87 2.5L AX-4 - My First Comanche

[jamcomanche]

No need to say it, but I'm new here. Just picked up my first Comanche last week and I love it.

 

 

The guy I bought it from had 4 of them sitting in his yard. 2 for parts, and 2 to drive.  He painted this one himself and I love the color man. It definitely has some issues, but the body and interior are in great shape. I've never driven a 4-speed before.. I can't say I love it but honestly it's not bad.  The rear end has some clunking on decel, and according to the seller it's the pinion bearing. It drove fine on the way home after I bought it, but I know I need to fix the rear end asap.

 

2 days ago it randomly started running rough and misfiring at idle.  I did a lot of research on here and I'm so thankful for this community, otherwise I would have wasted a lot more time and money on it than I needed to.  I found 2 cracked vacuum lines (one that runs from the throttle-body to the vacuum reservoir, one that runs to the firewall) and after replacing those and doing a basic tune-up it runs fantastic.

 

I still have a lot left to do though as I've found several other issues.

 

Things I've done to it since I bought it

1. Oil Change
2. Plugs, Wires, Cap & Rotor
3. Coolant Temp Sensor (for temp gauge)
4. Serpentine Belt
5. Vacuum Lines

 

Things I need to work on next

1. Rear End - Planning to open her up and see what I need to fix.  The Dana 35 appears to be pretty easy to work on from what I've seen. This is going to be the first thing I fix. I have tools to help me get the crush sleeve set and I don't think it will be a problem outside of working the old bearing races out.
2. Universal Joint - After inspecting my rear end I actually found out that the vibrations and knocking were coming from a loose universal joint.
3. Clutch Master and Slave - I was happy to find a few drips of clutch fluid on my floor-mats and noticed that it has been dripping on my fuse box.  The master cylinder will have to be replaced.  I also noticed what looks like fluid under the transmission. I fear that the internal slave on my AX4 might be leaking too.. This is going to be my least favorite job I think.
4. Rear Main Seal - I doubt this thing has been replaced since 1987.  I found a video that shows how to do it without removing the crank, so I am probably going to try that first. I might as well to it at the same time as the slave cylinder, so it's going to be a nice weekend job.
5. Water Pump & Thermostat - There doesnt appear to be anything wrong with these, but I think its safer for me to replace them now before I end up having an issue.  It's a reverse rotation water pump from what I've gathered.
6. Valve Cover and Oil Pan Gaskets - I'm going to have to replace the oil pan gasket when I change the rear main, so may as well change the valve cover gaskets too.
7. Front parking lights - these don't work right now. I think a bulb is missing from one side. Not sure about the other.
8. AX4 Output Shaft Seal - Discovered this was leaking while replacing the U-Joint.
9. Horn - The horn button on my wheel does not engage the horn. This could be several things, so Ill have to troubleshoot.

 

After I get these all done I should have a pretty solid truck.  I'm really excited.  I get a good bit of attention driving her around town.  Actually had 2 guys tail me on the way home one day which was fun... I don't know for sure but judging from what I saw I was worried they were going to try to jack the truck

 

Anyways.. Happy to be here!  I'll update things as I go. See you guys around!

 

P.S. Vacuum Lines are definitely the first thing people should check if the engine is running rough... Most of you seem to know that already, but I didn't at first.

[jamcomanche]

Well, I put my axle on stands, removed the wheels and took the cover off my rear end housing.  I played around with everything under there and even took the bearing caps off and I couldnt find anything wrong with her.  Bearings are good, no play anywhere inside there. So while it was open I cleaned it our really good and put a fresh RTV seal under the cover.  Waiting for it to dry before I torque it down.  Have some lucas gear oil to fill it up tomorrow.

 

While I was digging around in there, I found out that there was about 1/8" of play on the yoke side of the universal joint. The driveshaft would drop 1/8" every 180 degrees.  I'm pretty sure that's what was causing the clunking and vibrations, so I need to figure out which size to get now. 

 

I'm pretty relieved that I don't need to repair the rear end. A universal joint is much less work ha.

