Fire FrankenTruck

[janky89]

Here is my 89 comanche. The day I bought it, I drove to my parents house to show it off then dropped it home since the blinkers weren't working well and I had to go to the grocery store. I come back from the store and smell smoke.... open the door and my dash had an electrical fire. Again, this was the first drive of ownership! I went inside and rolled myself up in a rug like a sad sushi roll. After marinating in sad for a bit I ended up buying another comanche project to use for parts, and it was actually in better shape than mine. In hindsight, I should have just built and kept that one but we hadn't been through a fire together... After a few months of stripping out burnt bits and trying to figure out which parts I can use off of the new comanche, I decided to go a different route. I sold that comanche and I bought another cherokee and stripped it all the way to the bones in my garage. I ended up using all of the engine accessories off the cherokee so that I could use the engine wiring harness and the cab wiring harness in the comanche. I'm positive a smarter person could have made the original comanche stuff work with the spare comanche stuff, or even graft in the cherokee stuff, but I ended up just swapping as much as I could since it was plug and play.

 

Fast forward to now, I am still cleaning up things from the swap and trying to fix inherited issues. I built a front bumper for it, swapped to a bigger brake booster and refreshed the drums, deleted the load sensing valve, rewired everything nose to tail with the cherokee harness, replaced the steering box with a new one, new battery, new motor and transmission mounts, all new exhaust, new custom driveshaft from Tom woods, oil pan gasket, oil filter adapter, valve cover gasket, raptor lined the bed, swapped to the cherokee doors to have power windows, I'm in the middle of the WJ swap to fix the sketchy steering from the insane lift and convert to OTK one ton offset tie rods, I rebuilt the transfer case, it still leaked, swapped in a 242 which I also rebuilt and added a SYE to, it also still leaks a bit, etc.

 

It's been a journey! I still have lots to do. After I finish the WJ swap, I still have an entire cherokee length of harness in my cab that I need to trim and sort out, I need to address the gas tank, dents, interior, new tires, etc! Anyways, here's my Fire FrankenTruck.

 

 

[MiNi Beast]

Very cool 😎. Thanks for sharing with us. I think you made wise decision with extracting from the xj. Look forward to your updates. 

[JWheeler331]

Nice looking truck. I really like your bumper. 

[janky89]

FINALLY finished the WJ swap. Man, what a rabbit hole. I'm sure there are tons of posts about this swap so I won't detail too much unless requested but it was definitely more work than I initially thought. However, I learned a ton and came out the other side. I also went over the knuckle and used offset TRE from Barnes. They barely but beautifully clear the rims. The rims are stock take offs from a JK that I painted black. I had to use those monster spacer/adapters but it is what it is. The angles are much better and I now have new steering joints and new (upgraded) brakes. Time to put my welds to the test... wish me luck!  

 

 

 

[MiNi Beast]

Very nice. 

 

What Trac bar setup is that? I need to raise up mine badly 😫 

[janky89]

Thanks! So the track bar itself and the frame side mount are from ironman4x4fab.com. 

https://ironman4x4fab.com/collections/comanche-mj/products/xj-track-bar-bracket 

https://ironman4x4fab.com/products/xj-ota-track-bar?_pos=7&_sid=d5658c71e&_ss=r

 

The joint is high quality (Barnes enduro joint) and I like the frame side mount as it is offset forward and down, but as a fair warning I had to chop the track bar quite a bit to get it to fit. I do have a different than stock axle side mount but also have 6 inches of lift and it wasn't even close to fitting. Both items also arrived at my house with the finish all sluffing off, so I was a little disappointed in the experience for the price I paid. The frame side mount is also angled forward quite a bit, which in all honesty I don't know if that's normal, but it looks wrong - I would think it should be pointed at the axle side mount. But I'm gonna run it a while and see how it all shakes out.

 

 

Axle side is this one from Arctec https://www.artecindustries.com/rtbbracket-35dia

[janky89]

Quick update on the janky firetruck. I've been doing more maintenance work and am about ready to start doing fun work. It's a lot less sexy to replace bushings and things than it is to get new seats or fix dents and paint so I'm hoping to do more of that this spring. I went ahead and installed some long arms from Core 4x4 in an attempt to fix my stance. I also removed the drop shackle from the rear and replaced the leaf spring bushings. After one extremely bouncy test ride, I learned that it is indeed needed! So I ordered a smaller one. It's not comanche specific but I found it on another forum post here and it worked out. We had one warm weather teaser day so I POR-15'd the floor as my doors are from an xj and also need adjusting as they let water in when it rains. It's back to snow here so more paint will have to wait. I also got new shocks front and rear to try and get things feeling smoother, as well as replaced the motor and transmission mounts. I still need to tune things up, the wheels aren't fully centered in the wheel wells, the castor and pinion angles are also off but I did get the toe in professionally done. Something still looks off to me, I'm not sure if tuning the suspension will help or if its a bad tire/lift combo, or maybe the bed being dented in makes it look too tall and skinny? I also thought that maybe since my bumper sticks forward so far it gives it a bit of a garfish type look that I don't like.  Any thoughts? 

 

[Pete M]

looks fine to me.  

 

POR15 is notorious for being very picky about the circumstances of application.    was the metal warm enough for long enough? 

[janky89]

Thanks Pete! I think looks wise I'm going to try on a spare 35 I have and see if that helps. The POR set nicely, so no worries there.