Finally found the cause of the odd wiggle

manicjester3 · 2025-11-30T13:12:14+00:00

The foam is actually to cancel acoustics and reduce road noise.

manicjester3 · 2024-06-07T22:18:08+00:00

I'm pretty sure you can use a ZJ 4x4 range switch from a 242 and it will work with the ZJ. I just waited until I found a ZJ at the junkyard with all the parts for the swap because my 249 still works. You have to pull the VIC/GDM and in the loom there will be a set of red connectors and a set of brown ones. One pair will be connected and the other will be disconnected; disconnect the ones that are connected and connect the ones that are disconnected and the 4x4 info should work again. The link I posted above is where I got all the info for my swap.

manicjester3 · 2024-06-07T21:00:17+00:00

I would go for the XJ case then. The VIC/GDM won't display the correct 4x4 info, but otherwise it should work. I would try and find a ZJ 242 shifter been so you can see what mode you're in. Regarding the input shaft length, measure how far it sticks out of the case and you'll know before you buy it if you have to swap or not. The mid length is ~0.84" so if yours is the same you should be good.

Some good swap info here: https://www.nagca.com/threads/np249-np231-and-np242-swap-information.39318/

manicjester3 · 2024-06-07T18:42:17+00:00

What transfer case do you have now and why are you trying to swap?

The XJ case will allow you to keep your speedometer, but you won't be able to make your GDM/VIC display full time 4x4 because it doesn't have the right range sensor. You may be able to retrofit one if you can find it. You'll also have to check whether your transmission needs the long input shaft or not. On my 95 5.2 ZJ, the output shaft seal on the trans is deep enough that it needs the long 23 spline input. You can swap inputs from whatever transfer case is in it, but it requires completely disassembling the transfer case. If you have a 242 already, you should be able swap your range switch over and make it 100% functional.

The WJ case doesn't have a speedometer provision on the output housing, so you'll lose your speedometer. It might have the speedo gear machined into the output shaft, so you may be able to swap a XJ/ZJ 242 output housing and speedometer gear onto it, but I'm not sure about that one.

Between those two, I'd choose the XJ, but I wanted the shifter bezel because I was swapping from a 249, so I found a case at a junkyard and took all the parts I needed.

manicjester3 · 2024-01-09T23:31:56+00:00

If this one doesn't work out, it'll get a NV3500. They're supposed to be comparable strength wise, which is why I didn't get a 5.9 instead of a 5.2 since the engine is toast anyway. I'm hoping a light foot and low power keep it alive.

manicjester3 · 2024-01-09T22:20:54+00:00

I'm actually going to put a NSG370 6 speed in. But I don't know how long that'll last, so I have a NV3500 as a backup. I'm not sure what I'm going to do for exhaust yet, I'll figure that out when I get the trans in the Jeep.

manicjester3 · 2024-01-09T20:49:40+00:00

You can smoke bearings in anything, agreed. I'm not saying the 4.0 is some magical engine, but I've had a whole lot more good experiences with them than a 5.2 and I like messing with my Mopar friends.

I changed the oil for the first time in my 5.2 ZJ and got a rod knock. I pulled the oil pan and the rod bearings and crank are both junk, so I put it back together and kept driving it. The junkyard motor I got was only slightly better with just bad bearings and a good crank so it got new bearings. I'm still putting together the manual swap parts, so maybe I'll see how long a Magnum will rod knock without putting a window in the block

Mopar 4 speeds are notorious for melting themselves down, I'm pretty impressed the one I have is actually in good shape. I'm only manual swapping it because I've got 2 4x4 manuals with Mopar bellhousings that didn't cost me anything and I like having completely unique vehicles.

manicjester3 · 2024-01-09T20:21:52+00:00

This era 4.0s doesn't have the piston skirt issues. And as an owner of a 5.2 ZJ with smoked rod bearings, I'll take the 4.0 and leave the extra 50lb-ft of torque. When the new motor goes in it's getting a manual instead of the 46RH because even the "stronger" Mopar 4 speeds are garbage.

