Awesome

Ok no video yet as I've been too busy. Yesterday I fixed the driver's side door by replacing the pins. Re-aligning it afterward took a while. It will now close with a gentle slam instead of having to either body the door or lift it while slamming it. Still doesn't close as good as the passenger door. The striker is very worn so I need to see if I can get a replacement for that, and the bottom hinge is also worn enough that the new pin didn't take up all the slack in it. It still wiggles. Probably a combination of those two things causing the "still need to slam it" issue. There is also a visible gap at the top of the door between the door and the seal, which leads me to believe that the guy who welded the hinges on may have welded them slightly too low. I pulled the door up as far as I could when I bolted it on. I also accidentally oil-coated the entire underside of her truck. I'll have to help her clean it up now.

She's competing in some state-level contests this week (and so far has been top 3 in two of her three contests) so I've been working on her truck a bit while she's gone. I got the horn wired in and some of the miscellaneous wires that previous owners had added cleaned up and removed. I also fixed the starter issue by moving one cable. I'll post a video later if I can.

I figured it out. The fuse clips in the fuse block are broken, so they weren't contacting the fuse very well. I bent them over and shoved the fuse in behind the ones that are left. The radio works now. Now daughter just has to trace the speaker wires back to where they need to go.

Update on the stereo system: There is no power getting to the head unit. The fuse has no power going to it, but I looked at the electrical schematic and the Blower fuse, Turn Signal fuse and the Radio fuse are all powered by the same wire going to the fuse block. The blower and turn signal fuse have power. The radio fuse does not. This confuses me. I confirmed that I have continuity on the power wire from the head unit back to the fuse, but multiple checks of the fuse terminals indicate there is no power there.

Me too. :) I think she was 10 when I brought home the '88 that was to be hers, and we worked on it for a long time getting stuff fixed. Then my mom died and we stalled for a while, then she spent 3 years working on the '86. I'm proud of her. She's learned a lot. She just bought a stereo system so later this week we'll be installing that together.

Today daughter sealed up the firewall seam that was leaking, and in the process put a bunch of dielectric grease in the bulkhead connector to watertight it. Her Comanche should no longer leak at all. After she took that picture, she put urethane under the booster to cover the entire seam. She did a good job.

I mentioned that earlier in the thread. The master was leaking onto the floor inside the Jeep, but only a little bit. We caught it early. It got replaced a while ago. This time the slave was leaking like crazy.

I got it back together this afternoon, bled it as good as I could (it's a RHD bellhousing so the bleeder is on the wrong side of the slave), then took it for a drive. Drove about 30 miles and it was driving great. The line still had some air in it and it burped at the last stoplight I stopped at after I stomped on the pedal a bunch. Clutch pedal feels great now. I also confirmed that the last external leak this thing has is right underneath the bulkhead electrical fitting that's under the clutch master cylinder. Should be really easy to pull that plug out again and seal that area up.

I was resigned to needing to make a custom tool, but as one last resort I tried a 1/4" drive socket and a 1/4" drive universal joint (a one-piece socket+joint would have been even better) and it worked. I was able to get the nut off. Now to get the line free and replace this sucker. There's a carshow this weekend and daughter will probably want to enter again.

Got any tips on getting to the top nut on the clutch slave? We couldn't fit an extension between the slave and the floorboards so I had my daughter drop the crossmember. She says she still can't get an extension in there and get the nut off. Edit: lol I just found out whoever converted this to an external slave used a RHD bellhousing. No wonder I can't make anything fit.

'86 was missing two bellhousing-to-engine bolts and the remaining ones were loose. Got two bolts put in this afternoon and tightened the others. For future reference, the bellhousing-to-engine bolts are 12 communist unit diameter, 1.75 pitch 60 communist units long. AMC used standard bolts for nearly everything else but used metric for those? Probably because the transmissions are all Japanese, I guess.

The '86 got used and abused today. I crawled under the '86 today and found the slave cylinder that my daughter couldn't find. It's on the passenger side, which is why she couldn't find it. It is not leaking externally, but it is leaking internally. There is a ton of fluid everywhere under that truck, probably mostly from the clutch. When my daughter pushed the clutch in, the engine was pushed forward away from the transmission. It's missing at least one bolt, maybe more. That probably explains the leak - the slave is probably overextending and blew the seal out. There is a vacuum harness that contacted the exhaust and melted into pieces, so there's probably one more vacuum leak we haven't fixed. The harness used to go to a small round rubber vacuum fitting that is currently hanging near the transmission fill/drain plugs. No idea what the fitting is supposed to attach to. The starter relay does indeed seem to be sticking. Everything I've seen indicates that the starter relay is not the stock one - the pictures I can find of stock ones show a rectangular relay, but the one on the firewall is round. The '88 Comanche got the bed installed last week. I am going to make fenders for it and add some tie-downs along the sides. We flexed the truck out with a forklift and found that flat fenders won't work - it will end up rubbing with the tire at full stuff. Now I have to figure out the fuel situation for the '88 to get it driveable. The tank is FULL of varnish or rust. It's in decent shape but has completely varnished. I have some vinegar in it right now but that probably won't be enough. I may try to pressure wash it out. I sold the stock skid plate that originally mounted the tank, thinking I wouldn't be using the stock tank anyway. I now regret doing that, lol. I can make some straps pretty easily though so I'm not that worried about it. My biggest concern is with cost right now... I have four vehicles that need work and funds are limited. I'd love to try and salvage the stock components.

