October 2023 - The Twins' Truck

[89 MJ]

October 2023 - The Twins' 2nd Comanche

 

In spring 2022 my twin brother and I purchased a farm with the goal of cleaning it up and building a house on the property.  We knew immediately we would need a truck and very much didn't own one.  We had previously owned an 88 SporTruck that we had purchased in an epic Roadkill style adventure with friends, purchased randomly on Craigslist in Los Angeles and then driven 3,500 miles home to Erie, Pennsylvania.  It was an awesome truck but we sold it at the end of that year.  We instantly regretted it and three years later stumbled upon the need and the right truck at the same time.  A perfect 90 Eliminator with almost every option we wanted popped up in Redding, PA just 5 hours from home.  We sorted out a plan to purchase it and brought it home!  It needed a lot of tune up, but Cruiser54's list got everything sorted out.

 

 

 

We use our Comanche as it should be, as a truck.

1600 lbs of concrete in the bed and a 48" trenching machine in tow.

 

Estimated 5000lbs of trailer and contents plus 1000lbs of material in the bed.

 

A corn crib folded up and placed in the trailer, only weighed 2300lbs , the lightest load we took to the scrap yard last year.

 

Another view of the crushed corn crib.

 

Build Thread-

 

Year/Model - 1990 Eliminator with 265k miles.

 

 

Drivetrain

Engine: 4.0L, never been opened up, has upgraded injectors 

Transmission: AX15 with advanced adapters external slave conversion kit

Transfer Case: NP231

Rear Axle: Dana 44 with LSD, ordered from the factory

Front Axle: What ever is stock, it has a working CAD system.

 

 

Cooling- 

Stock Renix closed system, new Dorman expansion tank with the original cap.  Works great now that it holds pressure.

 

 

Electrical/Ignition- 

Stock Renix, original French coil, with new cap, rotor, plugs, and clocked distributor.  Electrical system in the truck is again stock with grounds sorted out for reliability.

 

 

Suspension/Steering- 

Suspension

Shocks: Rancho RS5000 fronts, KYB in the rear.

Springs: original, regular payload with no upgrades.

Steering is unmodified

 

 

Interior-

Standard Eliminator interior in grey.

Updated interior B pillar lights.

Head unit: JVC KD-T730BT rocking some random mix CDs.

REM II 4.3 Clock Panel.

Recovered headliner and sun visors with repaired and working vanity lights 

Tilt wheel

 

Looking to upgrade the seats with new foam, new upholstery and heated seats pads wired to two OEM rocker switches to the right of the steering wheel.

 

Brakes- 

Front are stock rotors and calipers with Hawk HPS pads.

Rear, the big drums that came on the Dana 44

Original brake booster, works enough for boost, the pedal is the best feeling pedal in any vehicle I've owned.

Still has the load sensing valve, appears to work.

 

Lighting- No mods, new replacement Sylvania sealed beams.

Missing the factory fog lights.

Planning to do some under bed rail lighting, likely hooked to the fog light switch.

 

 

Exterior- Been repainted by a decent amateur by the last owner.  New Graphics were applied.  

Just had the bed done in Line-X to replace the slide in liner and gain access to the tie down points.

Fey rear bumper, I love how sturdy and nice it is to tow with a bumper mount ball.

 

 

Wheel & Tires-

Refinished Eliminator wheels with BF Goodrich KO2s with the white letters facing out.

 

 

Misc- This Comanche had dealer installed AC.  Additionally I added factory cruise control with the clutch kill switch.

The original owner drive the truck 239k miles, then sold it back to the original selling dealership after 16 years of ownership.  The dealership turned it into their parts running truck and used it for another 15 years putting just 11k miles on it.  They sold it to a previous employee of the dealership in the same town it had always been in who used it to tow his boat for a year.  I bought it off him and have already put another 15k miles on it in 1.5 years.  

 

 

Best MJ story- Its too long for this post, involves buying my first Comanche in Los Angeles and driving across the country.  Before seeing it in Craigslist the day I looked at it, I didn't even know that they existed.  

