scaleless

It's not that much - I just did one on my Cherokee. The whole swap from 2WD BA10 to AX15 requires bellhousing, crossmember, mount bracket, and pilot bearing (for 1992 and up AX15s). Driveshaft should be the same: Pilot is available from Novak for $7: https://www.novak-adapt.com/catalog/adapters/engine-to-transmission/amc/ax15-to-nv3550-amc/ Everything else is parts vehicle or Ebay. Of course, we kinda got away from the problem itself. Let's see how toast the trans is before discussing rebuilds or big swaps!

And, you know, not to beat a dead horse but the AX15 has enough check balls that it definitely can't get stuck like that!

If your BA10 is shot, I wouldn't even consider working on it. Honestly, in your situation I would just grab one of the 4WD transmissions. You don't really need a forward driveshaft, you can just leave it floating. Just grab a shifter and a few misc parts which bolt right in and throw the transmission in, and you're halfway to a 4WD swap if you ever want to go the rest of the way. That all said, I have a 4WD BA10 that I can rob parts from if you need. Let me know if you want to go that route.

Unlikely if the transmission is making noise in Neutral and it's an AX15. It's split by the medial plate and the shifter is on the output shaft side, which is not spinning in neutral - if a screw fell down it would have great difficulty traveling across the plate. Also it probably would have caused some catastrophic damage in short order. That said, if it took a few teeth off another gear, those probably wouldn't have trouble sloshing around! You should get a new boot regardless - Crown P# 83500520. Here's a photo of my AX15, for reference. You can see how its split down the middle by a big plate, input on the left, output on the right.

Throwout bearing or loose flywheel bolt sounds easy, but if something is dragging the engine down only while in neutral, I can't imagine it would be in the bellhousing. Unless the sound is still there while in gear at idle speeds, I guess. Either way, finding a badge on your transmission isn't necessary for identification - they're easy to visually identify. The BA10 is split horizontally along the transmission and bolts together along the top ridge and the rear. The AX15, on the other hand, is split along a vertical medial plate just forward of the shifter hole, with the front and rear housing bolted together through that plate. (This is a 4WD version, so ignore the rear) AX15 (again 4WD): Failing that, just post a photo and we can identify it for you. It's not entirely necessary unless you determine that your transmission has given up the ghost, though. That said, if you can narrow it down to the transmission and not the engine, you'll probably have to pull it anyways. You might want to crack the case open and visually inspect it at the very least.

I see this, but it may be related to the fact that I don't have a Facebook account. It said this the very moment you posted the link, too.

Yep! They're the RA5 J-cut and RA3 blanks. I got two sets, and one is definitely going up in a frame on my wall!

Haha, I didn't get that far but I definitely ordered an HO flywheel before realizing my mistake. On an unrelated note, anyone need a new HO flywheel?

Perhaps not exactly a repair, but whenever I park my Corvette in a questionable area, I pull the distributor power so nobody can drive off with it. I very frequently forget I did, and start panicking when the car doesn't start! Of course, it always happens when everyone is watching so I look like a dork.

