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Little Red (T.J.'s XJ)

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CrawlingForward
Tonellin
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THOOPY3
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Post  Mark 10/20/2014, 5:51 pm

Hey there TJ, is the method that you use to shift t case from low to hi or hi to low correct ? as it should never grind.
When shifting from 4low to 4 hi you should move the shift lever to hi in one motion,do not stop at neutral, just push lever forward until you hit 4 hi.
Same way from 4hi to 4 low.
Usually if you put t case in neutral or stop at neutral it will grind when shifting out of it, so shutting engine off and then shift to 4 hi or low works in that situation.
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Post  THOOPY3 10/20/2014, 6:35 pm

Going from 2-Hi to 4-Hi is a breeze, no grind at all. Going from 4-Hi to 4-Lo or vice versa is when a small grind happens. I messed around with shifting it a little before I went wheeling and determined that if the vehicle is not moving at all the grind from Hi to Lo or Lo to Hi is atrociously awful. And by moving I mean under the 5 mph that Jeep recommends. If I'm moving it's just a brief, small grind as I pass from 4-Lo to 4-Hi or the other way around. And as I learned this should all be done with the transmission in neutral (exception is 2-Hi to 4-Hi) or bad things happen.

The problem is the case doesn't shift very smoothly (again exception is 2-Hi to 4-Hi), so making it a swift motion hasn't worked out thus far. I've tried quickly going from Hi to Lo or Lo to Hi; when going from Hi to Lo it seems to get 'snagged' a bit in the process and when going from Lo to Hi I tend to pop it completely out of 4WD or end up in between 4-Hi and 2-Hi. I'm not sure if there's a problem brewing with the case or if it has something to do with the fact that there's a transfer case drop on the vehicle. I read somewhere that a little grind when shifting it isn't abnormal, and that's what I have going on now. I will say that the YJ case doesn't grind at all, and with it if you're moving even the slightest bit going from 4-Hi to 4-Lo it grinds like a mother. It's a totally different process from shifting the case in the Cherokee though.
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Post  Mark 10/20/2014, 7:37 pm

The linkage is probably the issue as it should go in and out like a breeze,
Is there slop in the linkage or a binding feeling?
When you are shifting the t case are you anticipating the pattern that the shifter has to go through because it is notched at the shifter base.{zig zag}
You might want to try pulling the shifter towards your right leg when shifting from 4h to 4L .but it may be that the linkage is the issue no matter the technique.
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Post  THOOPY3 10/21/2014, 11:02 am

I guess you could describe the noise as a binding. Just for shits I played with going in and out of 4-Hi and 4-Lo last night and again it seems like nothing I do can stop the little noise from happening. It goes nice and smooth through N but as soon as you get to 4-Hi or 4-Lo there's the small hesitation and grind/bind that occurs. I'll try messing around with the linkage this weekend if I get some time, as I do plan on doing a few small things before it starts to get too cold. While I've been under the thing I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary but that doesn't mean much.
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Post  THOOPY3 10/21/2014, 11:11 pm

As promised, photos of this weekend's activities. I've got plenty more but for some reason I can't get them to upload. Not sure if it's on my end or the forum.

Little Red (T.J.'s XJ) - Page 5 Img_1514

Little Red (T.J.'s XJ) - Page 5 Img_1516

Little Red (T.J.'s XJ) - Page 5 Img_1515

All in all I was happy with the flex and the overall comfort of the ride off-road. Much easier and more relaxing than the YJ. As I noted before my only real issue was with the wheel spin in 4-Lo, which you can see a bit of in the middle photo above.
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Post  Posimoto 10/22/2014, 8:57 am

Nice pics thanks for sharing
On the t-case, when was the last time you checked fluid level?
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Post  THOOPY3 10/22/2014, 10:43 am

I haven't checked the fluid at all to be honest. The PO said he used to have all the fluids changed once a year and I took him at his word on that, but it wouldn't hurt to drain it and check myself. I think it may probably just be that the linkage needs some adjusting because of the drop that's on the t-case. Like I said it's smooth as butter going from 2-Hi to 4-Hi, and there was no whining or grinding from the case when I was putzing off-road this weekend.
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Post  THOOPY3 10/27/2014, 1:32 pm

So I got a chance to poke around at a few things over the weekend that were giving me trouble.

Project 1: My defrost issue (which is being documented here so I won't get into that too much here for sake of cross-posting). But, while poking around with the dash and checking things on the passenger side, I noticed that the passenger side carpet mat seemed really wet. At first I thought it was just residual dampness from my girlfriend sitting there after the heavy rains last week, but after pulling the mat up I realized the floor was soaking wet. So I tore up the carpet as best as I could and discovered at least half an inch of water sitting on the passenger floor board. Fuck me.

