lift goes on... now come the problems

I bought an 88 xj with 31x10.50 and a 3.5". I now have a huge vibration in the rear. I'm guessing that part if the lift but aslo part of the rear drive shaft pulling out of the tcase. I have the np242. Any suggestions? Second issue, the coolant overflow keeps blowing the cap off. Then if it stays on it overheats. Don't know what's up with that. Any help and suggestions would be nice.

You will probably need to shim the rear axle to at least 4* to start off with. Use steel shims. Also, I would try a new Tstat and flushing the system. An almost 20 yr old vehicle is bound to have some cooling problems if it was never taken care of. Also, how does the fan clutch feel if it has one?

regarding your coolant bottle - look at the inside of your hood right above where the cap is. I bet you will see ripped liner and scratched paint. Your hood is probably hitting the cap and breaking the threads on either the cap or the bottle. They are toast. Get yourself a new bottle and cap but before you install them, remove the mounting plate for the bottle and bend it down a bit so that the bottle sits lower in the engine compartment. Othewise the hood will just hit your new cap, pushing it down on your bottle and screw up your new ones. BTDT X2! before I realized what the prob was. Virtually every xj I have looked at has this problem.

I second fuzzydogs recomendaton.
your coolant bottle is not sealing, replace it and I bet your overheat goes away as well.
Don't forget that you need to burp the closed system. Park it on a steep hill, nose down. Pull the temp sender on the back of the head, cold engine.
pour coolant into the bottle until it comes out of the hole in the head. Replace temp sender, fill up the bottle halfway.

I've replaced the bottle cap and the tstat. The over heating stopped but now is blowing out white smoke on the freeway when accelerating and going up hill. Where do you buy just shims? Would a tcase lowering kit help the vib? Or is that more work than its worth? I think that the previous owner didn't install the rear aals. Should I buy some aals or just the leaf pack. (I eventually want to go up to a 6.5" la kit) skids come first.

I'd focus more on your cracked head or compromised cylinder head gasket before you start messin with the vibe stuff.

bcmaxx said:

I'd focus more on your cracked head or compromised cylinder head gasket before you start messin with the vibe stuff.

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X2 Sounds like a blown head gasket. Try a transfer case drop for the vibes.

Strictly.Offroad said:

I'm guessing that part if the lift but aslo part of the rear drive shaft pulling out of the tcase.

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its supposed to slide in and out of the t-case it accounts for the change in length of the driveshaft as the suspension compresses and extends.

Well I "bled" the cooling system and the smoking stopped. I'm going to flush it after my wedding. See if that helps a bit as well. As far as a tcase drop kit I've seen one by skyjacker for 40+ ship on quadratec. Are there any other ones that y'all recommend? Then for shims I've done some searching but seem to be missing a small degree shim. Where would I pick one up at? As for the rear aal or leaf pack. I've heard both sides of this argument but, if I go with a leaf pack I'd get a s10 or blazer leafs. Then the aal would be rough country or rusty's. Cheap for now then I want to upgrade to a 6.5" lift eventually. The 3.5" lift would get me the flex to learn how to crawl, bogg, and get stuck. probably more often than not.

Looking for as much advice (help) as I can get. I want to learn as much as possible but learning the hard way is not always the most fun.

Also if I'm going to crawling I've read a few posts about swaping axles. Should I save up some $$$ for a d44 f/r or build my current 30 and 35?

You can get a piece of solid square bar stock about 1.5" at home depot and drill the holes for the mount bolts. Install some longer bolts (you will have to remove two studs from the frame) and it's done for under $20. As for axles, what you should do depends on what kind of wheeling you plan to do. If you are gonna be doing hard core rock crawling then get some 44's or better. If you want to do light duty stuff then put good parts in your D30 and swap to a Chrysler 8.25 and you should be good to go.

Yea im gonna go with TC drop for the vibes. More info on your lift and componets would help tho.

spend a few days searching the forums and check out other websites like www.go.jeep-xj.info and others. Marcus's(GoJeep) site in my opinion is the best and he's a member here to. Best advice you can take is learn as much as you can about everything you want to do before you do it, then plan out what you want your jeep to be. This eliminates doing things 4 or 5 times.