Thank you, I downloaded it again. Daughter says starter is still staying engaged for a few seconds after she's finished cranking. Ignition switch might be sticking, which could account for the drain except I can't figure out how it would still work when the bulkhead harness is unplugged.

Ok we have discovered more issues. The clutch is leaking a lot of fluid. Probably the slave. I haven't crawled under it and daughter said "I can't find it." We already replaced the master. There is a parasitic draw of 343mA. The battery goes dead in about two days. There is no radio. I unplugged the bulkhead connector and the front grille harness and we were still seeing a parasitic draw. The draw comes from two places - with the alternator fusible link wired to the solenoid on the fenderwell, the alternator shows a draw of 343mA. With the alternator fusible link disconnected, the two green fusible link bundles with ring terminals collectively show a draw of 343mA. If ONE of them is hooked up, the draw is only 113mA. If the OTHER one is hooked up (by itself), it shows a draw of 343mA. If BOTH are hooked up, it shows a draw of 343mA. If the fusible link to the alternator is hooked up alongside both of the other fusible link bundles, the draw is 343mA. All of this is true with the bulkhead connector completely disconnected. Also my dad reconnected the wires on the fenderwell solenoid because he thought they were hooked up wrong. The starter now stays engaged longer than it should. Does anyone have a diagram for how those wires get hooked up properly? Does anyone have a Renix FSM? I have what I think is an FSM but it's for an '88 and I don't think it's complete.

Which could be a bad ground on the gauge, like what EagleScout said. It sounds likely as we did remove some extraneous wiring the PO had added, and the HVAC system won't come on. May be missing a ground somewhere.

Getting my daughter to work on her truck lately is like pulling teeth. It runs and barely leaks now so she's happy with it even if some things still aren't finished. One of the things that is bothering me is the fuel gauge. It is stuck reading full all the time. Unplugging the fuel pump makes no difference in the gauge reading. Any ideas?

Got the truck back together. Bought a new set of gauges but they wouldn't fit because they are bigger than the old gauges, so I made a gauge plate real quick and got it all hooked up. There is another leak somewhere but it looks to be coming from the firewall on the driver's side, instead of from up under the dash this time. We'll look into that tomorrow. The heater also isn't working but I'm not sure right now if it's a wiring issue or something else. More diagnostics are required.

Aha, thank you sir. Yes, the one in my hand has an orange wire. That last one is attached to the same harness as the rest of them. I'm not sure where it's supposed to go - the wiring in this truck was already a mess when I picked it up. We've been fixing it as we find problems. It looks like it's supposed to plug into the other one that's in my hand. Have no idea though.

Here are some pictures of the leak repair: And here is some stuff I need help with; what do these plugs go to? I assume some of it is to non-existent factory AC options and some is non existent radio wiring. 1: The plug I'm holding has a broken wire that was shoddily repaired and then re-broke, the white plug had wires jammed into it and then taped in place. We removed those wires and wired them into a fuse properly. What are these for? 2: I believe these are for the factory cigarette lighter, yes? Except it wouldn't need all of these wires, so I'm not sure what they all go to. 3: These appear to plug into each other... but why? I can't figure out why the factory would have a harness that just plugs into itself. 4:

Drilled out the spot welds, used stainless steel bolts, rubber washers and some body sealer and bolted everything back together. Shouldn't have any more leaks. Got the studs that were stuck in the firewall removed and re-inserted into the heater box after chasing the threads with a die. Put some JB-weld into the holes the studs thread into in the hope that after curing it will help keep the plastic from stripping. Reinstalled the heater box. We're working on getting the dash put back together but I think I'm missing a piece. Isn't there a piece that goes on the top of the heater box and connects to the vents? Or do I have that wrong? I thought I remembered a piece on the top in front of the shifter.... unless that's just the recirculating vent intake. EDIT: it's the defrost duct. We're trying to find it. I know we had it when we removed the dash. EDIT 2: Daughter swore it wasn't with the other MJ parts. It was with the other MJ parts. Dash is going back together.

We found the water leak under the dash. It wasn't the heater box. Now that I see how the heater box is set up, I'm not sure how you'd get a leak through there unless the cowl rusted out. The computer mount is spot welded to the bottom of the cowl up under the dash. One of the spot welds broke free and tore out of the cowl. It was right under the wiper motor, which is why we couldn't see it before. We're going to drill out the spot welds and bolt the bracket on with stainless steel bolts and some body sealer.

Thanks; I sent him a PM. Hope he responds. Not really looking forward to custom-bodging it all myself.

Ok, back to the '86. Today I fixed the tailgate so it's "permanently" mounted. Will be pretty difficult for the common thief to walk by and steal the tailgate. We got the entire dash and HVAC box finally pulled. Pretty easy to tell how and where it was leaking from the cowl now, but I have questions: Where do I buy new seals, new foam, and new components? The blower motor does not work, so that needs to be replaced, the heater core looks ok but is 40 years old so it should probably be replaced, and all of the foam needs to be replaced as well as the rubber seal for the air inlet. I've never done this before so I don't know where to find the parts. I know a few of you have done it.

IT BEGINS: 2-4-26

Well the last few weeks have been spent on building this: Built for a show by my daughter. She designed and built it. I didn't like the aftermarket bumpers that require cutting the grille to fit the winch, so we built around those design flaws. Once the show is over we'll get back to working on her truck. EDIT: She got sixth place. She's bummed, but the bumper was extremely popular with spectators and she gets to install it on her truck anyway.