1987 Comanche Laredo 2.1 Diesel

[ThreeComanches]

Hi all, I got a treat for ya'll. As far as I can tell, this Jeep is the only one of it's kind left. 

 

She's a 1987 Comanche Laredo with the factory 2.1 Turbo Diesel. It spent its whole life in Western Oregon until this year. At some point, the diesel was removed and a 2.5 gas was installed. It was driven like that until it stopped around 166k miles. Last registration was in 2022. I got word that the owner tried to convert it to run on natural gas and blew up his shop trying to make said natural gas. The guy that got ahold of it after sold the tailgate off of it (NOS pulloff) and sold the truck to a kid that put a sketchy lift on it, sold the body, and chopped the fenders. After getting in contact with the kid, I managed to put together a deal and drove from Alabama to Oregon to get it. On July 7th, she was on the trailer and I started home. 

 

(pictures taken of it before it was mutilated)

 

 

(when I picked it up)

 

As I was heading home, I had a mishap in Nevada. It was windy and as I was hauling down US-95, the hood flew open and messed up the cowl and firewall. It then occurred to me the kid had removed the hood latches and didn't mention it. 

 

 

After I strapped the hood down, the rest of the trip was smooth sailing afterwards and I arrived back home on July 11th. 

 

My main goal on this truck it to get it back to as original condition as I can.

 

[89 MJ]

I hope whoever committed those war crimes to that truck never breeds. Great save!

[eaglescout526]

21 minutes ago, 89 MJ said:

I hope whoever committed those war crimes to that truck never breeds. Great save!

Easy mi amigo! Haha. I do understand your sentiment for our trucks. 

[89 MJ]

   

[ThreeComanches]

So the first order of business was to remove the old 2.5 engine and its associates hardware. A lot of it had been done already so I mainly just had to unbolt the engine and trans. 

 

 

Once that was finished, I prepared and installed a 2.1 from a Winnebago LeSharo. The main items that needed to be swapped were the motor mount brackets and oil sending unit blockoff bolt. I also had to adjust the turbo inlet so it could connect to the factory intercooler. Speaking of which, all of the parts in the engine bay I installed were just spares I dug out of one of my bins. 

 

 

Since the truck had been gas swapped, the glowplug harness and hardware had been removed by whoever did the swap. With that said, I had a spare timer, a couple of relays, and some scrap wire laying around. Once I found the diagram in my eletrical manual, I got to work on building a new glowplug harness for the truck. Once completed, I installed it and it worked perfectly. I also had to build the main harness for the engine bay which consisted of the fuel shutoff, water sending unit, alternator, and the cold start solenoid.