DirtyComanche

Probably more than that. Took it wheeling a couple more times too. It's still happy.

IMHO a waste of money. If you hit the entire suspect area with brakeclean/rags to dry the oil off, it's normally extremely easy to tell what's leaking just by starting it up again and looking with a regular ol' bright light. Also, it might not be an engine leak. The trans could be leaking, auto or manual, and picking up enough dirt/junk that it looks nice and dirty black by the time it hits the bottom of the bellhousing. I identify fluids by smell mostly at that point, assuming if it's a manual tranny that it doesn't have engine oil in it.

Get a new lock ring and o-ring. Lube the o-ring with vaseline. You may need to tweak the tabs where the lock right interfaces on the tank side in order to make it easy to start. You can actually see if the o-ring is seated correctly, so it's way easier than most things. If all else fails you can coat the o-ring with Sealube (https://www.aircraftspruce.ca/pages/ep/lubricants/sealube.php) or Permatex 'Aviation' Form-a-gasket to help stick it in the correct place and have it seal, but it should NOT be needed. If the groove for the o-ring on the tank is damaged, or there is burrs on the lock ring or pickup/sender assembly, you will need to try to clean them up with a file/sandpaper/scotchbrite and replace them if needed.

You broke the back window by accident. What do I win?

Are they plastic or fiberglass? Either can generally be repaired...

I think the gear pattern you settled on looks fine. :thumbsup:

Nice shift knob. :brows:

Nice looking truck :waving:

A breather problem will cause the RMS to blow oil out, no matter how perfect it is installed.

You won't (likely) find any aftermarket cam for a 4L in the junkyard. I was talking GM stuff, if anything they seemed to be the most common converted vehicles out there. And a cam could be had for them relatively cheap, even at that time, so it was common to slap one in as part of the LPG conversion. Same with the Ford stuff, but I don't care much for them. I'd just run more timing and leave it alone otherwise, personally. The cost vs return is poor on doing anything beyond that. If you wanted to make the engine perform I would order an aftermarket cam, the Yellaterra rockers, a HEI and weight/spring kit if you didn't go that route, an Offenhauser intake manifold, a generic Holley square bore mechanic secondary throttle plate, an eBay/Amazon header, and an Impco 425 (and a Model E regulator to go with it).

RV cams aren't "custom" -- there are several companies who offer them off-the-shelf. Swapping a camshaft should be a lot less work and a lot less expense than doing things like decking the head. http://www.cranecams.com/product/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=23907 This was the standard thing to do with propane conversions in the 80s. In fact it was a great way to score a better cam for a SBC/SBF for nearly free, look for a truck in the boneyard with a propane conversion, 95% of the time they would have a name brand 'RV' cam in them just ripe for the picking. I never swapped the cam on my 4L. I just ran the timing on the ragged edge. Same with the current truck I have on propane with a SBC in it. IMHO shaving the head is the more work way to do it, and if you do that and wind up doing a cam swap you will not be able to run as much timing advance as is ideal. The cam swap would also likely make more power than shaving the head. The flame front speed is a little low on propane, timing helps more than on a comparable gasoline engine.

There are ways it could be done -- but very labor-intensive. Several years ago, a friend needed a driver's floor pan for his Comanche. I had an '89 XJ junker. He bought a body shop tool for drilling out spot rivets and went along the entire length of both sides of the frame rail, drilling out the spot welds that attach the floor to the "frame." Then he cut out the section he needed and welded it back into his MJ. The same thing could be done sort of in reverse -- drill out all the spot welds, remove the floor pans, and then cut out the XJ "frame" rails and weld them back in under the MJ floor. They're the wrong shape though; he needs all the way back to the leaf hangers. You would need another MJ as a donor. So short of finding one that went on its lid or had a tree fall on it, it's not likely to happen. Anything is possible. IMHO it would probably be easier/better to start over with some 3x4x.188 HSS, or something like that... I mostly did it with an XJ, but stopped working on it due to life reasons. How the XJ was going: Image Not Found4 Image Not Found The plan was still to stuff a cage into it, but tie it to the roof/pillars/etc. I have no idea how many hours I had into it before I moved (and moved on... :( )

Nope. I don't know the cutoff, but I tried to use an 86 bracket on an 87 and it was different. Must be 84-86 (aka the weird years), then 87+ was all the same. I know somewhere there was an 'early' version that was not the same.

That will take some major fab work and effort to repair... And by repair, I mean rebuild in a way that's not factory at all.

I could probably put a set of Ruffstuff XJ frame stiffeners up against the MJ frame if you're curious if it would cover enough to partially fix that problem. They're only an L shape, so they would really only work to bridge another repair and make it more proper. I've never tried fitting them against the MJ though.

