I am mostly on the ZJ forum, but my brother bought a 2,000 WJ last night and I may have to help him a bit to make his "bargain" a reliable rig.
It was a CL buy with no real inspection from myself or any other with experience with Jeeps in general. It was advertised as having a rebuilt motor and transmission, minimal rust, and some electrical issues including the need for a new battery.
I picked him up this morning and brought him to the sellers house to pick up his new Jeep. He had installed a new battery the night before. The starter barely rotated the motor. I hooked up the jumpers and it still didn't spin the motor well, but did start up. We agreed that I should follow him home. There were a couple of stalls at idle on the 6 mile trip, but he was able to restart it without a jump.
Forward to this afternoon I stopped by to see how things were going with the new(ish) rig were going. He said that the instruments weren't working right and that when he went down the road the speedometer was bouncing from zero to the peg.
I know that on my ZJs the grounds in the engine bay are important to how the electronics work.
I am sure that I missed one or two, but I did clean two grounds on the passenger fender, two on the engine block, and one from the block to the body. At this point the temp was mid teens and I was done working. I had my brother try and fire it up. It popped off immediately and went to a smooth idle.
He called me later and told me that on his next test drive all of the instrument panel was working fine including the speedometer. No stalls.
So far so good, I will be back with questions.
GW
P.S. Pics to follow.