I traced the dampness with my hand and determined that my passenger floor was/is soaked all the way back to the floor in front of the rear seat, meaning most likely there was even more water in there than I encountered on Saturday (a few days of drying in between the rain and then). The only good news in this scenario is that it was 100 percent not coolant that was on the the floor, which it goes without saying is good news.

Only the Jeep gods know where the leak is coming from, and my prayers to them have always gone unanswered so once again I'm on a witch hunt for the cause of my problem. Possible areas of concern are: windshield gasket; blower motor gasket; gasket around fresh air intake underneath hood cowl; antenna gasket; weatherstripping around door; or improperly positioned/messed-up door. There's a million threads on the internet about a million different things that could be causing this so it's going to take a full day of investigation to really pin it down I think.

I'm leaning towards the last area -- messed up door position -- as the culprit. I noticed that the door itself has some home improvement store bought foam on it that none of the other doors have that's clearly not a factory thing. I believe the Jeep was damaged at some point in the right front (there's a decent dent on the lower right front fender near the door, and the PO mentioned something about an accident) so maybe, just maybe, it's an issue with things just not lining up correctly as a result and his temp fix was the foam stripping. I did notice that it was dampest right under the door, and that the floor and carpet up near the firewall were not wet, again making me think it could be around the door.

Complicating the pinpointing process is the fact that there is no level ground virtually anywhere in the city of Woburn, so whenever I park at night I'm facing either uphill or downhill (mostly uphill in my situation), which I'm sure aided the water in reaching the back seat. At some point soon I'm gonna grab an assistant and take a garden hose (before things freeze over) and blast the thing and try and find the exact culprit. Regardless I think I'm going to silicone a number of the above areas that I mentioned just for peace of mind regardless of whether or not I can pin down exactly where the leak is. I honestly thought I left my wet floor problems parked at my parents' place, but you'd think I would have learned by now that things aren't that simple.

Project 2: Transfer case lever. As I wrote about previously, the transfer case was giving me a bit of a headache when shifting from 4-Hi into 4-Lo and vice versa. An internet search led me to the shift linkage, which is where I started to address my issue. I put the case into 4-Lo and noticed that there was a bit of play in the lever and the rod, i.e. is was not fully back when the case lever was pulled all the way back into 4-Lo. So I loosened the nut, had my helper pull the lever back all the way, and I moved the linkage back slightly further to eliminate any excess play (full disclosure: it took some minor blows with a hammer to accomplish this).

I tightened everything back up, and on my initial test ride it did seem to shift smoother than before, but I still get a small grinding/clunking noise when passing through N. What I really need to do is see one of you guys shift your TJ or XJ into 4WD on an upcoming run to see if it engages or even sounds like mine does, because it's possible the noises I'm getting are normal noises of the forks in the transfer case engaging. Also, as I feared, while I was under the thing I noticed that some of the corresponding linkages to the shift lever are 'bent' downward as a result of the transfer case drop that was installed by the PO. Because the case is lowered an inch the linkages (that are attached to the unibody or actual body, can't remember which) are not straight like they were from the factory, and this could be causing some binding as Mark mentioned in one of his posts. It's definitely already causing some wear of the plastic washers/spacers that are attached to it.

The saving grace here is that 98 percent of the time the Cherokee will be in 2-Hi, even in the winter, and because it is smooth going from 2-Hi to 4-Hi I'm not all that worried about it. Most of the time on the trail I'm not switching between Hi and Lo anyway, so again not an area of huge concern. This would be more of an issue if this vehicle was going to be a dedicated wheeler, but it will not be one of those and won't be seeing any double black diamond trails probably ever while I own it.
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Post  dongalonga 10/28/2014, 2:41 pm

Get another person and find that leak. One person sprays the suspected area with a hose and the other watches for water. Obviously remove the carpet and dry everything first.
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Post  THOOPY3 10/28/2014, 3:28 pm

Yeah that's the plan for Saturday morning (provided the hose doesn't freeze during the night). I've got a few areas of probable cause, and I may do some door adjusting for the heck of it. The door is messed up in one way or another because the retaining strap pin is long gone.

I'm beginning to wonder too if the mist I was seeing coming through the defrost vents isn't somehow linked to all of this in one way or another, i.e. both my defrost and leak issues. I'm pretty confident that the mist was the vaporization of the refrigerant system dye 'burning' off the block and coming through the window defrost vents. The only way it could do that would be if the blower were pulling it in, but it only ever happened with the HVAC system off, so I wonder if there's a gap between the blower motor and the firewall letting it in. If not this may point to a larger problem with the HVAC system than originally thought, i.e. the blower is always on when the Jeep is running, or the blend door never correctly closes or is broken. A gap or bad seal around the blower motor would explain the water getting in as well.

