Driveway Ornament To Daily Driver: 7 Years!

[Minuit]

If the AW4 gets too cool it doesn't shift so great either. But I've only noticed that on a cold start well below 0°F so you may not encounter that I suppose. But just an FYI.

It pretty much never goes below 0°F here, so I doubt it gets cold enough to do what yours does, but if it's below about 25°F it does stay in 1st longer and shift slower. I didn't notice any difference after adding the cooler, but switching to synthetic ATF seemed like it helped some. For all I know it does it on purpose to help warm the fluid up faster.

[HOrnbrod]

- Ravine Wheels!

 

 

Ravines are absolutely my favorite Jeep wheels, and I knew I wanted a set on this truck pretty much from the very beginning. I lucked out and found a seller on Craigslist selling the wheels, usable Michelin tires, and a full set of new lug nuts for a price I was willing to pay the day before school started.

 

The only trouble spot with these wheels is the front center caps - they don't play nice with the 2WD wheel bearing's huge dust caps. The proper fix is to convert to 4WD  A good enough workaround as pioneered by an anonymous CHROME FREAK is to use THESE chrome wheel bearing dust caps. Trouble is, they're ever so slightly smaller than the original dust caps. However, you can cut up an aluminum beverage can and shove it in between the hub and the dust cap to make up the difference:

 

 

 

Much better than the ugly stock caps. Make sure you use a thick enough spacer to make the wheel caps fit tightly. I had to buy 2 sets of these things because one flew off since it wasn't tight enough! You should have to pound the cap in.

Excellent idea! 

[buxmj]

Jeremy, it is funny how we fall into doing a project that wasn't toward the top of the list.  You always do great work so I am sure you will enjoy having electric locks and windows when you are finished.  

 

Buck.

[Briazz Manche Fu]

I absolutely love this build! Honest, you're doing a great job.

I just spent the last couple nights reading through this and have gleaned a lot of knowledge to assist me in working on my "new" 87 which I've had since April 2016.

I'll start a less exciting build thread for mine soon but i'll be watching yours.

Love the wheels BTW, bought a set for mine the day I drove it home.

[Minuit]

Jeremy, it is funny how we fall into doing a project that wasn't toward the top of the list.  You always do great work so I am sure you will enjoy having electric locks and windows when you are finished.  

 

Buck.

 

I'm a couple of weeks behind on my build thread so it's been finished for a little while, but yes, it was very, very worth it. Sometimes I regret taking away from the originality of the truck and part of me didn't want to make such a drastic change, but once I was finished I was glad I decided to do it. It was very important to me that I can put it back to stock if I want to, and other than about 5 pre-punched divots that were drilled out (most for the center console), I could put it back to 100% stock in about a weekend.

 

 

I absolutely love this build! Honest, you're doing a great job.

I just spent the last couple nights reading through this and have gleaned a lot of knowledge to assist me in working on my "new" 87 which I've had since April 2016.

I'll start a less exciting build thread for mine soon but i'll be watching yours.

Love the wheels BTW, bought a set for mine the day I drove it home.

 

Thank you very much! I try to share the things I learn as I go along. When I started this I had no mechanical experience at all, so it's definitely been a learning experience for me and I'm glad it can help people out. I look forward to seeing your build thread.

[Minuit]

It's a new page, and a new era for this Comanche. If you've read this build thread any other way than "click on link and skip to last page," you'll for sure have noticed that this truck has taken a turn for the luxurious over the course of the last 5 years. In fact, I think it would be somewhat fair to say that this truck is currently now one of the most heavily optioned 2WD trucks on this forum, even though it didn't start life that way. This is a major step in that direction, since now it has joined the short list of Comanches with... power windows and door locks!

 

We are now entering the fifth year of this truck's build. Holy $#!&, it's really been that long. I am starting to grow tired of the lack of apparent progress. I want to put my best effort towards having this truck in a finished or near-finished state by year's end. 