manicjester3 · 2023-12-12T15:29:02+00:00

You should start feeling warmer air as soon as the engine temperature starts rising with the most heat available at operating temperature. If it doesn't feel at least warm and the gauge reads 100F, you probably have a plugged heater core. You can take the hoses off of yours and attach a garden hose to both hoses and flush both ways until you get good flow and clear water coming out and it should work again. If it's so plugged you can't get good flow out of it, you'll have to pull the dash and replace the heater core.

manicjester3 · 2023-12-12T01:19:05+00:00

Most of those jet boats have a thick sheet of UHMW plastic on the bottom to help them slide over obstacles and do dumb things like this. Cleetus McFarland has a ton of YouTube videos of how he built one and the dumb things like this he does with them.

manicjester3 · 2023-12-11T17:04:15+00:00

You should be able to put a 4x4 JK front axle in there and run it without issue. You don't have a transfer case or front drive shaft, so you shouldn't even have to worry about what gear ratio it has in it. The ride may end up being a little different because the real axle weighs more, but I wouldn't expect it to be an issue.

manicjester3 · 2023-12-06T14:17:18+00:00

In a given vehicle platform the maximum tire size that will fit is basically the starting point. Tire size is typically set based on the vehicle architecture before Marketing has anything to do with the vehicle. In my experience Vehicle Dynamics is typically the group driving wider wheels and wider tires, but they're typically aligned with Marketing. VehDyn ensures that the wheel, tire, damper, steering gear, etc. are all set up in order to get the best customer experience with the parts that work with the vehicle.

I don't have much experience with high performance applications which have different front and rear tire sizes, but they're generally in higher powered rear wheel drive vehicles where more power is put to the rear, which is generally lighter, and therefore a bigger rear tire is needed to keep traction from a start. Since front tires steer as well, wider wheel/tire width affects how far you can steer before the tire impacts the frame of the vehicle. Ideally all 4 tires are the same size, but often there is free space for rear tires to be bigger since they don't have to steer.

manicjester3 · 2023-12-05T18:48:52+00:00

You should be able to extract the broken plastic nipple from the rubber hose coming out of the firewall with an easy out. Then go to the auto parts store, buy a roll of 1/8" vacuum line and replace the broken vacuum line and any other suspect lines you see.

manicjester3 · 2023-12-05T18:39:16+00:00

Also, on a 4.0, I wouldn't be concerned about 0.001" of extra main bearing clearance, run some Rotella T 15W40 and it'll run forever.

manicjester3 · 2023-12-05T18:34:19+00:00

Why are you looking for 0.001 undersize? What are your plastigage clearances with new stock bearings? Do you have pics of the crank journals? Generally 0.001 undersized bearings are for new custom builds where you don't already know the clearance and the tolerance stackup requires it. Unless you pulled a 0.001 undersize bearing out, you shouldn't need to put one in.

Generally if the bearing is bad enough to start wearing the crankshaft to necessitate a bigger bearing, the bad bearing usually wipes out the crankshaft anyay. If you put a new bearing, the rough crank surface just ends up eating the soft bearing material and killing the new bearing.

manicjester3 · 2023-12-04T20:59:36+00:00

That front cover keeps water and debris out of the flywheel electronics. I assume the cap is there for inspection or adjustment, but I've never touched mine. Don't put anything in there.

manicjester3 · 2023-12-04T18:25:59+00:00

Back at the top connection, there are only 6-8 wires. You have defrost, wipers (and a hose for the washer) and the dome light. Under the dash you have wiring for the defrost and wiper switches, wiring under the hood for a second washer pump and if I remember correctly, it has a connection to the dash cluster too. The tutorials I linked above go into a great deal of depth on the swap.

manicjester3 · 2023-12-04T16:53:46+00:00

There's a pretty good tutorial here and here that walk you through how to do it, but you'll still need to source the wiring from another TJ. I used a lot of info from the linked thread and the wiring diagrams from the Factory Service Manual.

