neohic

Here you go, Jim: http://comancheclub.com/topic/51603-1986-the-jim-oshel-edition/?do=findComment&comment=525518

Howdy, folks! Been a while since I've had the chance to start a new build thread in the "Project MJs" section, so this is kind of a big deal for me. Here's the back story on this one... A few years back when I decided that I wanted to pursue moving to Colorado I got in contact with our very own Mr. Jim Oshel. Made a visit at that point and he made the comment that he'd have a truck waiting for me come the day I made the big move. Fast forward to today, and I'm now the happy new owner of this prime example of an '86! Little more back story... I've been working at an offroad shop and one of the cage kits that we sell is for the Comanche. There have been more than a few times that I was asked if I could bring in my Eliminator to mock up a cage to get some pictures on our website, but I've been hesitant about doing any welding anywhere near it and it's sitting in storage right now. Being that we've got space behind the shop for storage, I've been saying for at least the past two years that I'd come get the truck from Jim, and that I'm conveniently living in Colorado I figured it was finally time to pull the trigger. My boss was awesome enough to hitch up his trailer behind his amazing '72 Chevy, so we went for a little drive. To be honest, I'm not totally sure what my plans are for the truck. Maybe get it running and leave it alone? Maybe do an LS swap to make for a fun new daily driver? Maybe do an LS swap, cut it in half, and tube the rear as a new trail rig?... who knows. I'm sure everyone here will be the first to know. ... stay tuned, I guess.

So... the tach? :dunno:

Have a look around 5th gen. Camaro forums such as camaro5.com. Look around for the L99 (same thing as LS3?) manifolds. I've seen them sell for as little as $50 for a pair! Some of these guys are practically giving them away with the stock cats. We just fitted a set of these on an LS swapped JK at the shop I work at and they fit super close to the block. Come the day when I build my next rig it'll be an LS swap and I'll probably be looking at these manifolds.

Gentlemen! Have you noticed that we're just about done with 2016? Not sure about anyone else, but I look back on the year thus far and realize that there have been plenty of changes. Not to mention looking back on past MJOTM members form 2016 and also seeing the changes that they've had since being started... so many routes to go down with these trucks! Here's one that really stands out with its changes both on the surface and under. Your Comanche of the Month for November is... YEAR/MODEL ● 1990 Comanche Pioneer SWB ENGINE/PERFORMANCE ● Completely stock 4.0l DRIVETRAIN ● External slave AX15, not sure what it's out of, non vacuum NP231 from an XJ, Advanced Adapters SYE, Tom Woods driveshafts, Dana 44 rear from an 87 XJ. Chromoly shafts. D30 front COOLING ● Open system conversion. Toyota Land Cruiser overflow bottle. Flow Kooler water pump. ELECTRICAL/IGNITION ● 2 E-fans on switches. SUSPENSION/STEERING ● Rough Country long arm upgrade. Rubicon Express 5.5" coils and shocks. Stock leafs rear, SOA with trail gear perches. Rubicon Express track bar. Stock steering. INTERIOR ● Two-door Cherokee (flip forward) bucket seats, Cherokee center console, Fox flag headliner. New floor pans. Rockford Fosgate 10 inch shallow mount sub behind the seat. BRAKES ● All stock...definitely needs to be upgraded. LIGHTING ● 4 KC Daylighters on rollbar. 55w reverse lights. XJ Wagoneer (4 headlight) Header panel swap. EXTERIOR ● XJ Wagoneer Header panel swap. 2x6 steel sliders. Roll bar. WHEELS/TIRES ● 33x12.5R15 KM2s MISCELLANEOUS ● This was my first truck. I 4 wheeled it pretty hard until I bought a TJ. I swapped over a bunch of stuff over to that and now the MJ is just a daily driver. Trying to keep it from getting so beat up off road. It used to have ARBs, AR twin compressor, 44s front and rear, and a Warn 8274. All that is now on the TJ. I am in the process of making the MJ a good work truck / daily driver. FULL BUILD THREAD HERE Remember That One Time?... Tell Us Your Best MJ Story ● A couple of my buddies headed over to Eastern Washington after school one day to do some wheeling / camping. It was about 100 miles on the freeway (which the Jeep did AWESOME, only burned 1 qt :rotfl2: ) and did 75 mph no problem. We spent a ton of time on the trails. We ended up coming to a wash out. I put it in first gear, low range, squared up to the hill (the washout was at a 45 degree angle to the road) and went right up it. The guy behind me took it straight on and chewed it up pretty bad. I ended up winching all 3 of the guys in the group over the wash out (I had a winch on my Jeep back then). Then made the trip back over to the west side. That (at the time) was the most amount of miles I had put on my Jeep in one trip, and it definitely impressed me! CC is Awesome!... Why Do You Think So? ● CC has been an awesome resource in building and modifying my MJ. You guys are all so helpful and can gave me a lot of help and ideas. Reading through the builds here has given me a ton of inspiration. Now THAT'S a cool truck! Love it or hate it, that Waggy grill really makes this thing stand out. For the record, I dig it... a lot! The whole build is a fun one to go through. Built a little... built a lot... added some more... unbuilt to keep it nice... Quite the roller coaster! The overall look of the truck is just awesome. Keep up the good work and congratulations! -Ben This post has been promoted to an article