[jamcomanche]

I kinda feel like I didnt give my jeep the best introduction, so here is a little more info on it before I talk about the work I did today.  This truck is pretty much a junk-yard build.  The previous owner had gutted it and installed parts from a mix of different Comanche and Cherokee models. 

 

The bed is not original, it was taken from another truck.

The interior was taken from a Cherokee, so it's been converted to bucket seats which I actually like quite a bit. I really don't like the shift knob, but I can't seem to find a decent one with the 4-speed gear indicators.  There are a lot out there with reverse plotted up and left, but the AX4 is down to the right. So I need to keep looking for a bit.

 

 

 

Here's all the grease covered spaghetti under the hood.  Previous owner added A/C and Power Steering.

 

 

You can see that the original paint was red.  One of these days I'm going to try to organize and clean it up a bit in there.

 

Today's Work

 

Last night I sealed the rear end case with RTV and this morning I torqued it down.  After filling it up with Lucas gear oil, it has a drip from the pinion seal.  I did not want to mess with that today.

 

 

U-Joint

After removing the driveshaft to get to the U-Joint, I noticed that the output shaft from the transmission had been leaking and slinging grease all under the truck.  I picked up a new seal for that, which ill cover in a sec.

 

After some research I checked around for U-Joints in stock nearby.  Nobody seemed to have any Spicer joints.  I managed to find a MasterPro at Oreilly's, so that's what I got. MasterPro #269 Non-Greasable

 

When I tried to remove the original retainer clips, they snapped xD. It took a little banging around to get the old joint out, but I managed.  Putting the U-Joint in was another story.  For some reason, the yoke doesnt have room for retainer clips.  Instead, it has a lip that prevents the joint from sliding out.  Even with the new joint, there was still a tiny bit of play left so I had to shim the bearing caps with a thing piece of sheet metal around one half so the U-Bolts would hold it tight.  After that, it was nice and snug.

 

Output Shaft Seal

This was the easiest thing I did all day.  The seal that was leaking was a really cheap, rubber seal. It was stuck in there pretty good, and I wasnt sure how to get it off without damaging the output shaft.  What I ended up doing was taking a skinny wrench and using leverage from the transmission to pull it out like this:

 

 

The Replacement seal Oreilly's had in stock was the National Multi-Purpose Seal, Part # 710319. It was much nicer quality that what was in there, and tapped in pretty easily.

 

Wrapping things up

After all of this, I slid the driveshaft back in and connected it to the rear end.  The rest of the work was putting the drums and wheels back on and cleaning up.

 

I took her for a test drive and the U-Joint definitely did the trick. The clunking from the rear end and all of the vibrations are gone :)  Feelsgoodman

 

I'm happy to have these repairs behind me. It will be a couple weeks before I can tackle anything else that's significant.

 

[jamcomanche]

Sunday's Work

 

Over the weekend I decided to do some minor reconditioning of the fuse box after seeing the clutch fluid drip.  I'm glad I looked at this when I did, because the genius that owned it before me had stuck 25amp fuses in almost all of the fuse slots, and one of them had the terminals wrapped in threaded copper wire.....

 

 

Never put copper wire on your fuses, people.  This is what happens.

 

 

I took all of the fuses out and it looks like they had somehow melted one of them into the blower slot. It looked pretty bad.

 

 

At first I thought the fuse box itself was melted, but it was actually plastic from an old fuse that had melted and stuck to it.  I was able to clean this out of the slot with a small flat-head screwdriver.

 

I also went through each terminal with the screwdriver and pushed the contacts together where some of them had been separated (like shown in the TURN B/U slot)

 

Using some WD40 Electrical Contact Cleaner, I sprayed the fuse panel down really good to remove all of the clutch fluid residue and debris.  I used the low setting of a heat gun to dry up any contact cleaner that had not evaporated and try to liquify any grease/oil that may had been deeper inside.  Then I wiped it down and installed new fuses.

 

I also wrapped some plastic around the top of the fuse panel to stop any more fluid from leaking into it until I replace the master cylinder.

 

 

I still don't have working interior lights, so I need to check the bulbs next. They are probably bad or they don't have any bulbs in them. 

During this process I also found out that the horn isnt working. I'll have to investigate that one day.

 

[Pete M]

did you try rotating the interior lights?