 

 

CC is Awesome! Why? It's your one stop shop for all your Comanche questions!  I've spent a lot of time on Internet car forums, several quite excellent but this one ranks number one for professionalism, depth of knowledge, and general willingness of members to help.  Plus, you all are willing to share and sell parts!

 

As you all know by this point, I like to see MJs that are family projects. I also really enjoy seeing these trucks getting put to work, but still get cared for. @pizzaman09 does a great job with both of these. Congrats!

[Salvagedcircuit]

Awesome story! The truck looks excellent! Trucks doing truck things.

 

52 minutes ago, 89 MJ said:

Best MJ story- Its too long for this post, involves buying my first Comanche in Los Angeles and driving across the country.  Before seeing it in Craigslist the day I looked at it, I didn't even know that they existed.  

 

Same here! Before year 2020, I had no idea there was a truck version of the cherokee XJ - and my dad was an original owner of an '89 XJ!

I purchased my comanche, then my dad pulled out his original '88 brochure. Sure enough, there it was.

Crazy!

[NHMJXJ]

A worthy candidate!  Congratulations!

[pizzaman09]

On 10/3/2023 at 5:06 PM, Salvagedcircuit said:

Awesome story! The truck looks excellent! Trucks doing truck things.

 

 

Same here! Before year 2020, I had no idea there was a truck version of the cherokee XJ - and my dad was an original owner of an '89 XJ!

I purchased my comanche, then my dad pulled out his original '88 brochure. Sure enough, there it was.

Crazy!

So, I guess I can share how the whole story went down.  

In 2018, myself, twin brother, and 5 other friends from engineering school after graduation were inspired by the old Roadkill YouTube series to do an old car road trip.  We planned to fly from Cleveland, OH to Los Angeles, CA with cash to buy two interesting cars on Craigslist then road trip them home across the US.  Before leaving we had plans to look at a tidy 83 K5 Chevy Blazer with 30k miles and an 08 vintage Ford Crown Vic Interceptor.  The K5 blazer was roached on the interior and paint due to sun but my gosh it was clean.  Didn't feel it was worth it.  The Crown Vic was obviously freshly painted, like that morning, one could still smell the paint, so we passed.  We joined forces at lunch and stared cruising the craziness that was LA craigslist car listings.  I found a mid 00s BMW 3 series to look at, another found a Lexus LS300.  Then a friend handed me his phone dialing a number and told me to talk to a guy about a Comanche.  I ask my friend what is that, he told me pickup truck Cherokee, just as the guy picked up the phone.  We organized to check it out as well as the other two cars.  The Comanche was at an off road modification shop sitting on a lift ready for us to check out.  It was darn clean underneath, but not perfectly dent free up top.  Though the interior was quite dirty it was in great shape.  We liked it.  Being mothers day the seller had to leave but we told him we'd buy it the next day.  Also looked at the BMW, it was in horrendous condition, the interior must have had 200 little trees hanging from the mirror, and it smelled like it.  The Lexus needed brakes, but the parts were in the trunk.  We decided the Lexus was good, unfortunately when the sale was about to happen the lady selling brought out a two inch thick pile of paper work claiming it had been an impound auction car and that the paperwork could be used to get a title in CA.  So we had to pass.  The next day myself and a friend went back to purchase the awesome Comanche from a very friendly Iranian guy in a dark back alley of an industrial park with a Non-op title as it didn't pass CA smog.  Another one friend nearly purchased a Miata that day but came to his senses that a three seat truck and a two seat Miata wouldn't get 7 people home.  So the Miata was abandoned, and a GMC Yukon XL was rented for the second vehicle of the trip.

