Minuit

Yep, both TCCoA and MN12Tech are my best friends right now. I know next to nothing about these cars but I'm learning :thumbsup: Good call on the bushings. As soon as I get more than a day without college stuff I'm going in and taking a look at the front end. Absolutely everything I've read says these cars chew up front end parts like nobody's business so I can't wait to see what it looks like. It tracks pretty straight and feels tight (except for that d$#% clunking) so I don't think it'll be too bad. I have an oil change reciept from a few months ago and fluids look good overall, but I do plan on changing fluids just to know that it's been done. I haven't noticed the driver door sagging, but the passenger side sags slightly. I'll read up on repairing the hinges though.

Chapter One: Just Skip This, It's Boring. To get to the interesting part, click here! The truck is in a pretty bad way right now. It's still up in the air whether or not the engine will need to be replaced, and if it does I'm going to do it right stroker. I'm a working college student, and frankly I don't have much time to work on it right now (note from the future: the truck is fine now, but when I got this car it was in the middle of a botched rear main seal replacement that resulted in a chipped engine block). In the meantime, I figured I should make a new thread for my "new" ride. No, it's not an MJ or an XJ or a ZJ or a YJ or a TJ or a WJ or anything really having to do with this forum at all. It's a car. Big Wall Of Text: January 2015 This car has a very special place in my heart. My grandmother purchased it new in 1996, and I've probably spent a quarter of my childhood in its back seat. Last year, she bought a new car, so the T-Bird was just sitting around. All the original paperwork (even the warranty papers) and owners manuals are present, and the glovebox contained a pile of maintenance receipts going back to its first oil change at 3,700 miles. It's about as far from my MJ as you can possibly get. At 201 inches long and 3700 pounds unloaded, it's a far cry from the small and lightweight Jeep. With front and rear independent suspension, it rides and handles surprisingly well. I didn't know you could adjust a car seat in so many ways, and the steering wheel alone has more buttons than an entire fleet of MJs. Despite its weight, the 4.6l V8 moves it pretty well, and on a recent drive home I averaged 26.7 mpg. I had no idea such a big car could get such good mileage, but it's consistently gotten mid to high 20s on the highway since I've been driving it. The best fuel economy I've ever gotten in the MJ is 17 mpg highway. The engine is the first generation of Ford's 4.6L Modular SOHC design. The transmission is the ever-slushy 4R70W used in pretty much every RWD Ford ever, and the rear end is (I believe) an 8.8 center section with 3.08 nope, 3.27 gears. Currently, the car has a few nagging issues. All will be fixed in due time. - The odometer stopped working on me when I drove it home from Nashville. This is a very common problem in Fords of this era, and the parts to fix it are cheaply available. I don't know the exact mileage, but my guess would be about 105-110,000. - When set to temperatures above about 70*, the climate control box makes a very annoying slapping sound every second or so. I don't know what's causing it, so I'll need to investigate that before throwing parts at it. - The hood struts are pretty much useless when it's cold outside. A big @$$ piece of metal smacking you in the back of the head isn't a great feeling. Ask me how I know. - When turning sharply, there's a loud clunk that I believe is a bad ball joint. My grandmother took it to a shop complaining of the same noise, and after $1700 in work, did they fix it? Of course not! - There's an awful belt squeal going on. The belt looks new and I don't see any pulleys out of alignment. If I don't find anything obviously wrong I might put a Gatorback belt on it and see if it improves things. Yes, the sunroof works. No, it doesn't leak. Fake wood! And I thought the MJ had a cramped engine bay. The engine is pointing the right way though, so that's a bonus. The headliner is pretty much cooked. As far as I can tell the board is fine, so it should just be a recover job. Same story for the visors. As a whole, it's in pretty good shape for a 21 year old car that wasn't terribly well maintained. There isn't anything horribly wrong with it. This won't be a "build thread" in the way that the MJ's is, and it probably won't get the monthly updates that the MJ's did. Don't expect anything any more exciting than a ball joint replacement.

Looks like we may have lost this one guys :(

If it's a factory piece, it should have "Low" or "Low Tone" somewhere on the horn itself. I grabbed a pair of horns from an '01 XJ last time I was in the junkyard. Sounded a lot better than the Autozone special that knocked itself out of tune. 96- XJ horns have Signal-Tone molded into the plastic, and 97-01 horns are made by Bosch.