Short post today, probably. I got this work done a while ago but I just survived 6 consecutive 14-hour work days so I haven't had much time to blog and I'm dead tired. Anyways, here's the block back from the machine shop! Bored 0.060 over and ready for reassembly. At this point I wasn't actually planning to stroke the engine, but you'll see why I ended up doing that in just a second lol Here's the original crank going back in very carefully! With some cheap but effective hypereutectic pistons from Sealed Power. And then I hit the dummy barrier, ha! I had shrunk two layers of heat-shrink over each rod stud to protect the crank, but still managed to miss and THWACK one right into the crank and the tubing didn't do much! Er, I bought real stud boots after this. Also a new crank. Needless to say... In a lapse of judgement I decided to spend an extra 400%-ish and get a Scat stroker crank and some Icon IC-944 pistons from Clegg Engine. I really don't like the performance numbers I've seen of strokers running the Renix manifold and head, but I'm going to deal with it for now. In the future I'm going to definitely upgrade both of those to a 99+ intake and probably one of those Edelbrock aluminum heads. Professionally ported, too, so that my wallet hates me more. Not going to spend that kinda money before the truck is running, though. In the meantime, I resurfaced the head, did a lazy-man port job, and lapped the valves. Did pretty good with just a Dremel, I think. Didn't get many pics but I spent like 2 days with some Prussian Blue and acetone getting this absolutely perfect. Very tedious. Here's the engine buttoned up and nearly ready for paint. I've got POR-15 engine enamel paint going on it - Austin Healy Green, I think it was. I think it's a really Jeep color. Also, my garage isn't usually this dirty, so don't judge me! 1 layer of POR-15 under a layer of engine enamel. I brushed it on because I'm dumb - I've got a spray gun and I know it would have left a better finish, but I wanted to see how a brush job would come out. Forgot to paint the thermostat housing before I took the pic, haha! I saw some guy on Jay Leno's Garage with a Pacer and he had painted the valve cover with red, white, and blue AMC stripes. Looked awesome - I think I'm going to do that before the truck is done. Oh, also when I got the truck I had a really $#!&ty set of generic keys for it, so I nabbed this set of NOS AMC key blanks on Ebay. Score! Oh, change of pace - I also Dynamatted the interior. Really went all-out because I had a bunch left over from my Corvette on top of a new big box I bought for the truck. I still have a ton of sheets left over! Dynaliner is coming... in the next post!

If it's the same as my '87 (and assuming I can remember correctly since it no longer has an automatic), it connects to the top of the plastic housing that rotates with the shift lever. It just clips on. Pretty sure that's how it was, but it's been a long time since I pulled it off so take that with a grain of salt. I'll get a pic in the morning if nobody beats me to it.

Build? Ha, a lesser man might say it's already perfect! I love the paint, and the interior looks fantastic as well. Looking forward to what you have planned for it.

At this point, I'm still just stripping the truck, prepping it to swap over from a parts Cherokee. Almost everything is going straight into the trash or being used as a core! I didn't get many good pictures, so not much to write up here. You can see a lot of the rust from that plank they used as a battery mount in both the above and below photos. Below you can see a large hole in the corner of where the mount is - since it's not a high-traffic area, I just went ahead and glassed it in instead of breaking out the welder. Mostly everything is stripped at this point. I decided about here that, since everything is getting pulled out, I'd go ahead and repaint the engine compartment to make it look a whole lot better. It kinda looks like crap right now. Also, new warehouse! This is MUCH better than working outside in my driveway! I didn't take many photos while I was painting, but I took down all the areas showing surface rust with a wire wheel on a grinder and finished up the corners with a Dremel. I replaced all the aging caulk-sealant-stuff that was cracking and peeling with 3M Strip-Calk, too. All the exposed metal got 2 coats of POR-15 after that. 1 coat of epoxy primer, 2 coats of color, and 2 coats of clear. I forgot to take an after photo so you'll just have to wait! I also didn't get photos of the floor pans before, but the driver's side was fairly rusted while the passenger was perfectly fine. You could trace a streak of rust up to the fuse box, so that's clearly where it's been coming from, but I'll definitely check the other seals before I reassemble everything. You can also see just how much mud has deposited throughout the truck! Gross. I took the firewall foam out and washed it thoroughly. The entire interior got pressure washed at this point as well. The driver's side got wire-wheeled which opened up some swiss cheese on the floor. Not a big deal - it's still strong enough to not flex when I put my weight on it, so it's definitely fine. Didn't get intermediate pics again, but I welded a corner into that big hole, sprayed another coat of POR-15, glassed it all in to fix the swiss cheese, 2 coats of epoxy primer to seal the glass, then the whole floor got another 2 coats of POR-15. It's definitely not rusting out again, haha! Used about a quart and a half of POR-15. Excess is my middle name! I also grabbed a new tilt column from a '95 Cherokee and sprayed it with the closest thing they had at O'Reilly's. It... doesn't really match lol. I ordered some SEM Palomino and Camel which supposedly match 86 and 87 tan interiors. Palomino is supposed to be a good match for 87 Tan but my original dash is definitely close to Camel. The plastic trim seems to be in the middle of Camel and Palomino but a little closer to Camel. My build date is in January and the trim pieces all have stamp dates of 86, so I'm wondering if my truck got the last of the Honey interior. If I had to describe the color in one word it would definitely be "Honey". Not really an issue since I'll be redying everything anyways, but I'm a stickler for originality. If I cared enough I'd get something custom mixed, though. In the next post, I'll probably not forget to get a pic of the painted engine compartment, throw down dynamat, dynaliner, and carpet, recolor the interior, clean out and refurbish the heater box and maybe even start to reassemble the dash! I might start to focus on getting the engine compartment reassembled first, though. Need to think through what order would be easier.

