6000 miles in an MJ

[GonzoTheGreat]

Ok, it's time for a quick update. The MJ is still safely stored in Costa Rica, but the girlfriend and I are on a brief sojourn in Europe, and since this forum loves amc/chrysler oddities, I thought Id show everybody what we've got.

 

She was impressed with the Comanche's performance on our trip, and decided she had to have an XJ at home in Italy. So, we found a '96 XJ with the 2.5L VM Motori Turbo Diesel, AX-15, NP231, dana 30/35 with limited slip rear.

 

 

It needed a lot of work, which I will detail here.

 

The ultimate goal is to drive from Turin to Palermo, with many stops in between, and return it to her parents house before heading back to Central America.

 

The above picture was taken in Colonnata, a town famous for marble quarrying and ...marble box-aged pork fat. It was actually delicious.

 

We also made a pit stop at the world's most famous engineering mistake,

 

the Lavazza coffee museum,

 

and the oldest producer of balsamic vinegar.

 

I'll probably post one or two times more from this continent depending on what we see.

 

And don't worry, the MJ is not forgotten. I'll probably have an update on that come January. 

 

 

oh and another pic of the XJ, because I know you all want to see it.

[pizzaman09]

Cool cool!  I've visited Italy for work a handful of times, it's a lovely place to check out.  The cured meats are amazing as you have probably found.  Definitely interested in hearing more about the diesel XJ.

[Salvagedcircuit]

Aww yeah, this is gonna be good. I wonder if the pizza rims are made in West Germany like the 10 spoke rims another CC member posted a while back. Nuts!

[schardein]

Very cool.  Interesting that it's a 96 but has the 97-01 rear view mirrors.  I wonder if it's original or an owner upgrade? 

[gogmorgo]

Always been curious about the 2.5 diesel. How it compares to a 4.0 or 2.5 gasser. Every so often I window shop the 2.5td/ax15 ZJ. Seems to be a few of them cheap in Italy, but I’m a long way from when I’d be able to import anything. Seems everyone in Europe thinks they’re junk but that’s the overall opinion of Jeeps in general there so… yeah. 
 

Out of curiosity does the XJ have headlight height adjustment on the dash? I’m pretty sure it was a euro requirement. Both my Ladas have it, at least, and I’ve seen it on the ZJ but I haven’t found any info about it on the XJ. 

[GonzoTheGreat]

9 hours ago, gogmorgo said:

Always been curious about the 2.5 diesel. How it compares to a 4.0 or 2.5 gasser. Every so often I window shop the 2.5td/ax15 ZJ. Seems to be a few of them cheap in Italy, but I’m a long way from when I’d be able to import anything. Seems everyone in Europe thinks they’re junk but that’s the overall opinion of Jeeps in general there so… yeah. 
 

Out of curiosity does the XJ have headlight height adjustment on the dash? I’m pretty sure it was a euro requirement. Both my Ladas have it, at least, and I’ve seen it on the ZJ but I haven’t found any info about it on the XJ. 

The 2.5 has been great so far. Plenty of torque. The only issues I’ve consistently read about are the 4th cylinder head cracking from overheating, and the EGR clogging up the turbo.
 

The PO had the engine “overhauled” in 2018. I don’t know what that means, and neither did he. He’s a pasta maker, not a mechanic. But he did mention a new water pump, and head gaskets, and I could see the EGR delete. So that was good news. 
 

So far we’ve had no issues, and the exhaust doesn’t have a speck of soot. The crank case breather has an oil trap in-line, but there’s still quite a bit of oil making its way back to the intake, so I’ll have to take a look at that at some point. 
 

and yes! It did come with adjustable headlights. The switch is in the center console. They don’t work after the PO swapped in LED headlights, but I may be able to resurrect them. There is a servo that hangs off the bottom of the header panel under each light bucket with an arm that attaches to the bucket. I’ll try to get pics when I take it apart. We nabbed some original glass lights from a junkyard. They’re very different from the North American sealed beam. There’s a socket inside the glass housing for a replaceable hi/lo light bulb, and a little socket for a daytime running light. I’m not sure if it’s the same for you in Canada. I had a Canadian XJ at one point with daytime running lights, but I never looked into it. Again, I’ll try to get pics of all this when I take it apart. 
 

 

On 10/13/2024 at 9:22 PM, schardein said:

Very cool.  Interesting that it's a 96 but has the 97-01 rear view mirrors.  I wonder if it's original or an owner upgrade? 

This guy “upgraded” a lot of things, but I think the mirrors might have been original. Getting parts here is tricky, new or used, so I’d be surprised if someone put in that much effort. 

 

 

On 10/13/2024 at 7:31 PM, Salvagedcircuit said:

Aww yeah, this is gonna be good. I wonder if the pizza rims are made in West Germany like the 10 spoke rims another CC member posted a while back. Nuts!

 

it actually came wearing a set of turbines, which ironically, are all made in the USA. They’re in rough shape, so we stuck with the gamblers. They’re original, at least they match the spare, but the turbines are stashed at her parents house in case I ever want to strip them and make them pretty. 

[gogmorgo]

EGRs plugging things up is pretty typical to all diesels, especially if they’re just poking around town in heavy traffic, running cold on short trips with lots of low rpm and idle time. 

I think they call those little bulbs in the housings “city lights”. If I understand it correctly they’re for cruising around a well-lit city where you don’t need extra light to see, but need to be seen by traffic without blinding anyone. A “nighttime running light” if you will. The ECE low beam kicks a fair bit of light up and right for reading road signs which can be unpleasant for anyone in eyeshot. I don’t know if the housings with the city lights would have been factory or not, but they’re definitely common. ECE sealed beams were definitely a thing but there’s a very strong preference for H4 housings. 

The DRL on North American spec Jeeps from the era is accomplished with a step down module that sends 5V to the high beams, its a little square box on the driver’s side inner fender up by the firewall. It uses the same sealed beams as the non-DRL setup. They like to fail and stick the high beams on. It works alright with OE wattage halogens but doesn’t always play nice with higher powered aftermarket lights, especially LEDs that don’t expect the 5V. I don’t know if the European Jeeps used the same system, or even had daytime running lights at all. I know European cars did have them but I don’t know if it was mandated or just a premium feature.

The Canadian-spec Ladas I have had the DRLs added at the port with a couple relays that turn on some function of the headlights. There’s no documentation about them that I’ve found anywhere and I’ve never bothered decifering how they’re supposed to work. But this is still very early post-Soviet stuff and even today the Russian market isn’t exactly a typical example of European regulation equipment.

But the ‘93 Samara I have has OE molded H4 housings with city lights. The ‘96 Niva has standard 7” round lights. It may have had sealed beams in it when I first got it, but I put some cheap aftermarket H4 housings with blue neon halos shortly after buying it that also had the city lights, also in blue. I had to pull the DRL relays to keep the headlights off so you could see them while driving around town. It looked cool but I don’t know how I didn’t get ever stopped for them. But one of the lenses cracked and I replaced them with some OE H4 assemblies. I don’t remember if they have city lights or not, but they’re for sure much better at being headlights than the cheap ones were.

 

 

 

[GonzoTheGreat]

Ok. Time for another update. 5k km and about 5 weeks of travel, and I've probably gained 5kg from all the food here.  We drove from Turin to Palermo in a zig-zaggy path, stopping for major tourist locales, and local cuisine. We also made a quick stop in the towns where my great-grandparents were from, and I randomly met a distant cousin. That was pretty cool.

 

In the end we took a ferry from Palermo to Genoa (22hrs) to return home. Fuel is super pricey, and the highway tolls are insane, so it was actually cheaper to take the ferry. Plus I don't love the sounds coming from the trac lok in the dana 35 lately, so I think it was best not to risk all those highway miles.

 

 

I'm 6'2" so in hindsight if I do this again, it's going to be in a 2-door, or at least with 2-door front seats. we bought an Ikea futon mattress that fit perfectly in the back, but I would have fit a lot better if the front seats folded forward.

 

[GonzoTheGreat]

The only big issue we had was with the rearmost driveshaft U-joint. I somehow missed this until a few hours before the trip started, at which point I had eliminated enough shimmies and wobbles to notice a driveline vibration. 

 

 

Apparently at some point the PO broke a retaining tab off the rear pinion yoke. His solution was to tack a washer on in its place. Long story short, the tack weld cracked, the caps spread out a little and the u-joint beat itself up. Through some extreme good fortune, I had a u-bolt kit I had bought years ago and never used. I had thrown it in my bag before this trip thinking "I'll never need this, but why not bring it?" The old u-joint looked pretty shiny, so I'm wondering if an old one recently broke while driving, and that's what tore off the retaining tab. The PO seems to be a bit of a meat-head, so that's the theory I'm going with. We got the new u-joint installed, with u-bolts, and a little JB weld where the tab is supposed to be. That did the job.

 

In other news, we got back to the north, and spent a little time in the lower alps. It was good to get a little dirt (and snow) under the tires.

 

 

As some of you may also know, Turin is the "Detroit of Italy," due to the founding and production of FIAT. So of course I had to visit a former factory-turned-shopping center downtown that still maintains the original FIAT test track... on the roof of the factory!

 

 

The site is now a garden/sculpture park with a cafe and a small museum. Some benches in the garden had slogans that may or may not be intended to poke fun at FIAT.

 

 

And finally, @eaglescout526, as a fellow eagle scout, this really stood out to me. In southern Sicily, in some no-name beach town, there is a plaza/parking lot dedicated to Baden Powell. Totally random. I didn't expect to see that, but I think you might appreciate it as well. 

 

 

And that's a wrap (or a panini?) in Italy. At some point in the next couple months, I'll be back to Costa Rica to pick up the pickup, and continue on with that venture.

 

[eaglescout526]

4 hours ago, GonzoTheGreat said:

And finally, @eaglescout526, as a fellow eagle scout, this really stood out to me. In southern Sicily, in some no-name beach town, there is a plaza/parking lot dedicated to Baden Powell. Totally random. I didn't expect to see that, but I think you might appreciate it as well. 

 

Woah!!! That’s really cool! 

[89 MJ]

That’s awesome! What an adventure. 

[JZLAJeep]

An amazing trip!

[pizzaman09]

16 hours ago, GonzoTheGreat said:

 And that's a wrap (or a panini?) in Italy. At some point in the next couple months, I'll be back to Costa Rica to pick up the pickup, and continue on with that venture.

 

Having worked with many Italians, it would be a panino.  Panini is the plural, sandwiches.  

 

Absolutely awesome adventure!  I drove from Marseille, France via Nice and onto Genoa, Italy before turning north or Milano last year for work.  The Mediterranean coast was amazing, the blue water like in your one shot was incredible.

[Salvagedcircuit]

Excellent update indeed!

So you're saying there's a 2 door XJ in the works