gogmorgo

What does it sound like?

I have a hard time imagining you're not already heating the intake with the heat radiating directly off the exhaust right underneath, at least by the time the coolant is warm enough to do anything. I don't expect warm coolant is going to be doing a ton of cooling in the manifold either. If you're running a block heater it might help to pre-heat the intake a little to prevent fuel dropout on particularly cold starts, but I guess you'll never know until you try.

Ever cleaned out the neutral safety switch? Pretty common for it to cause a no-crank, and they usually just need disassembled and cleaned. You’ll likely need to correct whatever went down during the ignition switch replacement.

Oh yeah. For sure. There was a bit of a hiccup a few years back where people were thinking the ‘96- glass was unobtainium, but that’s not the case. 60-year-old glass is usually held in less permanently, just rubber gaskets and whatnot. Makes it a ton easier to get out without damage. But for cutting out glass you want to salvage, and I’ve said this enough recently even I find myself exhausting, the cutting string that goes the full circumference of the windsheild (à la Orange Bay) is definitely the way to go. Way less stress on the glass. I wouldn’t be impressed with a professional glass guy who showed up to salvage my windsheild with only the old knives. Even if I wasn’t trying to salvage anything, the string is also significantly less likely to damage the vehicle’s paint. Especially when cutting through rock-hard urethane. Yeah the old school guys have gotten really good with the knives, and they do work. But it’s pretty telling that they’d all rather try to squeeze more urethane into a leaking windsheild than cut it out entirely and start over.

Out of curiosity, what tools were used to attempt removing it? Up here even if a windsheild isn’t cracked, it’s usually pitted to heck. Not generally worth reusing most of the time.

Fan clutch is easy enough to test out. When the engine is cold (and off) you should be able to spin the fan by hand. When its hot, shut the engine off and it should be difficult if not impossible to turn by hand.

If reversed lines was the issue it would probably be more consistent. But that’s the other thing. Sometimes it starts and sometimes it doesn’t, what’s different about the times it does? Does it fire off right away or does it make you work for it? On the days it doesn’t start is it doing the same thing, you go through the same steps and it just doesn’t?

So sometimes it starts and sometimes it doesn’t? How does it run when it does start? If the fuel drains back from the line it can take a little bit to reprime it. More than a couple flips of the key at least. But I’ll reiterate on submersible fuel line. Regular fuel line is usually only fuel-friendly on a thin inner layer, with cheaper not so fuel-friendly material on the outside holding it together, and it degrades quickly when submerged. Even if it doesn’t fail completely it makes it hard for the clamps to hold it. But we could be barking up the wrong tree, we don’t know whether you have proper fuel pressure or not. Also, if you want it to run right you’re probably going to want to run more than one tank of gas through it a year. I would also be far happier running regular pump gas that’s coming from a tank that gets cycled regularly vs your high-dollar specialty gas that’s been sitting for who knows how long before you got it. And unless you’re somewhere really humid ethanol isn’t going to be much of a concern. Honestly it might be better because it’ll pull the condensation into the fuel instead of it sitting on the bottom of your tank until it rusts out. But if it starts and runs sometimes, the fuel in the tank isn’t going to get less garbage on its own for you. I also have been impressed with the 4.0’s ability to run on garbage fuel. Doesn’t really seem to care. Something else worth investigating once you’ve established you’ve got proper fuel pressure when it’s not starting for you is that the fuel injector timing is controlled by the cam sensor/distributor sync sensor. If the distributor is worn out and wobbling around it screws with the timing. I think cruiser54.com might have a test procedure for it as well, but I haven’t gone and looked.

Did you check pressure at the rail or just poke the valve? Simply having fuel doesn’t mean you’ve got enough volume at adequate pressure. The other question is how long it’s been sitting and what the fuel in the tank is like. Could be the filter or sock on the pump is plugged. I also get real suspicious of the fuel line between pump and sending unit when someone says they just replaced the pump. It’s very easy to compromise that piece, and if it gets replaced with non-submersible fuel line it’ll also cause problems.

The issue with going with square tubing is that the weld seam doesn't typically allow you to slide in a hitch. You can address that easily enough by filing it down… or you can just go down to your local hardware store, farm supply, wherever, and pick up an actual piece of receiver tube for $30 that has proper internal dimensions without a weld seam to grind down, that already has a hole drilled for a hitch pin and reinforcing piece on the end, etc. Going to 3/16” wall tubing like the OP was complaining about 13 years ago would make an 1/8” clearance that might make up for a weld seam inside the tubing. Seems like a logical money saving technique if it’s only intended as a recovery point and not for actual towing so it doesn’t matter if it’s a bit sloppy. But all of this is aside from the point. The assembled pictures show a receiver, and the first product question and answer confirms there is a receiver tube included in the diy kit. Which means you’re paying for it. Would be nice to know from someone who got the kit sometime more recently than 13 years ago if the receiver tubing you’re paying for is worth paying for before you paid for it.

