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1988 Comanche Pioneer Project


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  • 2 months later...

Figured I’d do another update since I haven’t been keeping this very up to date... about 2 months ago I lifted back some carpet while cleaning the interior and found a little rust underneath the carpet, I had no intention of doing any floor pan work so I set it off for a few weeks until it bugged me enough to to rip out all the carpet and see what the damage was, it wasn’t too bad mostly surface rust but there was 2 pin sized holes on the driver pan, I bought a 5 pack of wire wheels at Harbor Freight and went to town stripping both floor pans down (I actually found those fiber disks work 10000x better but of course not till the end lol) after it was all bare metal I primed it with a combo of bare metal etching primer & rust inhibitive metal primer, I let that dry for a week before I scuffed it with 400 grit and painted it with an acrylic based white paint that was custom matched to the exterior of the Jeep.......BUT....it didn’t occur to me till I was spraying the second coat that the Jeeps been repainted a few years back and the exterior is slightly more of a pure white than the original Swiss coffee type color that the factory used.....OOOPS... I guess thats why we have carpet right lol, I let the paint dry for another week before I shot some enamel clear coat over top and then buttoned everything back up, I ditched the old carpet and had every intention to buy a new one from rock auto since they are only like $200 after shipping and all but as soon I went to order it I found an old roll of rubber cut to fit floor matting in the back of the shop and decided for the sake of budgeting that the rubber flooring will do till I have the windshield resealed. Unfortunately all the pictures of the process where on my old phone that broke a few days after I finished so I don’t have many pictures of the process when when I get that phone recovered I will post proper pics of what I did, this seems to be the only pic I have, this was right after fist coat 7f0e9879bf3735dc2e6a3d052f834e96.jpg
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After the interior was done I started to notice that my idle was kinda erratic and my REM kept telling me that my TPS voltage was too low at times even tho I had rest it 3-4 times in the weeks prior, I also noticed that on long drives that occasionally I would feel a lose of power for a second and then all as normal for quite a while. Suspecting the TPS was bad I was about to buy a new one when I remembered that Cruiser54 had a tip about the TPS ground so I went ahead and tore the harness down and found some duct tape covering 3 wires all just twisted together from the factory.. went ahead and soldiered those grounds and the Ohm on my harness went from being 3-20 ohms to .4-.8 ohms MUCH BETTER! That seemed to solve my erratic TPS issues e98e6e5114997717ca4fd99c96675937.jpg
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Even thought refreshing the TPS helped it still seemed like the Jeep was a-little down on power compared to my buddies XJ that I rode in a few days prior so I started digging deeper and doing a much better inspection of the intake and exhaust and realized that my intake/exhaust gasket was fried. It was leaking in between all the cylinders intake and exhaust and the #6 exhaust was just blowing back against the firewall I was using brake cleaner to check for vacuum leaks (I know not the best to use around rubber stuff) but as soon I would spray around the intake/exhaust gasket area the Jeep would start to bog out or it would idle a tiny bit faster depending on where I was spraying on it.....so the madness began, I went on rock auto and bought the cheapest manifold they had which was a dorman manifold for $140 shipped to my door, i ordered some extra felpro gasket too because they where like $2.00 each and a new down pipe that I intent to weld a flex joint into and then started tearing it all down, everything was going smooth till I finally found out why the #6 exhaust was leaking soo bad......the stud was broke clean off...003ca04634a5235942e41d7959dd7e03.jpg
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You can also see my motor mounts where looking pretty tired tooo which probably didn’t help the exhaust , but luckily I had some brown dog rubber mounts stashed away from a sale they had going a while back, I installed those while I contemplated how to tackle the broken stud

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I tried to drill it out and use a bolt extractor but the extractor bits where just too damn long to fit between the firewall and the head so I had a few brews and somehow it came to me to use a t20 and some pb blaster and it worked! Ill have to post a pic of my useless t20 in the morning but from there on out it was smooth sailing again!

 

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It's crazy to see duct tape on wires from the factory.  I was sure my windshield was leaking so I had it replaced. Still have a leak. It is elusive because I have fixed several things that were suspicious looking but no dice yet. 

