Skylynx

Man was i frustrated at this point, just looking at the mess of wires and cables surrounding the HVAC box made me panic a little, the mountains of dust everywhere kept my nose permanently runny, and both the dash and the trim piece that goes below it had steel pieces on them that were very rusty and dusty, thankfully it was all surface rust still, so it was easy to fix at least, first things first, i began cleaning everything, trim pieces, dash, cables, interior, anywhere i saw dust i attacked with brushes, wipes and a vacuum cleaner, i was tired of it, and got to work on fixing that, here you can see a pic of me holding the TCU and pointing at where it attaches behind the trim piece, where you can see how absolutely nasty it was back there, and how rusty this thing was. i grabbed a small 12 V battery drill and a wire wheel and began grinding the rust away from wherever i could reach from the dash's metal piece and the under-dash's piece as well, of course wearing safety glasses and a dust mask all the while, and doing so in a well ventilated area with a fan blowing across and away from me, no rust dust in my lungs please! Here you can see kind of a before and after picture, the top part already being cleaned while the bottom was as nasty as it came. i took my time and was thorough, at some point along the way i decided that just cleaning the one side wasn't enough and i drilled the studs connecting the metal piece to the plastic dash to remove it and be able to wire wheel the underside of it, once i had the two clean pieces i cleaned them well with alcohol and hanged them, painting them both with a few layers of Rust preventing rustoleum, which instantly made thing look much, much nicer! here's a picture of the dash's metal piece attached back to the dash with new rivets, you can barely see the difference between it and the plastic a small victory for me in a much, much longer way i still had to wage with this truck's absolute negligence riddled past, all the while working on this i could feel it.. presence of something evil, of something god did not intend to create, staring at me and laughing with a mania that would make even Alexander the great retreat, from the corner of the yard the monster lurked and waited patiently, waiting for me to man up and face it... The dreaded Hvac box... it was time to face my destiny.... Continued!...

it'd be a while before i could install any of these new nifty toys into the Comanche anyway, i knew i still needed to do the HVAC box job and the floor pans before anything else, so i got back to work the next few days, further stripping the truck out Until it was the turn of the dash to come out.. i'll be honest, i had t see a few youtube videos on how to even pull the damn thing to get it to come out, for whatever reason i couldn't figure out how to get to the bolts on the top of the dash with the windshield on the way, i honestly considered removing it for it, but in the end i managed to pop it free with a swivel screwdriver.. barely, this one's gonna be a female dog to put back in once i get to that! Not even the Ancient sahara has seen this much dust, ratatouille's home was not as much as a rat's nest as this, a thousand years of the scariest horror movies couldn't have prepeared me for the horror i witnessed here, the HVAC box wasn't even attached properly,hanging only from the crews on the firewall, cables going everywhere were entirely cut open, copper exposed to other wires and ready to start a fire as soon as you flicked a switch, all of the airlines were crimped and restricted, so even if the air box was working (which it wasn't, not even aligned properly...) you'd get no air out the vent at all. This is the state i found things in, entirely covered in dust, misaligned, free floating and stressed out of position, cables running here and there and nowhere at all, cut and not sealed, randomly paped and bent to go places it had no business being in. i wanted to scream. The factory radio was long gone, but the HVAC controls were still there.. sorta, the vacuum lines are all rotten and cracked, half of them are open and not attached to anything at this point, i have no idea where to get new ones or where i should plug them once i get them but that's a job that i'll have to do soon, if you guys have any clue where to get them, as well as details on how to service this thing, let me know please!! finally though, i managed to get the damn dash out of the truck and i couldn't be happier about it, well, maybe a little happier.. since the screws ontop were so hard to reach because of the angle, the screwdriver's shaft dug a bit into the plastic-ish covered foam which was already cracked in some spots, making it even more cracked, after more than 3 decades in the sun i can't say i expected anything else, but now my dash was even uglier than before, and i needed a plan to fix it. you can very clearly see the cracks i was talking about here, plus where the vinyl thingy was just entirely discolored and burnt from the years in the sun. Continued!...

