Dropping Gas Tank?

I was reading the FSM and it says you can remove the fuel pump/sending unit without dropping the gas tank. I was wondering why people drop the tank, does it make it easier, save time? Looks like it would come right out.

Depends which years. The pre-97 XJs, the fuel pump is on the front of the tank. No pulling necessary. The post-97 XJs, the pump is on the top and only accessible if you drop the tank or cut a hole in the floor and access it from the top. They're easy to drop, just did one a few weeks back.

Nice, yea, I've dropped many gas tanks on 4x4/cars. Thinking it was one of the quirks of a Cherokee.

depending on what your doing dropping the tank is sometimes easier or necessary.

Have dropped the tank out of late model XJs more than once. An easy task if the tank is near empty...

Really, it just the hose connections to the filler, the wiring and two straps. As the late model tank is plastic, it weighs next to nothing.

One of the easiest tasks. If I may inquire, why is this necessary? Fuel level sender?

Replacing a good fuel pump. Still magically quits and then restarts.

Had the exact same issue with the '97 I had. The fuel pump would quit whilst on the highway. Then, after a few tens of seconds, come back on. What made it interesting to diagnose was that the PCM seemingly does not care what the fuel pump is up to. No Monitors assigned to this, obviously, insignificant part...

Sarcasm aside, the failure is not all that common. All told, it took maybe an hour and a half to drop the tank, replace the pump assembly and re-install. Not difficult, just a tad time consuming.

It would be nice though... If Chrysler had bothered to include a fuel pressure monitor as do other manufacturers.

There's sadly no real way to monitor the fuel pump, since it's driven by a relay and there's no fuel pressure sensor. You could add a pressure sensor pretty easily though, just not sure where to splice it into the harness and you'd need to modify the ECU firmware to recognize it.

Tanks are easy to drop as long as the bolts aren't rusted into solid balls of gunk. Use brakleen and a wire brush to clean the threads off south of the nut, it's a 9/16 nut, get yourself a 9/16 flex head gearwrench and you'll thank me later.

Got everything reinstalled without dropping the tank. The rubber cone that goes into the tank reserve was left there on the first fuel pump change by the PO. I have some really large hands so couldn't get one in the tank to feel around. My Son on the other hand (some pun) has a more normal size hand and felt around and found the rubber cone. And getting those 2 notches to line up....took my Son 1 minute.

Before my Son got the cone out I was trying to get the skid plate off. For those who want to know it's a 18mm not 19.