Guess I'll start here as an introduction.
I bought this a week ago. It's a 1986, 2wd, 2.8. The ad said it hasn't ran for 5 years and he thought it was the "points or something". He also didn't post good pictures, but for $1000 I didn't think it would be a bad investment. I messaged the guy about 30 minutes after he posted it, and he didn't get back to me for 7 hours. I figured it was gone. Comanches seem to go pretty quick these days. We'll, he did get back to me and I told him I'd be right there. I loaded it up and took it home.
Then I told my wife.
She was pretty upset, seeing as I have a large collection of cars. But this one has such a nice interior and the body is in original condition and only has a little ding in the hood. The previous owner cracked the corner glass while mowing his yard too, but that's easily obtainable. She isn't so mad after all. All the hard to find Comanche parts are there anyway (tail lights, tailgate, rear bumper and caps, etc) Best part? The 119,xxx miles are original. It's absolutely a survivor.
So I got a new battery and tried it out. No crank. I found it had a bad starter relay. So I did what any responsible adult would do and drowned the carb bowl with gas and touched the signal wire from the starter relay to the positive terminal of the battery. It fired off immediately. It idled on 5 year old gas. Continuing my streak as a responsible adult, I decided to drive it down to the parts store for a starter relay. To my surprise, it ran almost flawlessly. Even on 5 year old gas. I got home and started checking it out. Looks like it has a limited slip D44 rear axle 3.55 ratio, so maybe it has the metric ton package? It only has 4 leafs in the pack, so maybe not. The bottom leaf is super thick, so I don't know.
After a few days of driving it, it suddenly died off. I couldn't go past 25 MPH, and not for long. It sucked too, as I was coming home from work and had 26 miles to go. I figured the fuel filter was full of crap, and I was right.
So, I got a fuel filter for the carb, a pre-filter (wix 33003), and a rebuild kit. Yep. The old Rochester Varajet was full of rusty junk too.
Anyway, the carb rebuild went well and it's driving great. In the week I've owned it, I've met some great people as well. One of the guys I met was tonight at Sonic (scguy). Unfortunately, I can't message anyone because my post count is too low or something.
Future plans:
-Probably 4wd swap
-I might try my hand at restoring the paint
-Probably end up having it painted
-That's about it.
