Minuit

My big toe has finally recovered enough to where I'm not worried about reinjuring it wearing socks and boots, so I got a little rust work in today. Appt tomorrow - hoping for some answers. Might tear some seats down and make a start at getting the garage under control before that. Feeling a little better every day. Making a point to drink at least a gallon of water a day. Thanks for all of your kind words - they've helped more than you know. Time to find out what lies under that innocent looking floor brace... ouch. I poked my prybar straight through the floorpan into the uniframe channel under that brace in a couple of spots. Every bit of metal the brace covered is completely rotten. This is all going to be part of a writeup eventually. More than anything else, this is making me nervous for what this spot looks like on my 91.

Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. The porno red is calling to you. Would you dare shun its light? Better yet - porno red/slate blue mashup.

Gotta ask - did the 84 have any interior worth saving in it?

The AMC made XJs are my favorites, to be honest. For my 89 build, I'm gonna be implementing a lot of stuff from those even if it's not quite appropriate for the year. Good find on the seats too. That particular style of fabric is REALLY durable. Like a burlap sack. Good choice for a work truck.

I agree that it's just a 97+ swapped MJ. But the background does make it look kinda funny around the back of the cab.

Looks good

While I can't tell you for sure right this minute, the safe answer for a 10mm head is M6x1.0, and that sounds about right to me based on the way that bolt has looked when I had it removed. I can't check for you right this minute, but if someone doesn't have a definite answer for you I can always go out to my truck and check it for you... not much else for me to do right now

I would say "you suck" but AMC cruise control voodoo is out of my wheelhouse... so congratulations!

Some of you who pay a lot of attention may notice I've been very scarce recently, making a post here and there from my phone. Some of you may care, but no hard feelings if you don't. Some of you already know. Feel free not to care - I just felt like I should put this out there. On Wednesday morning, right before I was due to leave for work, I was taken by ambulance to the hospital after suffering what is almost certain to be a grand mal seizure. From my point of view, I blinked out of existence in my bathroom as I was brushing my teeth and woke up in the back of the ambulance right as I was getting to the hospital. Apparently, I walked out to the ambulance, but I don't remember any of it. I can walk and talk just fine now, but I look and feel like I got beaten up, I bit a nice chunk out of my tongue, and I might have permanently lost a toenail. Not bad, all considered. If it would've happened about 10 minutes later, the outcome would have been very different indeed. I've been told that I can't go to work, drive a car, or operate heavy machinery (double whammy, since I sometimes act as a forklift operator at work) at the very least until I see a neurologist. They did a brain scan on me while I was in the hospital, so hopefully I'll get some answers soon... like if this is going to be a recurring thing, or if I'll ever be able to drive again. So - anything that I have to do that involves driving a car by myself has been put on hold. I'm already going crazy because of it, so it's quite likely that radio orders will be opening up on a LIMITED basis again. I'll either have to schedule pickups or get help with dropping off packages until I'm cleared to resume normal activity. Sorry if this bums anyone out, but considering this is where I spend a majority of my time online, I feel like I have a duty to put it out there.

You can find several bodyshop manuals from reputable sources back in the day showing chicken wire and filler being used to repair holes in bodywork.

Wasn't me. I forgot about them entirely, but I had an excuse. That color is from 84 and 85 XJs, so hopefully nobody with a tan or honey interior bought them expecting them to match.

Just wait until you see the ultra-rare Grand Cherokee Eliminator.

I wouldn't do anything until you look at the other side. Some of that metal may look fine from the bottom but be nearly gone up top.

And if you don't do an extremely thorough job of examining both the top and bottom of every layer that makes up the floor system of the Comanche, it will come back. And it will not stop until your truck turns to dust around you.

And if there's that, there's likely to be more. The job ain't finished until you know there's no more rust. That means doing surgery beyond just cutting out the obvious rust.

My guess - 86 or 87 Renault car, high trim level. Maybe a GTA or similar. Essentially the precursor to the Eagle Premier system I've talked about. The top unit is the receiver and outputs a line level signal to the bottom part, which handles EQ, amplification, and volume control - if it's the same operating principle as the Eagle unit. Should be manufactured by Mitsubishi. I have part numbers written down somewhere. 8936001127 for the head unit comes to mind.

I'll probably be fabbing it from scratch just for some metalworking practice, but good to know

I want that. I really, really want that.