I know! In a way shows how bad AMC had to cut costs in the last few years to try and stay afloat. Also I’ve been looking into getting my windshield resealed but I have an odd suspicion that that its still good, but It makes me wonder if that the small seam just below the hood hinges that is packed with some sub par seam sealer is our culprit, only reason I say so is I had a tarp over the cab area while I was letting the paint on the floor pans dry because I was expecting rain through ought the week and I thought the windshield was leaking so I ran the trap from the front cowl area back into the bed covering the whole cab and when I checked on it midway thorough the week there was a small puddle in the driver floor pan again..... food for thought I guess lol
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Last weekend I went ahead and have her a tune up before I started moving onto bigger projects, new NGK plugs, new Bosch wires and cap & rotor aswell as finishing up my new fuel injectors, I bought some OEM rebuilt Bosch 746 injectors a while back from eBay for $65 shipped but was having some issues with the wiring harness so after figuring out the injector wiring she was running like a tot! d3f5c118b40d78d2073ef9d28e91b2d3.jpg
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Also threw some new sway bar bushings and rough country sway bar disconnects (this was about 5 months a go though) because I was starting to hear some noises in the front end whenever I was turning onto an incline on the street the bushings seem to fix those weird sounds and the sway bar disconnects made the Jeep feel a tiny but more “responsive” above 65mph because my OE sway bar links hhad been stretched and bent too many times so it was a win/win! (Don’t mind my coil spacers they are coming out after my axle swap ) 64203c2909991661ef3083327c5277d7.jpg

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These where a few more things I took care of a few months back but never got around to posting about them, after a longer wheeling trip out near Salinas CA I was having issues with the tranfercase popping out of 4 low quite often (it was super annoying it seemed like every time I would try to lift the front end over a rock or ledge I would pop out of 4 low into neutral or start going up a large incline I would loose 4 low again, after popping out of gear on a Damn near vertical incline and soiling my pants I decided it was time to take a peek and see if I could fix anything, thinking the transfer case had just cooked 4low I didn’t have much hope of fixing it 15 or so miles from the nearest town so upon inspection I realized that the stock rods that take the movement from the shifter to the t case where bent beyond repair & the bushings that held onto the 2 rods was completely gone...lol so I disconnected all the rods with the trusty high idle stick (y’all from up north will get that reference lol)and just locked the tcase into 4H on the tcase shifter and lugged the rest of the trail home needless to say my torque converter hated me after running that trail in 4H Hahahahaha, on my way home I had the wifey do some research on the old inter webs and found this transfer case linkage from Azzy’s design works and I had one ordered before we even made it home to clean the Jeep! A week later it arrived and I must say after installing it the tcase action is silky smooth and feels a lot more durable (you can sla the shifter hard and actually feel engagement where as before it would take a good tug or 2 to get the t case to engage in the same way) all in all I’ve been running this linkage for closer to 4 months and can’t see how I lived without this before this was possibly one of the best upgrades I did at the time 10 out of 10 recommend over the cable driven shifters others sell on the market be5b1c888c9bb23860539eb5c343a10c.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

Last weekend I had a chance to get my new to me rear end in, I found this matching set of 4.10 axles under a 2.5 Cherokee with only 118k on them in the JY a few months back, even tho I had no intentions todo an axle swap any time soon I couldn’t pass up a sweet deal, $300 for the set so I took them and stored them away till last weekend, the rear is an 8.25 which was what I already have swapped into the rear and the front is a Dana 30
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I cut all the mounts off of the new to me 8.25 and started relatively fresh, I then pulled my old 8.25 with 3.07 gears out and tossed the bare 4.10/8.25 under,setup the pinion angle and tac’d some spring perches and shock mounts on then I pulled her out burned it all in,threw some paint and a Purdy diff cover on her and some fresh brakes & gear oil and she was ready to rock, I made sure to take my front driveshaft out as I still have my Dana 30 with 3.07 gears in the front end as I build up the new Dana 30 with 4.10 gears, all in all one of the cheapest regears I’ve ever done lol!
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Also decided to weld the axle tubes on this 8.25, I was originally gonna put a truss on it but kinda talked myself out of it as I have a Ford 9” that was given to me with 4.10 gears already setup and decided I should save my money to splurge on that axle, so welded tubes seemed to be my next best/cheapest bet haha I also noticed that this axle tube had CANADA stamped on it right before I welded it up kinda interesting

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  • 5 weeks later...

Getting kinda bored at home so I decided to bust out the welder and add a flex pipe to my exhaust 7a1f982492a7f154c47bb7c324ce4bc9.jpg
I started with 2 of these down pipes from rock auto.... don’t ask why I have two it’s a long story lol, I measured up the inside length of the flexpipe and cut the down pipe accordingly( I originally planned to place it on the crossover section but decided it was easier and would produce the same result being in the straight section)
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Welded it back together.... and From looking at it you’d swear I know what I’m doing lmao, I haven’t installed it yet as I’m due for smog this month and I’m not sure how the inspector would feel seeing a flex pipe so it’s on the shelf ready to be installed with a new magna flow exhaust
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Today the wifey was doing a little art project with some satin black oil based paint so I ran out to the garage and dug out this ole badge I scored at a junkyard a while back and polished it up a little bit, had her throw some paint around the letters and I’d say it looks good as new, it looks soo good I might actually put it on the truck soon lol just gotta find something to stick it with
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  • 3 weeks later...

