Cato

I recently bought me a Jeep XJ 94 2.1 Diesel. It was totally unplanned, but the price was nice and the car is in very good condition, exept from a few minor details:
I bought it of a guy who had no clue whatsoever regarding tech, he told me that there was bad earth connections on the instruments, making most of the instruments not working, or at best working sporadically and not being very precise. Only thing working properly is fuel gauge and turbo gauge. Last night i removed the cluster, wich was surprisingly simple, and checked the wrap-a-round wonder of a circuit board, noticing most of the instrument attachment screws/connections had come undone slightly. I checked for corrosion and wear, but none found. I reconnected it to check, seems speedo is now good and stable, turbo gauge is more stable/correct and oil pressure seems ok at idle, gives readings off the scale at revs though, but that i can live with. The taco is still dead as a herring, this i can allso live with, but the temp gauge is allso dead, wich i considder critical. So i investigated and found that my engine most likely is a replacement, possibly not originally built into a Jeep, probably some french freaky car, Renault Espace i suspect. It is the same PSA J8S engine, but some things are different, like the temperature sensor in the engine close to the thermostat housing, the original cable to the temp sensor, purple and yellow was hidden and just hanging with half the sensor attached to it on the side of the engine. The sensor in place is different and has thre connections, i am guessing earth plus feed and output. It is allso bigger than oem chrysler sensor, however this is manageable and i can just produce a brass adaptor to make oem part fit again. However, the tachmeter wich is not working is a bigger problem, i tried to find schematics for the 2.1 td engine but am so far unsuccessful, i have no idea whatsoever where the tacho gets it signal and how to troubleshoot it. Aftermarket tachometers for Diesel are cheap, approx 20 $, but they are smaller than the huge oem one. Anyone knows how to check to locate the problem? cato, Norway

Cato

Since no one seems to know anything anywhere about my Jeep Diesel wonder i will post whatever info i gather here to try to help other lost Diesel driven souls. Today i replaced the whole instrument cluster with one from a 1995 2,5 TDI Jeep, since i "fixed the old one" it has gotten mechanical trouble, it worked good for a few trips, then got worse, the old "raging-fist-to-the-dash-trick" suddenly stopped working. So i just drove a couple of hundred miles and bought myself a nice OEM jack, handbook, 4 near new spiked 235x75r15 winter tires and the instrument cluster from this nice guy who had bought a car all rusted through and decided to sell it for parts to reduce his loss. Anyway, the clusters, they are not identical, in the lower right corner there is a volt-meter instead of my turbo pressure gauge. However, the wiring on the printed circuit board handles all the connections, and the connector on the back is the same, so now: no turbo gauge, but working voltmeter instead. The tacho is still dead, and after some investigation and reasoning, (it is kind of obvious) since the car was shipped to Lithuania(!) for a engine swap, they most likely used a Renault espace 2 engine, wich are pretty common in salvage yards in, well pretty much the whole of Europe since they are crap. They did not connect the temp gauge since it does not fit, the Espace set up is with a completely different sensor, and of course the tachometer is allso connected differently on the Espace, so need to find the circuit on the jeep wich supplies the tachometer with its signal. In the only wiring diagram i have found, it says it is connected to the "tach circuit", i used to be pretty firm in my believes that tachos got their signal from the coil, or for Diesels get their signal either from the "W" on the alternator or from a magnet attached to the flywheel, none of wich seems to be the case for the Jeep XJ 2.1 Diesel. Soo, i could really need some Diesel-electric input from someone about just now. Could it be that the OBD 1 thingy somehow produces a signal for the tacho? Pondering on this problem, i am getting close to giving up and just produce a workaround for the whole problem by replacing the instruments inners with standard gauges and just move the fronts from the Jeep ones on to the replacement ones and be done with it. Jeep XJ both Diesel and petrol editions are easy to find, both complete cars for parts, or cheap driveable specimens.

cruiser54

Reason being is that most members are from the USA. We only had a 2.1 diesel XJ for 2 years. I think 85 and 86. No XJ diesels after that.

salad

Yeah Renault 2.1 diesel is apparently junk. Only suggestions I'd have is that since it's a Renault build they might share a few things in common with the Renix 4.0L gasser... specifically really bad grounds

Cato

I can understand that, i would prefer to have a gasoline engine if i could, but since 1 liter of gasoline costs 2 US Dollars and 1 liter of Diesel about 1,5 Dollars and mileage is much better for Diesels it is pretty obvious we Europeans would choose Diesel. What do you pay for a liter of gasoline anyway?

Cato

It seems all the instruments on XJ´s are made by mitsubishi. They are practically identical to the ones on 80´s Pajero or Montero, actually me engine is working pretty good, no oil consumption to speak of, runs evenly and is strong in its favourite rpm area as with all older Diesels. Parts are easy to come by as many are sold with high mileage and eventually killed by rust. Seems the engine is not the problem as on the VM motori pre 1996.

Big David

In the ATL the average is $0.92 US.

Jamie57

Lucky bugger. Here in Canada it's been hovering around $1.20-1.30 a litre.

salad

Interesting, I had assumed you'd find Renault and Bendix on everything!

May I ask what country you're in?

And same price for diesel too

Cato

I live in Norway. The engine is used in many cars, but in general French cars are killed by badgers in the wiring, so they are problematic second hand cars. Easier for me to scavenge parts of Jeeps from 94 than newer renaults, since they are compacted and recycled years ago. Since i am a total newbie to American cars i am not to familiar with Bendix. All though extremely many american cars are found in Norway, like mustangs and Oldsmobiles ,Caddys, they are mostly the families extra "sunday car". In my family we have a 68 mustang conv, a 1970 Oldsmobile 442 Custom conv, and a 1962 Ford Galaxy 500 Xl with stick, and we are no bunch of freaks. So i guess i better get with the program.