Stuff like this is always such a crap shoot.
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Post  Mark 10/28/2014, 5:28 pm

Does the jeep stay outside in the rain?
Did you check the heater box drain ? that will make water leak in jeep if it is clogged?
If you haven't yet it's worth a look see,, if for nothing else than the peace of mind knowing that is or isn't clogged up.
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Post  THOOPY3 10/28/2014, 5:39 pm

Yeah it's always out in the rain. Only accessible garage is at my grandmother's place, and the YJ on flat springs and 29s barely got into that. I might be able to pull the hood of the Cherokee in there as a last resort, haha.

I have not checked the drain but it is on the list of things to do. I know exactly where it is coming out of the firewall and plan on giving it a quick cleaning just to check. I'm fairly sure it's not just water backed up from the drain though because this was literally a gallon of water, and I hadn't run the heat much during the time before I found the puddle (as in during the week beforehand). But never say never as I've learned. Now the drains for the cowl are another story as they're tucked in behind the fenders. I don't think I've got much hope of getting at those, and I have a gut feeling that they're probably clogged up and part of the problem after reading up on them. More investigation this weekend will hopefully turn something up.
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Post  Mark 11/7/2014, 10:05 am

Did you locate where that water leak originates ?
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Post  THOOPY3 11/7/2014, 11:04 am

Not yet. Go figure it was too rainy to do it last weekend. I'm hoping to mess around with it sometime this weekend. The good news is that there hasn't been any additional water in the cab (even with it raining lately) since that major rainstorm a few weeks back, so it would appear it was a combination of a substantial amount of water in a short period of time and possibly the way the vehicle was parked. I'm still going to try and narrow it down because obviously I want no water in the cab at all, but I've been able to relax a bit. And I've been monitoring coolant level and it's not moving so looks like I'm clear on the heater core front as I thought.
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Post  dongalonga 11/7/2014, 5:07 pm

This is all good news.
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Post  THOOPY3 11/10/2014, 9:34 pm

Got a few small things done this past weekend. I attempted to change out the non-functioning rear wiper motor with a replacement one from Advance Auto. It's a pretty straightforward process, however it's very dependent on the part you buy actually working out of the box, which as is my typical luck it did not. So I returned it and got my money back and will eventually just buy a brand new one and not a reman unit. An hour and a half of my life I'll never be able to get back, but so be it.

My other project for the day was to make interior mounts for my axe and shovel. Up until now they've always just kind of floated around whichever Jeep they were in and I was determined to make something permanent for them. I looked online for various quick clamps and they were all way too expensive for my taste, so I got thinking and decided to get creative. I ended up settling on electrical conduits as my mount of choice. Since the axe and the shovel both have round/oval handles the contours of the conduits work perfectly.

Mounting them was a breeze; I went with two conduits for the axe (because of weight and balance) and one for the shovel. All that was required was the quick drilling of three holes into the plastic trim panel for the mounting bolts to pass through, and just like that axe and shovel mounts. I went with wing nuts and lock washers on the actual clamp part of the conduit to make taking both items out a breeze, and to ensure things don't rattle themselves loose (within reason).

For a total of about $10 you can't really go wrong. I only got one photo of things and that was of the final product, shown below.

Little Red (T.J.'s XJ) - Page 5 20141110

I plan on mounting my power in the coming weeks as well. I'm torn between installing it on the front passenger side of the center console (well off the floor since I know now there's a leak somewhere) or on the trim panel opposite the axe and shovel. Both places have their pros and cons, I just need to weigh them all out and go from there.

I also think I've decided to go with a handheld CB unit for the Cherokee, as I really don't feel like drilling for the antenna and also figuring out where to mount the radio itself (as there really aren't any good places). I'm planning on going with the Cobra 38 WXST with magnetic antenna, i.e. the Cobra HH Road Trip. A handheld CB fits my multi-day hiking lifestyle as the unit I'm looking at has instant weather channels, and I can run the magnetic antenna on the roof during highway drives and on the hood on the trail if I felt like it. I've recently discovered the greatness that is Amazon Prime which is what I'll be using to pull the trigger on it.
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Post  Jake 11/11/2014, 10:48 am

Looks good!