I've seen some questionable swaps but this just seems stupid to me. MJs already ride kinda rough with the stock leafs!

The angle and lift and sometimes even color of a truck can also influence how "long" it looks to my eyes at least.

Going to agree with this. MJ gauges are actually useful (unlike the oil pressure gauges on Fords, which just sit in the middle all the time) and will literally plug right in. Cleaner look with much less work than wiring in seperate gauges. Not to be rude, but why would you hack your truck up if you don't have to?

Not a very good match but it should give you an idea.

Sorry, but my schedule really doesn't really allow for non-school or non-work things during the week. I'll try and get to it by the weekend.

You want it to match the MJ's paint color?

Appreciate the offer. I may just take you up on that at some point :wrench: At this point the thing to do is to just put it back together and see what happens. I think it'll pour oil out of the back of the block, but it may run just fine. Time will tell.

Here's the current state of the truck. It's gonna be this way for a while I think.

This definitely isn't the update I wanted to make before going back up to Cookeville. Obviously the person who chipped the block owes me an engine, and my choices run the gamut from a $300 junkyard special to a $5k and up Hesco stroker. The truck isn't going anywhere, and at least it's not racking up miles or sitting under a tree anymore. The bad news is that I don't have any of the equipment or the time to do this job, so the MJ may be down for months or maybe years. We'll see. The truck will live again.

DAMN. This afternoon, a family member was working on tapping out the RMS since I mentioned to them that I was having some trouble getting it out. This person somehow managed to chip the engine block where the RMS meets with it. I'm not sure to do yet, but there's a pretty good chance that this build is indefinitely going to be put on hold until I can put a new motor in it. I move back to Cookeville on the 18th, so until the MJ can be fixed completely I'm going to be driving a vastly different vehicle. Son of a b$#@%.

If you see a box on the back of the passenger side axle tube (i.e the tube isn't circular from the diff to the passenger side wheel) with some vacuum lines coming out of it then yes, it's a CAD axle.

People run similar builds with the 4.0 (which has similar output to your hypothetical 3.4) all the time. I don't see any reason why not. I would be far more concerned with the AX-5.

Could be that it started off as a base truck and someone got about halfway through turning it into an Eliminator. Never heard of a factory MJ with a console with a column shifter of any kind, but that blockoff plate looks really nice on there. OR it's actually an Eliminator and for some reason they put a column shift and idiot lights in there. :nuts: Knowing '80s Jeep, it's entirely possible that you could have ordered a bucket seat Elim with column shift. That doesn't explain the cluster or console though.

Can't agree enough. My FSM has been more useful than I can say. It does lie every once in a while but it's light years better than the Chilton I have.

Had this problem recently on my oil pan. Apparently gaskets don't like to be disturbed after almost 25 years of sitting in the same place. I wasn't going to reuse the oil pan so I went crazy with a prybar (without nicking the block). I practically destroyed the oil pan by the time it finally let go. Spraying gasket remover and letting it do the work for you would probably be the better idea.

Now that you mention it, I better go check it again. :D

:hmm: I have to keep real close tabs on it but my HO hasn't managed to sneak itself into a junkyard in the 3 years I've had it.

1) Beige 2) The MJ would get a new paint job and a new rear end at the very least. 3) Pay off my student loans. 5k of the remainder would be invested, 5k would get blown on the MJ, and the rest would go into savings for whatever. 4) Pay off student loans, invest 20k, blow 5k on the MJ, set aside 50k for a house, and save the rest. 5) With my real friends :D 6) Honestly, it wouldn't feel right to trade mine away. If I did, it wouldn't be mine. I wouldn't have any attachment to it. 7) Medium rare ribeye with grape Crush in a glass bottle. 8) Silver Star Metallic (a '91-92 color only!) 9) A nice 5-speed 280ZX. 10) The nearest mall parking lot (I don't wheel my Jeep, don't hit me) 11) It pretty much fell into my hands and I decided I wanted to drive it, so me? 12) If you could do only one more mod to your MJ, regardless of cost, what would it be? A small lift in the front to level it out.

How did your engine freeze up at 17*F? Were you running straight water in there?

Seems so unfortunately.

Got my shot a couple months ago (first time I have), and I'm feeling alright. :crossfingers: The news says the flu shot really isn't helping this year. Figures.