johnj92131

Looks like it arrived just fine. Nice job.

Even better from relatively new springs! Question will be which/what relatively new springs? Looking forward to the new/old measurements

Don't know. Good thought. I will check next time I need to add fluid. Suppose I should take the truck to the car wash and spray the engine compartment down. to get a good read on it... One more thing on the list. Problem is the list keeps growing, longer and longer. Example, I finally installed the back panel and the plastic below the rear window. Then took Anita for a ride and heard a loud "Pop' a couple of times when I hit the gas. Her seat moved against the back plastic panel and the panel popped out of place. I need to pick up a fresh set of Plastic Push Pins to hold the panel in place. Dealer wants $3 each for them and I need 8 total. Thursday I have to go to Orange County anyway, there is an Ebay supplier up there I will stop to see if they have the correct fastener. Should be about $6 for a box of 50 if the have stock.

Is this the VNT17 I keep hearing about? No. The VNT17 is a bolt on upgrade to the ALH VNT15. The ALH engine was last used in 2003, but still very popular and reliable. The 1Z and AHU engines are older than the ALH by 3 or 4 years and did not have a VNT turbo (VNT = Variable Nozzle Turbo). The older engines used a wastegated turbo, not VNT. The GTC1549VZ turbo is about 2 generations newer than the VNT-17 and was never sold in North America. The GTD1752VRK is 3 generations newer than the VNT-17, also never sold in North America Both of these turbos support more top end horsepower and spool quicker at the low end than the VNT-17. That means a broad, flat torque curve. As an example, later Audi/VW diesels report peak torque over a range of 1750 to 2750 rpms, rather than at 1900 rpms. The GTC turbo pushes enough air to support 200-210 horsepower. The GTD turbo will support 220-235 horsepower. Both Turbos require some custom work to mate to the ALH, AHJ, & 1Z engines. For the last 18 months, I have been running a GTC1549VZ turbo on my 96 Passat with close to double the stock horsepower and I have been super pleased with the results. Very, very little turbo lag and smooth power to 4500+ rpm. We had to dial back the power because the clutch would start to slip at 313 lb/ft of torque. The tune is now putting out 285 lb/ft with no clutch slipping. Max boost pressure is held to 26 psi, in the interest of keeping the head gasket in one piece. The 285 lb/ft is at the front wheels on the dyno. The H.O. 4.0 puts out 230 lb/ft at the flywheel, not the rear wheels. With this engine for the Comanche, the stronger 12.9 head bolts will keep the gasket in place for more than 30 psi boost. The AHU pistons are said to be a bit stronger than the 1Z pistons also. The larger Jeep 4.0 LUK H.D. clutch "should" support more torque than the stock VW VR6 clutch. All in all, the thinking is that the GTD1752VRK turbo will be able to deliver the same or more torque at lower Exhaust Gas Temperatures in the Comanche compared to the GTC1549VZ in the much more aerodynamic Passat. Sorry for the long winded response.

I have a persistent, slow power steering leak. When my fluid gets low, I have the noise you are describing. Top off your power steering fluid, drive the truck around the block, with some left and right turns (to bleed out some air). My money is on the noise being better or gone in a day or so. Then check your power steering level again - top it off a second time. Unfortunately for me, the problem has defied several fixes like replacing hoses, a rebuilt pump, etc.

So, I'm seeing XJ seats on CL, but I'm wondering. Is there a year range to these? Should I stay within my same model year, or does it not matter? Tom, The bracket on the back of the XJ bucket seat does not match the floor pan of the Comanche. You want to use the brackets from your Comanche. The 94 and earlier seats will fit with just the Comanche seat brackets. 95 and later seats mount differently, so will require some custom work to mount in the Comanche. Send me your email address and I will send some pictures of how I did mine.

Finish color on the block: Head is back on the block with a standard 2 hole head gasket. Piston protrusion measurements were within a .005 range, nice and tight grouping. Next the engine gets flipped on the stand and the rod bearings get replaced. Exhaust gas temperature probe has been ordered. Manifold will be drilled to accept the probe. Started shopping for an upgraded turbocharger from Europe. Looking to buy a turbo from a 170/177 hp. 2 litre Audi or VW or from a 190 hp 2 litre BMW 320D.

Very nice! Camping a couple of weeks in Iceland - FANTASTIC!

Even a cheap Harbor Freight Volt/Ohm meter will be your best friend here. Now, remove the cables from your battery, Clean them - even sand paper will work to get a better connection. Make sure they are tight when you put them back on. Maybe your new battery did not get the connections tightened! First thing to check with the volt meter is your battery charge. Do not "assume", we all have been there with "assume". A fully charged battery should read 12.6 volts. New batteries sometimes fail with bad welds between cells or other issues. So check the charge, very first thing. Second, do you have a set of jumper cables and another car? Try jumping the Comanche. Does that help the lights go on? You can do this even before you get a volt meter.

Looks like an old Harbor Freight box. Good job on that hitch box. Should avoid 98% of the damage (or more). Is it going to Canada?