I mounted my CB on the passenger side of the center console, just drilled right into the plastic. Admittedly it does steal a little bit of passenger leg room.
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Post  THOOPY3 11/11/2014, 1:14 pm

I considered the console area, but having already experienced a radio in the YJ that I can barely hear without the use of a speaker hanging near my head I determined it's just not the right location for me. Passenger leg room isn't a huge concern, but since this is a DD I'd like to conceal the CB like I did in the YJ (which thus sacrificed ability to hear it which I'll admit was poor planning) and there's just no real place to do that in this vehicle. I considered under the steering wheel but again that presents a problem with being able to hear comms. The 38 WXST should fit right in the cup holder and it's small enough that I may even be able to rig up a 'mount' next to the steering wheel for quick access and easy listening.
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Post  THOOPY3 11/13/2014, 9:49 am

I paid $74 for mine after tax with free two-day shipping using Amazon Prime. And it comes directly from Cobra so no dinking around with a possibly sketchy internet vendor. Technically what I bought is called the Road Trip, but that's just a 38 WXST packaged with a magnetic antenna (and the radio has 'ROAD TRIP' written on it instead of '38 WXST'). If you half the price you found at Wal-Mart (since that's for two of them) that's pretty much spot on with what I paid so that is a real good price, as Amazon had the best price I could find on it. It will be on my doorstep sometime tomorrow so I should be able to mess with it this weekend and test how well it functions.
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Post  THOOPY3 11/16/2014, 11:16 pm

Got a few small things done this weekend ahead of the club run next Saturday. The Cherokee hasn't had a resonator or rear-most exhaust hanger on it since before I bought it and that obviously needed to be addressed. So we went to AutoZone and grabbed some 2.25" straight pipe, clamps, and a cheapie universal hanger, and got down to business.

There was a good chunk of straight pipe left out back to clamp to, but the previous resonator had rotted away/broken right at the welded flange of it and the pipe and needed to be addressed. It took some massaging with a blade-type screwdriver and a hammer, and then about 10 minutes with a grinder to smooth out the weld beads and remaining bits. From there things were pretty straightforward as you might imagine, and the final result turned out pretty good. Obviously this fix was nothing special but the exhaust definitely has a better tone to it, and more importantly it isn't bouncing around after every bump. I plan on putting a full exhaust on it in the future so this $20 fix was really all I was looking to do at this point.

Little Red (T.J.'s XJ) - Page 5 20141112

Also got a chance to try out my new 38 WXST handheld CB. I tested out the range with the help of my father and the CB in the YJ. The range wasn't anything special; I'd estimate only about half a mile, but that's with iffy weather coming in and lots of obstacles in a suburban setting. Hopefully it will be a little bit better on the open road, and even if not the half-mile range will do just fine when wheeling. Very clear audio from it and a lot of good functions that I plan on using moving forward. For what it is and what I paid for it I'm happy with it so far.
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Post  THOOPY3 11/30/2014, 3:02 pm

Took care of two items of business this weekend: a failing TPS sensor which cropped up after last week's run and my non-functional windshield defroster. The TPS was plug and play, while the defrost issue was easy once I figured out the cause. And after taking my life in my hands Thanksgiving night and driving back in a snow/sleet/rain without any windshield defrost I was determined to get to the bottom of the problem.

I've had properly working heat and A/C on every function except for defrost, which would only come out strong on the window vents and produce basically nothing on the windshield vent. The first place I started looking weeks ago was the vacuum system, but having found nothing I then moved on to checking actuators. When all of the actuators checked out functional yet the system still wouldn't switch to defrost, I immediately began thinking that the defrost door itself might be the issue.

Fast forward to yesterday. I took the necessary dash panels off, removed the radio, and began getting to the bottom of what was going on. You could tell the defrost function itself was fine, because as soon as you switched the controls to defrost you could hear a door somewhere close followed by the sound of a tremendous amount of flowing air and a high whistle, except you only felt a small amount of air coming out of just the left side of the windshield vent. Driveway deduction: defrost door isn't opening fully if at all.

The defrost vent itself is easy to access and see from inside and on top of the dash, so that's where I focused my efforts. I could see the defrost actuator turning the arm for the defrost door, but again there was nothing actually happening during this process. The defrost vent was just wide enough for me to get my hand and arm down into, and doing this proved my hypothesis correct: the door was completely closed. My arm wasn't quite skinny enough to get the job of opening the door done so I enlisted the assistance of my smaller-armed girlfriend, and wouldn't you know she was able to push the door fully open and for the first time since owning the thing I had fully functional, high-speed windshield defrost.

