Lay down speed demon

I have a '88 Cherokee (duh) w/ a stock 4.0L, K& N Air Filter, High flow exhaust, 3inch lift 30 x 9.5 tires. The rest of the drivetrain is stock!
When I am going down the road (30mph) and I step on the gas, it takes off like a bat o' hell until I think it should up shift and instead it starts to pop and spit backfire and all kinds a stuff until I lift and step on it again. It takes off again just fine.. its just that when it tries to upshifts from 1st to 2nd. It just don't wanna! Any comment on what is going on and how to fix it!

Mine has done the same thing, once it was a loose plug cable, that sometimes made contact. Another time it was a really worn distributor, rotor had some serious play (in the gears).
The last time it was a weak spring (or not enough tension) in the EGR valve. It was opening to soon or at a low vacume. Caused bucking, missing and an occasion pop back through the throttle body. Unhooked the vacume line at the EGR valve, plugged it with a 1/4" fine thread bolt, 90% of the problem dissappeared. Easier than it sounds, took six months and some help from , to help me nail it down.
Vacume leaks have always got to be suspect, found the plug for the MAP sensor vacume, at the back of the thottle body, just flopping around on the manifold one day (can´t be good), put a dab of silicon on it, just to help some. Another time found a vacume leak at the hose running from the vacume canister, under the battery box (rotted).
Think I´M still loosing some vacume at the intake manifold and probably the brake booster (hisses at little at shut down and when braking really hard).
The better the vacume, the better she runs. The EGR (temp. repair) also changed my shift points, guess motor vacume has some kind if imput to the TCU, or so it seems.

That would explain some other things that are going on (HVAC problems that I suspect are vacuum related) I guess I know what I'll be doing this weekend! Thanks for helping w/ some direction!

Just park in a good parts store parking lot with a really good selection of hoses, T and Y connectors and adapters. Do them one at a time so none get mixed up. Suggest you relocate that vac blimp behind the bumper to somewhere in the engine compartment. Gonna need to do that anyway if you put on an aftermarket bumper...

Thats exactly what I am gunna do!