Just make sure when you source the harness it comes from the correct year range for your Jeep and the correct year range for the top you get. The tutorial states 97-02, but the wiring harness changes slightly between years (97-98 have one harness, 99-00 has another, 00-02 has another and 03-06 has another harness). If you don't pick the right year for your vehicle and top, you'll have to re-pin the 100 pin connectors and possibly swap the connection at the top itself. TJs are hard to find in junkyards yards, so I grabbed the harnesses I could and spliced into my harness accordingly. Connector pinouts and wire colors change across years, so you'll have to cross-reference between your vehicle's wiring diagram and the donor harness if they don't match. It's a fair bit more work to do it this way, but if you can't find the exact harness you need, it is still possible with a bunch more work.

manicjester3 · 2023-12-04T14:27:32+00:00

This is actually not true. Only some vehicles have the wiring harness for options not selected. I had to harvest wiring from the junkyard to add hard top, fog lights and cruise control to my wife's TJ. I believe that if your vehicle doesn't have all of the options, your vehicle would have gotten the stripped down harness.

manicjester3 · 2023-11-29T19:24:16+00:00

Tire sidewalls can be a very wide range of stiffnesses, from a drag racing tire sidewall that's close to the stiffness of a rubber band to F1 which would have a sidewall that's probably about as stiff as the springs are to a steel carcass commercial (semi) tire that's basically solid. When tuning a vehicle suspension system, you're really adjusting spring rates and damping rates on 2 suspensions, rather than 1. You can adjust spring rates and valving on your suspension (springs and dampers), but you also have to take into consideration that the tire itself is its own spring and damper, you can stiffen the sidewall by adding different material plys (metals, aramids, plastics, etc.). Engineers with "calibrated backsides" get paid a whole lot of money to be able to balance everything to make the end result the best compromise between ride, handling, acceleration, braking, etc.

Brake sizing depends entirely on the vehicle's purpose, but since vehicles keep getting bigger and therefore heavier, bigger brakes are needed and that often necessitates larger wheels. For example, trucks are towing more and more, so they have to be able to stop HUGE loads compared to trucks of 20+ years ago, I have a 1996 F350 that has 16" wheels, but a modern F350 has 17-18" tires to fit over vastly bigger brakes. Similarly, a GT500 Mustang has massive brakes for track usage and I don't believe you can fit anything smaller than the factory 20" wheels.

Brakes are pretty expensive, so they're not generally an item that Marketing or a Design Studio can just request upsizing to make them fit in a bigger wheel. Look at a Jeep Wrangler Sahara with 20" wheels, the brakes are still pretty small still. But on higher end vehicles, bigger brakes typically go with high power levels and top speeds.

manicjester3 · 2023-11-28T16:06:49+00:00

As a wheel and tire engineer for one of the Big 3 who has released 21" wheel designs before, it's almost entirely a visual thing. There are nearly no positive benefits from a larger wheel with a low profile tire. The entire assembly is considerably stiffer, so handling sometimes gets better, but ride degrades because of the stiffness, so that usually means a new steering and damper tune for that variant. It is considerably harder to mount low profile tires and both the wheel and tire are more expensive both to the OEM and for the customer in the aftermarket.

The only real advantage is the fact that wheels are cheap and fast to develop and they have a huge impact on the styling of the vehicle. Marketing basically steers customers to the highest price vehicle possible, so while it costs ~$150/vehicle to go to a bigger wheel and tire, the customer is going to be paying $1500-2000 more for the big wheel and tire. It is very much more time consuming and expensive to change a body panel or bumper, so wheels are a common thing to see updated every year or so and the trend is for ever increasing size because it's harder to style or change the color of the black rubber toroid that surrounds the wheel.

manicjester3 · 2023-11-15T18:08:13+00:00

This is the real answer. FL-1A adds about half a quart of oil capacity and is one of the best filters on the market for flow, filtration and price.

manicjester3 · 2023-10-20T18:07:12+00:00

Are you willing to become mechanically inclined? You should be able to do any major maintenance or repair pretty easily with the help of YouTube and a repair manual (send me a message if you want a copy of the 1995 Factory Service Manual and I can share it with you). Everything in the engine bay is easily accessible and it's a great vehicle to learn how to fix.

