AZJeff

Quoted for posterity.

MEK is gonna take paint off of anything it touches, and may be harmful to the phenolic resin PS pump pulley. Acetone would be the best choice. Soap and water and a toothbrush will also clean the grooves in serpentine belts of any silicone residues, and won’t hurt any plastics or paint.

That is WAY too loose for a 4.0 belt. That engine/belt routing requires an ungodly amount of tension to not slip, so such so that it does not deflect hardly at all with manual testing. placing silicone on a serpentine belt is a bad idea, for reasons mentioned previously. Now you have contaminated the belt AND the PULLEYS with that stuff. You need to get a new belt and, before installing it, get the silicone off the pulleys with generous amounts of brake cleaner an a toothbrush in the grooves of each pulley. (Silicone tends to migrate every wear, and it’s not easy to remove completely.)

The definitive test for a bad booster is this: 1. Engine OFF. Pump brake pedal until it is rock hard. 2. While keeping brake pedal DEPRESSED FIRMLY, start the engine. 3. If the pedal “sinks” somewhat as engine vacuum is established, booster is working normally.

Agreed. Given the small price difference compared to added output, the alternator with the biggest output that will fit is always the best choice. Side benefits such as faster battery recharging are also realized with this choice.

Harbor Freight (among others) sell infrared temperature sensing “guns”that have a built in laser pointer. Warm up your engine, and make sure the heater control valve is open to allow full coolant flow into the heater core. Using the temperature gun I described above, point the laser at each of the two nipples of the heater core. The difference between the inlet and outlet should be relatively small. If one side is much lower than the other, that’s a clue that your heater core is plugged. Whether flushing both directions will alleviate the low heat is totally dependent on what sort of crud is blocking the core🙁

“Not needed” does not mean “not beneficial”. Even if all it does is make the next gasket removal job easier, it’s worth the small effort to add a film of RTV before installation.

If Oxgard is not available, dielectric grease (or plain old silicone grease) is quite effective in sealing out moisture and oxygen at the microscopic level where the electrical connection is actually made. I use this on ALL electrical connectors under the hood where the environment is less than benign.

Agreed. I ALWAYS use RTV on water pump, thermostat, and timing chain cover gaskets. The thin film helps seal any irregularities in the surfaces, and makes gasket removal MUCH easier if the job needs to done again for any reason.

That’s kinda hard to do with an in-line pushrod engine. You would basically have to revamp the design to OHC to make room for the exhaust ports/runners.

If you are replacing “front suspension parts”, the stuff you posted (with the exception of the track bar in the first picture) is all steering linkage stuff. You make no mention of installing new control arms and/or control arm bushings. if you are going to the trouble and expense of steering linkage, ball joints, and track bar, the control arms are a small cost adder at that point, and well worth the added scratch. The advice about avoiding “kits”, and using reputable brands such as Moog, purchased from competent on-line vendors like Rock-Auto, is also worth heeding. Nothing is more aggravating thank going through the effort of installing parts that turn out to be junk in short order.

When I took engineering mechanics classes in college (a million years ago), we never discussed other variants of six cylinder engines beyond those used in ground transportation. The focus was on vibration and balance, as land transport devices will convey that vibration to operators/passengers. The straight six auto/truck engines have the added benefit of being balanced in both the primary shaking force, AND the secondary (harmonic) shaking force, thus making them very pleasant on passengers. I wonder why they use an alternative order for marine applications?

That’s interesting. I owned an E-type at one time, and don’t know if it applied to that model or not. Leave it to the English to go their own way with things automotive.🥴

I checked before I posted to be sure it was not a 2.5L. I guess I did not check carefully enough

The firing order on EVERY straight six in the entire WORLD is 1-5-3-6-2-4. unless the distributor is loose and turns, timing shouldn’t ever go out of wack

That’s a real possibility. I am going to try to remove the broken stub from the converter, and get a machinist I know to make a repair to this piece, since I don’t think it’s available as an item unto itself. And buying a new (reman) torque converter just to fix this piece is sort of extreme.

Yeah, as a retired mech engineer, I recognized that something is amiss to cause that failure. So that pilot piece is threaded into that hole in the converter?

Yup. That’s the part. I have already removed the flexplate from the old engine, and saw no cracks. I am going to see if I can pull the broken part from the torque converter to study the failure mode here.

