"Readers come to this forum because they are smart enough to stay away from others.

SD "



I'll second that. I stumbled upon this forum about 3 years now, ever since I picked up my 99 XJ, and I have to say I was appalled at some of the ôadviceö on what would improve or repair, fill in the blank, this site is far the best place I have found to get honest advice or what actually does and does not work, from people who have actual experience. Not trying to say anyone involved in this thread doesnÆt have experience, just merely stating this site is a wealth of info. And I hope I have been able to help some with some of my posts as well. I will say I am not a factory trained tech, or even a vehicle designer, I am a Mechanical Engineer, and I have been turning wrenches, tinkering on things, and fixing most everything that was fixable and many things that werenÆt, since I figured out how to walk. Ok a slight exaggeration, but you get my point. My first question is always why, followed by howÆs that work, and I can usually figure it out, and I donÆt understand why others canÆt, but thatÆs my problem. And by stating I was an engineer I was only qualifying I do understand my limits of what I am able to do with my current education and diagnostic and repair tooling.

SD you bring up a great point, that I just realized reading your post; because itÆs not the way my mind works.
ôExample of a stupid and costly mis diag...
Post: I went in for a smog/emissions test and failed, I have a 4.0 XJ and it failed on CO.
The first most common response is O2 sensor and others chime in a say yup O2 fixed mine.
Next are the bunch who say...gotta be the cat, I put a new cat on mine and it passed.

Then the come to a forum like this one...where Jim and I say...what year is the jeep, have you checked for codes?
Then ask a series of questions like...how many miles, recent repairs or maintenance?
It often ends up with telling the poster that we recomend taking it to a shop for a proper diag/repair.ö

In my mind they guy has already checked codes and done the basic tune up, filters, plugs, cap, rotor, etc., but you are probably right, he probably would have gone straight to the shop to the keyboard, in hopes of the quick fix, willing to spend a few bucks.


Marty does make a good point too, if these parts are interchangeable, equally as functional, comparable in cost, and if they have a longer service life, in the life cycle of the vehicle maintenance costs will be reduced if parts last longer. It just has to be clearly stated what the actual benefit is. The longer service life, so money saved. Properly maintained both sound to perform equally as well. I cannot speak to this first had, I am just rewording what was said about the 2 options, with a different perspective, Life Cycle Cost. Something I deal with at work all the time, ugh.

But the key to this entire thread was what the guy asked in the first place.
ôI read somewhere that you can increase power by putting on a high output coil,like MSD,putting an adapter on top of the Distributor Cap and change some wires around.ö
This I can speak to first hand, I put the Jeggs equivalent of the MSD Blaster 2 coil on my Æ79 F150, and some Accel 8.0mm wires, they were yellow and looked cool, (my truck is yellow too) and I needed wires and plugs anyway, so I figured why not upgrade, and the coil I think was around 16 bucks and I had heard the same, more spark, wider gap, more complete burn, more power. Seemed logical to me, but I felt no performance change what so ever. And the only reason I was changing the wires was because they looked like hell, the boots had tears, and it would miss a little if I splashed through too big of a puddle, but for the most part it ran great. They only thing that was fixed with these aftermarket parts was the slight miss with the big puddle, but that would have been solved with new stock wires too.

My philosophy now is, stock vehicle, stock (fill in your favorite parts house or repair shop) parts. Personally I prefer to get the made in America part when I can find them, which usually means they cost a little more, and I prefer to get the heavier duty brakes, and the biggest battery I can fit. For the most part you have to look at the vehicle as a system that has to work together and the parts have to be properly matched to perform properly. For a completely obscure example, but one that I think everyone would understand. Would one ever connect a fire hose to house garden faucet? Obviously not, the house wont flow enough water to fill the hose.

Anyway just my 2 cents when I am stuck awake at 1:00 am. This has been an interesting read by the way.

Cheers

Sean