Well Jake has been having clutch and trans issues, so he, automan, and I swapped my spare ax15 4x trans in today. I hate to see him having troubles with his MJ because he's a good kid, so I made him a great deal on the complete conversion…he's just getting a new job so he'll pay when he can afford to (not too worried, like I said he's a good kid) Anyways, things did not go as planned…. but it runs and drives, and the clutch works. His clutch issues were that the slave cylinder leaked, and the master cylinder was just plain WRONG for the jeep. wrong bore and stroke…the P.O. actually extended the push rod for it. the pukey came out with no real issues. fluids came out a nice creamy white after that was out, we discovered that virtually none of the original pilot bearing was left. We also discovered that it has a new clutch (newish), and that the transmission had most likely been swapped in from a 2x XJ. the trans we installed is a '93 4x4 xj ax15. the input shaft in the pilot bearing area was .750"…or 3/4". the old one was .50", or 1/2". the new pilot bearing (bronze bushing) had the same OD of 1.05", or 1 and 1/16"…however, the inside was 5/8". So, we set out to find a different bushing that would work and have the proper ID for the new trans. having tried two different parts stores, and a hardware store, we had no luck…so out came the drill. unfortunately my drill press is dead, so we had to do it by hand…it's not perfect, but we sanded it out a bit and it will at least get him by for a long while until we can find an external slave setup. After that, we installed the new pilot bushing…the old one came out almost too easy with the slide hammer. new one went in well with the proper pilot bushing tool. having had no issues thus far, we went out for beer and burgers @ Freds bar and grille in b-town. after lunch we went back, got the trans prepped, 4x4 shifter in, and body side linkage bracket in… and installed it all. got it all bolted up with the rear driveshaft in, and hooked up the slave then bled it out…around this time (with much swearing), the slave blew (or so we thought). so…it all had to come back out. dropped it all down (didn't take more than a half hour or two haha), and inspected the slave. The slave itself hadn't blown…but the lines going into the slave had blown because they only had one O-ring each (they need two). Not willing to chance more issues, we hooked the slave to an extra master I had and mounted it to a pedal assembly I had laying around…then retained the slave using a ball joint press. bench bled it out and locked down the bleeder and tried as hard as we could to blow out the slave. It held, so it all went back in. at this point, we had the trans in, and we needed to halfarss fix the exhaust before the x-member went in. got that together (with a trans mount….something jake's jeep was unfamiliar with previously), then put the x-member in. Conveniently, the 4x ax15 relocated the x-member back to previously unused bolts, so it went in easy. then bolted on the starter and driveshaft. It's convenient that I just converted my brother's '88 LWB/ax15/4.0 to metric tonne…gave me the proper driveshaft to get Jake's jeep driveable. Then we had to run to my friend zach's house, where I'm building another comanche for him that's going to be auto….and nabbed his old unused master cylinder. Bled the clutch (feels AWESOME) and tested everything out…it moved the rear wheels, so that's all that mattered at the point. BTW, the CPS was an interesting issue…this thing had the factory CPS repair kit put in at some point…From what I know of it, there's an issue in the factory loom and this was the recall repair…we couldn't remember which connector the CPS was hooked to previously but it was 50/50 so no harm no foul. then drained trans and t-case fluids, refilled, bolted in the shifter, and put the seat back in (had to remove to lift the carpet to get the 4x part bolted to the trans tunnel). buttoned everything up, test drove it, and it works GREAT. unfortunately, I didn't have time to pull the rear end from zach's parts jeep to get matching d35 rear just to get the 4x4 working. so, right now, it's still 2wd. We left out the front driveshaft at the moment. I'll be preparing All in all it was a hectic day. Between parental issues (I work on things in my dad's shop, which my mom thinks she's paying the bills for…yeah, right ) with my mother, insults from her to me, rob, jake, and our jeeps, and the fact that we had to drop the trans twice and reinstall it twice, plus the hackjob that the P.O. did with jake's rear light harness as well as the clutch system…well, it was just not fun. We got started @ 10ish AM and didn't get done until close to midnight. oh well… Anyways, it runs and drives, his clutch system is operating @ 100%, and he has tail lights now. We'll get the 8.25 ready for it soon and swap it in, along with new shocks and finish installing the center console. oh, and jake now has functioning interior lights too, so he doesn't have to guess what the jeep is doing @ night now oh. and yes, we reused the E-torx top bolts. had no issues with them whatsoever.

Next weekend goes in the rear axle, rear leafs, shocks and a few minor thing and it all set

Another Story

Got 'er done. Turned out to be a bad master with an internal leak. Well, not only that, but the LOVELY P.O. of Jake's truck needs a long chat with my fist. We have found so much hillbilly stuff on this thing, and the more we work on it, the more we find. So anywho, here's the how we fixed Jakes truck:

8AM, Jake shows up at my place, and we head out for Pats. Get to pats, get it in, and jack it up…

(Let me just say that Pat seems to be the MJ epicenter of the US… Seems like all of his friends have at least 2 or 3, and they always pop in and out.)

After getting it jacked up, and doing some parts shopping in Pat's barns, we got everything we thought we needed, and set on taking everything apart. Got the shaft out, the crossmember, and the trans out… Went pretty smooth, and we were feeling good. We got to the pilot bearing, and saw it was T.O.A.S.T. to begin with… Used to be a pin bearing style, now just empty and wallowed out… Looks like the clutch was almost new too… I have no idea who would do one and not the other. Also, upon dropping the trans, we noticed that the slave was leaking… Hmm. That's a problem. Jake got the 2 pilot bearings (one '79 CJ 304, one '90 MJ AX15). Neither worked. The CJ was at least a bronze bushing, and the OD was right. We decided to make a parts run to locate the right bearing, and get some lunch. 

After finding no luck, and filling up on lunch, we came back, and just drilled out the bushing to the correct ID in the shop. Fit good, and we smoothed out the drill marks with some emery. We picked the best of Pat's slaves he had laying around, bolted the bellhousing on the AX15, and found the proper crossmember. We got the clutch back in, everything in except the last few things, and wanted to test/bleed the system. We were pumping, and it still wasn't making any pressure… Then, Pat noticed fluid coming out of the bell housing. Bad Slave. So we took everything back down to find the lines into the slave leaking… After closer inspection, found the other slaves to have 2 o-rings on the lines, while this one only had one on each and felt loose. Got that all together, found a pedal assembly in the barn, with a master, and hooked it up in the vice, and held the slave with a ball joint press. No leaks, hard pressure. Then we noticed something goofy with the master in jakes truck. The rod was welded and extended at some point. Not right… And still not making pressure… So after a run to a friends house to grab a master out of his project MJ, back in business. Got everything in, bled, and shaft in (luckily Pats bro had just swapped his D/S out because of a metric ton swap so there was his old one) and got it all together… Pulled it out of the shop, and went on a test drive with great success. Jake says it feels like a new truck, and completely different Jeep. Even went as far as to say that without Pat and I, he would have sold it a long time ago. 

Long story short, the root problem was the master, the minor problem was the slave, and the known problem was the peugot.