Codename Bumblebee: Now With Oil Pressure!

[fiatslug87]

7 hours ago, Minuit said:

...tan plaid interior fabrics and have found the correct paint color for the plastics.

What paint did you end up with?

[Minuit]

34 minutes ago, fiatslug87 said:

What paint did you end up with?

SEM Palomino is the closest to the '87 Tan fabrics in my opinion.

 

(on the right - the left is the '86 Honey, which is SEM Camel)

[fiatslug87]

When I search for SEM Camel, I get two PNs: 17403 and 15173. Which one did you use for hard plastic trim?

 

Edit: My problem is I was searching O'Reilly's site and those two show up as camel but 15173 is actually camel.

[Minuit]

16 hours ago, fiatslug87 said:

When I search for SEM Camel, I get two PNs: 17403 and 15173. Which one did you use for hard plastic trim?

 

Edit: My problem is I was searching O'Reilly's site and those two show up as camel but 15173 is actually camel.

Yep, 15173

[Minuit]

Yesterday, I seriously thought about selling this truck to a guy who was driving past and saw it parked in the driveway and asked if it was for sale. I didn't, though.

[89 MJ]

Glad to hear that you didn't sell it.

[Pete M]

me too!

[Minuit]

New year, new plan, right? While I'm on self-induced unemployment, let's work on the runt of the litter, shall we? I'm really rusty at writing these updates, so do not expect anything that is easy to read, flows well, or makes sense.

 

Upon realization of the fact that I have most of the hard-to-find parts to complete another grey MJ interior, and the fact that I sold most of the parts I had accumulated for the planned 1987-tan interior... this truck will have a grey interior, but different from my 91. Armed with that knowledge, I went on a junkyard rampage:

 

A tight tilt column with a good leather wrapped wheel in a junkyard in 2022? Say it ain't so! I had it in my head that all of the good condition parts for these were crushed by about 2016 or so. It will need a new horn button though, but I want the one with the fake screws in it anyway. This is an automatic transmission column, so it will need to either have the park-lock feature disabled or be converted to have the key release lever somehow.

 

A decent, non-cracked grey dash is another thing on the "never thought I'd see it in the junkyard again" list. This one is 95% good, with one small flaw on on the front. It'll definitely have a mat on it to keep it that way.

 

This was my first XJ/MJ dash pull in years, but I can still get it done in just under an hour and still remember every tool needed. The bastards at LKQ were very proud of this thing and charged me separately for every little bit and piece on it. That place sucks these days.

 

The biggest mystery left at that point was seats - the factory buckets as found in my 91 are off the table entirely. I don't want two of the same truck. The driver side seat bracket for this truck is rusted out anyway and would require one of the legs be added back on to even be able to bolt into the truck. On this project, I can allow myself a little bit more freedom to stray from original equipment, plus I'm having to do fab work on the floors anyway, so my next move was going to be determined by my choice of seat---hello, beautiful.

 

 

What a fortuitous find that is. Late model XJ seats on their own are kinda unremarkable unless they're leather, but these have some special guts. This XJ was an especially rare bird - 2.5L with a 5 speed. A totally optionless late model.

 

 

Much like early 2-door XJ seats or MJ bucket seats, these flip forward, but unlike the others, the mechanism that makes these tilt forward are self contained into the recline mechanism and can be transplanted into all sorts of Chrysler-era Jeep seats - XJ, ZJ, WJ, you name it -power, heated, and all kinds of leather. We're going to start off somewhat restrained, with these '98 ZJ seats.

 

By the way, don't think this is something I've come up with myself. Multiple CC members have done this before. I'm just using their notes, but I'll be putting my own little spin on things for that "OEM-plus" flavor.

 

The recipe here is ZJ seat - except with the 2-door XJ recline/tilt mechanism swapped in place of the ZJ's recline-only mechanism - bolted to the 2-door XJ floor mounts.

 

Ooo, what's that?

 

Anyway, a Frankenstein late model XJ/ZJ seat swap implies some level of fabrication on the floor. This is a pretty simple job on an XJ, much less simple on most MJs, but made a little easier for me because about 60% of my floor pan is gone to begin with, so I can pretty much do what I want putting it back together. Here's the plan, more or less:

If you know me, you know that I like to ramble. You also know that I like an OEM-style installation. Not only does this seat mount neatly replace the (rotted) sideways unibody brace, it also acts as a full-width crash structure tying the side of the cab and transmission tunnel together in case I were to be hit in the side. Couple that with the side-impact bars in the '95 XJ doors I'm running and this ought to be a bit stiffer than a stock MJ in a side collision. Not worlds of difference, but something that will hopefully prevent the cab from imploding in the event of a crash. I also plan on reinforcing the other side of the trans tunnel where I'll be welding this in so it won't be bearing on just the floor pan.

 

An easier way to do this would be to cut the "feet" off the late model seat brackets and make new ones that line up with the factory seat mounting points. Considering that 3/4 of my driver side factory seat mounts are... nonexistent, I'm going to go with a plan that more or less replicates the 95+ XJ seat mounts in the MJ. Key Parts comes to the rescue again, because not only do they make the best floor pans, they also make the 95+ front seat mounts. I did not feel like drilling the spot welds out of a pair at the junkyard.

 

Today, I did what I don't usually do - call in some reinforcements. A buddy and I worked through most of the day on getting ready to test fit the ZJ seat to make sure what I was dreaming up would actually work.

 

Step one: cut out even more cancer, leaving us with this:

I think I have finally gotten rid of all of the perforated metal on this side. I've never seen a southern truck this bad. And it truly is a southern truck. It's spotless everywhere else. Stay on top of those water leaks, guys. I'm starting to think I should have ordered the "full length" floor pan meant for an XJ and just cut out what I didn't need. My new pan isn't going to even come close to what I really need. I'm also going to either have to cut out half of a donor XJ's trans tunnel or just fab it myself out of some sheet metal.

 

Step two: lay in the new metal in its approximate locations. As a starting point, I matched the 95+ XJ's dimensions - 28.5" from the gas pedal mount (the only thing I could think of that was constant and still existed between my truck and the late model XJ) to the front seat mount.

 

Step three: seat!

 

The starting point of 28.5" from the gas pedal left plenty of room behind the seat, so I decided to move it back for maximum leg room. There's a small flat area on the floor that the back left "foot" on the new seat fits perfectly onto. That just happens to coincide with the back of the seat hitting the back of the cab with the seat moved all the way back, just like it does with factory seats.

 

I think the ZJ seats make better use of space than the old factory seat did - it seems like I'm going to pick up a couple inches of leg room while keeping about the same amount of space behind the seat. I can stretch my left leg all the way out and still not hit the firewall. Can't do that in the 91. All in all, it should be an upgrade in every way, with the added benefit of being able to swap between something like 20 different styles of seats at a moment's notice without even unbolting the floor brackets from the truck.

 

 

Approximate height comes out to about 1" to 1-1/4" higher than the factory seating position, which is totally fine with me, especially considering that I'll be putting a tilt column in this. There's still plenty of headroom and everything (everything that's installed, anyway) seems to fall right where it should. The seating position will be flatter than stock, but not by a huge amount.

 

With the seat all the way back, it's going to hit the back of the cab. No biggie, the factory buckets do it too. I've already checked - it clears the B-pillar trims. Since it seems like I'll be picking up a couple extra inches of legroom, I don't think I'll even need to have the seats all the way back anymore. I might even be able to recline the seats a bit without smacking into the back of the cab.

 

 

Approximate seat to mount to floorpan fitment. This is all a little rough and by the seat of my pants. The final thing is going to take a little bit, but not much finessing to really get right.

 

Another thing that I'm massively excited for - there's going to be room to put stuff under these seats! That opens up a whole lot of freedom for amplifiers and other fun stuff that simply doesn't exist with the factory mounts.

 

 

Mounting wise, it doesn't seem like there will be any real difficulty. Up front, the only modification I'll be making to the seat mounts is to add new captive nuts about two inches over from the original ones to line up with the seat. In the back, I'll be copying what the factory did and welding captive nuts to the floor, with an extra plate under both rear seat "feet" for strength. I'll be welding them a little better than the factory did, because the rear seat mount captive nuts are very prone to breaking the welds on ZJs.

 

You may have noticed that my mockup driver seat looks a little shaggy, so chances are it won't be around for much longer than it takes to get this setup finalized. To be fair, the jeep it came out of had 287k on it. Not a bad run for a seat. To be honest, I'm not sure what I want to end up with. I just grabbed those ZJ seats because they were somewhat clean, convenient, and on sale at the junkyard for $20 a piece. I'm not tied to them, so I might end up changing seats several times. Don't be surprised. I might try to go fancy, or just keep things simple. I really don't know what I want to do.

 

Door panels are an obvious choice - these:

 

I think I will use chrome armrest trim and power window switches (wait, did I say that part out loud?) once I get to that point. Those are easily my favorite XJ door panel, I just never can find them in good shape.

 

Carpet wise, I'm thinking an MJ carpet will fit OK once I convince it to fit around the seat mounts with a heat gun. Those ACC carpets are pretty loosely molded to the floor to begin with. Color wise, dark charcoal to match the seats and door panels for sure.

 

I've put a light down the HVAC box and the truck still has its original copper-brass heater core. 33 years ain't a bad run for one, but I definitely plan on changing that while it's easy. It's already outlived the 91's heater core, and the 91 had way better maintenance than this thing. The last thing I would want to do is to get the interior buttoned up beautifully and have the heater core spring a leak. I don't know whether the evaporator core leaks or not - I never attempted to charge the A/C, but I do fully intend to run A/C in this truck, so I might change it for peace of mind - I am worried about breaking the evaporator probe though. I think the Renix variety of those is an unobtainium part.

 

Anyway, how's that for an update? Nobody wanted to buy this truck from me, so might as well try to make something cool out of it.

[eaglescout526]

26 minutes ago, Minuit said:

. I think the Renix variety of those is an unobtainium part.

Heh. You can still readily get the thermistor. Hell I think I have a crown and a NOS OEM thermistor. 

[Minuit]

I'll be damned.

[neohic]

14 hours ago, Minuit said:

… Nobody wanted to buy this truck from me, so might as well try to make something cool out of it.

Word up.