DirtyComanche

Closed knuckle axles were gone by 73. Many of the Quadratracs had part time kits installed and manual locking hubs installed in lieu of the drive flanges.

The thread sucks because the pictures are dead for page 1 and most of page 2. I forgot about that and never fixed them.

No, pretty much just get an XJ Cherokee that has the parts you need and swap them. Basically just get one that has the same engine and fuel injection, then take the transmission, transfer case, front axle, front driveshaft, tcase shift linkage, etc out of it and install them in the MJ. The only thing you'll need is to have a new rear driveshaft made, as finding a 4wd Comanche one is rather elusive. There's a few builds here where it was done, and lots of threads on it in the tech forum. My green one started out as a 2wd, although I bought it half converted.

Looks good.

Solid looking 2wd in Medicine Hat: https://www.kijiji.ca/v-cars-trucks/medicine-hat/89-jeep-comanche/1346230636?enableSearchNavigationFlag=true Honestly, I'd rather take one with a decent body and convert it to 4wd than start with a rotten body that's already 4wd.

You could, but I think it would be fairly undersized for the 6.0L.

I've seen a couple nice MJs come up for sill in 'Beerta over the last few years. Scour Kijiji and Facebook, I'll bet you'll find one.

Yes, it's not polarity sensitive.

They're only cool if you graft two of them together.

Front wheel drive is an abomination made for people that are just along for the ride.

That's why I thought it would be a Lada. But it's not, since it's a Dana axle.

Can you put it in gear from a standstill?

Forgot to reply to this. It's not a clock panel, it's the "I'm too poor/cheap to even get the optional clock" panel, so it's just a piece of plastic that looks like a clock panel. I think I got it out of a 94 XJ? There's enough space behind it to jam SOME gauges in there. With that Viair gauge I really had to cheat for space to get the fittings on the back. I'd planned to eventually get a little clock to put in the top of it, but never got around to it, honestly it's terrible trying to get it in an out with the air line that's routed behind the gauge cluster and all the wiring.

J-trucks are wide track, about 66" wide. It's actually an advantage compared with the narrow track Grand Wagoneer axles. But yeah, you'll need a suitable matching rearend, look in the same truck for that, or get a C&C GM 14 Bolt as it will be close. Also certain mid-70s F-truck axles were about the same width. I believe they are driver's drop post 78? Mine are all passenger drop, and I'd gladly trade one for a driver's drop... All that said, it's a low pinion D44, I wouldn't do it, it's not worth it.

Just buy it. The harness, sensors and ECM is worth it alone.

My consumption is staggeringly low. It actually has a very tight engine in it. It was a GM crate engine somebody bought and wrapped the truck it was in around a pole shortly after. I really should change the oil because that's easier than changing the engine (again).

I don't know that you'll learn anything terribly useful by trying to get it to run on starting fluid. And stored code history will likely be fairly irrelevant too. I'd say just look it over and hope for the best. How cheap is it?

Why does it have no fuel lines?

Makes more power, burns more gas. If you wanna go fast it's a good starting point. The factory tune is also really conservative, and some power and economy can be pulled out of them with just a tune. You're going to need a tune anyways (delete VATS, and probably the rear O2s, maybe a few other things) so you might as well either find somebody that writes good tunes or just buy HPTuners and try not to blow your engine up. How many miles on it? One downside of the engines in the 2500+ trucks is often they're beat on pretty hard.

In a 2wd I'd just get a F-body oil pan and set the engine low. If you even need the F-body pan. I know you can use a tape measure, so you can determine if you're going to have a clearance problem or not.

Looking better!

Pretty much. I should order a filter for it so I don't have any excuses.

Vehicle speed sensor. Assuming you're putting it in with a manual transmission, an automatic that's not controlled by the ECM (IE a TH-400 or a 4L60), people will tell you that you don't need it. If you delete the input so it won't throw a CEL the engine will likely stall every time you come to a stop. Cheapest way to do it appears to be to buy the whole donor vehicle, pair down the harness and dump the engine/trans/tcase all in as one. If you buy Novak motor mounts you will need a LS1 or LS6 style intake to clear the hood, plus their headers, and you'll have to rearrange the accessory drive. If you set the engine low and build your own mounts you can clear the hood with the truck intake you will lose some axle to oil pan clearance and a bunch of oil pan to ground clearance; if you buy a F-body oil pan to fix that you'll have all sorts of oiling problems off camber and will need a baffle kit and an accumulator. There is some other factory oil pans which give you a compromise on clearance but with less oiling issues, plus there's a couple steel aftermarket ones that aren't bad. Most guys are cutting out the front crossmember and stuffing a larger squarish radiator in.

I haven't changed the oil in my plow truck is 5 years. It looks like brand new, yup, it's propane. That's with tons of full throttle use and abuse and driving it on the road in the summer the first couple years. That doesn't mean it is okay. The actual contaminates most often damaging to an engine are metals in the 5-15 micron range, which unless in really high concentrations are not very visible and will most likely be silver in colour if they are. What makes oil black is soot (carbon) and often it the pieces are smaller than 5 microns, so it really doesn't filter out in a conventional oil filter. With a 10 micron absolute (which will filter 5 microns most of the time) bypass setup you will get most of it out, along with almost all of those 5-15 micron pieces of metal. Carbon itself isn't a terrible thing, it's not hard enough to cause any real wear, but it will deposit itself in places and the bigger chunks do plug the filter. Anyways, the problem with only running a conventional filter is that it becomes much less efficient in short order, as more of the media is plugged with various contaminants it makes it so the remaining unplugged areas are more likely to just have contaminants pushed through them. I don't personally see an issue with extended oil changes with synthetic oil, YMMV, but you MUST change the filter at a regular interval and top the oil up. Topping the oil up seems to reasonably effectively restore the additive package, which breaks down through heat and oxidation as the oil is used, and if you don't do this the oil will lose it's effectiveness in various ways along with typically becoming acidic in nature. Oil becoming acidic is very hard on bearing surfaces and will lead to corrosion attacking them. If you really want to not have to change your oil then adding a bypass filter is the best bet.

It's something related to how in Crapatalk you can like a post. Whoever gets the most likes in a day "wins" the day.