in progress 1988 Comanche (Barn Find Project for a new Jeeper!)

[CapitalCityPioneer]

Excuse the terrible picture, but this was when I first did all the front grill building/wiring. was super excited, and it was dark. Enjoy! It looked super alive

 

[Pete M]

do you still have the fuel pump resistor in the mix?

 

great work so far!    love the coil pack!

[WesD]

I'm impressed by your work and perseverance.

 

 

[Vakarian]

This has been a wild and interesting ride for you. Has been fun assisting with the work and I'm immensely excited for it to pull into the driveway at my place to continue our work shenanigans. Keep up the great motivation, you are so close!

[CapitalCityPioneer]

On 4/15/2020 at 8:02 AM, Pete M said:

do you still have the fuel pump resistor in the mix?

 

great work so far!    love the coil pack!

 

I do not have the fuel pump resistor in the mix, actually. I saw it on a Cherokee that Vakarian and I bought (for a wicked future build), and just had no clue what it went to because nothing was connected to it! Saw it on the Comanche Facebook group a few weeks back, and it clicked in my head. I noticed in my last week of test starting bit by bit that the fuel pump is indeed very loud, so I may be sourcing one in the future if it bothers me that much. I assume over the engine and exhaust, I won't hear it at all . Is it necessary to the performance or longevity of the fuel pump?

[Pete M]

in theory "yes", but in reality, no not really.   

[CapitalCityPioneer]

On 4/15/2020 at 10:28 AM, WesD said:

I'm impressed by your work and perseverance.

 

 

 

Thank you WesD, means a lot haha. It's been a journey for sure. I have had many moments of just sitting for hours and hours googling for weeks on end trying to solve a problem. But its slowly all come together. I can definitively say that I think if I were to 97+ swap another Comanche/Cherokee, I would NOT use a 2000-01 Cherokee. The amount of stuff changed for little to no reason, with little to no information available anywhere is just extremely frustrating. The amount of build threads I've read on 97+ swaps that just haven't had the answers I need is astounding, simply because the 97-99 don't match the 00-01 in many ways! I've read an equal amount of TJ/LJ/ZJ forums that have explained just as much as the XJ/MJ forums haha.

[CapitalCityPioneer]

On 4/15/2020 at 10:40 AM, Vakarian said:

This has been a wild and interesting ride for you. Has been fun assisting with the work and I'm immensely excited for it to pull into the driveway at my place to continue our work shenanigans. Keep up the great motivation, you are so close!

Very soon buddy

[CapitalCityPioneer]

So, I got my new harness extender from KSuspension for my viper coil pack, its real nice quality and fits the role flawlessly. It is rubbered/hopefully waterproof. They sell the entire swap for about $125 (pack,mount,harness), so I assume the rest is just as nice quality.
So I "permanently" mounted it. Here's another picture because I'm so proud of my fabbed mount! You can see the harness.

Along with the harness came my huge pack of hose clamps. They're the full wrap kind, not the ones with the slots. I got a 30pack of assorted sizes for $9 off Amazon (big mistake, long long shipping time with the Corona going around), instead of $9 at AutoZone for like 5 of one size. So got all my fuel lines clamped up, along with my coolant overflow bottle line.

Lastly, I kind of refreshed my grounding points that I could see and know about in the engine bay, and also added a 10gauge ground to the battery for extra measure. I have been trying to test start, and have been troubleshooting everything slowly. I am getting a hard dip in voltage when starting, and after refreshing these the dip has gotten a little bit better, but not 100% better. I think I need to do a better engine ground. Those 2 relays on the wall next to the battery are for my headlight harness. I wired it in wrong I think, as my regular beams work great but my highbeams do not. Could also be a battery issue, which could also be an issue with my starting issues!

 

While troubleshooting and double checking my sparkplug wire order, I managed to break my brand new spark plug wires. Dang it faulty manufacturing of my $25 wire set! (jokes). I did my best to repair it, as I've never done such a thing. I hope I did it correctly, it certainly looked correct. I crimped it down real good after the picture, don't worry.

 

But onto exhaust things!

 

[CapitalCityPioneer]

Before exhaust things (I know I know, such a tease.) I also swapped out all my fuel injector orings. A few of them were leaking, and a mechanic friend advised I swap them out because they may be leaking. So I did, used some good ol' vaseline to make sure they slid in properly, and rocked and rolled. No more leaking. But look at some of these! They were nearly rock hard, was certainly a challenge getting them off.