Great article. I have a massive amount of respect for Mr. Leno, and I personally think he's absolutely correct here. It goes way past restoring cars: just think about how much less maintenance a modern car requires, and how much people procrastinate and complain about their now-biannual oil change! Chinese trinkets dominate the Amazon bestseller charts while American-made, sturdy, and superior alternatives are readily available. And for every person I know who truly enjoys mastering a trade, I know ten who spend hundreds of hours per week mastering a video game! Or worse yet, mastering their Twitter feed. Perhaps it isn't entirely true, but with the advent of social media and the absurd explosion of vanity and celebrity worship across all forms of media (The Real Housewives of Whoever-The-F!@# Cares? Drives me crazy), it's certainly becoming so. People are expecting more and more for less and less, they're considering themselves better and better than those around them (which, admittedly, is very easy if you've seen the average political opinion on Twitter), and an alarming amount of people now seem to want absolutely every aspect of their lives served to them on a silver platter courtesy of the Nanny State (sorry, I mean the American Taxpayer). I deeply apologize for the long rant, and for the directly political nature of my response, ha!

Orange-on-white stripes look killer! I do think it would look better with the 4x4 decal, though.

I don't think I've seen this ad before. Super cool!

Haha, right? It had been picked up from the front with a forklift and it destroyed the tie rod. Had to cut it to steer it on the trailer.

'87, 4.0, 2wd, flooded, $300, including free mud! There were also free plants growing in the bed! It was basically Christmas. This was back at the tail end of 2019.

I was leaning towards AMC Blue, but I really didn't like how it contrasted with the gold exterior paint job. That said, I'm no interior designer, ha! I picked up a can of an olive drab color, hope I don't regret it. Definitely agree on that! I'd go so far as to say it's THE best. If it weren't for cylinders 4 and 6, I wouldn't have had to get any machine work done on the block at all - it was in surprising condition! Very nice crosshatching still on the other cylinders. 4 and 6, though, had deep and significant pitting throughout, and I'm confident it would have almost no compression at all. The machine shop ended up punching the block 0.060 over just to clean it up. Also, looks like I just missed you at Brookhaven! I was planning on attending with my Corvette, but I ended up working on my Comanche so much that my 'vette is still up on the lift with no sidepipes and a lot of bodywork left to do! Oops! Ended up just working today instead of heading out at all.