I also managed to snipe a pair of chromed Door handles fro the same jeep, i snagged both of those for 8 bucks too, right around that, and from a different jeep i found i was able to find the chromed side electric mirrors, one of them was missing a mirror and both of them had cracked bases, plus the controls for them were gone already, so just for the chrome cases, one actual original glass and the cables that go into the door i got charged 4 bucks for the pair and i didn't even have to remove them myself, the owner of the lot just went for it. I've seen someone here in these forums selling new 3D printed bases for these for 20 bucks which i intend to get and repair these, the bases would legit they'd be 5 times the price i paid for these chrome electric mirrors (without international shipping, mind you, that'll make it a lot more) but in the end it'll be cheaper than getting new ones! while he was working on getting the mirrors off me and him kept talking, joking and laughing, having a good time under the mexican sun, i noticed that the glovebox in the trashed XJ still had the latch on it, and that it was the same color as the interior of my Comanche which was missing, i offered to take it for 2 USD, but he replied that since i had made him laugh so much while he worked, that little piece was coming home with me for free! happy with my junkyard day, with a gauge cluster, an upgrade for my ECU, two new chrome door handles for my doors, powered mirrors that need new bases and a nifty little latch for my glovebox in my trunk and with around 34 to 36 USD less in my wallet... if only i knew things wouldn't be this cheap going forward, haha! Continued!...

Took me just a few hours to tear down most of the interior aside from the dash and some side panels (which i later removed too), leaving me a clear view of the floor of the comanche which was the original first task i had, the good news is that the floor panel situation was way better than most ofther truck i've seen in here, since this ulgy beauty has lived the past 21 years in the mexican desert, the bad news was that there was rust there anyways, which i knew from the start, from below you could see a softball sized hole on the passenger outer side of the floorboard, but only that was visible from the outside you can very clearly see the hole that was visible from the outside in this picture, but it wouldn't be the only one i would find once the carpet was out, sadly, just below the black foam insulation there on the firewall i'd find another one, which would force me to cut the entire right side of the panel out and replace it. At this time thosw two would be the only holes I'd find, where were other patches of surface rust that had started to appear but nothing that didn't buff out quickly with the help of the wire wheel, sadly things wouldn't be that peachy for long, but that's further out in the story. \ it was after i managed to clear most of the interior when i had a chance to go to the junkyard to see if i could find a few pieces i knew would be upgrades, and i did manage to find some! Now, keep in Mind that is is Mexico where most car pieces are sometimes 4 times as cheap as they are in the united states! but this is also the same Mexico where people sadly make 2.50 USD per hour of work if they're lucky, so the value of the pieces you may find is actually greater if you see things that way, so keep in mid that every time i list prices here from the things i find or am trying to purchase! (prices are almost always in mexican pesos originally, i just try my best to convert them to USD for you guys to have some reference to it, the conversion) prices are only relevant to the day i type the post, so if you're looking at this in the future it will likely be way off.) ANYWAY! i went to the junkyard and i found some goodies! the big one and that i was quite happy with was the wire driven gauge cluster with the tachometer, i've not tried it yet, but apparently it worked when it was removed, i also got with it the whole cable with what i think is the cruise control sensor, which i don't know if i'll add to this truck, but it's nice that i got it anyway, the whole cluster and cable was only 15 bucks. I was happy with this find alone, really, i couldn't believe my luck when i found a compatible gauge cluster for me to replace the idiot lights one that came with the truck( i've bought the oil pressure sender and the air temp one needed to replace it already, they'll go in the truck when i start fixing the electrial.) needless to say i couldn't believe my luck when i looked under the dash and saw this: i've heard this 428 computer model is way better than the one my truck had (225), so i pulled it and got charged only 8 bucks for it, i've seen this things sell on ebay before for over 120 USD, so i think i'm pretty damn lucky, and considering i got the gauge cluster and the computer from the same trashed jeep, i expect them to have good compatibility already. Sadly apparently someone beat me to the TCU, the transmission computer, so i couldn't pull that one too, but since i'm not switching the transmission out on my jeep yet, i figured the one i have shouldn't be a problem, here's a picture of the new ECU with the TCU that was originally in my Comanche, if you guys know of any issues with combining these two, PLEASE let me know!!!! Continued!...

My journey with this thing starts with me picking it up after buying it, i knew the breaks were shoddy at best so i took my time, drove slow and prayed all the while driving it that those damn mercedes benz and BMW's would stop cutting me off so much when i was driving an old truck with barely any breaking power across the city without insurance, thankfully, i arrived at my friend's shop without much issue and gave him the truck to work on the breaks so i could at least use it, he kept the truck for a month since i had to go live in mexico city for a month, and he supposedly fixed the breaks by then so i decided to pay for the work, grab the truck and drive it home to start working on it for real. the breaks worked really well, i was even able to lock up the wheels a little in the first tests i made as i exited the shop, but not even 3 blocks away from it they began to fail once more, it was too late to turn around now so i drove it slow as hell back home, called my friend and he said that he'd check em out at some other time for free, but that i should start working on it for now, i got home with no issues and parked it in the garage to keep her out of the rain, mainly cause the seals in the windows are entirely rotten and gone by now. i don't know when or where in this site i read something about taking the carpet out and seeing the floor of the jeep should be one of the first thing you did, so i got to work on removing the seat and trim from the truck, to my absolute joy once i removed the bench seat i found 3 of the missing 4 trim pieces from the interior, the speaker covers that a previous owner had removed from the doors and back trim, and theyw ere in good shape too, sadly i couldn't find the back/passenger side speaker cover, but i'm sure i'll get one at some point from a junkyard.. hopefully. sadly the carpet was worse than what i imagined, and i'm already working on making a replacement with the new color the interior is going to have.. the rest of the trim's almost entirely in perfect condition though! though at the time everything was covered in a very thick layer of dust and dirt that i have since cleaned, i began removing everything from the inside, everything that could be bolted on and off, removed and taken out, i did, in part also because one of the main issues i wanted to tackle from the start was the HVAC box with the heater core and the AC evap. nothing could have prepared me to the mess of cables that i found, a big issue that is still haunting me to this very day, i did my best to tag and take pictures of every step i took, but i still think i'll need lots of help putting this thing back together, specially since i kept finding peeled cables and exposed wires everywhere that lead nowhere, i suspect i'll need to rebuild the entire harness from scratch. Continued!..

