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Hello fellas!!! I present to you "1BeastMJ". She's my 1989 jeep Comanche base model, originally 2wd, 4cyl, 4speed manual, short bed. I bought the truck from a craigslist seller about 2 years ago for $650 and within a few months she went through a drastic transformation. It was a good deal because she was rust free and ran strong. Only thing I didn't like is that she came with no tailgate but I saw a good future for her. My plan here is to share with you the process of her transformation, maybe make some friends and hopefully go wheeling someday who knows maybe in a wonderful place like Moab Utah. Here are a few pictures of how she looked when I bought her. As you can see she was very ugly but for me she was precious . The day i bought the truck I had to drive 3 hrs to its location. The initial idea was to tow it back home but I couldn't find a truck to tow it, so instead I drove my car out there with my wife and kids. The truck had been sitting for a while and was missing headlights and grill. I didn't know if it was able to drive 3 hrs, but I took the chance. I took the complete header from my Cherokee and after I test drove and made the deal, I zip-tied it on the mj. The engine and transmission ran excellent but the suspension and steering were another story. The steering had a lot of play and it would terribly dead wobble even with the smallest imperfections of the road. Luckily I made it back home safe with a new project truck. The next day I began changing the looks. I immediately sprayed bed liner over the red accents because I just didn't like that theme. I changed the wheels and tires from my xj which were in excellent condition aside from the plasti dip peeling off. I replaced the front bumper also borrowed from my xj, and I also plasti dipped the rusty hood that came on the truck. I also got rid of the factory stereo and installed an Alpine. She is starting to look different and I can now daily drive her to work. A few weeks later after I took ownership of the mj, I began searching craigslist and facebook market for a donor xj to do the 97+ swap. I've always been a fan of mjs with the newer xj front end, specially the ones who have the interior swapped too. So I got lucky one day and came across this 2wd automatic 2001 limited edition xj with 125k on the odo. I paid $400 for the truck and the guy delivered it to my house for $20 bucks on a flat bed of course since it had front end damage. I was really happy because it had all the luxuries of the limited trim such as heated seats, power seats, mirrors, windows, cruise control, overhead console with compass, a/c, and all four oem wheels in excellent condition, airbags were intact, but the best thing of all was that the damn thing ran really good; It just couldn't get any better. I even though about fixing the front end damage and daily drive it, but my main goal was to convert the comanche. Within a day or two after I got the donor xj I got down to business and started taking her apart. The first thing I swapped over where the wheels. In the past I had been after a set of limited trim wheels for my xj and my comanche just got lucky. The next thing which made a big different was replacing the doors because the original doors had most of the window trim and rubber seals missing and they would rattle like crazy down the road plus the mirrors on the mj looked funny to me lol and I wanted to get rid of as much bedlined panels done from the previous owners. I knew it would be a while for the power functions to work so I just added power and ground whenever I want to keep them up or down. The dashboard came out in a few hours along with the a/c unit. Only thing I wasn't a fan of at this point was the damn tan interior, but sometimes you gotta work with what you have. One month later after I bought my mj, I took her on a 14 hr round trip to my hometown Brownsville Tx. I even took her across the border to Mexico for a spin and on the way back she got x-rayed by the customs. When I got back home, I didn't even let the truck cool down before I started removing the engine and striping all the interior. Many won't believe me but it took me less than 3 hrs to remove engine, tranny, dash, seats, and carpet. The engine was still hot by the time it was out. I left all the wiring harness and accessories on the engine because the idea was to sell it as a complete package. Exactly 2 days later I sold the complete engine and tranny along with the steering column for $400. My goal was to get back the $400 that I had spent on the donor xj and I did. After I sold the mj's 4 cyl, out came the 6 cyl from the xj donor. I also left all the wiring and accessories in place just like with the mj's engine. I had to do it this way because I didn't have much time left before summer was over and my wife was gonna need the family car which I was using for work in the mean time. With the engine out and ready and with the mj striped to the bones It was time to work on the firewall for the dash swap.

As I was perusing this month's COTM I noticed Ironman4x4fab's XJ(MJ) Steering Box Brace With Sector Shaft Support. I'm currently dealing with the beginning stages of the typical loose/breaking-away steering box in my truck and have been considering how to address it. And there's much to consider indeed! What are the thoughts out there on bracing the box in this fashion as opposed to simply beefing-up the left "frame rail" area?