Bacon

10.5 is a narrow tire for running in sand. another thing to consider in sand too is gearing. too low a gear (4lo) and you'll most likely just sink, especially with narrow tires. i have very limited sand experience, but that was the one thing i noticed. i 4lo, i sunk, in 4 hi, i drove. weird. i can't really say much about airing down, cuz i NEVER do it. but i also have 12.5 tires on 10" rims, so my footprint is already pretty wide. i really should air down more tho

a buddy of mine used a set of shocks for a toytota pickup. he has a ZJ with about 8" of lift. he says they're plenty long enough. i'll prolly put them under my manche once it's lifted a little more. cheap alternative, he picked them up at napa for about 50 bucks.

update: toward the end of May, I took the truck out for it's first run of the summer. we went to a favourite mud hole nearby. this hole used to get me stuck every damn time so i had to try it with the new sneaks. everything was going pretty well, i was about 3/4 of the way through when i heard a snap and lost 4wd. luckily it turned out only to be the linkage, and it was only 4lo that i lost. so i had to go the rest of the way in 4hi by revving up to about 5grand and dropping the clutch. love that smell! anywho, i finally got out of the hole, and my buddy tells me my front axle was wrapping hard. i looked underneath and found i had ripped my right upper CA mount completely off, which then in turn ripped my left UCA in half! yikes. god i hate maritime rust. so, two months later, and i now have a D30 from a 98 XJ under there. bigger u-joints, no rust on the mounts. very nice. i re-geared it to 4.56 to match the 8.8 that will be regeared and put under the truck after my next pay. for the moment, the truck is mobile, but only 2wd, as i took out the front DS. no pics, they will come after the install of the 8.8 (soa). oh, and i picked up a set of 2wd leaves for my soa, hopefully keep the lift to about 4 or 5 inches.

drool.....comanche on boggers ....i want! i want!

anybody out there go SOA with a 8.8 and 2wd MJ leaves? that's what i've got sitting in my garage waiting to go in. i've got a 3" AAL lift right now, and hoping to only add and inch or two when I put in the 8.8 and 2wd leaves. how much lift does this setup give you?

a 3" lift will give you plenty of room to fit 31's. that's what mine had when i bought it. no issues at all at that size tire.

two things; one: nice truck, that thing sure is clean. i'd love to come across something that clean two: to hell with the truck, i'm digging the suburban trailer across the street in the first pic :popcorn:

holy crap....it even came from NS, that makes it even harder to believe. what a find. i bought mine in kingston ns and the rocker panels were made out of foam insulation, a little bit of mesh, and a bunch of bondo. frame was all scaley (actually broke on me the first time i took it on a twisty trail). oh, and the PO replaced pretty much the whole floor. seriously, nice find on a completely unrelated side note, do you know who owns the red comanche on prospect sitting across from wood motors, inside the fence? is he building it? i see it's got a 97+ front clip.....

how the hell did you find a 19 year old comanche with such little rust here in new brunswick? that is friggin amazing, it looks like it came from the southern US or BC. i wish mine looked half that good. can't wait to see it when it's done.

hahaha, i can remember stalling through an entire phase of a green light once! too funny. like 6 stalls in a row cause i was all nervous about the car behind me. green light-stall green light-stall green light-stall green light-stall green light-stall green light-stall yellow light-"DAMN" red light-mom laughs at me :oops:

jumping back a few posts here....that stripped bolt is a 12-point 13mm and there are three of them which hold on the bearing assembly on all Dana 30's. if you try to use anything other than a 12-point 13mm socket, you're gonna strip it. You do not need to remove it to do brake work. You need to remove it to replace the bearing unit, shafts, u-joints, or any work work you're doing inside the pumpkin.

swapping from a high-pinion to a low-pinion is actually a downgrade in strength (or so I've always heard, never actually seen any numbers on that), but it also increases the angle on your front axle u-joint, making it wear faster and possibly more prone to breaking or binding due to extreme angles during flex. I'd say just swap out the shafts-the TJ's have the larger u-joints which are stronger and stand up better to big tires and wheeling.

Peterson's 4wheel & offroad did a write-up of a chevy/gmc truck a while back that was camo'd with skulls and cross bones. that looked pretty cool. camo from 30 feet. up close you could see the skulls.

i have the chance to pick up a V8 93 ZJ with a 3" lift for cheap, as it has front end damage. i was thinking maybe buy it, put the lift under my ZJ, and throw the engine/trans/tcase into the manche. anybody here ever put a 5.2 out of a ZJ (or anything else i suppose) into a manche? if not, do you know of any good tech threads out there for the swap I'm just thinking about it at this point, i wanna do some research before i do it. thoughts?

thanks Pete, i had no idea how to do that. thanks for the comments guys. i love the 35's with 3" of lift. as it sits right now, the truck is actually wider (aobut 6'2") than it is tall (about 5'9") so it's unbelievably stable. i can sidehill things that my buddies just can't think about. even after the soa, it should be about as wide as it is tall, so it should still be pretty stable. i had to pound out my inner fenders up front to clear the tires just so i could turn the thing, and i don't have much flex before everything binds up up front, so i'm looking forward to a little more lift. oil problems...um, sorta. i replaced the oil pan gasket and filter o-ring, which cleared up a lot of the issue, but the rear main still leaks. so i tried to replace that a few weeks ago. unfortuneately the crank is grooved, so it'll never not leak, then i messed up the oil pan gasket putting it back on, so it leaks again. i gotta take the pan off and fix it, but i'm lazy. lol, the truck likes to leak itself down about a quart and a half, then it isn't so bad :D

aren't 92's just left-over 91's that they sold as 92's? meaning getting a 91 or 92 would be the same thing. correct me if i'm wrong, i just thought i read that once... whatever you get, just make sure it's what you want and isn't so rusty it'll turn to dust soon. with vehicles of this age, you won't find one that doesn't need something fixed. we're not talking a new or even a three or four year old vehicle. even the youngest manches are 15 years old now. as long as the cancer isn't killling it, buy it, fix what needs to be fixed, drive it.

