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1990 Rebirth ('97 Conversion)


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  • 4 months later...

The Comanche got a new garage (and house).

 

 

This garage isn't as big as the last but I'm going to build a shed in the backyard to free up some space.

 

 

Does your MJ fit in the doorway? Looks like it's tight with the lights......

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It is new construction. The truck fit in the last garage and there was nothing special about it, so I assume it will fit in this one too. Unfortunately, its going to have to live outside. The JK and the Barracuda will get the covered spots. At least I can pull it in to work on it though.

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  • 5 months later...

Not a whole lot going on with the truck.  I just repainted the plastic parts of the front bumper and repainted the rear bumper as well (you can see in my tail light pictures a couple posts up how faded the paint was).  The fresh clear coat that I put on the tail lights oxidized almost immediately, so they look worse than they did before.  Not sure what I'm going to do about that.

 

The Barracuda is about to go to paint, so while I have space in the garage, I'm going to pull some of the interior.  I've been getting a lot of water on the passenger floorboard, so I ordered a new set of door seals.  That may or may not be the issue, but mine are pretty flat and I know they don't seal that well.  I could have pulled another set from a junk yard (this is my second pair), but the newest set I could find would still be 15 years old.  I'm not really looking forward to pulling the carpet and seeing what's underneath.  I'm really hoping I don't have to scrape up any of that sound deadening stuff I put down or run into any mold issues.

 

The next couple things on my list are painting the bushwacker flares; they've faded pretty badly.  I also at some point will be doing the rear main seal, timing cover seal, oil filter adapter seal and oil pan gasket.  There is also a spot on the back of the cab where some body filler cracked and split the paint.  I can tell it's already starting to rust so that will need to be addressed too.

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I had some trouble with water on the passenger side as well.  The culprit was the seal (foam rubber-type as I recall) that connects the cold air intake to the outside.  I didn't do the repair myself but I know the dash had to come out at least most of the way.  I also re-sealed the heater fan.

Let us know what you find when you get into it.  This seems to be an issue on some but not all of the MJs.

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  • 3 months later...

Since the Barracuda finally went to paint, the truck got a spot in the garage.  I pulled the interior last night and I'm pretty sure the door seals are not my problem.  The '97 XJ had a firewall pad that goes between the heater box and the firewall and it was still wet far above the water line.  It hasn't rained in a while, but there has been a lot of water in the truck and I'm sure I wasn't able to vacuum it all out.  

 

I really really don't want to pull the dash because that would mean I would have to evacuate and recharge my AC (plus I really don't like having to pull the dash).  The cowl seal is toast, so I'm going to replace that and I'm going to check the drain as well.  I'll also see if there is any more sealing that I can do with the heater box hole in the firewall.  Back in post #552, I mentioned making my own combo gasket for the newer heater box in the old hole.  That could possible be a culprit too.

 

 

Besides my water issues, I have a serious heat problem too.  The catalytic converter under the passenger floor board is cooking my interior.  It got hot enough to melt the carpet backing to the heat insulation I installed on the floor and transmission tunnel.  So, now I need to figure out some way of shielding the cat from the floor.

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Besides my water issues, I have a serious heat problem too.  The catalytic converter under the passenger floor board is cooking my interior.  It got hot enough to melt the carpet backing to the heat insulation I installed on the floor and transmission tunnel.  So, now I need to figure out some way of shielding the cat from the floor.

I gave up on more shielding when I had that issue initially and moved the catalytic converter back to under the bed and extended the oxygen sensor wires. A muffler shop could probably do it for cheap too.

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I found last night that the antenna cable grommet had come out, so I'm sure that wasn't helping.  I ordered a new cowl seal that should be here this week.  How does anyone address the cowl drain on the passenger side?  It's completely covered up.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The big problem seemed to be the gap between the heater box and the firewall.  I suppose since this isn't the original box that the fit wasn't perfect.  Here is the gap that I filled with silicone:

 

 

I also had to pull up a good bit of the material I put down for heat and sound insulation.  There was some water and surface rust that I had to remove.  You can see in this picture where some of the carpet backing (and some of the carpet itself) is still stuck to the floor.

 

 

I installed brand new door seals as well.  Those are very tight.  I really have to slam the door to get it shut properly now.

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  • 1 month later...

Today I ordered a new rear main seal, oil pan gasket, timing cover gasket set with front seal and oil filter housing adapter o-rings.  Time to take care of some extremely slow, but pesky leaks.  I guess I'm fortunate that it's not any worse at 214k miles.

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Sweet mj. You'll have to check out mine when I get pics and progress up. Did a lot of the same stuff but mine hasn't been back on the road yet.

 

Mine is a similar green. My favorite color.

 

I do gotta dig through and see how everyone is attaching their long arms as that is my main next step.

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I'm in the process of doing my 97+ swap I'm wondering how or if you ran your Evan canister and pictures of where you mounted it would also be helpful if you have any thanks!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I just put it in the stock location as it was in the Cherokee.  There was a bracket for it right on the firewall.  Is there something preventing you from doing the same?

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I'm in the process of doing my 97+ swap I'm wondering how or if you ran your Evan canister and pictures of where you mounted it would also be helpful if you have any thanks!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I just put it in the stock location as it was in the Cherokee. There was a bracket for it right on the firewall. Is there something preventing you from doing the same?

I pulled mine from a 98 so it was under the Cherokee and not in the engine bay I'm probably just going to have get a canister from a 97

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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  • 3 months later...

The truck kept having a situation where it would just die on me (sitting still, moving, whenever).  Looks to have been a bad crank position sensor.  Installed a new one of those, a new O2 sensor and also a new distributor cap and rotor for good measure.  One day real soon, the catalytic converter is going to be replaced.

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  • 2 months later...

With Photobucket's new policy of charging $400 for 3rd party hosting, I'm not sure what I'm going to do about this build thread.  I have 600 photos on their site and a good majority of them are related to my truck and all my other Jeeps.

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Yeah it sucks. My Xj build on JeepForum was huge and pretty useless. Along with my old MJ build on here.. it's a catch 20/20 with my new MJ. I haven't had the thread going on here very long so not much is lost but now I can't go back and look on my old thread to make sure I'm doing it right lol

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah it sucks. My Xj build on JeepForum was huge and pretty useless. Along with my old MJ build on here.. it's a catch 20/20 with my new MJ. I haven't had the thread going on here very long so not much is lost but now I can't go back and look on my old thread to make sure I'm doing it right lol

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

The expression is called a "catch 22".  :laughin: 

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