CaptainPatchy

Made an early trip to the junkyard this morning after checking their inventory online and seeing a 91' XJ. As luck would have it, it had a trans comfort/power switch which I had read was the same part number. When going to remove it, I got my second surprise of the morning when I discovered the contactor portion and actual plastic faceplate of the switch are two separate pieces! So I grabbed the contactor portion of the tranny switch, along with faceplates from that one and two others that were in the XJ. Not bad for $5 out the door either. Then it was a simplr matter of taking apart the dash, cleaning and greasing my existing switch and swapping for the junkyard faceplate and now I'm back in business! I might work on it more tomorrow, but its supposed to be CRAZY hot with the heat index so I might just take a day Edit: I almost forgot, while I had the dash apart, i decided to bypass my comfort/power switch entirely, so I made a small jumper wire per Cruiser54's suggestions and got that mounted up as well. Did some more wiring getting ready to get my stock rear bumper back on for now, I think the roll pan is going to be retired to a winter project so I decided to get my plate lights working in the meantime.

Went to flick my fogs on this morning and the middle plastic portion disintegrated in my hands, so add that to the list of parts I need haha. Are the rockauto repro's worth the $30 bucks or whatever, or should I just go scrounge one from the local junkyard?

Got my fogs mounted and wired up to the factory harness. Not all that bad for a weekend's work!

It got shuffled to tomorrow haha, I didn't forget! Thanks for the reminder, I'll take a look bright and early.

So being made for another truck, the new front valance had a pretty decent fit out of the box. It was a simple matter of flattening the ridge on the bottom of the factory bumper to allow it to sit flush and then the hard part of deciding where to cut the excessively long side pieces. After much back and forth adjusting the tape, I settled on following the factory flare lines to give it some coherence. Couple seconds with the grinder followed up by a file and some sandcloth and I was able to mount it up for the final time with some new 1/4 stainless hardware. Surprisingly time consuming, given how simple the idea really was, but I'm nothing if not a perfectionist. I kind of have a love/hate with the frontal profile right now, but it does help to make it look more aggressive imo. Between the new valance being more substantial that the old, and the half dozen odd bolts holding it all tight, it has very little play in it at all. We were joking about running some Naca ducts from the holes instead of getting fogs down there 😄

Second thing on my list was to do something about the faded and (imo) ugly front end. Started by removing the zip ties and assorted bolts and screws keeping the factory front valance on to set about fitting one off a mid 80's/90's Chevy S10. Out with the old! Found the wiring for my factory fog light switch that I thought (read: hoped) might be hiding out behind there somewhere. Interestingly enough, I also discovered that the MJ had most definitely been involved in some sort of front end collision on the drivers side. Hard to see in that photo, but it had very hard to miss signs that it had been crunched a little and pulled back to close to original in the past. No skin off my back, but was surprising anyways.

Got started early this morning since I had several things I wanted to do. First out of the gate, I wanted to fix the weird narrow butt thing the comanche had going on, so after some research I picked up some 1.25" wheel spacers for the rear. This is my first time ever using spacers, and after reading all of the "my wheel came of on the interstate!!" horror stories I was real careful to use locktite and carefully torque everything in sequence to 100 ft. lbs. Honestly, I feel like it turned out great aesthetically, but time will tell if its reliable.

IIRC the Black wire is the ground in that circuit correct? I could always run a length of test wire from the wiper motor to the battery negative and see if it has any effect.

Got a wild hair this last weekend and went to the junkyard with my brother to poke around some. Scored a complete windshield wiper motor assembly with track that I might replace down the line as mine are slow to cycle,along with a vacuum ball and some assorted random vacuum fittings and lines, all from a 99' Cherokee. Set about repairing as many lines and fittings as I could find that needed it, and mounted the vacuum ball near the blower motor in the vacuum circuit, replacing the tee at the cruise module and just running straight into the module. Tore my wiper assembly out and cleaned and re-greased all the bushings and inside the motor case. Cycles better but still slower than my 95' XJ, not sure why? Haven't had a chance to check the charge on the AC system, but it's still blowing cold even using it nearly every afternoon. I'd have thought if there was a leak in the system it'd all have leaked out by now 🤔 Scored some custom plates, my first for any vehicle I've owned!