 

I've tried to write this update 3 4 separate times now. At first, it was one of those boring nothing updates, then I decided to scrap it. The second time, the power went out as I was writing it. The third time, I forgot to save it before I left for work. Maybe I'll get it done now!  :wall:  Even after this update, I'll still be behind. And this is only one of my two trucks. And then I need to write an update on the big white land barge...  :papers:

 

Going Soft: January 2017

 

Power windows had always been on the table, but I wasn't going to do it until I had a set of the 2-door switch panels on hand. Every now and then I would look, and find nothing in my price range. Until this truck showed up:

 

 

A loaded 1988 Eliminator. Bucket seats, full console, power windows, power locks, fog lights, and not a single part was taken. Judging by LKQ's website it had gotten there the day before. I was so giddy to get my hands on a fresh Eliminator that I didn't take any pics of it until I was done taking the parts I wanted:

 

The floors were even in brilliant shape. If they didn't have the vehicles supported by the floorpans at this yard, I would have cut the floors out of it to use on my trucks. And believe me, I took everything I could carry back that wasn't welded down, including those prized switch panels.

 

After 3 years of changing my mind back and forth, I had the switch panels. They didn't even charge me for them. If I was going to do this, I had about 2 weeks to be done, so I did some quick on-the-spot research, and discovered that adding power windows and locks was quite a bit easier than I had thought, but for the most seamless install I needed either a 1991 or 1992 XJ donor. Here's why:

 

1984-1990: Crap. In typical Renix era fashion, the wiring is subpar. The passenger side switch is used as the master switch, with all current for the accessories travelling through basically the entire cross-body harness no matter what function was being commanded. In addition, there are no relays used for locking and unlocking, resulting in weak door locks. Door harnesses not compatible with other years, and no replacement window regulators are available. Door lock actuators are compatible 84-96.

 

1991-1992: Relays are now used for locking and unlocking at all times, and they are conveniently located in the cross-body harness. Window regulators are updated, and run faster. Door locks work very positively, and all parts are commonly available or compatible with something that is. Power for accessories comes from fuse taps that plug into the fuse box. Minimal splicing is required, as the power accessories are mostly standalone from any other wiring and simply need power and ground.

 

1993-1996: If you're swapping this into an MJ, get ready to splice! The door lock and unlock relays are now located in a relay center... in the dash harness. After finding that out, I quickly decided not to bother with a 93-96 donor. Window regulators and door lock actuators are compatible 91-96.

 

Conveniently, a junkyard down the road had this '92 Laredo:

It donated the cross-body harness, door harnesses, and door lock actuators. Make sure to get the red fuse-tap and a few inches of the other wires from the 10-pin connector on the cross-body harness. I didn't bother with the window regulators because...

Tip: When pulling window regulators at the junkyard, look for a 1994 or later donor! They are riveted in on earlier years, and are a massive pain to remove and re-install.

 

Thankfully, there was a 1994 Country with power windows right next to it, so I grabbed my tool battery to test, and once they tested good I had the regulators out in a jiffy.

Hopefully I don't need to say this, but you'll want to test any used power accessory parts you grab in the junkyard. Both the window motors and lock actuators work by reversing polarity, so by swapping power and ground with a simple 12V power source (like the Milwaukee drill battery in the pic) you can test them fully. I've made up some test leads with a variety of different ends for different purposes. The Milwaukee battery is very convenient because quick disconnect terminals slot into the top slots on the battery. Overall, I've found the XJ regulators and actuators to be pretty reliable. I've never had a window regulator not move in the junkyard. Some have made some pretty crunchy noises, but they usually at least work.

 

In a single day, I had the following cast of characters:

Door switch panels: 1988 Eliminator

Cross-body Harness: 1992 Laredo

Door Harnesses (w/power mirrors): the same 1992 Laredo

Door Lock Actuators: 1992 Laredo

Window Regulators: 1994 Country

 

Now that I had all of the key ingredients, before I took a single screw out of my truck I wanted the entire setup operational to make the swap go as smoothly as possible. Sitting crosslegged on the floor with the FSM wiring diagram in one hand and a test light in the other, I became one with Jeep power accessory wiring:

I only hit one snag, and it was due to mixing up parts years: with the system powered up as the FSM directed, the power locks would only work from the driver side. If the driver side switch panel was unplugged, the locks would operate from the passenger side. After about three hours of very intense headscratching, I decided to pull up a picture of the back of a 91+ switch panel:

Versus my '88 switch panel:

See the difference in the foil backing on the lower left? That switch on the bottom left corner is the door lock switch. Anything that foil backing touches is grounded. Turns out, that when you mix a pre-1991 switch panel with 1992 wiring, the driver side lock switch grounds out the passenger side lock switch. Removing the foil from the lower left switch fixed the issue. If you want to read a few more details on this, and my sudden realization 2 hours after posting a help thread, look here.

 

Since my wiring was from a 4-door Cherokee, and the 4-door switches are laid out differently, I needed to switch two wires around to be able to control the passenger window from the driver side:

On a 2-door switch panel, the right front window switch is where the left rear window switch would be on a 4-door. Swap the wires for the LR and RF window, and you're golden. The small plug on the driver side can then be discarded.

 

After that, the swap devolves into a simple matter of replacing components, adding wiring, and providing power and ground. Not much of it is interesting for the purposes of a build thread, so let's pick up after adding the wiring:

The cross-body harness is run under the carpet padding in front of the shifter. In an XJ, it would be attached with small clips sticking out of the floor, but my truck didn't have those so I used tape. The carpet and interior panels will hold the harness well enough. The jute padding is temporary; I have a much, much better solution coming soon.

 

The very nice thing about the 1991-1992 cross-body harness is that the door lock relays live here, independent from anything else. A pre-punched divot marked the spot for these.

 

Here, you can see my grounding point of choice behind the driver side kick panel. All of this wiring was not meant to co-exist with the MJ's foot operated parking brake, but I made it work. Routing all of this stuff while still being able to use the parking brake and still being able to put the kick panel trim on was not fun. Lots of zipties were used to keep everything from shifting.

 

~to be continued~

[Wiggilez]

Next thing we know you're going to go all chrome on us too :P

[buxmj]

Like always Minuit, great work!   Your attention to detail is amazing.  

 

Buck.

[wrightstuff]

Love the look!  What color paint did you use for the Chrome Dust Caps?

[Minuit]

Next thing we know you're going to go all chrome on us too :P

NEVER! maybe

 

Like always Minuit, great work!   Your attention to detail is amazing.  

 

Buck.

Thanks as always  :cheers:

 

 

 

Love the look!  What color paint did you use for the Chrome Dust Caps?

 

No paint - that's how they come out of the box. I wonder how they'd look painted to match the wheel though?

[johnj92131]

Very interested to know what you have in mind to replace the jute padding!  And what/where research you did. 

 

Also should ask what you have experienced with wind noise ??

 

I do like having the power windows and lock in the truck.  That and the power 97+ mirrors are a great touch.

[Minuit]

For anyone else who is curious, here's an excerpt of a very long PM I sent to John:

 

 

Basically, my plan for the floors is to replace any metal that needs to be replaced, and coat the floor in a POR-15 type product (they make a nice silver color that almost matches my truck's color!), and coat the floor in mass loaded vinyl over some type of soft waterproof underlayment to give the carpet some softness and prevent the MLV from touching the metal. I may end up using the Sound Deadener Showdown guy's foam, but I'm not sure yet. I'll do the same MLV treatment in the doors and around the cab below the glass line. I plan on coating the B-pillar up to the headliner, since the cab vents let noise in. Heat is a concern too, but I haven't decided how I'm going to address that yet. I don't know if you're familiar with the use of sheet lead in acoustic room treatment, but it's a similar idea; block the outside sound from getting in, and keep the inside sound from getting out. To absorb low frequencies, you'd need a really thick material so your only choice for the most part in a car interior is to block it.

 

My truck still has too much wind noise. I found the cab vents to be a huge source of very loud "windows down" type noise. Sealing up the vents except for a small area helped. The wing windows need to fit perfectly against the door frame or they'll whistle. I sealed a gap at the front corner of the window glass (between where the glass run seal ends and the division bar seal begins) with a small cut piece of extra window channel gasket. That made a big difference. The metal trim around the windshield clicks against the windshield and probably contributes to wind noise, so at some point I'll replace it with the later XJ's rubber gasket.

 

[relyt120]

Minuit, on 06 Apr 2017 - 9:26 PM, said:

Until this truck showed up:

 

 

A loaded 1988 Eliminator. Bucket seats, full console, power windows, power locks, fog lights, and not a single part was taken. Judging by LKQ's website it had gotten there the day before. I was so giddy to get my hands on a fresh Eliminator that I didn't take any pics of it until I was done taking the parts I wanted:

 

 

 

Could this be the same truck??

 

 

 

relyt120, on 23 May 2014 - 4:53 PM, said:

 

It all started from this truck that I would pass on the way to visit my granny. I didn't know what it was called and hated the orange paint but i knew i wanted one and now i have two... you can't beat that.

 

[Minuit]

Yeah, looks like it. Exact color of orange and everything.

[relyt120]

That's awesome.

 

First MJ I ever took notice of!

[Minuit]

I wonder why they decided to scrap it. It honestly seemed like it was in awfully good shape to be in the junkyard. Even still had the trim that covers the seat brackets!

[Minuit]

Uh, so where was I?  :hmm: I meant to come back and finish that update a couple of days later, but obviously that never happened. As I prepare to take the truck off the road AGAIN, here's the update that should catch us up. For a time reference, the last update happened right before I left for the Spring 2017 semester at school, and this update will be things that happened, mostly on weekends, during it in my free time. I do actually have to drive my truck, so the level of work I can do is kinda limited. The reason for the long hiatuses is because I divide my time roughly 50/50 between working on my stupid little trucks and doing boring stuff like this:

 

Yuck.

 

My MJ Needs More Chinese Electronics: January-May 2017

 

Anyway, when we last left off I was just finishing up the power window and lock swap. I figured a keyless entry system would be the perfect way to tie everything together, so after some failed experiments adapting various GM keyless modules to my truck I bought the cheapest aftermarket one I could find. Mostly because the remotes only have two buttons and don't look like some kind of alien laser gun, and I'm a stickler for stuff like that. I briefly thought about adapting the $#!&ty infrared OEM keyless system for novelty's sake, but that got shelved as soon as I found out that the remotes have a street price of almost $70!

 

In typical Chinese product fashion, you have to test it to make sure it works before you do anything else. Thankfully, this one works!

The instructions were Chinglish and not even the funny kind, so I had to resort to Amazon reviews to figure out how to install the bloody thing. If you're interested in this unit, just read the Amazon reviews. They do a better job of explaining how this works than I do.

 

Jeep power lock systems of this vintage use a positive trigger to activate the locks, so I tapped power off of the passenger courtesy light. I figured that if I ever wanted to remove the keyless system, replacing the light was easy enough. The yellow wires are the supply wires for locking/unlocking and the red wire is 12V+ for the receiver itself. To tap into the dome light I made a 3-into-1 splice to the green wire, into a 2-into-1 splice on the courtesy light's positive wire, which is always hot. 

Fun fact: many dome/courtesy lights are ground side switched. I don't see any reason why this would add any notable load to the 10A fused dome light circuit as this thing is drawing maybe 200 mA when you lock or unlock the doors. It's just triggering relays. The actual power for the lock actuators comes from the fusebox on a 30A fused circuit.

 

Here is the connector that would normally go to the keyless entry receiver on an XJ. Its three wires are ground, unlock trigger, and lock trigger. I made an adapter to adapt the keyless receiver to the other end of this connector, and just plugged the keyless module into the factory wiring.

By the way, I swapped in the carpet out of the orange MJ I talked about earlier. It's kinda ratty, but the vinyl floor mat wasn't going to survive another removal, so it had to put it in for a while. I only paid a few bucks for it, so why not?

 

I somehow don't have a picture of the keyless module installed. I velcroed it behind the passenger kick panel and ran its antenna under the A-pillar trim. Range is pretty good, I'd say about 30 feet or so. The module's harness had several wires I didn't need, so they were removed from the connector. The one stupid thing about this $16 keyless entry module is that you can't do lock or unlock twice in a row.. Before you can lock again, you have to unlock first. It's not a big deal, but it's annoying.

 

A few weeks later I installed a BIG LAMP BRILLIANCE INTENSIFIER OF AUTOCAR, to make my headlights brighter of course.

In English, that's a H4 headlight relay harness. Despite the, uh, poor first impression that the box left, this thing isn't that bad quality wise as long as you discard the relays it comes with. I wouldn't run high-powered bulbs on this thing as the wires are 16AWG if I recall, but for the stock rating bulbs I'll be using it'll be fine.

 

I finally had to cave on my "don't connect a bunch of $#!& to the battery" policy.

 

I used a spare christmas tree connector to attach the relays to the fender:

Those relays are pretty infamous for being junk. I replaced them with some Jeep replays I grabbed at the junkyard.

 

On this particular harness there's two ground wires. On both sides they lined up fine with factory grounding points.

 

The harness gets snaked in front of the radiator. There's juuust barely enough room to squeeze it between the uniframe and the header panel to the other side. My transmission cooler hoses didn't make it any easier.

 

The new plug gives you plenty of free length. The connectors aren't the most skookum thing I've ever seen but they're ok I guess.

 

Overall this harness wasn't too bad. There are a few weird things about it, and it's obviously built to a price, but I doubt I could do better for the price. I noticed a slight improvement in light brightness, but the main benefit is taking the load off of the undersized and overly long factory wiring. Besides, you can only do so much with DOT sealed beam headlights and their "who cares where the light goes" beam pattern. I took before and after pics, but you can't really tell a difference in brightness through a phone camera that adjusts automatically.

 

I then installed the Hella 003427811 Euro-code H4 composite headlight kit. I'd normally put in an Amazon link, but when I bought a kit from Amazon it showed up broken, sent through the mail in the retail box. The seller I linked on eBay packed it very well.

 

Disclaimer: The linked headlight kit is not DOT compliant and is technically not legal to use on-road in the United States despite being much better and safer than just about any DOT approved product on sale today. I only drive this 2WD truck around on my 20,000 acre private farm, never on road. I'd never ever violate the poorly thought out and outdated auto lighting laws in the US.

 

The Euro-code pattern beam is much more controlled and less likely to glare than the beam pattern used by sealed beam headlights. The high beam is much more focused than the sealed beam, akin to a driving light. There's also a raised portion on the low beams that's meant to light up road signs. Of course, that's if you use these headlights on the road which I would never ever do. The kit comes with everything you need - bulbs, dust covers, and lenses. Everything feels well made in this kit, and I highly recommend it having had it on my truck for a few months now.

 

The Hella light is a little deeper than the sealed beam, but it didn't cause any problems.

 

Stock sealed beam on left, Hella E-Code on right. Both on low beam. The Hella bulb is brighter and whiter than the sealed beam, despite being the same 55W low/60W high rating.

The difference is hard to see against my garage door. On a totally hypothetical road, the E-code low beam would be a flat, even spread of light compared to the sealed beam's narrower "cross" shaped blob of light. The E-code high beam is focused straight ahead and reaches a very long way. On my farm I estimate I can see almost a half mile away clearly with the E-code high beams. A very worthy upgrade. If you haven't done the relay harness + H4 bulb conversion yet, do it! You will be very happy. The relay harness and the headlight kit cost about $100 in total. Make sure you aim the headlights properly! Here is a guide to doing so.

 

I also bought a Snap-On MT2500 scanner to talk to both trucks. You Renix guys have Nick's Renix Engine Monitor these days, but us early HO guys are screwed.

A Renix truck will need the JEEP-1 adapter, and an HO truck will need the CHRY-1 adapter for the ECM and the CHRY-2 adapter for the transmission. The Renix system only offers live data, but the 91-95 HO system offers basic trouble codes, and some bi-directional tests. If you want one I'd recommend snagging one soon, because the prices are going up on them. I pieced mine together from individual parts and have about $150 into it so far. I soon learned my NTK oxygen sensor with less than 15,000 miles on it was stuck and had set a trouble code. STUPID AFTERMARKET $#!&! This is getting very frustrating! The radiator fan code is because I've added a switch to control it. On HO trucks, the diagnostic connector is behind the air box, and on Renix trucks it's under those weird yellow covers.

 

And then... my radio obsession started. I had installed a factory radio (a 1994-1996 56007214) last year, which had an extra clock and a display that would sometimes be backlit and sometimes not. Here it is in one of its very brief moments of working:

(the LCD bulbs on these things are always either completely blown or barely hanging on by 2017)

 

But what I really wanted was the original one for my truck, which would have a bright green display and no clock - instead, it would have a "DX" button that changes how sensitive the AM-FM tuner is. 1991s had their clock on the dashboard, but 1992 and later trucks had theirs in the radio, and I was getting tired of having to sync up the clocks on the dash and the radio, so I put out an ad for a radio with the part number 56002467. I got a few responses, one by a CC member named josehuerta. He had one out of a 1991 Pioneer, but it didn't work. I bought it anyway. 

When it arrived I was floored to see that it was in excellent condition, but didn't power up other than the panel lights.

 

Not having anything to lose, I dug into it. The first problem was readily apparent, but you'll have to look hard to see the second problem.

I fixed the burned PCB trace with a wire, which didn't fix it completely, but I noticed that the radio would now briefly blink to life if you tapped on the relay. When I took the pic, I still hadn't spotted it, but the eagle eyed viewers among you will notice the cracked solder joint just above the center of the pic. It turns out that tapping the relay would briefly make that joint make contact. 

 

A quick touching up of that solder joint later and...

I was hooked. I'd never experienced the rush of fixing electronics before, but seeing my dead radio spring to life was a great feeling. It sounded awesome with a couple of speakers hooked up on the table too!

 

I even got the tape player working!

 

I quickly transferred over my aux input cable from the old radio and gave this reborn '91 radio a forever home in the dash of my truck. This is the one radio I will never, ever sell.

 

The thing you need to know about factory Jeep radios is that they have excellent sound , but they struggle to keep up with the extreme road and wind noise my truck and most other MJs have. I wanted a little more volume, so I stuffed even more electronics into my truck:

I needed something small so I could hide it, relatively efficient and low powered so I could run it with existing wiring, and able to accept speaker level inputs from my factory radio. The Alpine KTP-445U fits that bill perfectly with an advertised 180W of power at 1% THD, a big improvement over the ~35W that the factory radio is capable of.

 

Side note: I find the blanket "factory radios suck" BS that car audio retailers spout and many people believe to not be true many times (counterpoint: certain 1.5DIN Chrysler radios are absolutely hopeless) Most of the weakness of factory sound systems is in the speakers, which really do suck most of the time. My 26 year old factory radio definitely sounds better than the Kenwood I had years ago and looks a million times better. Maybe I'm just an a$$hole, but 80% of the aftermarket headunits I see in older vehicles look horrible. I'm not against aftermarket radios, but I'm not having them in my own truck.

 

In any case, the circuit in the picture looks like this in real life:

Believe it or not, all of this wiring does actually fit behind the dash. If you use about a mile of electrical tape on it it even looks factory! If I do have one complaint about the KTP-445U it's that the input harness is way too short and the output harness is way too long for my application. I really should've shortened the output a bit.

 

And then, while looking for radios to add to my collection, I mistyped a part number and came across NOS power window switch panels in black. I didn't need that $70 anyway.

No, the black isn't correct for a 1991 vehicle, but I don't care.

 

I think they look pretty good, tacky surface-rusty screws notwithstanding:

 

I was cooped up in the house with a sinus infection for a few days, so naturally the wallet came out again. While browsing the UK eBay site, I found a gauge cluster with almost exactly my truck's actual mileage (it's just a little bit low):

So of course I bought it and spent way too much on shipping. Note the 125mph speedometer.

 

Note that the RHD British cluster is almost an exact mirror image of the American cluster, but you can swap parts between them. That's right, I bought an entire gauge cluster and shipped it across the Atlantic Ocean for the damn speedometer. Sadly, the temperature is in degrees celsius and the pressure is in bars, so you won't really be able to use anything else. On the bright side (for us), the UK pound is in the dump now at only $1.30 per pound so if you're going to buy stuff in pounds, now is a good time.

 

These clusters are pretty simple to get into. Just remove the 4 screws holding the lens and faceplate on, and pull the knob off of the trip reset button, and then remove 3 screws on the other side of the speedometer.

You'll notice that the US speedometer is taller than the UK speedometer, and that the screw pattern is a little different. Not to worry, the extra height on the US speedo is actually an adapter to switch between the US and UK screw patterns. Without it, the speedometers are identical from the back.

 

Remove it and swap it from the US to the UK speedometer, and then put the UK speedometer in the US gauge cluster.

 

 

Put the lens and face on, and you now have a 125mph speedometer in your US gauge cluster. It looks like it belongs!

 

So, we're now caught up! In the coming months I have a lot in store, so expect to see an update about 3 months behind schedule, as usual. Thanks for reading! 

[DirtyComanche]

I think those power switch panels look better in black, personally.

 

I like the clean look with the factory radio.  Too bad the aftermarket has never figured out how to make anything that looks clean.

[Minuit]

Yeah, I agree totally. The black panels look a lot better than I thought they would, and it's a nice match with all of the other black stuff. Hopefully Don won't kill me but I think the chrome switch bezels look kinda tacky personally.

 

There's some older aftermarket decks like this one that would probably look pretty good in an MJ, but a lot of those don't have modern features like AUX either.

[Minuit]

I also forgot to mention that at some point during the above my A/C completely $#!& the bed in a span of about 2 weeks. Symptoms were a loud hiss coming from the dash, as well as an unusual smell. For the past years my A/C system has worked on the following cycle:

 

- Throw money at shop to repair fault.

- System works well for 5-7 months; surprisingly well for a converted 134a system, in fact

- Meanwhile, compressor decorates serpentine belt and rest of engine bay with PAG oil via its front seal

- Gradually notice decline in cooling performance over a period of weeks.

- HVAC system fails in a new and exciting way

- Repeat

 

I'm frankly tired of spending at least $200 a year to have it "professionally" fixed by the highly trained button pressers at the shops in my town, so this year we're going to do this once and do it right. I have already procured a NOS evaporator, and will soon be ordering the rest of the parts to totally rebuild this A/C system including a new Sanden compressor, parallel flow condenser, and R-134a compatible barrier hoses when available. I briefly considered charging with R-152a, but for this build I'll be sticking with plain old R-134a. R-12 was not even up for consideration for a number of reasons. Using a parallel flow condenser should improve performance, and I was fairly satisfied with the original converted system's performance anyway. Of course, my plans to POR-15 the floors and soundproof the whole interior top to bottom are still going to happen. I won't be starting until I've collected all of the parts, so I'll be starting a little later than expected.

 

Fun fact: Our Jeeps use expansion valves and receiver/driers in the A/C system, which is usually something you only see in more "premium" vehicles. All of my other stuff (even my mom's 2004 Cadillac) use accumulators and capillary tubes.

[Minuit]

Work is just beginning, this pic is from a while ago. Time for a little change of furniture! Found this very rare '91 Briarwood dash bezel on eBay. It's classier and less shiny than the Country version, not to mention less likely to crack. AMC DNR radio for display purposes only. I plan on finding a set of Country door panels with worn out wood on the tops and wrapping them to match the dash bezel.

[jerpderp]

By god do I love the wood grain bezel. Been looking for one since I bought my truck.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Minuit]

By god do I love the wood grain bezel. Been looking for one since I bought my truck.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Yeah, I wasn't sure I was going to like it until I put it in just to see how it would look. I'm definitely sold on it now that I saw it in my interior. Here's a better pic:

 

Current status, to prove I actually am doing something:

oh no it's a total loss what am i gonna do so much rust  :doh: 

That's 5 years of very leaky firewall seals over a very poorly done grind 'n' paint job. One of the few pluses to living in the south.

 

I'm currently prepping to apply POR-15 to the floors as well as seal all leaks, replace the AC evaporator, and properly sound insulate the floors. Unfortunately that means I have to pull up all of the Dynamat that was on there. I'm not happy about how it did absolutely nothing to make the truck quieter but holy crap does this stuff stick. You can still see little patches of the butyl adhesive all over the floor - obviously not good for the POR-15.

 

Also, after searching for what seems like forever I have a new dashboard with 95% less cracks and 100% less destroyed mounting tabs!

 

The color for the new carpet is decided - 8019, aka Mist Grey. It's the closest match to my eyes to the OEM carpet. The camera flash does some weird stuff to it, but in person it's almost indistinguishable from the factory color - what's left of it, anyway.

 

Side note: I expect you guys to hold me to a better standard of photography than the garbage in my last post :D

[Minuit]

Progress report!

 

Floors are POR-15'd, and I'm currently working on getting the foam and MLV cut for the floor. In addition, the heater box is coming back together nicely. Basically, I have about 3 separate projects going right now.

 

The silver POR-15 is a fairly good color match to the truck's paint, not that it matters:

I'm about 90% happy with how it turned out. There's a few air bubbles, probably from me applying it a little too quickly. Except for a few air bubbles it looks to have adhered very well. I used the full lineup of products. Rust-oleum Aircraft Remover to get rid of the old paint, water and POR's degreaser to clean it up, Metal Prep to phosphate the now bare metal, and finally the paint itself. I probably spent more time grinding than I really needed to, but I wanted to make sure all of the scale was gone. Side note: Aircraft Remover has got to be one of the most unpleasant chemicals I have ever worked with. It's got an awful, sickly smell, but it works. I did not see the need to POR-15 where the original paint remained undamaged, so the transmission tunnel in front of the shifter didn't get painted.

 

I made new neoprene foam rubber gaskets for the shifter and 2wd consolation panel. I quickly learned to not even bother trying to make a "nice" gasket with this stuff. To be cut with any precision at all it needs to be pushed up against a flat surface. If the stars don't align just the right way, the material will just rip instead of cutting cleanly, even with a shaving sharp knife.

Side side note: why did Jeep think that self-tappers were a good way to hold a shifter on? Especially with the fairly well thought out engineering elsewhere, it just seems out of place. Even after all of the $#!& I've gone through with this truck, I generally think it's very well put together. Stuff like this is just downright crude though.

 

Getting a square sheet of foam to fit over an irregularly shaped floorpan is sometimes a challenge. To make the foam fit tightly on the transmission tunnel I needed to make some relief cuts, and then glue in some new material to cover the seams. Also, I de-rusted my console brackets! It's important that this foam underlayment fits tightly over the floor, since I'm covering it with mass loaded vinyl, which works much better as a sound barrier if it's not in contact with the metal at all. Did I mention that this particular foam rubber can be kind of a pain in the @$$ to work with? That's why the console bracket holes might look a little bit too big. My process is very similar to what you'll see on sites like Sound Deadener Showdown.

 

I also adjusted the driver side door and fender to greatly improve the panel gap. This truck said hi to a deer at about 35 mph 15 years ago, and this is probably why the fender gap is a little wonky. It's not perfect but it's much better - the fender is tucked in just a tiny bit more than it should be compared to the bottom of the door. Otherwise the door lines up fine, so I'm pretty sure it's just the fender. I'm sure I could fix it entirely if I stuck a shim under the bottom fender mount, but I've got more important stuff to worry about right now.

 

 

I also removed the top shim from the driver door hinge to compensate for hinge wear. The door closes much easier now, and lines up with the striker perfectly. I'm very much aware that it isn't a permanent fix, but it'll do for now until I can get my hinges rewelded.

[comanche jaho]

congratulations you are a beautiful mj