Sorry to say it, BUT the key word above is "advertise". I think Don may have a before/after dyno with the addition of the 99.5+ intake to share. The factory claimed 195 horsepower, including a number of other minor tweeks made. Surely if it made a bigger horsepower difference, the factory would have reported it?

I don't see any real improvement over the AX-15, just a slightly steeper first gear and a lesser overdrive ratio. Maybe a replacement for the AX-5 in a 4 cylinder? But even then, the AX-15/NV3550 would be a safer path.

Found this: http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/jeep-non-hardcore/892870-5-speed-6-speed-swap-cps.html and this: http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f11/nsg370-6-speed-cherokee-1018529/index2.html Last post seems to have some good information: Nsg370 Howdy, I currently have several transmissions on my garage floor, including a NSG370, NV3550, T5, SR4, TF727, AX15, TF904, and an AW4. The NSG370 and NV3550 share nearly identical flywheels, but the crankshaft position sensor is in a different spot. On the NSG370 it is a round hole on the side with a round sensor and on the NV3550 and all the other 4.0 transmissions the sensor is a rectangle on the top of the bellhousing. If you look closely at the flywheels the notches are the same, but they are clocked differently. You must have a NSG370 flywheel to match the transmission for the sensor to work properly. The shift linkage for the two transmissions are identical and interchangeable. The slave cylinders are almost identical, but very slightly different. The NV3550 has a plastic spacer on the end of it that adds a quarter inch of thickness to the flange. The NV3550 slave cylinder does not have that plastic piece and they should be interchangeable but I'm not totally sure. I put the two next to each other and they have the same dimensions. My NV3550 slave is plastic and the 370 is metal. You're best buying the right slave cylinder to match the trans. The connection (weird o-ring and rod setup) on the end is exactly the same and the rest of the clutch system can be left alone. The pilot bearing for the two is exactly the same. If you are putting it behind a 258 crank it will still work just fine. There is a little extra lip on the 4.2 than the 4.0, but it doesn't effect anything. The earlier transmissions like the T5 are a smaller bore nose with the same splines. Clutches should be totally interchangeable. When you order the pilot bearing make sure to get the whole assembly. Its a bearing inside of an aluminum ring that get pressed together into the crankshaft. When I got one at Autozone only the bearing part came, and to remove it you will damage the adaptor so that part was totally useless. I then got it at Advanced, and the whole adaptor and bearing part came as an assembly. Thats what you need. All 4.0 flywheels are a quarter inch less thick than 258 and AMC V8 Flywheels. I don't know if the slave cylinder will adjust enough to make up for it. I would love to see if someone has successfully installed one behind a V8. The V8s cannot use a neutrally balanced flywheel and you don't have the option of putting a 4.0 flywheel on a V8, even tho it will bolt up. I ditched the NV3550 bellhousing and used a T5 bellhousing with stock V8 thick flywheel and shift linkage and then used an Advance Adaptors adaptor that bolts between the NV3550 and stock T5 bellhousing. That setup lets you retain the original mechanical or hydraulic clutch linkage you already have. I used the original clutch assembly except for the new pilot bearing. The integral bellhousing on the NSG370 doesn't allow that option and I used mine behind a 4.5 inline six. The AX15 with an internal slave cylinder will bolt up to the NV3550 external slave cylinder bellhousing with very slight modification. I like the AX15 the best, it feels less like a truck to me, but its weaker than the 370 and the 3550. All three of those are much much much stronger than a T5. Even a "World Class" highly modified T5 is junk compared to all three of them, and many people have had T5s behind AMC 360s without trashing them. If you're gentle all these transmissions will last forever. -Dave Spillane- AMC Eagle SX4 with 401 NV3550 AMC Eagle SX4 with 4.5 NSG370 MPI CJ8 with 4.2 NV3550 Soon an AMC Eagle SW with SD33T and NV4500

Take a trip to any of the pick n pull yards in the Metroplex area. They should have a decent selection of Jeep Cherokees you can get the window regulator from. Here is the address of the one in Ft. Worth. Pick-n-Pull - Fort Worth 5806 Elliott Reeder Road, Fort Worth, TX 76117 The manual regulator will cost you about $18 and you can learn how to correctly remove and reinstall it at the same time.

Guys, the damage in the above picture was done by an industrial forklift and the hitch plate being between a fixed object while the forklift operator pushed a pallet into place as far as he could. Likely, the operator stopped pushing when his pallet started cracking. The forklift operator had no clue the hitch was caught, he/she just knew the pallet was not where it should be. Most of the time a "gentle" push will move things into the proper place. No amount of additional steel gussets would stop this kind of forklift damage.