The fuse box contacts are called "Pack-Con" connectors. Readily available.

We're approaching critical mass for another "what Minuit knows" writeup here, I think. My SEM Camel test panel is a near perfect match for the vinyl. I've ordered some '84, '85, and '86 brochures to hopefully get a lock on the interior colors that were offered in the wild west AMC years. EDIT FROM THE FUTURE: 1987 Tan, the color on the right, is its own color that is significantly lighter than 1986 Honey, the color on the left. "Honey", the darker shade in this picture, was available up to 1986. This color was replaced in 1987 with "Tan" and again in 1989 with "Sand" which changed to "Dark Sand" at some point thereafter. While the fabric on the "1987 Tan" seat is heavily faded, the vinyl is virtually identical to a NOS seat cover that has been in the package since day one. Knowing this, I recommend SEM 15323 Palomino to replicate 1987 Tan, and SEM 15173 Camel to replicate 1986 Honey. Another poster in this thread has mentioned SEM 15123 Santa Fe as being a good match for the Sand color - I haven't sprayed a test panel myself but I believe their judgment. At this point, I do not know a good color match for the early "Almond" color offered on 1984 and possibly 1985 XJs. It looks quite close to the later Sand color, but I don't have any Sand color parts on hand right now to compare.

I want 'em, but I shouldn't. I don't even have floors in my truck yet. https://www.ebay.com/itm/124139922926?ul_noapp=true These are a pair of NOS front floor mats in the rare, AMC only color "Nutmeg" - it's more of an orangish brown than the butterscotch Honey or the sandy Sand. If nobody snags these I may pick them up and do a dual tone thing, but please. Buy them so I don't have to.

It would seem to have been originally white. Color looks about right for the genuine article though. Also, WTH is going on with that A/C compressor mounting? That's an ear mount compressor. A 92 should have a direct mount Sanden 709, unless for some reason dealer installed A/C used a totally different compressor mounting setup that I haven't seen until today. Anyone else see the CC sticker on the bottom of the hood?

