Replacing Head, intake & manifold.. suggestions?
 

I have a 98 Jeep Cherokee 4.0L.

So I cooked my jeep and blew the head gasket. I've replaced all of the coolant system since (radiator, water pump, hoses, tank, thermostat, temp sensor), And I was going to take it to a shop to have the head gasket replaced but decided to drop $200 on a tool set instead and do it myself :D

After going through all of the trouble Ive decided I'd like to replace the head, the intake/exhaust manifold, perhaps the throttle valve thingy and the air intake.

Ive been skewering the interwebs for days now and figured I'd be better off asking the pros. If you were to replace all of these things, are there some things that would just work really well together?

Im going to save up until I can afford to replace it all at once. I want to do it right. I wish I could throw a stroker in there but certainly can't afford that right now :P.

Any help would be greatly apreciated.
Thanks,
-Flashy

Make sure you get plenty of stickers from offroad companies. They add 5hp each. Doesn't matter if you buy their parts or not, just get the stickers. But on a serious note, if you're gonna replace the throttle body (if thats what you mean by throttle valve thingy?) Then you might as well get a 62mm tb. There's a guy in the buy sell trade section that sells em.

Haha.. lots of stickers.. check :D
Here's what im thinking so far:

Cylnder Head:
=============
Rock Auto: $430.79 / $100 core
* http://www.rockauto.com/catalog/more...nid=471&jpid=0
4wheelparts.com: $413.99 / $100 core
* http://www.4wheelparts.com/Performan...0&t_pn=ATK2A32

Injectors:
============
87-98 XJ’s use what is commonly referred to as EV1 injectors. This is due to the electrical connection they have. The injector you need is Bosch part # 0280155703. These injectors can easily be found in most 95-97 Dodge/Plymouth Neon, Dodge Stratus, Plymouth Breeze, and Chrysler Cirrus vehicles with the 2.0 engine. Just be sure to check the side of the injector for the correct part number as Chrysler used many different injectors in the mid-90’s and early -00’s. One possiblity for the 87-98 XJ’s though is to use EV1-to-EV6 adapters. These will allow the use of EV6 njectors, making the hunt for the much harder to find 703’s a thing of the past.

Throttle Body:
==============
63mm bore: $170 / $70 core (+$4 for 63mm gasket)
* http://www.strokedjeep.com/tbody.html

Headers:
=========
APN Jeep Exhaust: $159
* http://www.ineedparts.com/apn-jeep-e...-manifold.html

Intake Manifold:
================
Get one off of 99+ cherokee or keep original ?

Air Intake:
============
....

I would use a known quality head like Clearwater. May be a bit more but you know it will work. I wouldn't go with a 63mm tb they are known to crack. Stick with 62 max.

Really not all that much more $450 for a Clearwater Head.

I would probably go with a 7120 which is slightly better than what you have, you probably have a 0630 which is fine.

http://www.cylinder-heads.com/cylind...ms-fits-87-06/

Everything else you seem to have figured out.

Make sure you get new Head Bolts, you will need thread sealent for one of the front head bolts, a decent torque wrench (on the cheap look at Harbor Freight Digital).

Personally I don't like Cold Air Intakes unless they are Cowl Intakes, which no one is currently making right now. The reason I don't like them for me is I see constant deep water and most aftermarket make it worse then the stock air box.

Yeah stick with 0630 heads

Ok great yeah. Thanks for the info on the head and tb.

I too am torn on the CAI. I MAY go snorkel as I tend to get mud all over both sides of my hood. I don't cross water but I've had plenty splash around in there.

I saw a video where one guy put the CAI through the firewall... I'll have to research further. Thanks for the help so far!

There were two kits that offered the through firewall design (Spectre 9948) and THOR, Spectre was purchased by K&N and is redesigning the kit so they took it off production (In my opinion they are making minor changes so they can increase the price from $150 to $250 as I see happened with the TJ Kit), and THOR chose the wrong time to go "out of business" for the longest time their store showed "out of stock" but now their website is gone so I assume they closed the doors.

In either case search "Jeep XJ DIY Cowl Intake", I like the cowl intakes because I don't have to worry about tearing off the snorkel in the woods, and the tube for the snorkel shares space in the drivers wheel well, and easily exposed with cut fenders, where the "cowl intakes" don't, I "cowl intake kits" because they used an inline filter, otherwise you either need to remove the cowl cover to clean/change air filters, or use the existing air box and seal it up, but I like the airbox removed so you have room for a second battery (or in my case to move my primary battery over so I can install my TORK On Board Air compressor on the side where my battery sits now.

Hope that helps.

Ok cool. That must be what i saw through the firewall, he was up in the cowl.

I too like the idea of removing the airbox for extra battery or aircomp.

I will search for this. Ty sir!

Also (i will have probably googled it before anyone replies but..), can injectors fail? If i get used ones from junk yard, how can i be sure they'll work?

This is what I did.....

I take a can of pressurized injector cleaner, adapt it up to fit a cut off piece of injector tubing with an injector fitting and injector wire connector from the junk yard, then I use one of those little red funnel shape adapters that come with small portable air compressor, So out of the can spray head - to a red straw, into a red funnel shape adapter, to a piece of rubber tube - into an junkyard injector section (blocked off on the other end),

then with a 12volt battery to the injector wire harness, hook up the positive only at this point

one hand push nozzle down on can to pressure line, with other hand I tap for a second or two the negative terminal to the injector wire to cycle injector, it should be a nice even stream out of all holes in the injectors, if you have a bad one you will know it (unless all of them are bad - lol)

I have done this with Jeep, Neon, and Ford injectors, I would not let the pure cleaner sit in the injectors a long time, it might start eating away at it, so clean them, install them, and run them all in the same day... the sooner the better.

Optionally you could get this;



This is the same principal after typing all the above... LOL

That's kinda true but in '96 they switched to a much larger EV-1 electrical connector and because of that the one injector under the throttle cable bracket does not have enough room for one of the EV-1/EV-6 adapters to fit on it. It's more work but if it was me I would just splice new EV-6 plugs on everything and go to the easier to find 784 Neon injectors. 703's are getting hard to come buy.

Hah, thanks for typing all that. Seems easy enough!

By splice them in, do you mean basically cut the adaptors off when i take the injectors and just replace the adaptors i have?

Will it say 784 on it? Do you know what year has them? Thanks!

Don't know much about replacing heads, but as for the intake/exhaust stuff; I would go with an aftermarket header like APN. I have one on my jeep and really like it. This is also a great time to replace your motor mounts since you'll have a lot of crap out of the way. When replacing the intake/exhaust gasket, do yourself a huge favor and only use a gasket from your mopar dealer. This was the only gasket I could find that wouldn't leak. Hope this helps a little.

Ok so with all of the help/advice I received, here is my updated parts list. Any last minute suggestions or things you would do while your wife thinks these are 'required' parts :D?

Why not have a machine shop rebuild your head and save $200?
63 mm throttle body is too big as stated above.
APN headers are prone to cracking according to other members here, FWIW.