This is my life at the moment, too dull in Ne to demand anything in the way of high real-estate prices, but cost of living is crazy low along with crime and we don't have much in the way of rioting or major issues at the moment. My lady and I are in the process of buying a house right now, and are trying to close on a typical suburban home for right around the $200K mark, even with the market being bonkers. Not that I'd ever given it much thought, but as to your other requirement: According to the most recent ACS, the racial composition of Nebraska was: White: 87.49% Black or African American: 4.77% Two or more races: 2.55% Asian: 2.32% Other race: 1.89% Native American: 0.91% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander: 0.07

Wonder if they'd ever consider parting with it... Or at least the street goodies haha

We're in the underwriting/appraisal stage in the home buying "adventure" and I can't wait to have a garage to call my own! Congrats to you and yours

Thanks, I got sidetracked when I found several vacuum lines that had fallen apart so I set myself on replacing those as best I could. Seems to run better, but still has some idling issues when in gear. I'll get around to that next weekend I hope. Installed my headlight harness and struggled to get it mounted to the fenderwell. While I was messing around with the vacuum issues, I noticed that I don't seem to have a vacuum ball, and that hose is just capped right below the e-fan controller (which also has no cover). Then afterwards I was looking for my source of harsh bottoming-out issues and noticed that I've got some sort of hard rubber caps instead of bumpstop bushings. I wonder if these could be replaced with something with a little give, or even raised up some, but I'd have to check clearance with everything else.

That's cool, I had no idea! I've got a relay harness I need to get installed this weekend and check out why it seems to be idling low. Maybe clean the IAC and throttle body and just generally go through the thing piece by piece.

Thanks, I'm assuming that wasn't a factory option? Messed around with the AC circuit last weekend. My brother is a Commercial HVAC tech by trade so we checked the charge and found nothing in the system (strange?) so we pulled a vacuum on then left it for a couple hours to see if it had any leaks and strangely enough, it never lost vacuum in that time, so we took some refrigerant and charged it and it seems to be holding and not leaking out, but we used a gas sniffer just to be sure. I'll give it a couple of weeks to see if any leaks out and then we'll recover it and charge it back to factory settings. So nice to have some cold air again!

If you're really set on keeping the stabilizer, you could do a custom mount like this guy did:

Looks like a super cool project, I'll be interested to see your progress on this

FWIW my comanche doesn't have a steering stabilizer mounted at the moment, and I've not noticed any weird driving issues. "They SAY" you don't need one, but until I bought this Jeep I'd never really given it much thought, however the PO assured me that everything had been recently (>1000mi) replaced and I've had it up to 70mph without a hiccup so I don't think I'm going to get in a hurry to put one back on.

That's kind of my pickle at the moment as well, I've seen other guys do custom trackbars and/or replace the pitman arms to get something more level

Absolutely, this was just a temp fix to make sure everything else in the cooling system was ship-shape. I'll keep driving it for another week or so and if I don't notice any leaks or the overflow dropping, I'll drain the whole system and fill with some 50/50.

It's been a couple weeks now since I made the 1200 mile round trip journey to pick up my second Comanche pickup, and so far I couldn't be happier with the purchase. She's had a couple small issues, but has been everything I want in a "project" vehicle. By that I mean, mostly perfect structurally and mechanically, with a few small issues that I can fix over time while enjoying it as my daily driver. So without further ado, some pictures from the seller before I picked her up. 1991' Comanche Eliminator 2wd - AW4 console shift Dana 35 rear Lowered ~3.5" using unknown springs front and 3" steel blocks rear Aluminum Rad with Dirtbound Offroad triple fan shroud and 3x Derale 10" fans with PWM fan controller Newer belt, idler puller, thermostat, water pump and rad hoses Grant steering wheel Smoked signals/tails and LED headlights Factory 3pc glass rear window Clean, rust free texas truck (unheard of in NE) So far my plan is to go about fixing and cleaning up the little issues it does have and getting it back to tip-top running and driving shape. I've only had it a week and a half and I've already diagnosed and fixed a bad blower motor (replaced motor and resistor), a non functional horn (blown fuse) and no reverse lights (cleaned and re-greased NSS). Still to go is fixing the AC, which isn't kicking on for some reason although the PO said everything was new (and it looks new) and general tidying up of the wiring harness and ground situation. In the future I'd like to keep it around this height, but maybe allow it to have more uptravel as it currently bottoms out pretty harshly over any large bumps in the road and I'd like to look into some form of rear drop other than blocks, just for my own piece of mind. Potentially a Liberty 8.25 rear swap for discs and a stronger axle and even an AX15 swap (included in the sale with pedal bracket) although I'm quite happy with the AW4 currently. Thanks for looking, and please let me know if there's anything I should watch out for!

My kinda guy haha. Truck looks really good man, great work so far. What bumpstops did you use for the front? The P.O. that put mine in work fine, but they're super harsh over bumps

This is one of the projects that made me decide to pursue a certain lowered MJ for myself. So in a way, because of you, I now own another Jeep truck! I'd love to pick your brain and chat about where you want to go from here. Here's the one I picked up:

Made sure the system was still full today, and solved the wandering temp gauge. The connection was so loose I could easily pull it off. I gently squeezed it with channel locks and reinstalled the much tighter sensor wire. No more bouncing needle!

My thoughts exactly, I'm going to go through everything with a fine tooth comb this weekend to make sure it's all up to snuff. FWIW, the jeep has been running fantastic all week otherwise I just happened to have distilled water handy, and didn't think it would take as much as it did. Like you said, living in the midwest, I understand the importance of not running straight water all too well haha. Thanks though Thanks