Been getting tons of work done on the old manche these past 2 weeks to get her ready for daily driving again, started welding up a truss and C gussets from Artec industries on my new to me Dana 30 with 4.10’s in it.93a4b8a2832c0a117834b8aaf60fcf86.jpg
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Decided to start with the C gussets and move to the short side of the axle tube just to get all the weird welding angles out of the way. Everything came out great then it was onto the long side of the axle truss

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I didn’t get a lot of pictures when welding up the truss only because I was doing it all by myself & I was gonna trying to focus on keeping the axle from warping & making sure my welds still looks half way decent for the angles I was having to weld at but here how it looked once I burnt in the long side of the truss 3baf12f67db1b2a349a1d581835bc295.jpg

Not only did I just truss the axle but I boxed in all of the stock mounts with 1/4 plate around the areas where the mounts where “open” and didn’t attach anywhere to help strengthen them up & to make sure the flimsy 3/16 mounts wouldn’t bend if something hit them or got over loaded. I also like to add a nice thick washer to the front of the track bar mount as I’ve found that likes to bent under the torque of the trac bar when bolted in, the washer seems to distribute some more load over a larger area and defiantly helps IMO

Here’s how it looked after a couple coats of BBQ paint next to the one I pulled out of the truck

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Once the truss was done I had a little bit of fun trying to swap my locker from my old Dana 30 to my new to me one,

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I’ve done plenty of lunchboxes before (must have all been under 4.10 carrier break because.....) when I went to pull the locker out of my old 3.07 carrier everything came out like butter but then when I went to tear down the new to me 30 with the truss I ran into issues after issue, first I don’t have a case spreader so it took me a total of an hour just to pry / hammer it in and out of the pumpkin, then I had always been told that 4.10 and higher gears that the cross pin won’t come out without the ring gear being removed... I always chalked that up to be an ole wives tale or something but I learned my lesson as soon as I went to remove the cross pin on the 4.10 gears..... the ring gear had to come off.. no biggie but it was 1130pm at that point to I persisted through, got it all back together at about 1 am but then I hit another brick wall.... I had no way to torque the ring gear bolts after a cold brew I figured I’d bolt the old stubby axle shaft to a wheel and use that... WALAH! It worked and everything was hammered and bolted back together at about 230 am when I started falling asleep lol e130a1bd3124007e138d5b0346c871c3.jpg

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I didn’t get any pictures of the cross pin or my awesome torquing procedure but let me tell you... they where quite the sights to see lol

 

Added some timken seals when reinstalling aswell, these seems to be a newer version of the Dana 30 seals as they have the little curled lip that goes towards the outside if the axle shaft to stop dirt I’m assuming, the last 2 sets I used from Dana/spicer did not have these little curled lips and where merlerly just straight seals(similar to the black picture on the timken box), needless to say I was very happy with these seals

 

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The new front axle was pretty much ready to be bolted in, but before I tackled that one I had a kinda serious leak from the trimming cover/harmonic balancer area that was going to piss oil onto my new front axle so I decided to handle that while it was all apart and easy todo, tore it all down to find the PO had tried to solve this issues before but did not buy a sleeve & seal kit for the harmonic balancer so there was 2 large groves worn into the harmonic balancer where oil was just snaking around it under pressure, it was obvious they tried to slap some rtv to seal it up but it didn’t last long... I was prepared for this with a brand new harmonic balancer, timing cover gasket & a new timing chain set from cloyes so I went to town:

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Nasty nasty dirty


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Side by side of new and old ( old one had much more than a 1/2 of deflection it was close to a whole inch!!) 965ce11d58f7beb8089c9ff77d8ea076.jpg
New one fit tighter than you know what....lol, even took some wrestling to get it in place the chain was soooo tight which was a good sign!



Everything went together like a dream, painted the timing cover while I was there because why not, and gave it a pressure wash after it was all together to get rid of some of the mud & oil that has gone everywhere to make sure there was no fresh leaks and it everything it sealed and good to go then it was time to get the Jeep out of hover mode and get the new front axle under her 229e044d6a95219d040190e82e8736ad.jpg

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