Current plan: tear everything apart! I took a lot of photos during this stage to help with reassembly, then quickly realized I couldn't find anything I was looking for in a folder of 300 images, ha! Looking back, I really should have pulled the trans with the engine! I didn't intend on removing the nose of the truck just yet, though I should have. This Harbor Freight hoist wouldn't quite clear with it on unless I shortened the chain a bit, which I honestly should have done the second I got it. Wow, that engine looks brand new! And, well, yeah it is. Didn't even have time to get caked in oil. Just about everything here is getting replaced. Any sane person might have swapped in HO parts, but I'm special and made a conscious decision to keep things more original that I now regret, ha! I might swap everything in the future, but for now, it's Renix. I had the same experience with my Corvette - needed a new carburetor and so I sprung for an expensive double pumper instead of a Sniper setup, because it was cool and I hadn't much experience with carburetors. Well, now that I have... anyone wanna trade a Sniper for a carburetor? The bottom end of the engine looks really dang good for sitting in oily water stuff for 4 years. This is my first time breaking an engine apart. The Haynes manual, liberal googling, and JeepSolid's engine rebuild series got me this far! Sending it all off to the machine shop! "But Scaleless," you might say, "doesn't your forum signature say you have a stroker engine? Why are you getting your crank resurfaced?" Well, hahahaahahaa, I'll cover that in the next post. Stay tuned! In the meantime, I pressure-washed the whole truck, which has it absolutely shining. Lost the decal, though - it was peeling and cracking very badly. I'll grab another when I get the truck repainted. Also note the damaged bumper and the adjacent bed, courtesy of the owner of that transmission shop! Really glad they took so much care dragging the truck around with their tractor. Luckily there're no creases in the metal at all, and it should pop out fairly cleanly. Kinda debating whether to get another SporTruck decal or a Pioneer decal. I'm planning to swap to 4x4 which I think thematically fits better with Pioneer badging, but I'm not sure. Feedback would be appreciated! And as always, see you guys in the next post!

Glad to hear I've got friends nearby! I've been through Jackson quite a few times - last time 'cause there was a Comanche at the Pull-A-Part not too long ago. Wherever it's at, I'll keep an eye out for your 'Manche! I'm sure we'll cross paths sometime.

When I started this project, I was a stickler for originality. I wanted to keep everything EXACTLY as it came at first, so I wanted to just rebuild what was in the truck or replace it with original components and nothing else. Well, after digging through all the broken crap on the truck and picking up a few other projects on the side that were less-than-original, I eventually backed off that plan a little bit. But for now, I was just replacing... everything exactly as it came from the factory, to the best of my ability. And boy were there a lot of things to replace! I expected basically a total loss, but digging in I was still impressed. Also impressive was that, even after a thorough pressure wash, there was still mud everywhere. The mud'll probably be haunting me in my dreams forever, at this rate. One of the funniest things courtesy of one of the previous owners was a brand-new battery mount from some other vehicle that didn't fit at all. Hard to see in the pic above, but they made it fit by screwing a 2x6 into where the battery mount goes with 5 long, self-drilling screws. I thought it was funny until I noticed that the board was rotting and holding enough moisture to rust out a big hole underneath the battery! At this point, I noted the engine was seized, so I looked into the cylinders with a borescope and saw a whole lotta ew. I forgot to get a screen cap of it, so I'll give a pic of the "oil" instead: Mmmm, yum. This is literally all that came out of the crankcase. It smelled like gas, too - not oil at all. Weird. The head - you can definitely see which cylinders had their intake valves open. Don't forget this engine is brand new, and has zero miles on it! A real shame. And here's the block after I poured a ton of MMO in to try to see if I could turn it. When I cracked the head open, cylinders 1 and 3 were actually FULL of the gassy substance I pulled out of the crankcase. I'm assuming the battery was in the truck when it flooded and some connectors shorted the injectors open -> cylinder full of gas? No clue, just spitballing. Shortly afterwards, I ended up finding out the engine actually wasn't seized at all, but the starter - the only thing I hadn't removed from the engine before trying to get it to turn, of course - had actually seized up while engaged to the flexplate, somehow. No clue how that happened, or if it was before it was flooded or what. Perhaps they burned up the starter trying to get the truck to start and it stuck engaged, or if the starter shorted out in the flood and it burned up? Sounds unlikely. I have no clue. Anyways, I gave up messing around and actually started to pull everything. Everything comes out, and new stuff comes in. Eventually. I'll continue the write-up in the next posts. Oh, don't worry! I pulled up the vinyl to take a look as soon as I got it. Passenger side looked immaculate, but the drivers' side looked like a nice block of swiss cheese. Fun stuff! Guess that'd be that fuse block/connector leak. I'll get that all fixed up in a few posts' time.