I pulled my old 4.0 engine in preparation of installing my newly rebuilt short block, and when I decoupled the engine from the torque converter on the AW-4, I found a strange piece located where the pilot bearing would be found on a stick shift engine. The piece is question has large flange that is inserted into the counterbore in the crankshaft in the same location where a pilot bearing would be found if the engine was connected to a manual transmission clutch. The other end of these piece has a small pilot stub that engages a hole in the front of the torque converter. This piece appears to be broken off flush in the front of the torque converter. I have not attempted to remove it yet, so I don't know if it's a press fit into the converter or not. The end that went to the crankshaft is loose enough that it fell out when the engine was lifted from the vehicle. WHAT IS THIS PART? I do not see it in the shop manuals I have for the XJ. I have seen it in YouTube videos of removing an AW-4, but nobody mentions if it's a loose fit or a tight fit into the torque converter, or if it's part of the torque converter assembly, or a separate piece. Wisdom and advice needed from those who have swapped engines or transmissions as separate items. I guess an even more pertinent question would be: is this part required? What happens if I leave it out? Will concentricity between the crankshaft and torque converter be reduced/lost?

Those bearings are TERRIBLE for having been run for such a short time. That engine has serious issues that won’t be fixed by throwing a couple of quick parts at it. The wiping of the shells down to the copper layer implies SERIOUS wear, and all the bearings have significant dirt/foreign material scratching, which screws up oil pressure. oddly enough, the two main journals that are visible look like they might be able to be polished smooth. If you want this MJ to run reliably, I would start looking for a good used engine, or consider taking this one out and having a machine shop go through it from top to bottom. By doing that, the shop can fix all the stuff that is trashing those bearing shells and causing the weird oil geyser issues.

Wait a second. Your answer raises questions. 1. How do you measure the crank main journals in the car? You need to drop the crank to get the micrometer on the widest part of the journal, and that’s not easy in the car. 2. Thrust bearings don’t create shavings for no good reason. Did you check the thrust surfaces on the crank for scoring, etc.? Did you measure crank end play with the new thrust bearing installed? Was the thrust bearing damaged during installation? Did you remove the bearing to examine for damage to it and/or the thrust surfaces on the crank? 3. If you have “shavings” that entered the oil passages, they are all over the engine after it was run, and just cleaning the journals isn’t going to remove all that stuff that is floating around the oil system. Can you post a photo of these “shavings” (with something for scale) and describe exactly what locations in which you found these shavings.

Your issues are more than just a bearing that is a bit loose. (BTW, is that #3 rod, or #3 main bearing you are referencing?). If it’s a rod, it should be making a ton of racket when running if it’s as loose as you describe. Additionally, a loose bearing can cause journal surface damage that would need to be addressed before slapping an undersized set of bearing shells in a given journal, so some careful inspection of that journal is warranted. In addition, your description of streams of oil coming out of the pushrods/rockers would not be explained by this loose bearing. In fact, if anything, a loose crank bearing, be it a rod or a main, would cause more oil to leak out around that journal, and thus LESSEN the amount of oil getting to the lifters, and in turn, less oil being pumped up the pushrods. Further, have you done a DETAILED visual inspection of ALL the bearing shells and crank journals to try and find the source of the “metal shavings” you reported in your post on Sunday? BTW, what do the lobes on the camshaft look like? You need to roll the cam around and study them carefully with a flashlight for sights of pitting, scoring, etc. They may be a source of metal shavings.

Oil blowing out of the fill cap would be due to crankcase pressurization. Oil geysers from the pushrods would imply some serious blockage in the oil delivery system to the crankshaft, resulting in most of the oil going to the lifters, who, in turn, pump it up to the rocker gallery. Did you clean out all the cross-drilled holes in the crank that feed from the mains to the rods? Did you also make sure all the feed holes from the main oil galley that feeds the mains was clean?

I would advocate for using a Reflex manifold gasket in lieu of the regular Fel-pro. The Remflex is more tolerant of sealing the juncture of the manifold and head.

Agreed. The rod itself only really has contact with the rubber dust boot, which provides almost no friction. The piston and its seals in the mast. cyl. bore, however, will drag massively if the bore or piston are corroded.