Polar bears aren’t much of a concern on land, they’re mostly out hunting on the sea ice. Or so I’m told. But I’ll take the cold over the heat any day. You can always put more layers on, but you can only pull so many off. I’d missed that little detail. I don’t really know what sort of effect having the rear line blocked off would have, but I have a hard time imagining it would be good, at least if it’s been bled at all. If it’s bled completely then it would be trying to compress something incompressible. Probably not the case because the pedal would be rock hard once the MC passes the fill port. If there’s a lot of air in the line (or it’s just open) it would squeeze it down as far as the front cylinder allows it to travel. If it’s got somewhere between those two ends of the spectrum, I imagine it would squish the air until it can’t compress much further, which may not be allowing for the full stroke of the master cylinder, impeding proper front brake bleeding and performance.

How hard is it to slip your hand through the air? That’s about how hard it is to push air out of a thin tube. Having an upward loop in the lines shouldn’t be causing problems. Starting at step one, we know the master cylinder is pushing fluid? You can bench bleed on the truck with a short length of brake line running from the port back to reservoir. If it’s been pushing back and forth dry it’s possible the seals got damaged. Depending on the level of damage it’s possible the thing could hold just enough pressure to move it with no resistance to flow but not be able to put much pressure into the system with it closed. I’m a little skeptical of NPT fittings in a brake system. Spiral leak path, could potentially be causing problems although generally if air is going in fluid would also be coming out the same place. Being outside in any sort of cold while sick is the worst. I was just up in Resolute, Nunavut. For reference, it’s further north than the northernmost point of land in Alaska. Without much comment on temperatures, it’s gonna be at least three months yet before the ocean thaws enough for boats to get in. And there’s no trees to block the wind up there either. Laying underneath a truck in the snow to diagnose a 4x4 issue was… a time.

Different beach

If you can drive it for a bit, or even just sit idling, you might be able to get some codes off of it. The CEL will only be on during an active fault, but codes will be retained for 50 key cycles. I wouldn’t be concerned about burning out a starter. They’re usually good for a few thousand starts. What really kills them is low voltage during cranking due to a weak battery or poor connections.

If you can find a way to upload it somewhere, make a thread in the DIY section and link to it, and a moderator should be able to add it to the master list.

The eliminator style wheels have rivets around the outer edge. Those wheels still look to be in decent shape. Not particularly rare, but might still have value to someone. I've got a set of three in worse shape I haven't got rid of yet. Whether you'll get your money back over what you paid for them is tough to say.

We’re gonna need more info. If you’ve got no spark your ignition system is not functioning. If you got your ignition system functioning, then you would have spark. Do you mean you have spark but the engine still won’t fire?

Well yes. Sway bars keep axles parallel with the vehicle body. Disconnects are definitely a good idea if you want to run both off and on road. But in terms of cornering, if the body is rolling and you keep the rear axle parallel with it, you're going to lift the inside rear tire (possibly far enough to roll the vehicle), and the outside rear is going to be leaning over onto the sidewall, severely limiting traction. You don't want to run a rear bar if you've got nothing up front. But I do sometimes see people in groups for vehicles that came with two sway bars recommending removing the front and leaving the rear sway bar on the grounds it's generally stiffer and therefore has a bigger articulation benefit than removing the rear, with the mistaken belief it will still allow some roll control on-road. And it's terrible advice. You can't really use sweeping statements like "sway bars make understeer or oversteer" because it very much depends on how the suspension is set up. What they do is keep the axle parallel to the vehicle body, which in turn helps to control changes in suspension geometry as the vehicle body rolls, which goes a long way towards handling predictability.

^^^ I like this. Much cleaner. You can probably get specific caps for it too if you really wanted to.

I only know it’s a problem cause I’ve done it 😅

Under the downloads section

Aren't the license plate wires just a couple loose bullet connectors? The ones set up nicely for someone who knows enough to be dangerous to plug them together while trying to diagnose some other issue and immediate pop the fuse and not remember what they did and can't figure out why they can't keep taillight fuses in the thing?