded up and some deferred maintenance addressed. It was otherwise completely rust free. Good luck.

That would be phenomenal. I need to check if I have the wiring already. My truck was pretty fully loaded so I'm guessing it may have it. Let me check tomorrow and I'll confirm the exact parts I still need.