Researching to buy...MUST be a manual tranny! Would you recommend a 97-99 XJ (seems to be the most agreed upon rig for a good build) or 93-94 ZJ? My needs are reliability first...all other concerns are secondary but I will build the rig up as much as possible without sacrificing the reliability of it.

 

have you located a manual tranny ZJ?

 

good luck finding a 5 speed ZJ. The XJ's are much better anyway.

 

didn't even know that they made a zj in a manual.

 

According to the info I found the ZJ never came with a manual. Guess that narrows things down for ya.

 

They did make a 5 speed ZJ. 94 is the only year I have been able to find with this transmission.

http://autos.msn.com/research/vip/Sp...okee&trimid=-1

 

I lied, they did make a 93 5 speed

 

I'll just leave this here. Only ZJ id want to own right there. I believe there was only something like 400 ZJ's with 5-speeds and it was very early on in their build years. Although I wouldnt trade my 98 5-speed xj for one.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1994-...item1c1808e38f

 

Go with the xj. The ax15 is amazing and pretty hard to kill. I have only ever seen one zj that is a manual.

By the way the ax 15 was put into both so it depends on what body style you like more.

 

Autotrader has 2 but 1 is without an engine.

Frankly I like them both, but the sheer #s lean me towards the XJ if only because I'll have better luck finding one in good shape. The link XxXJ99xX posted on e-bay is real nice (albeit motorless) and am curious what it will finally sell for. I won't be in a position to buy for several months, so I'm just researching now.

 

XJ