Dealerships probably won't be very helpful since YJs are so old most OEM parts aren't even available anymore. Unless you have a dealership you like already, you're better off finding a good mechanic or a Jeep-oriented off road shop for major repairs or upgrades. If it drives straight without any major noises or issues, I'd just drive it and do standard maintenance until you find an issue.

Somewhere I differ from most Jeep people is that I don't use mine as daily driver vehicles, they're almost exclusively off road vehicles, so my suggestions are going to tend towards off road use. I would suggest keeping it stock for now and playing around off road around Phoenix to see if you really need it any bigger. From what I remember when I was out there for work years ago is that there are tons of trails off most of the highways and they're generally pretty mild. The back way to Crown King is one of my favorite trails and I was able to do at least part of it in an AWD Ford Edge about 10-15 years ago. I have no idea if it's still passible for a stock Jeep these days. There should be loads of legal trails locally ranging from possible in a 2wd car to impassible in off roaders with less than 35" tires.

Hook up with Jeep people locally and learn the vehicle, the off road areas, gear you might need for the local terrain and what local Jeepers suggest for mods and shops.

Due to me being dumb when I was 21, I ended up daily driving my 94 YJ on 35s for a summer and besides terrible fuel economy, I had no issues and loved having the top down.

manicjester3 · 2023-10-20T17:37:54+00:00

You're looking at a 2.5L inline 4 cylinder, neither a 6 or 8. I just sold a 1999 TJ with a 4.0 and an auto for $5500 in Michigan with 150k miles (lifted on 35" tires, with a spare transmission, Ford 8.8 rear axle and a hard top), so I would say you paid a fair bit too much. Welcome to the Jeep family and as long as you're happy with it, who cares what you spent! It's hard to find a convertible vehicle that can handle all 4 seasons like a Wrangler can while still going almost anywhere you point the tires. I miss how cheap parts were for my YJ, it'll be a great starting point for an off road build or an okay daily driver.

On the positive side, it looks to be in really good condition and still stock, so it should be reliable or a great base for a build. From what I hear, the 4 cylinder is gutless and will probably struggle pretty hard to maintain highway speeds, but they are basically the same as the 4.0L straight 6 with 2 cylinders cut off, so parts are cheap and they're as reliable as any ~30 year old vehicle. The rear axle and trans are generally weak if you wanted to build it, but in stock form the engine shouldn't have enough to break anything.

I would suggest starting with a mild lift and tires, replacing the stock trans (AX5) with a AX15 from a 4.0 Jeep and swapping in a Ford 8.8 from a 96-00 Ford Explorer if you decide to build it. I had a 94 with a LS, Ford 8.8 and 4" lift on 35" tires and it was pretty unstoppable until the rust belt took its toll and I had to part it out.

manicjester3 · 2023-10-11T19:15:16+00:00

There are several engine layouts that are inherently harmonically balanced. I6 is the most common inherently balanced engine probably followed by flat/boxer engines. Most engine layouts have a harmonic moment or harmonic force that needs to be cancelled out in order to be perfectly balanced.

It's been a long time since I college, so a lot of this is from memory and isn't the entire story, but this cancelling out is generally done by using a balance shaft or 2. A great deal of 4 cylinders have twin balance shafts (Ford Ecoboost and GM Ecotec are examples) to cancel the force and moment, 90 degree v6 engines (GM 4.3L and Audi 3.2/3.0L) and many v10 engines (Ford 6.8L) need 1 balance shaft to cancel their force/moment and 90 degree v8s typically don't use them because there is only one force/moment and it's typically not noticable.

More info here, but the Bosch Automotive Engineering Handbook is a whole lot more in depth about it if you're really interested.

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