Jeep Strokers

SilverXJ wrote: Also, since one of the power seat motors died last time it was sitting I'm looking in to replacing the power seat trck with a manual to lower the seat height. I'm 6'2" and my head is about 1" away from the roof and the manual seat rails are quite a bit lower. I just hope they have enough angle for me on the seat bottom.

FWIW My 88 with manual seats (Laredo package) had an adjustable seat base angle. Something ranging from almost straight legs (I'm 5'8") to feeling like knees in my chin.
I know the 97+ has a different mounting pattern on the floor pan so this may be of exactly zero to you.

yeah, from a post on Naxja it seems that the 97+ manual seats don't have a rake adjustment.

IMHO the AMC/JEEP era -95 seats are far superior in both fit/finish and comfort over anything DCX put out in the XJ.
The leather limited seats in my 94 sport have over 350K miles on them (250K in a 1988 and 100k in this one) and are just now starting to wear.

I agree there. I had a 91 XJ that was 10 years old and had 200,000 mile on it when I totaled it. The seats looked like they had only ~30,000 miles wear on them. they held up very well and had much more lateral support than my 00 XJ seats in orginal form. However, I actually don't think the leather in my 00 Xj is that bad. Its a bit softer than my 91, and it shows a few more creases but over all it isn't bad... and its not nearly as bad as the leather in my mother's 2004 WJ.

If I had a 96+ XJ GIVEN to me the first item of business would be to put -95 seats in it (even if I had to break out the welder and catch it on fire)

I though about that but its very hard to find a set of black. dark grey pre 95 seats in good condition. I also thought about going with another seat like a recarro or from another car that had better support but that is $$$

Isky finally contacted my machine shop and they agreed to send me a new cam and issue a call tag for the old one. That was 3 weeks ago. The old cam is still sitting there and I haven't received a new cam yet. Called Isky last week and they said the cam is done and they would ship it out that week and resend the call tag. No cam and no call tag yet.

One the seats... yeah... about that... the manual brackets don't offer any height change over the electrics.. but they do offer a lot more bracket material to cut and weld back together.

I'm also working on revising the transmission cooler install so the hose don't have any sharp bends or kinks or other goofy stuff. Also adding a transmission filter and using AN fittings.

The new block needs a slight line hone, but it should be coming back to the machine shop soon.

Looks like I will be installing the engine in the dead of winter... once again.

I finally received the cam from Isky on Wednesday of last week.

That was one of my biggest issues with Isky, it takes forever to get them to do anything. You just have to stay on top of them.

It pisses me off. I was working with Ron, who is supposedly an owner of the company. I think he may have returned my numerous phone calls all of two times. If I actually waited for him to call me back I wouldn't even have had a cam from them. The whole way he handled this was not very professional. I thought Isky was suppose to be a top notch company. I don't think I will be using them again. Maybe I should have talked to Engle more.. or just got a $1200 cam from Performance Research Inc.

Well, the cam checked out perfect this time. I'm going to call ISKY and let them know... maybe in two months though, just to keep up with their time line.

This new block was sent off for a line hone. I found out today that it was actually sent back to the company that did the line hone as it wasn't perfect. Their response was 'that it was still in spec and they didn't know they were doing a racing block'... wtf? The racing customers get better service? So it was sent back and they fixed it.

I was a the machine shop and I ran a tap through all the bolt holes to clean the threads, Interestingly none of the engine block bolts are metric. The water pump, timing cover large , oil dipstick, oil pan large, oil pump, engine mounts, block grounding, and distributor hold down were all 5/16"-18. The engine bracket mounts, A/C mount, steering pump bracket mounts, and upper transmission mounts were 3/8"-16. The majority of the oil pan bolts, and timing cover are 1/4"-20

All the important stuff that gets bolted to the block is american, anything that gets bolted on to the stuff bolted to the block is metric. At least thats what I have found from working on my heep way too much.

I never put that much thought into it, but I just assumed the block stuff was a mix of metric and american. It wasn't until I needed to find the correct taps that I needed to find out the correct sizes.

I would be using a different machinist. Those cam bearing failures were not an oiling issue.

The verdict is still out on what the hell happened. First the Comp Cam loses its lobes, while the cam bearings are fine. This was after a break in to the 'T'. Replaced it with the Isky, which promptly eats the bearings and spins one. While the lobes are unharmed, although one lifter stopped spinning.. probably from garbage in the oil. Nothing else was found wrong with the block. He checked the cam and found run out it in, which was hashed over with Isky (been meaning to call them since they received the cam and get their opinion). However, when I installed the Isky cam it spun freely in its bearings, and I didn't think to have it checked by the machinist.

SilverXJ wrote:The verdict is still out on what the hell happened. First the Comp Cam loses its lobes, while the cam bearings are fine. This was after a break in to the 'T'. Replaced it with the Isky, which promptly eats the bearings and spins one. While the lobes are unharmed, although one lifter stopped spinning.. probably from garbage in the oil. Nothing else was found wrong with the block. He checked the cam and found run out it in, which was hashed over with Isky (been meaning to call them since they received the cam and get their opinion). However, when I installed the Isky cam it spun freely in its bearings, and I didn't think to have it checked by the machinist.

We disagree on how to/why to check lifter preload. Lets agree to disagree for the moment.

Did you check to make sure the pushrods were not able to bottom out in the lifters, using a method similar to the one I describe elsewhere on this site?

Yes, I was sure both times that the lifters weren't bottomed out. I always go through and push the rocker arms down after they are torqued sown and set sure everything is seated correctly and nothing feels funny. I have adjustable rocker arms so adjusting the preload with those are so easy it would be hard to screw it up. I'm not eve sure if they have enough safe adjustablity to even bottom a lifter out.

The machine shop finally finished the engine today. New block, new bearings, new cam, new lifters, rebuild rockers. I reused the crank, rods, piston, pushrods and head. Haven't done much besides pull it out of the trunk of the ZJ, put it on the stand and threw a coat of paint on it. 40* out today, so I don't know how well that paint will stick or last. I also don't know when I will be able to get it running as its still cold out. I should have it assembled tomorrow I think. Transmission lines and cooler have been reworked so hopefully that will take care of the knocking sound from the bell housing. If the engine doesn't last this time I'm going to give the XJ the Jewish lightning treatment. I'm definitely not as excited as I was the first time I got the block from the machine shop.