Here is a link to a really good article by David Vizard: http://www.hotrod.com/articles/0311em-power-squeeze/ About half way into the article he discusses quench. You will see he even ran a super tight .025 (?) quench on one of his test engines at 7K RPM, pistons just kissed the valves. In the late 1960's this was the hot ticket on air cooled Corvair heads to boost compression and power. It also killed detonation and allowed more timing advance at exactly the same time. A real life case of have your cake and eat it at the same time. For a real, high power Jeep 6 cylinder engine - Look WAY back to about 1963. Barney Navarro built a couple of 700 hp, turbo charged 199 cubic inch AMC 6s for the Indy 500. Did not qualify. But it gives you an idea of how strong the bottom end of the Jeep 6 engine is. Unfortunately the Jeep 6 cylinder head is not designed to be a high power head. But for low end torque/power, it is just FINE.

Ben, You are SO right! We have to use these things! Pete - Great pictures of the truck and tent being used for the intended purpose. Rob, My Wildernest is waiting to take up residence on the 86 diesel now being converted to VW TDI also. Then the goal is a 5 week long road trip to Alaska! Looks like summer 2018 now.

Darn good spot for the hardware!! Maybe add some cardboard scraps to fill the space?

Here is a good site for getting good ideas on what to get in the way of a stroker. http://www.jeep4.0performance.4mg.com/stroker.html Many of the tips apply to a standard 4.0 rebuild The 96(?) was the first year to have the crank support and other noise, vibration, harshness improvements. So a bit better to start off with than the older blocks. Also have less core shifts because the blocks were cast with newer tooling. As DirtyComanche mentioned the 99+blocks are built with the coil pack ingnition. And they are supposed to be even lighter, with more precise casting still. The Renix era blocks were made with long on tooth AMC tooling and supposedly had more core shifts, compared to later blocks. The 2 spare blocks I have are both in the 97-2003 range. 1 is stock bore, the other .020 oversize. Both should be good for up to .080 oversize bores. The H.O head flows better than most jeep heads out of the box, but it needs supporting modifications like a larger throttle body to make more power. When you build your engine you want to pay close attention the "squish/quench" between the head and the top of the piston. Aim for .035 to .045 and you will get a much less knock sensitive engine. Spend a bunch of time reading on the jeepstrokes site. There are a number of experienced and sharp Jeep engine builders over there. You will also find there a couple of suppliers to avoid.

The Edlebrock head doesn't flow any better than a ported stock H.O.head according to posts on the Jeepstrokers site. Or even as well as the old HESCO aluminum head.(I have one in my stash of old parts).

Your 300 hp goal is TOTALLY unreasonable for the 4.0 Jeep engine on the street or the trail. You will spend $10-15K just on the engine to get close.

About 5 years ago, I sold a hitch and shipped it by FedEx. Getting FedEx to accept the package was a BIG problem. I repacked the hitch 3 different times, 3 different ways. The person at the counter kept saying it was not good enough. Last time, she got a supervisor to look at it. He took it. I used 2 sand bags to go on each end of the hitch so they overlapped in the middle. Covered the sandbags with packing tape completely. Next I used rolled cardboard to completely cover the hitch at least twice. Wrapped that completely with 2.5 inch packing tape. Lastly I stretch wrapped the heck out of the entire package and added another roll of 2.5 inch wide tape all over again. That was what it finally took to get the supervisor to accept the package. WAY TOO MUCH time spent on packing!! The 2 X 4 packaging is an excellent and inexpensive idea. You will still need to box the hitch, simply to keep it from "catching" on their automated packaging equipment. A nice, flat rectangle box will not attract any special attention. Wrap the outside box with fiber tape to keep the box from being totally shredded. As for your nuts, bolts, and spacers - bag them, tape the bag to the hitch inside the box and you should be good. Might be a good idea to put some 2 inch thick rigid styrafoam inside the box between the hitch plates to keep the box in shape during shipping. NCTom is 100% correct about odd shaped packages! Hope this helps. But nothing will protect it 100% from a forklift. A "Fragile" label only means "SMASH with Care"

Don, that is a good thought on the cross body harness. I really don't know what was used to make the cross body harness in my truck. Had a shop do it and hook up the reading light rear view mirror at the same time. And those reading lights have burned out a few bulbs over time. Hmm, kind of points towards the wiring again? One last thing...the p/w switch on the passenger door is works backwards. Press down, window goes up. Press up, window goes down. I really did not want to get into the under dash wiring the first time around. So I just run the a/c all the time. Likely will just keep the a/c on all the time.

I can tell you that the 97+ power window regulators are much less expensive that the earlier window regulators. I can also tell you that I have had at least 3 different electric window regulators/lifts on the passenger side and all of them have been very slow, Including the Electric Life Don suggests. So it looks to me that I have a friction problem in my window frame or a electrical issue with voltage to the window. A bit of graphite in the window channels seems to help for a little while. The drivers side window has been fine since I got the power windows in 2009/10. When I got both replacement doors, one of the vent window was broken and the yard changed the vent window before I picked up the doors. I think this was the start of my window issues.

Do you want a used engine or are you going to rebuild one or buy a long block. Also it would sure help to know what you are starting with and if this is your toy/project or a must have daily driver. Does your Megasquirt system utilize the factory Renix knock sensor? If so then stick with the Renix era block .