Once the fix was established, I went about trying to figure out what exactly was going on. It seems that for whatever reason the door closes properly when you switch the settings from defrost to any setting but defrost, but the door will not re-open once you try to switch it back to defrost and must be done by hand. I'm guessing a rod is either unhooked or broken that attaches to the door and that's the root of the issue. The strange part is that the door stays open on its own once its pushed down, but as soon as you switch the setting it immediately comes back up (as it should) but will not switch back down.

Now, the proper solution for this is to tear the dash apart, replace whatever part is broken on the defrost door, and have a permanently fixed HVAC system. But because I don't have any plans to use the A/C in the winter, I have zero ambition to rip the dash part in the cold, and because defrost is so important this time of year, I'm opting to just keep the defrost permanently on. To try and ensure the door doesn't close after hitting a big bump or for any other reason, I jerry-rigged a coat hanger into the the defrost vent propped up against the defrost door that is getting the job done.

It's a total hack move but I'm so out of this world happy that I'll finally be able to see out of more than 15 percent of my windshield that I really couldn't care less. The only real downside is that the A/C compressor and clutch will be cycling non-stop all winter, but both of those have been (supposedly) recently replaced so they should hold up.
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Post  dongalonga 11/30/2014, 8:10 pm

This time of year no one will blame you for temporarily rigging something up.
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Post  CrawlingForward 12/11/2014, 11:09 pm

Hot damn you've been busy.
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Post  THOOPY3 1/18/2015, 3:29 pm

So it's been quiet on the Jeep front lately, but I do have a few things to report. I began to notice a heavy burnt coolant smell coming from the engine bay probably around the beginning of December, so as any reasonable person would do I began to hunt for a leak. I was unable to track anything down, but the smell was an itch I couldn't scratch so I made sure to keep an eye on levels. I was seeing small puddles of bright green fluid here and there, but I attributed those to my A/C compressor still possibly being overfilled.

I got a bit lazy following the club's 'final' run around the second week of December, and didn't really keep an eye on all the fluid levels like I normally do following an outing. Well on Christmas Eve my shitbox senses were tingling and I decided to take a peak under the hood. What I found was a completely empty overflow bottle, which of course caught my attention. Luckily the radiator was still full and I always keep an eye on the temp gauge and never had any scares there, so I filled the bottle and set out to track down the source.

By Christmas night the level in the overflow bottle had once again dropped, so I knew I had to get on this pronto. I feared a head gasket or worse (it is a junkyard motor after all), and was prepared for a nightmare scenario. After crawling around underneath the thing with my flashlight and following the trail of green, I found the source was the freeze plug closest to the front of the block. Crisis averted.

Following the discovery I had all the freeze plugs on the side of the block replaced with new metal ones (no rubber quick-fixes). All was good for the last week and a half until last night when I checked the level in the overflow bottle and it is once again down a little. After poking around a little today it seems the culprit is the upper house from the thermostat to the radiator. I could see a bit of pooling on top of the water pump itself, and some vaporized (dried white) trails of coolant on the thermostat housing, so it's again a relief that it's probably just a loose clamp.

I didn't have any sockets on me at the time that I discovered this, but tomorrow (as long as it's dry) I'll re-position and tighten the clamp (it's been changed from the factory style already) and see how things hold. My hypothesis as of now is that the clamp on the hose has actually been loose for quite some time, but because of the leaky freeze plug the pressure in the system was escaping from there and not the hose. Hopefully the worst case scenario is I have to replace the hose. I'm hoping this finally solves the mystery of my disappearing coolant, which has now spanned six months and two motors.

Aside from that saga, the only other Jeep-related stuff I've been up to is planning my budgets for the two Jeeps for 2015. It will ultimately be determined by my tax return, so everything is preliminary as of now. Originally I was going to sink money into skid plates and suspension components, but after further thought I've decided that the money I'm sinking into the Cherokee is to improve its street driving, gas mileage, and to equip it for mild off-roading (i.e. tow points and lighting) for trails like Henniker and Hooksett, and maybe the bypass trails at MaBell. I bought this to be my everyday driver and need to approach it as such  I do think the driver's side front axle bearing is cooked and thus the hub will need to be replaced, and I will address that once the weather gets warmer. Here's the list so far for the Cherokee:

-Skyjacker Hydro 7000 shocks
-Bosch 5277739 fuel injectors (four-hole vs. factory one-hole)
-Replacement steering box
-Trailer hitch
-Frame nutstrips (for hitch)
-Hella 500 driving light kit
-LED flood lights
-Rocker guards
-Rear wiper motor
-Axle and F/R driveshaft U-joints
-Timken hub assembly
-Solid front diff cover
THOOPY3
THOOPY3
Moab Dessert

Posts : 626
Join date : 2012-03-13
Age : 33
Location : Woburn, MA

http://sorrygonecamping.com

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