If it is oblonged I would probably get a wrecker bracket. They changed at some point, early stuff uses a smaller taper and smaller TRE. I believe it's 84-90 and 91+ for the two generations, but it might not be... Either way, I'd get as new of bracket as possible and buy the track bar for that bracket. Alternatively a guy could buy a later track bar, and a Snap-On R121 and ream the oblonged bracket out to fit the bigger TRE. That would be a pain in the @$$ and more money than a wrecker bracket. I wouldn't try to repair it by welding, it's actually some higher carbon hardened steel that they put the taper in, it's a pain to work with at best and would be terrible to try to rework after welding it and could easily damage a reamer. Normally it's the hole on the bracket at the axle that gets all hoopa-jooped.

Spade connectors and low amperage. I wouldn't use that fuse box. Yeah, those things suck.

Wow, that's really nice. Love that colour.

Seems like it's an internal issue in the tcase at that point. Unless I'm forgetting something obvious. The good news is they're easy to take apart. The only real 'special' tool you need is a large pair of snap ring pliers, and a 1-1/8" (IIRC) socket to get the front output nut off.

If there is too little initial preload, as the bearings/races wear in there will be no preload and/or actual slop. That will allow for the pinion to deflect away from the ring gear much more under load, which will cause the actual contact pattern to move up to the top of the teeth, which may lead to a failure of the gear set. It will also decrease the bearing capacity of the pinion bearings, as it will result in them being loaded much more unequally, which will lead to a failure of the pinion bearings and potentially the gear set.

So my 2dr XJ seats didn't work out as well as I hoped. The driver's seat was pretty thrashed, so I planned to swap them side to side anyways. However, when I drilled the brackets off the driver's seat I found that the rails were badly cracked. I think I can just drill the 'stop' rivets out of the rails and swap them over too, but I'm not sure if I am that interested because the seat isn't in great shape anyways. I honestly would like to pick up a set of 2dr JK seats and try to make them fit. Somebody on here did try it (who has long since sold their truck and moved on), and got the driver's seat to fit fine, but had no luck with the passenger seat. I am not sure why the passenger one wouldn't be able to work... So I may try hitting the boneyard and seeing just how spendy such a pair of seats would be. Anyways, I did put the passenger one in on the driver's side, which I am happy with for now. At least I have reasonable access to back there without having to take the seats out. It also meant I could put my first aid kit where it 'belongs' - which is on the back of the seat.

8 ohm speakers, that's pretty weird. Trust AMC to decide to do something like that. :rotf:

I never check preload once the carrier is in. I have no idea what it would be, and I'm not sure it's a very valid measurement at that point. I just add shims equally to each side until it's quite difficult to hammer the carrier in with my large deadblow.

I found the pedals to be a bit slick, mostly the clutch, so I figured "Why not get some grippy 'race' pedals!" So, Amazon I went, and BAM, in my mailbox: The clutch and brake one went on easy enough, other than there wasn't much for flat surfaces in the right place to drill through and bolt them on. The gas pedal was a different matter completely. It wound up pretty butchered. Back side: I moved it around a bunch of times trying to find the best place for it. I wound up shaving the sides down a bit, and centering it on the pedal like this: It wound up being way too close to the brake pedal, and test driving it confirmed that. So I flipped it upside down, moved it over, and cut one row of holes off it: All in all I think I'm happy with it. The clutch and brake pedal are good, the screws are a bit wonky because there isn't a flat spot to put them into, but I can forgive that. I might pull the gas pedal back out and trim it some more, I haven't decided. I also regret not looking for a matching pedal for the parking brake, but I think I can live without if need be. One thing that has me puzzled is that I grabbed a gas pedal out of the shed rather than jacking up the one that was in the truck. After I put it in I realized it sits way higher. Pedal I pulled out of the truck: If you look at the final picture of the pedals installed, you can see the pivot is in a different location. So, did I swap a HO pedal in by accident? It should not have been one, as it was the gas pedal that went with the clutch/brake pedals out of a parts XJ that definitely was a Renix. Or was the original pedal in my Comanche wrong? I compared it to the pedal in my XJ (also Renix) and it is the same as the one I swapped into the MJ, BUT my XJ has a HO throttle body on it and I don't specifically remember if I bent the Renix pedal or put a HO one in and then wound up bending it too (the floor is not normal in my XJ because there is a doubler and a NP205). I actually had doubts if I was getting full throttle out of the original pedal in my MJ, since it sat so low to the floor to start with, but I never investigated. Anyways, this was another one of those projects that should have taken about 15 minutes but turned into about 3 hours. :rotf:

6 pounds is 6 pounds. The M90 won't be capable of producing 6 pounds with the increased displacement of the stroker, that's the issue. It just can't move enough air. I think realistically it might make about 3 pounds on an engine like yours, and yeah, not much gain there after parasitic loss. A M90 came up for sale locally, so I was doing some reading. :yes: