Comanche 2wd to overkill Build
 

Here is the day I got it home, after spending a reasonable 400$ for it. 1988 Jeep MJ 2WD.

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Rust free and unmolested, aside from the crappy white paint job put onto it by the PO. I have been doing a bunch of project prior to getting the MJ so if you see something interesting just let me know and I'll try to post some more pics.

Here is the donor XJ. Going to be taking the engine, trans, transfer case, and wire harness out of it. The body has giant rust holes in it, pretty much a danger to be on the road. You can actually see one rust hole on the passenger rear door there.

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I'm skipping over the tear down since most of you have seen it before. I put the body up on a frame stand to work on it and threw some wheels on it to help since i have a tiny garage.

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Rolled it outside for some sun while I cleaned out the unholy mess made after cleaning all the old undercoating off.

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I think this thing was buried in some deep mud at one point since there was huge amounts of mud caked up all over the under side.

Some of the goodies that will be going in soon.

Ford front HP Dana 44 (narrowed to waggy width), Chromo shafts, yukon zip locker, 4.88s, reed knuckles, 1 ton steering, ruff stuff diff cover. Rear waggy Dana 44 with yukon zip locker, 4.88s, ruff stuff diff cover. I'll be putting a truss on both of them as well.

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Some 1.25" heims for the three link going in and then 7/8" heims for the pan hard bar, and TREs

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RE 5.5" coils. For the rear ill do a SOA conversion to gain the same lift.

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14" bilstein 7100s, 275/78 valving for the front and 255/70 for the rear since its a pickup truck.

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A buddy gave me these 06 JK seats since he put Mastercrafts in his.

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Swiped this York compressor to run a belt driven OBA setup rather than having AC (I never run my AC anyway)

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This Crossmember needs to go since i plan to run the rear shocks through the bed floor.

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After tacking in some supports to keep the "frame" straight me and my friend cut out the old crossmember to make room for the new one.

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Here is what I replaced it with 3"x3" .125 wall square tube. and I cleaned off all the old fragments of the old one.

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Fast forward a bit. This is after cleaning and painting the engine bay when me and some buddies swapped in the donor motor trans and transfer case.

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I built my own bender and notcher a while back. Bender is the Gottrikes one and the notcher is my own design, works pretty good for me.

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Here is a pic of some doors I made for my buddies JK. He wanted something a little different. Since then he has added an aluminum panel in the middle portion.

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looking good

Sweet! Looks promising. Updates soon, I hope.

That thing is incredibly clean for only 400 bucks. Can't wait to watch the progress.

Sub'd, project lookin good.

I do most of the work on it over the weekend, so I'll do my best to get an update in once a week. But thanks for the positive feedback.

Anybody know why some of the other forums like naxja are not very active anymore?

I think a lot of it has to do with most people moving over to Facebook. There's TONs of facebook groups now. I still prefer a forum. I wish more folks would join NAXJA, as it's a club that just happens to have a forum. Not just a forum like CF.

You should post this on NAXJA.

I used to love naxja, I've been on there for a while. But it's a bit of a mixed bag now. People kinda seem to hate a lot. I can understand if someone is doing something that might be dangerous or unsafe, but if it's a matter of prefference or opinion why do they feel the need to comment negatively.

You'll get just as much of that here as you would there, if not more.

There's a much older demographic over there so you're going to have more individuals call you out on something that's dangerous or unsafe. The build you've posted so far won't draw negative attention. Yes, there's a lot more post volume here than there. Like I said, NAXJA folks get out and wheel together. CF is just a forum.

Yeah, that is true. I guess I'll post there too. One thing I will say is building this MJ is nice since there are fewer design restraints.

Well I know it isn't going in the Comanche but this is what I've been up to this weekend. Installing this wicked atlas transfer case into my buddies full size dodge crawler.

good clean looking work keep it up this is going to be a nice mj

Alright I got some updates!

Spent some time modifying the 96' fuel pump to fit and function properly into the MJ tank. all I did was cut the two apart and rotated the lower portion of the XJ pump 180* and welded it to the upper portion of the MJ pump frame. then drilled an extra hole in the face plate for the extra wires from the XJ pump. its a returnless system so the tube i welded is not used and just functions as a frame.

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Rebuilt my XJ box and drilled and tapped it for Hydro assist.

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Its not the greatest picture but I hung the rear axle with the new U-bolt eliminators I made from 3/8" plate and 5/8" bolts. The axles is just tacked in place since i need more stuff to adjust pinion angle n stuff.

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Here is some closer pics of the perches

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I rebuilt the stock springs and mounted it spring over to get the 5.5ish inches of lift im looking for. Also extended the leaf spring keepers to see if i can get a little more flex out of the springs.

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My friend got this sweet plasma cutter that has been making things much easier for me.

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I happened to be at the JY on a half off sale day and stumbled across this XJ 44 with limited slip. 100$ was to good to turn down. I wont be using it in the MJ tho.

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So, Update time. I got to work on the front suspension recently. My DSLR camera crapped out a battery so these cell phone pics will have to do for now.


I started with the Upper third link Mount. I decided to cut some holes in em to save a bit of weight and make it look a bit nicer.
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Axle side trac bar mount, I just have all this stuff tacked together for now until final welding so I can make sure everything clears.

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Frame side trac bar mount. I plane to add a third bolt on the top and bottom side for so extra strength and run a support strut to the other side of the frame. I pushed the mount out and forward a bit to get the trac bar a bit longer matching the drag link.

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My wife got me this snazzy steering wheel for xmas. Its all aluminum, so in the weight savings department it might help a tiny bit hehe.
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Couldn't help but test the flex a bit. It should work pretty well.

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