 

Now onto exhaust things!

So after talking to more mechanic friends, it was decided that another reason for my rough start--->run for about 20-30 secs--->die might be due to not having an exhaust! Before today, my exhaust consisted of headers (yes, plural, another thing changed in the 00-01 XJ's), most likely deteriorated/clogged catalytic converters (yes, plural, haha ), and.... NOTHING! They advised me that the Jeep 4.0l does not run well with little to no exhaust! Upon more of my own research, running with too short of an exhaust can lead to cold air being sucked too far into the exhaust, and back into the engine warping valves or some other sciency talk I don't fully understand. Maybe you know more about this and can inform! So, I needed to build an exhaust for Elizabeth eventually, and in true jeep fashion loaded the parts cannon and pressed the bang switch.

 

As seen in my previous post, I had the beautiful stainless steel header laying around already. So I googled and found a part number for a downpipe that would match the flange, and matched the bends. Now, not sure how many others have experienced this, but the pipe is actually a bit too short! It dips down, and hits the cross member! Now, if you were running the AW4 or other transmission that used the front set of mounting holes for the cross member, you'd be perfect. But, for the AX15, the crossmember sits too far back. So I'll be doing some finagling, and maybe you will be able to as well. In that case, here is the part number: Walker 55277. The local Advance Auto Parts had it in stock, and with Corona inspired shipping times I opted to pay the little extra and go pick it up immediately.

 

There has to be some magic trick to getting the lower exhaust/intake bolts in/out. I scraped up my hands/arms and twisted in ways that reminded me of working on my little Acura/Honda to get them in/out. But alas, she was done and bolted back up in about 4 hours! This included taking everything apart, wirewheeling the faces down to make sure they were clean, and reinstalling everything with new gasket. Enjoy pictures!

Yes, this is 2 separate headers. They brake in the middle, and go to 2 smaller catalytic converters. And yes, you are seeing not 1, not 2, but 4 o2 sensors. I will have to figure out how to get around that in the building of my new exhaust!

The new header looks so lovely. Too bad it gets hidden by the awful intake manifold!

[CapitalCityPioneer]

More pictures of the exhaust fit, the last post said I reached size limit!

 

And, with all that put back together, I got it all bolted back up just as light was being lost for the day. Felt very successful and optimistic. Need to pick up some bolts/nuts for my exhaust flange between the header/downpipe, and I'm hoping that all of this will be my solvent for starting issues!

 

I will try to get a camera setup to record the next time that I try to get the engine to turn over and stay running! Its super exciting to watch it fire and smell the sweet sweet victory that are exhaust fumes, and I'd love to share it here.

[89 MJ]

Have you made any more progress on your truck?

[CapitalCityPioneer]

Yeah! Actually made a bunch of headway cause I was being forced to move, so it was all very fast and I never updated here. Will run through photos and stuff over the next few days and update!!!!

Just a spoiler, the only thing left to physically DRIVE it is messing a little bit more with the timing

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[Pete M]

timing?

[CapitalCityPioneer]

Its not exactly timing, but where the distributor would normally bolt on to the 4.0l, in the ingition rail 4.0ls there's a different sensor with a plug that bolts on there.

Excuse the low quality photo, working off tapatalk. But that's the sensor I'm talking about. Blanking on the name. Basically it has to be oriented properly or the intake and fuel injectors and exhaust don't line up properly.

Gonna throw a video of it up on YouTube later and link it up here!

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[CapitalCityPioneer]

Wow coming back to look at this makes me incredibly nostalgic. My Comanche, poor Elizabeth, has been sitting in a non-climate controlled 10x20 storage unit for almost a year now. Haven't been able to work on it due to facility rules.

I ended up moving into an apartment building, so of course I lost my nice backyard and private space to work on it. Unfortunately, the building garage isn't open to mechanic work.

I have been doing a ton of little work on my YJ. Learning even more about running electrical, relays, and fuses. Wiring in lights and doohickeys. Learned how to work CB. Learning what kinds of fluids the engines like and how to work the cooling system. All pretty simple stuff, but definitely something a "beginner" can be proud of.

Hopefully the next few months find me somewhere to begin work on the good ol' MJ again. All she needs is that "timing" fix and she should be running/drive-able. Then its just doing tail lights and license plate light to be street legal!

[JWheeler331]

Enjoyed the thread so far. Hope that you can get back on the MJ soon.