That interior finish looks great! :thumbsup:

Wow! Definitely a sharp truck. I don't recognize it from our ranks though.

Good call! I've got an LS swap on the docket for my next build as well. I'll be watching!

Any thoughts on having a functioning factory tach?

Does just fine in two wheel. The front obviously hops around on pavement in four wheel, but the drivability is way better now. Only difference between locked/welded and locked/locked is now the rear makes a slight clunking sound around corners and while pulling into parking spots instead of sounding like a yappy little dog while chewing up the rear tires! :rotf: It's been burping and farting more than usual too lately. Have to cycle the key in order for it to start right up, the pump is getting noisy, and the fuel pressure is all over the map. New fuel pump module on the way! Hopefully I'll get it just in time to run the tank empty. :crossfingers:

New locker... new sticker! Just a few more pieces than the four gears that should've been in there. Oof. :laughin:

Not much for miles put on this truck this year... not under its own power, anyhow. It made the trip west just fine and the weather is finally cool enough out here to wash it up before putting it away for the year.

The factory tachometer signal can get tapped off of the coil for an aftermarket gauge but it'd be the same wire that goes to the factory tach in the cluster. If a signal converter would be used, one would be able to retain a full factory cluster, right? Does the factory tach run off of a six pulse signal?

Meh... I'd run that. :rotf:

Moved. :D

All of the original senders for the new engine would need to be retained to function properly. I was thinking more of using then along with adding the RENIX senders for the original cluster. So... my main question was about what's between the senders and the gauges themselves. What about the tachometer? Is it possible to figure a way to use the stock RENIX cluster tachometer in an eight cylinder application?