Here's a little follow up to my previous post - with our trucks and the way they are built, you have to look INSIDE as well. What you can't see is much more important than what you can see. Our trucks are made of a bunch of sheet metal spot welded together, and as a result there are a LOT of voids and overlapping joints in these multiple-layer sandwiches where rust can hide until it's much too late. Situation: 1989 Jeep Comanche with long-ignored clutch master cylinder leak. Passenger side floor is in typical shape for a Tennessee truck; surface rust with slight pitting, but there's no clear signs that any sheet metal will need to be replaced. Driver side floor: I know it was the CMC that caused this because there's a very clear trail of rust running up the firewall leading directly to it. Now, I've seen a bunch of build threads on this site where damage of this type was addressed by cutting out anything with holes (usually the flat parts on either side of that floor brace that runs from front to rear), replacement sheet metal welded in, riveted in, or even sometimes glued in, and any other rust visible from this angle was ground down and painted over. That's a half measure at best, and in my humble opinion those people would have been better off doing nothing because in 5 years they're going to be really surprised when their truck rots through about 3 inches away from the repair. Here's why: the floor pan in our truck is not one layer of metal. In some sections, there are three or more layers of metal with voids in between each layer. The longitudinal frame brace that runs from just under the pedals all the way to the very back of the cab is the top layer, the layer of metal that forms the majority of the floor pan is still there underneath it, and finally you have the bottom of the uniframe which itself is sometimes multiple layers. In some areas, there is additional reinforcement, so there's even more layers than that. Here's my best 8:30 PM attempt at a diagram: This is also my "it's not that simple in reality" answer to why it doesn't really matter if they make reproduction MJ floor patch panels or not - to get a correct repair, you'd need repros of at least the upper two individual panels, as any truck needing rust repair probably needs repair to at least the upper two layers. Before I got stabby at the longitudinal brace with a screwdriver and poked right through, you could be forgiven for believing it was just surface rust with heavy pitting, and the correct solution would be to grind it down and POR-15 over it. My argument is that the whole thing must be dissected and inspected from underneath, because sometimes there is even worse rust hiding underneath panels that at first sight look saveable. To put some pictures to that argument, I'm going to cut out a slice of the longitudinal floor brace, which is completely beyond help anywhere past the rear seat mounting studs. That's the main section of the floor pan, and there was no screwdriver action before this picture was taken. That's exactly what it looked like when I first cut it. Underneath you can see the inside of the uniframe, and just out of frame to the left is the lower control arm mount. The real purpose of this expedition: to find out if the inside of the uniframe is solid. This is where a borescope camera would be very handy - just pop out a body plug and look inside. The bottom of the main floor panel is visible at the top of this picture. Where I cut seems to be the worst of it, but you can tell the rest of it isn't in great shape. This picture was taken facing the rear of the truck. There's lots of rust flakes and other crap in here, but otherwise looks fine. It wouldn't have been much longer before the rust spread to here, and some of the uniframe's flanges where the uniframe, main floor panel, and longitudinal brace come together are suspect as it is. My point: the worst of this rust would have gone completely unseen had I not known that these trucks rust from the inside out. If you want to fix the issue for real, the sandwich needs to come apart. That means the spot welds holding the two frame braces need to come out, and the parts need to be inspected from the inside. If only surface rust exists on the bottom, it needs to be fixed and the assembly welded back together. When this happens, the inside of the uniframe needs to be inspected to make sure there isn't rust in there too. I'd recommend shooting a healthy coating of Fluid Film or similar anti-rust coating anywhere you can get it inside the uniframe. Now, how do we fix this the right way? That's a good question, and I'm not fully sure of the answer myself. I really don't think replacing it all with a single flat sheet is a good idea. As janky as it seems to make a truck frame out of a bunch of stamped sheet metal squeezed together, the panels are laid out the way they are for a reason. The floor braces add stiffness to the whole floor section, which don't forget is a structural part of a unibody truck. Making exact or close reproductions of the individual parts from scratch and rebuilding the original assembly would be a ton of work, but until someone comes up with a better idea it's what I lean towards. Once you've fixed it, how do we stop it from happening again? Two big things: 1 - WATERPROOF THE INTERIOR! Shame that Jeep didn't bother to do that from the factory, but that's just how things are. All gaskets need to be remade and the truck needs to be extensively water tested from all angles. Pack the hell out of the wiring harness bulkhead with waterproof dielectric grease, and make sure the clutch master cylinder if equipped does not leak. That's a really bad day if it leaks and is ignored. 2 - DON'T PUT A BUNCH OF SPONGES ON THE FLOOR! Jute padding and whatever the water-absorbent foam that lines the firewall are what I'm thinking of here. Your carpet underlayment needs to be something that doesn't hold water if leaks were to happen. 1/8" closed cell foam followed by 1lb/sqft mass loaded vinyl is a great choice here and will MASSIVELY improve the quality of the driving experience by reducing a ton of road noise. I do not recommend anyone put vibration dampers on the floor, as that's another water trap if the adhesive fails. Ask the driver side door skin on my '91. Sorry this turned into a soapbox, but I'm tired of some of the half repairs I've seen, and I've been wanting to say this for a long time.

It's an engine that was used in 3 model years in XJs and one model year in MJs that made less horsepower and only slightly more torque than the base 4-cylinder. It does not justify this shortcoming with reliability, fuel economy, smoothness, or novelty. In fact, by many accounts it's quite possibly the least reliable engine offered in any year of the MJ - that being said, there really aren't enough diesels out there to have a decent sample size. If you dared option the truck up, it came with an automatic with three whole gear ratios, and a transfer case that was similarly dropped after 1986. The factory carburetor is finicky 80s emissions "technology" at its almost worst. You can read accounts from back in the day of there always being one in the shop with a window in the block. The 4.0 that replaced it, and appeared in 6 model years of Comanche and fifteen model years of Cherokee (this is important - parts availability), among others, is better in literally every quantifiable way. The 2.5 that it was an option over is better in most quantifiable ways. I've seen a handful make it to 200k on the original engine, but I've seen literally dozens of 4.0 Jeeps make it into the 300s that only landed in the junkyard because they were about to rust in half. The only saving grace of this engine is that it can be easily replaced with another GM V6 that is only found in 3 model years of rapidly disappearing F-body posermobiles, and is still in many quantifiable ways inferior to the 4.0L that any other year of MJ could come with except for fuel economy. In addition, the full potential of said replacement GM V6 can only be achieved if the fuel injection that came with it is swapped in, which isn't exactly a project for a toddler. You be the judge.