89 Sportruck

[watchamakalit]

I don't know how other states work, but Indiana has an affidavit program that allows mileage exemptions to be corrected. I think you have to contact 2 or 3 previous owners and have them sign off the mileage being correct. Not sure but on a collectable vehicle it might be worth a shot if your state has a similar program.

[89 MJ]

That’s interesting. Definitely worth looking into for the right car. 

[89 MJ]

Not very often anymore that I do work to this thing and take pictures to prove it, but here we go. 
 

Pulled the dash to do the heater core because it puked coolant all over my carpet and got my seat brackets for the bucket seat swap all painted up. 

[89 MJ]

Interior all back together. Unfortunate, the battery went bad though, so that needs replacing. 

[89 MJ]

Swapped the water pump to the new flowkooler. Seems to be much more efficient, but hard to say so far. The block looked great inside. 

[89 MJ]

I believe I can finally put this overheating issue to rest. The flowkooler water pump took care of it. Drove it 90 miles last night and it got warm, but I think there might’ve been an air pocket in the cooling system. Drove it 90 miles back home (same route as yesterday, just in the other direction), and it ran perfectly cool. Very satisfying to have this issue solved. And the buckets are so much more comfortable than the old bench. 

[89 MJ]

Now that I like the truck again, I had it out in the yard and decided to snap some pics of it. It’s absolutely filthy with all of the pollen and planting here, plus sitting outside for 3 weeks and not having been washed, but it still looks good. 

[Salvagedcircuit]

11 hours ago, 89 MJ said:

Now that I like the truck again, I had it out in the yard and decided to snap some pics of it. It’s absolutely filthy with all of the pollen and planting here, plus sitting outside for 3 weeks and not having been washed, but it still looks good. 

Boo yeah, lookin good

[fiatslug87]

Very shiny, looks fantastic!

[89 MJ]

54 minutes ago, Salvagedcircuit said:

Boo yeah, lookin good

 

41 minutes ago, fiatslug87 said:

Very shiny, looks fantastic!

Thank you!

[89 MJ]

I'm back in AZ, so the truck is parked again, but I wanted to give some thoughts on the rocker bases in the seats. 

 

The seats themselves are the same as any standard XJ or MJ bucket. I do sit 2-3" higher in the rocker base buckets than I did in the bench. I don't think that I sit too high though. My line of sight is mostly out of the upper half of the windows, which I prefer. I also swapped in my tilt column, but there is room between my legs and the steering wheel with the column straight. 

[89 MJ]

My brother has been dialing in his 3D printer lately. He printed a couple of MJs for me while messing with the settings. Pretty neat!

 

[fiatslug87]

Do you plan on selling them to us? 

[89 MJ]

7 hours ago, fiatslug87 said:

Do you plan on selling them to us? 

He probably would. I think he has to dial in a couple more settings, which will have to wait until he’s home from school in NC though. 

[89 MJ]

This truck might have an adventure in its future. That has me thinking about what it needs before the adventure and resuming daily driving duties. 

1. Tires, the current ones are somewhere around 14 or 15 years old
2. Rock sliders, I built the truck to wheel it, but I don't want to wreck it off road. Maybe I'll finally paint the sport bar at the same time.
3. Air conditioning, I think I can live without this for now. Though it should just need a charge, so maybe I'll fix it
4. Radio and speakers, maybe someday it'll get these, but until then my phone with the volume cranked or a bluetooth speaker will do
5. New driver side seat foam, this might happen if I have time, but I'm not going to hold my breath. If I do this, I'll also dye the center console at the same time.
6. Rebuild the LSD in the rear. I wanted to swap in a TrueTrac, but that is highly unlikely before this trip. I can settle for replacing the clutches in the stock Ford LSD with some performance clutches. 
7. Steering box brace, this is something I've wanted for a while. Playing on the rocks with 31s seems like a good enough excuse to finally do it. I suspect the issue I'll run into here is finding one that will work with the stock front skid plate.
8. Upgraded steering components, heavy duty tie rods and such. This would all be nice to have, but I'm fine if it doesn't happen either. 

Hopefully I'll start ordering parts here in the next coming months. I'm really hoping to have the truck down here by the start of winter. Time will tell if that works out or not. 

[neohic]

6 hours ago, 89 MJ said:

This truck might have an adventure in its future.

[89 MJ]

15 minutes ago, neohic said:

After considerable thinking, I think the MJ is the better choice to go to Moab. The Eagle would've been awesome, but the MJ already has a limited slip rear, has more ground clearance, and the MJ doesn't have the oil consumption issue that the Eagle has. Add on top of that the fact that the MJ has overdrive and better seats, I think it makes more sense even though it is the more normal vehicle for a trip like this, which makes it a bit of a bummer. 

[neohic]

11 hours ago, 89 MJ said:

After considerable thinking, I think the MJ is the better choice to go to Moab. The Eagle would've been awesome, but the MJ already has a limited slip rear, has more ground clearance, and the MJ doesn't have the oil consumption issue that the Eagle has. Add on top of that the fact that the MJ has overdrive and better seats, I think it makes more sense even though it is the more normal vehicle for a trip like this, which makes it a bit of a bummer. 

No idea what my plan is yet if this happens. Everybody keeps telling me how near perfect my truck would’ve been for Moab four months ago. 

[89 MJ]

19 minutes ago, neohic said:

No idea what my plan is yet if this happens. Everybody keeps telling me how near perfect my truck would’ve been for Moab four months ago. 

It really would've been. Though the CJ should do just fine too