I have my next hypothetical build happening in my head right now. Here's what I'm thinking right now for a recipe: GM 5.3 LS, 4L60 trans, and a GM/Jeep 231 bastard t-case. I know there are tons of warnings about cooling a V8 in a XJ/MJ and I know that there are plenty of reasons to keep a Jeep engine in a Jeep... that's not what we're talking about right now. :D What I'm thinking about is final details. Why not, right? Typically I need to think through and research every aspect and detail about a project before I even start. Tonight's topic is gauges. RENIX clusters... There isn't anything between the senders and the gauge cluster besides the wire themselves, correct? If I were to use factory sending units (on the already said 5.3), run new wires to their appropriate gauge (assuming that everything as far as wiring under the hood would be a clean slate), then everything should function as it should... yes? The odd balls would be the speedometer, the fuel gauge, and the tachometer. I think the speedometer would be fine being I'd be using the back half of a Jeep 231 so I'd be able to retain the stock speedometer gear housing. The fuel gauge would be remedied by using a stock fuel tank (or build one that uses a stock fuel sending unit) so that I could use the stock gauge sender in the tank, delete the in-tank pump, and use a 5.3 compatible inline pump... or compatible in-tank pump. The tachometer has me stumped. :hmm: I know that the early RENIX clusters have the adjustable potentiometer that would make up the difference in signal pulses between the 2.5 and the 4.0s, but would there be enough adjustability for an eight cylinder engine? Now, many newer gauge clusters use a single pulse signal so they can read off of a single coil pack, but I doubt that I'd be lucky enough to use cylinder number one coil pack as a signal for a stock RENIX tachometer to read correctly. Push comes to shove, I'd probably use a cluster with the giant fuel gauge in place of the tachometer and substitute an aftermarket gauge mounted elsewhere. I'd prefer not to, though. Right now, everything is just hypothetical. That's not to say that I'm not planning a new build for a wheeling rig at some point... stay tuned for that. Let's get the conversation going, shall we? Keep in mind that I do not want to use aftermarket gauges for anything. I want a stock looking dash. Here's a picture I found of a couple clusters... 'cause people love pics. :laughin:

I think Pirate4x4 is a really bad place to be trying to find solid information for a daily driver. Sure, there's tons of builds and information, but that only forces you to sift through it all to find what you actually need. I'd say that most of the "four/three link for dummies" webpages out there will say something along the lines keeping your arms as close to the same length and have your upper link(s) as close to parallel to the ground at ride height. Whenever I get around to building my next wheeling rig I want it to be streetable as well. If you were to measure for front links and figure that you could be using a beefy transmission crossmember as a frame mount location, use that as the numbers(ish) for the rear too. That'd make for a closer balance for street driving. What my plan will (probably) be is to not have a stupid long set of control arms in the front. Maybe halfway between the factory mounts and the trans crossmember?... call it a "mid arm"? With that though, I have no intent to have a sway bar. I'll be keeping leafs in the rear in an attempt to keep some stability. I'm sure I (you too) could find a junkyard swaybar that'd work, but I just have no interest in it. Lots of good aftermarket options though... expensive too. You're still talking about a lot of variables. Having a daily driver/wheeler/road trip truck is a tall order to cover all those bases.

Lots of questions and numbers in there that really don't make much sense unless you're laying under the truck with a tape measure. Most of the time you can really only work with the room you have to dictate control arm length. You're right though that a 60" control arm is pretty silly unless you're building a monster truck. Too long and it'll just drag over rocks. Too short and you'll sacrifice flex and make for goofy pinion angles. Run what ever your builder thinks. Better put some good sway bars on your list. If you're running coils front/rear things are going to get tippy if you want a decent daily driver. That goes double when you're running long arms.

:waving: Took a picture of the good side, eh? Glad to see it here! Be sure to keep up on updates... that is, unless you'd like to sell it already. I have been kicking around the idea of building a new rig. Not sayin' anything... just sayin'. :peek:

I keep going back to look at YOUR BUILD THREAD ON PIRATE4X4 hoping for updates. For that matter, updates here would be kinda cool too... just sayin'. :redX: Getting the itch for a new build of my own and (at the risk of stones being cast :peek: ) kind of like the idea of cutting a Comanche in half to build something special. So... what's new, Nick?

I'm curious why you didn't want to pull the intake manifold off, mill the inlet bigger, and stick the new throttle body directly to it. 'Sup wit' dat? Awesome and interesting work as usual there, Alex! :popcorn:

Looking good there, Willy. Been waiting for an update for a while now. How's the blue truck holding up?

Meanwhile, the guy behind the rental counter was like, "Pretty cool, right?! You must think you're so lucky!!" Then Troy be all, "Meh... yeah, I guess." :rotf: