I'd follow the 91 guidelines if still running the 91 fuel and emissions management. You'll only have to be concerned with the 91 technology, not the 98 since you aren't using the 98 gear.

My fiance has a 98 TJ thats not coil packs, its cap/rotor.

 

The easiest way to do a mechanical temp gauge is to run a "t" in the heater hose with barbs for the hose on either ends. heat still works perfect and gauge is as accurate as can be. Had no problems with it at all.

 

So, do to the location of the gauges in the cab of my friends Cherokee, we decided to run electric gauges. When I first started this thread I of course was looking for a solution to running mechanical gauges, but even though I was not able to use the information in this thread for this car, I was able to to use the info in this thread to finish the mechanical gauge install on my brother's '87 4Runner, not to mention I think that a lot of people who had questions, now have ansers on this subject, so not all was lost. We did however, in my friends '87 Cherokee, discover a really cool place to mount the gauges in his car. As long as you can live without the OEM clock and the OEM location of the cigarette lighter, then it is a great place to install the gauges. I will post pics in a day or so, maybe even do a small write up on how we cut the dash and what hardware we used to mount the cluster.

 

why not do it the easy way and get a guage cluster from a xj with gauges and change the sensors then you have factory gauges

 

My dash is pretty much toast, dry rotted and cracked. Pretty much beat to hell. Water always pools inside the nooks and crannies. I was considering just getting rid of the dash alltogehter and making a custom plate to mount gauges to.

 

i have a upull it yard like less than a mile from me and there are always at least 5 xj there so im lucky at getting parts all you need would prob be around 100 bucks to put in if the water sis is that bad yyou prob want to look into gauges from boating supply store water proof uno

 

The potential problem with pulling a gauge cluster from a 23 year old car to put back into a 23 year old car is that you don't know what you are getting. I guess that you can find later models that might work, but Napa had a great deal on some VDO gauges, which I have always had good luck with, I think it was a little over 60 bucks for the gauges, hell the sending unit for the oil pres gauge at 35 bucks was more than the gauge itself.