I know i'm going to hate myself for that title in the future, but it'll do for now, been putting off starting this tread for about two months now since i found this truck and started work on it, i never imagined how much work needed to be done or how much fun i'd be having fixing it up! I'd like this forum post to be kind of a story, a journal for this piece of American rust rusting away in a foreign country and it's journey to bring it back to glory, i guess i should start from what little i know about the truck from before i got it, keep in mind English isn't my mother tongue, and even if i'm well versed and practiced, i'm doomed to make spelling and grammar errors from time to time, so bare with me here! This comanche's birthday is still a mystery, since the stickers on the door have since been removed from it, but i have a pretty good idea where it saw asphalt for the first time ever, since it still has the dealer's decal on the tailgate, can't be 100% sure though, since i don't know if the tailgate is original to the truck, and the original title has been lost to time, but in case it is, it's fun to think i know where she started things in 1988! She's very Likely from Alabama, and i hope to drive her to the dealership again one day, from all the comanche pictures i've seen i have never seen this decal, and i'll try my best to preserve it. the other things we know about her is that she was bought in texas sometime in the year 2000's my a mexican national and brought down to the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon in the 18th of august of 2000, more than a year before she had to see her mother nation weap when the towers fell, she has been in this country and state since. as i said, the original ownership title has been lost since Mexican customs keeps it when you do the vehicle importation paperwork, but they give you instead a document with a lot of information about it, from this importation papers i can know this comanche was a pioneer trim, which i already suspected from the interior, (since the original paint was so horribly painted over by a previous owner... ) but it's nice to see it confirmed in paper at least. from this same doccument (which has to be signed by the new owner every time the truck is sold from hand to hand) i can also tell that it has at the very least had 8 separate owners since she crossed over down south, who knows how many she had while in the states since the years 88 til the 00's... she's been passed around and it shows.. the bad thing is that nearly everything need maintenande or is entirely broken, the good thing is that this was the perfect excuse to get it for cheap, and finally start making myself a cool toy i can take me and my brother fishing with in the weekends to the local lake, aside from wanting to get better at my mechanic and hand-working skills, since i'm at most a novice still and i've heard that this trucks along with the xj's are relatively easy to work with. i pulled the trigger on it and bought it about three months ago, but i've been only working on it from time to time for the last two months, i'll include here some pictures of it from the day i bought it and before i messed with it at all, so you guys can have an idea of the state it was on when it landed on my lap. The windows barely worked, the mirrors need new supports, the dash was cracked, and the optional slider window was missing... the carpet had holes in it everywhere, the ignition cylinder is so worn out you can start the truck without a key making it more of a go-kart than a truck and the bench seat was not only torn everywhere, it also stank like cat pee. the truck bed is okay-ish, it's got a pretty big hit on the sheet-metal on the driver's side that actually barely poked through, and the tailgate is bent outwards, but a friend of mine that works with sheet-metal assured me it's more than salvageable. The whole truck was painted horribly by a previous owner, it seemed like they put the wet paint in their mouths and spat onto the truck until it was red enough, it's dripping in some areas, lacking in others, oversprayed everywhere and tool marks all over where you could see they laid things over the paint before it was cured, here's the roof for example, which is not the worst place, the hood has marks where they sat their beer bottles onto the paint before it dried. front needs work too, the hood had a bit of puddy in it, but only where i intend to cut it to add hood vents in the future, so not too stressed about that, the grill is what worries me, i want to keep it with the pre 97 grills, but i'm having a hard time finding a chromed grill that's not absolutely trashed... still looking! and this is without talking about the engine yet! just the outside still.. you've got to admit thoug, even despite all her bruises and age, she still looks damn fine. ...Continuing!