 

Now the fun really began.  Two of my friends drove first as we headed back to the rental car return, when we were entering the highway in a big looping on ramp, we found traffic stopped at the end of the ramp.  I was able to stop easily in my modern Ford Fusion rental, in my rear view mirror I watched the Comanche come to a four wheel locked sliding stop as apparently the brakes were a bit touchy after not really having been driven in two years.  As we headed out of town, we got the tires balanced, it had a bent rim so that didn't do much.  We hit up the Patterson auto museum, which was excellent, got some great Comanche photos in their parking deck.  That day we visited the Pisca Lava tubes, an old volcano in the CA desert off RT66.  The Comanche climbed to the top of the old volcano.  We then headed east to Grand Canyon area.  No issue other than a surprising lack of power in the truck , which we eventually realized was due to high elevation.  No one in the trip had driven in high elevation before, I spent 5 minutes trying to pass a Uhaul truck at 75mph pinned in 3rd gear before reaching the crest of the local mountain at 8500 feet.  The next day we headed north to Utah and Colorado, hitting monument valley, which was good fun driving the truck down into, as well as our two wheel drive Yukon rental.  We staid the night in Durango, CO.  We drove the million dollar highway to Silverton, what an epic drive!  CO is beautiful.  Ended the day on the Kansas border.  The next day in Kansas we had a mega headwind and the Comanche started pinging, turns out the 85 octane fuel from CO wasn't making the engine happy at 3000 ft above sea level.  Some 93 octane fixed that.  At lunch though at Pizza Hut in small town Kansas, we found a massive puddle of oil under the truck after it had been sitting.  7 engineers defended on it and started looking at every gasket to find the leak, however none of the gaskets were leaking.  Upon tracing the oil, it was coming from the air filter!?  Pulled the filter and found it drowned in oil, bad PCV.  Luckily there was an auto store around the corner in this very small town.  In the store I was met with the most stereotypical scenario one could expect, the older gentleman man behind the counter was talking to another older gentleman on a barstool on the customer side of the counter.  After 10 minutes they finished their conversation and the guy behind the counter asked what he could do for me.  I figured it was a long shot but I asked for an air filter, PCV and rubber grommet for the PCV for an 88 Comanche 4.0L.  He typed away for a minute or two, then walked no more than 6 ft behind the counter, picked up all three items and gave them to me.  $6 later I was ready to go!  Topped off the oil and continued on.  The truck had been using some oil up until that point in the trip.  The next 2000 miles home, it used no oil!

 

The goal of the trip was to sell the vehicles when we got home and not loose the $1000 it would cost to rent the one way rental car.  We ended up selling it on Bring A Trailer at the end of the summer, first Comanche they had ever listed.  https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1988-jeep-comanche-4/

 

Selling it was even an adventure, we managed to sell it to an awesome guy in Wisconsin who had just retired and bought a farm.  He was looking for a stick shift 4x4 vehicle that was narrow enough to fit through his fence gates.  Being near Christmas time he couldn't find anyone to ship it to his place.  My twin and I just so happened to find our dream 1999 BMW M3 and hour from him in Wisconsin, so we drove the truck out there three days before Christmas and drove the M3 home.  The new owner loves the truck and says he can't get it stuck, it is a beast.

 

Of course, we regretted selling it almost immediately, but what we learned is we wanted another Comanche, and this time the one with every option we wanted.  The upgrades we wanted were an AX15, air conditioning, bucket seats, full gauge pack and hopefully cruise control.  The 90 Eliminator fit the bill, almost exactly.

[Salvagedcircuit]

Hell yeah! Sounds like a great adventure.

[jpnjake]

Beautiful truck, I’m really a sucker for an MJ earning its keep. Congrats on MJOTM 

[MiNi Beast]

Addicted for life.  can't beat the workhorse these midsise trucks are. Go figure they only made so many, they knew a solid platform it was. Racing to hauling these jeeps did it all. Much like you guys I was glad to get a MJ back in my dd line up. Congrats. 

[Drahcir495]

Yep, had no idea they existed either until saw one looking at XJ’s on Craigslist. 
 

Congratulations on your nomination. Well deserved.

[pizzaman09]

I appreciate the compliments!  This was a lot of fun to write up.