holy small world batman! :Canadaflag: i'm from fredericton. now live in sussex. welcome to the site. :cheers:

found the digicam... http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2092140676&idx=5 http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2092140676&idx=1 http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2092140676&idx=7 i sorta don't like the front. i don't like the way the top of the flare slopes back. next set of fenders, it'll be more level.

yeah, my bad, should be fixed now. oh, and i forgot to mention the "custom" brush-on paint job. looks like hell, but it's super thick stuff, so scratches just aren't an issue. not sure what colour it is, the closest i can find to match is new ford grey engine block paint....

well, i found this site about a year ago when i bought this thing, but have never posted any pics. not that she's anything to look at, but i thought i'd share.... this is what it looked like the day i bought it... re-done floor, 3"BDS lift, TJ wheels and 31's. worth every penny of $800. looks pretty good, but what you can't see is the unbelievable amount of bondo holding the rear fenders together, and the massive oil leak underneath home in the yard...notice the slick underneath another the afternoon i got her home this is last fall. a buddy gave me a set of YJ flares for free (i had to do something with the rear fenders, and i picked up a very worn set of 35's for $200. i liked the fit, i liked the look, but the flares were too small, they just looked silly. these were taken yesterday. TJ flares now installed, 35" Trxxus m/t's, longer shackles to help offset those horribly sagging rear leaves i've got an 8.8 rear with 4.56's waiting to go in. i just got to buy more stuff. shocks, brake lines, spring perches, install kits, axle flange... the list goes on. when i get it all together, it's gonna have a soa rear with about 5-7" lift up front. gonna do the rear first, then decide how high the front has to go. who knows, after having the wheel wells so filled, i might wanna go with 36's or 37's afterwards....we'll see i guess.

bike cops are dedicated traffic officers. that's their job. traffic and only traffic. the guys in cars are on general duty, meaning traffic is only one of the hats they wear, and are most likely too busy responding to other calls to do much traffic. also, with a dedicated traffic section, the general duty guys may not ever do traffic enforcement, since they don't really have to.

had another look at mine. you don't cut the inner fender where the seam is...if you do, you'll be cutting into the bed. cut an inch or two out from it. once you get under there, you'll know what i mean

after reading that again, i forgot a couple of things. 1)i did this using a 4 1/2" grinder, a sharpie, and some masking tape. 2)after you cut out the inner fender, your going to find that your outer fender is really wobbly, meaning you can move it in and out a lot, and you may think "oh $#!&, i ruined my box". no you haven't. the TJ flares are so big and stiff that it will stiffen the whole box side up again.

Cole, I can't post pics cuz i don't have a digital camera at the moment, but i can tell you that if you look at randysmj's pics (the white one with 37's) it looks pretty much like that. the difference being that my rear flares are lined up with the body line that is about an inch or two above the flares in randy's pics. it's a pretty easy thing to do. i just put the flare on the the fender and held it there with some tape. this allows you to stand back and have a look. i moved mine around a bit until i decided i like the way it looked. the flare won't line up perfectly with the body line, so you just have to like the angle at which it sits, i just tried to make mine look as level as possible. once this was done, i marked the fender with a sharpie where i had to cut. i also marked two holes for drilling. then i removed the flare and cut the fender. at this point, the outer fender was a few inches above the inner fender, so i had to cut it as well. the wheel well and the outer fender are attached by a sheet of metal (well, mine weren't really attached anymore cuz of rust...) i just cut that back to the wheel well, making sure i did not cut through the box (ok, i did once, but after that i made sure not to cut through the wheel well) there's a seam in there which runs along the outer edge of the wheel well, so it's pretty easy to see where to cut. i then drilled the two holes which i had previouly marked and set the flare on there with a couple of bolts. i did this to make sure i like the way it looked before i drilled all the holes. i liked it, so i marked and drilled the rest of the holes, test fitted the flare one last time, liked it, removed it, cleaned up all the edges and painted it. i put the flare back on and it's been there since. One nice thing about the TJ flare is that it has a little lip on the bottom where the tire might meet the sheetmetal. This lip will keep you from cutting your tire. That's not an issue for me though, as I can completely stuff my rear tires up in there and not touch the flare now. It seems i put it just high enough to make room. also, my lift is AAL in the back, so flexing isn't really one of my trucks strong points. but it's peace of mind anyhow i put my flares on so the lower side of it is toward the front. i tried both ways and i thought this way looked the best. on the back of the flare there are "L" and "R". pretty sure i have them on the same side they woulda been on on a TJ. sorry for the post hijack, but post pics when you're done. and to everybody out there reading this. go buy a set of TJ flares and put 'em. trust me.

i don't have any pics of mine, but it was by far the best thing i've done to it. putting on tj flares allowed me to run 35" m/t's on only 3" of lift. nice low COG, all the clearance of 35's. if you're doing like i did, running big tires on small lift, make sure you do something with the pinch seam in the inner fender. either cut it off and reweld the pieces or "massage" it with a BFH. i've cut the outer lugs of my tires more times than i wanna remember. also, make sure you adjust your steering stops, that will help keep the tires outta the inder fender. last but not least, if you have no sway bar or disconnects, make sure you extend your bumpstops. that's the front. i have absolutely no rubbing issues on the rear end with the tj flares on it. i have both the front and rear of the flares lined up with the body line that runs the length of the truck. oh yeah, and i'm running 15x10 with 3.75" BS.