Minuit

Thanks for that bit of advice regarding the dust cap. Yeah, I did make sure the grease was packed in and worked into and under the rollers. Thanks for looking out for me!

Brakes, Brakes, BRAAAAAKES!: July 2014 My brakes prior to this point had been absolutely awful. Even with the pedal pushed all the way down, I was never able to lock up either the front or the rear brakes. The pedal was very spongy and staying stopped on hills was sometimes a dicey proposition. Time to fix that. The shoes on both sides were worn out. Both sides were also missing some parts (there wasn't an adjuster cable on this side) and had slightly leaking wheel cylinders. The drums would probably have been fine but I had new ones already. The new shoes have much more pad area on them than the old ones. I didn't take many pictures in the process of replacing the shoes, wheel cylinders and hardware because I wanted to get done quickly. That's probably why this happened: When I took the truck out for a short test drive the brakes had improved but I noticed a horrible metal-on-metal scraping sound like a worn out pad would make. It only took a couple of miles for the dangling adjuster to do this to my brand new drum: It turns out that I had forgotten to make sure the adjuster cable (which keeps the little lever in place) was sitting where it needed to be on the guide. I got off lucky, the groove wasn't very deep yet. Much longer and the drum would've needed to be turned. If you hear grinding sounds, stop driving! Naturally, I had to fix both sides. :doh: This is how the adjuster is supposed to hang. Make sure you put the cable on before the return springs! Tip: At least in my case, the FSM was wrong about the parking brake lever. On the FSM's diagram, the PB lever is held to the shoe with a C-Clip. On my truck with 9" rear drums and some others I've seen, the parking brake lever just hooks on. :thumbsup: I suppose the moral of this story is make sure you take your time, and walk away if you get pi$$ed off, especially if it's your first time touching drum brakes. It's very easy to make silly little mistakes that can cause big problems. :doh: In between brake jobs, I went to my local JY and grabbed a pair of these out of a '94 XJ. I have Euramtec dome lights but they still don't put down useful flight past about seat level. These little lights did the job perfectly: This pic was taken inside my garage with absolutely no outside lights. They work much better in person, my phone camera isn't very good at taking pics in the dark. This weekend, I replaced my wheel bearings and front brakes, since the bearings had gotten pretty loud recently. I also replaced the soft brake hoses, since I discovered they were damaged when I did the shocks. Tip: When working on brake lines, always use a wrench that fits tightly on the flare nuts! Brake line fittings are made of soft metal that will round off easily. Cheap brake line wrenches are nothing but fitting round-ifying devices! Don't be like me and round off half the flare nuts with a crappy wrench! I have a 2WD truck, so I have standard car-type spindle bearings with the hub integrated into the brake rotors. I have recently learned that the technical term for this is a "captive rotor." Those of you with 4WD trucks have unit bearings and a completely different brake setup. Some years (up to '89 I believe) are rebuildable, but it's typically not worth it to do so. Off with the dust cap! These can be tough sometimes. I managed to wedge a screwdriver under the cap with a hammer. After you get the cap off, everything is laid out pretty simply. The bare spindle with the old brakes removed and the old grease cleaned off. One of my new rotors had some surface rust on it. I'm not too happy about it considering these are new parts but I don't think it will cause trouble. My new (Centric) wheel bearings came with races, but they were already pressed in on the new rotors. The inner bearing and wheel seal go in from the back, then you put the rotor on the spindle and put everything else together. The axle nuts have very little torque on 2WD trucks. Everything back together. Excuse my lack of pictures, but wheel bearing grease is the last thing I want on my phone. That bucket definitely doesn't contain "snack mix" The old brake hose. The driver's side was alright but I went ahead and replaced both (it's really hard to find 2WD brake hoses in my town! If I was thinking I should've ordered them online) The inner hose was also beginning to crack. If this thing wasn't leaking fluid, I don't imagine it would've been long before it started. :ack: I don't think brake fluid is supposed to look like this. All of it got flushed out, of course. With new brakes all around, new fluid, and an airtight system, the brakes feel excellent and work 10 times better than they did. I think I'm pretty much at the limit of the stock single-diaphragm system without using special pads and rotors. The brakes are more than good enough now, but I think an upgraded booster and master cylinder is still in the future. Total Expenditures since January 2014: $2,379.39 Junkyard Parts: Door panels: 1988 Jeep Cherokee Limited Front bumper guards: 1992 Jeep Cherokee Sport Windshield wiper motor: 1998 Jeep Cherokee Sport Tailgate handle: 1989 Jeep Comanche Mud flaps: 1987 Jeep Comanche Interior Quarter Panels: 1989 Jeep Comanche Courtesy Lights: 1994 Jeep Cherokee Country Maintenance Status: Oil changed 6qt generic 10W-30, 150,580 Brake pads, rotors, fluid and calipers replaced at 152,455 Brake shoes, drums, hardware and wheel cylinders replaced at 152,295 Odometer: 152,467 :wrench:

:agree: If your taillights aren't damaged, you'll be surprised what some polish will do to them. If you want to go a step further, clear coating then polishing will make them even better!

:agree: with all the above if you don't have any of the stickers. The VIN readers on the interweb aren't 100% reliable at times, though.

I just finished a round of work on the MJ. When are we meeting up? :brows:

Got them out with a screwdriver+hammer eventually. Oddly enough the driver side was much easier, that's the side that's never been worked on apparently. Thanks guys for the quick responses!

Welcome! CC has a pretty strong presence in TN for sure. Good to see this beautiful MJ got passed on to someone that'll keep us updated! You're right about the strength. As far as unibodies go, you're getting a lot of strength in a pretty small package with the MJ.

It's always the simplest things... :hmm: I'm in the middle of a brake job/wheel bearing replacement on my '91 2wd (so no unit bearings) and I can't figure out how to get this stupid dust cap off. The FSM is of no help here. Any suggestions? It's the cap the goes over the entire hub assembly.

One's enough for now, but it would be very hard for me to stop myself if the right one came by.

:banana:

Good job on that door. You're making some great progress. :thumbsup:

Do 86s have the vacuum disconnect? If so, check there first.

Jeremy H. '91 4.0L 2WD SB and '89 4.0L 2WD SB Columbia, TN

:banana:

Dana 35s are pretty much never worth re-building. For a fraction of the cost you can buy a much better axle (97+ chrysler 8.25, ford 8.8, etc) and make the modifications to install it into an MJ. Before you do any of this make sure the D35 is actually the problem, though.

+1 on the above. Not only would I recommend buying a new one, but I would also recommend you buy a decent quality one. Don't end up like me and end up having to change the CPS twice in a month because you bought a cheap one.

I touched on this briefly in your build thread, but the stuff you're interested in swapping will mostly be a direct bolt-in. The black interior is highly desirable, and will swap into the '88 no problem. I've read on here (can someone confirm/deny?) that the '86 has weaker driveshafts than other years, however. Edit: One difference I can recall is that the hood latching mechanism differs on the '86. A cross-reference shows that the hoods for the 86 and 88 are different part numbers. I don't imagine there is too much difference, though.

About time this one gets MJOTM. I wish I had pictures from when my truck was a year old!

Are you sure the red one isn't an '86? It seems like it ticks all the boxes for being an '86, like the black interior, AMC mud flaps and uppercase COMANCHE badges. In the end, it really doesn't matter much for what you're looking to do. With that said, it is a very nice find. Looking forward to see what happens next :)

$13K seems like a quite expensive lift and paint job.

And it seems like that pic of your truck started a little something. Yesterday, about half of the posts on the r/Trucks page were Comanches. . :MJ 1: .

This is probably my favorite of all your builds. You might have just pushed me over the edge on getting a roll bar for mine. Shortbeds with rollbars just look so cool. :thumbsup:

Every other Comanche owner I've seen around my town doesn't seem to be "part of the club" - never been waved at by another Comanche. However, I did wave at a pretty dang sweet Grand Waggy last month and he returned it. Highlight of my day. A couple Wranglers have waved, too. Both seemed to be stock or pretty close.

I agree with the two above gentlemen. You don't see many pre-Renix XJs anymore. I doubt they're very valuable but it's cool to see one that's not a complete heap. There's lots of cool oddities about the AMC era XJs. But yeah, swap your TBI stuff on to the 85 engine and you're off if you're going to swap it into the MJ.

:bowdown: Some day I'll have a Scrambler to go with the MJ... hopefully by then there'll still be more than three of 'em left in the world.