Thanks for the info, jdog! The dealership that originally sold the truck is now a Toyota/Lexus dealer, funny enough. Truck's spent its whole life in the same spot, though. Regarding the build thread, I've started it: And the running boards? Don't worry, they're going nowhere! They're absolutely immaculate, somehow.

Comanche Project Day 1, woo! 4.0L, Champagne Metallic over Tan interior, column-shift AW4, 2WD, D35 rear, some fairly nice bits like running boards. So anyways, I picked up this Comanche about a year ago. Work had taken me past this old transmission shop in Denham Springs quite often, and I took note of a Comanche sitting in their field. I didn't really think too much about it then. I was never really interested in cars at all - I certainly wasn't a mechanic in the slightest, but I was a Jeep guy for sure. I had a Wrangler that I drove top-down, doors-off, rain or shine, all through places that I probably shouldn't have been, and that pretty much branded a 7-slot grill into my heart (ouch). Seeing the big black 'Jeep' tailgate lettering poking out of the grassy field next to the transmission shop diddled that part of me in a way only your wife should, I guess. Dec 2016 streetview. Funny enough, the paint was nearly immaculate except for terrible scuffs on the driver side fender. Hmmm, truly a mystery where those came from This was all after a major flood in the area, so I knew the fate of that truck. The water in this area rose at least 6 feet. That's a big "oof" for sure. Fast forward four years of driving past that truck nearly every day and the transmission shop now had a big "for sale" sign out front (not a mystery - the owner of this shop is a grade-a d-bag and does pretty terrible work to boot). I was pretty confident that if the truck sat there much longer, I would at least never see it again. Or worse: it would see the crusher! So I did what any sane and rational person with no mechanical experience would do, and I walked inside, asked who owned the truck, went knock on a few doors and ended up buying it for $300. The story of the truck, via the seller, was that his friend bought it new in '87 from Price Leblanc Chrysler Plymouth, took very good care of it, and rarely drove it. It spent most of the time in his garage until the 2010s when he let his daughter drive it as her first car (...which explains the absurdly large perfume sachets stuck under the seats which just barely masked the smell of flood and death when I got it). When she bought her own car, her father sold it to his friend (the last owner) to build into a great daily driver. His first order of business was, despite the fact that the truck was in very good running condition with low miles, replace the engine. His justification was that he "wanted to," haha. He purchased the crate engine and this transmission shop - the one it has been sitting at for over four years - offered to do the swap for $600. They swapped it all fine and dandy but it never ran. They could not figure out the problem on account of, you know, Renix. Scan tool or bust, apparently. They told me they got a specialist in who only does old car electronics, and he told them they needed a new ECU! (read: "I don't really know what the problem is so go away") The truck sat for months while they dawdled and got nothing done, and then it rained for a week straight and suddenly the whole place was under water. That's basically the whole story, other than the truck constantly getting dented, scratched, and mangled as they pulled it around their field with a tractor to make room for other vehicles. This was all about a year ago. Most of the time I've spent since then was ripping everything apart, assessing the damage, and doing an absurd amount of research just to get a vague understanding of what I got myself into. I also cut a big 6-month hiatus when I nabbed a junkyard '69 Corvette and brought it up to daily driver status. Figured I'd start documenting the Comanche here to keep things interesting, get some feedback, and maybe kick it up a notch speed-wise. I'm prone to dawdling, hence the already-extended timeframe. Anyways, in the next few posts I'll go over what's been done to the truck so far and my plans to bring it back to life. Stay tuned!

4.7 Stroker, yeah. And I'm definitely swapping those axles out as soon as possible - I'm focused on ironing out the truck and getting it in good running condition first. Aside from the drivetrain, the truck is pretty much bare at the moment, inside and out. There's work to do! To the best of my knowledge, those are original running boards. There are also holes in the bed that line up exactly with the mounting holes for factory bedside rails, so I expect they came with the truck as well, or at least were installed at some point.