Dozer11B

Haha- sounds good. I'm gonna have to do a motor swap on both- think the Wartoad will get the swap first while the Killpig puts me around. All that is about a year off though.

Well the weather was kinda crappy today, so all really did was drill out the broken rivet on the seat bracket and bolt it back together with a grade 8 bolt. I put the seat back in (I'll be buying a new seat soon!), and replaced my beat up tailgate with a net. I also finished the 13 ball shift knob. I'll get a photo of that later. Still needs some refinement..... I did get these in the mail today: Brand new from Edelbrock for $175 guys...... Get some if you are keeping your 2.8L......... I need to do the front brakes and istall the longer brake lines (front and rear), put in the rear aal from Hell Creek, mount a shift boot from some small foriegn pick up in the JY, clean the floor pan up (probably won't patch the holes until after deployment :( ). Also gonna change the diff fluids as well as the trans and tcase fluids.

Haha- yeah I got it out- after I swaed most of it out, I beat it the rest of the way out and when it gave, it didn't go down in the cylinder. I grabbed it with needle nose pliers. The weather was kinda crappy today (drizzling) and so I limited myself to stuff that didn't involve the hood being up. I'll pull the plugs tomorrow and run some anti sieze in there.

replied!

Oh yeah hornbrod- I'm gonna go pick some up tomorrow and pull them all out and apply some to each. This was a big PITA.

Nice truck- great start on it. Now you got plenty of stuff to keep you busy! I've been on leave for the past week so I've spent pretty much every day tinkering with mine...... Loads of fun! Good luck and have a blast.

OK so now that I have defeated the spark plug (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=23283), I will post up the other stuff that I had been doing while waiting for these like PB blaster to take effect.......... I pulled the interior. From the passenger side: Passenger side holes: Driver's side: Driver's Side hole: Rear of cab: Seat bracket studs are good, but seat bracket needs to be fixed or replaced. I also did the cut and fold in the rear fenders to get a little bit more clearance. I started this by removing these four inner mud flaps: Then I set to wire wheeling the inside of the fenderwells. I also used rust-converting primer on some of the bare/rusty spots in there. The brown is just old undercoating It was still black- the lighting is just wierd I guess. I figured leave the stuff that is sticking alone- more is better : Next I used a cutoff wheel on my angle grinder to radius cut the wheel well. You obviously want to cut in between the pinch welds... Some of my cuts were too long- damned grinder jumped on me: Here is an idea of how much more clearance you can get- I had already trimmed the wheel wells a bit: I then beat the notches in with a small ball peen hammer and a three pound sledge: I used a flap disc on the anglegrinder to sand down the chipped areas of the paint. I followed that with some primer and undercoated the entire wheel well and lip on the wheel well: If I could do this mod again, I would have used body sealer before primer and undercoat. I listened to the guy at the auto parts store when he told me "oh undercoat will be thick enough". Lesson learned. I'm not too worried- eventually I will either tub the wels out or remove the bed altogether. Also started a small tool box from an ammo can from work: Not sure if I want to mount it in the bed permanently or make it a grab and go affair. I sanded it down to bare metal with the wire wheel and prmered it black. It got too dark for a good pic so I'll take one tomorrow to letyou see ow it came out....... Have fun and be safe. Thanks for looking!

Hey thanks Jim. I appreciate all the advice from everyone here too. I think this was just an extreme case of neglected spark plugs where extreme measures were called for.

So this is what it looked like: The arrow denotes up in the first shot. So I got a hold of my buddy and explained the situation, and what all I had done to try and break this thing free. He told me to get a small hacksaw blade that will fit inside the hole and saw it out from the inside out. I bought some "midget" hacksaw blades from Home Depot, snapped them in half, and pinched them in needle nose vise grips: So I sawed in two spots about a quarter of an inch apart and eventually I was able to hammer that piece out with a screwdriver: The I sawed another spot opposite of the chunk I took out. After sawing partway through (which left a weak spot in the rest of it), I beat a screwdriver in around the remainder of the spark plug until it loosened up and I could run it out with the EZ out: Then I used this to vacuum the area around the hole as well as down into the cylinder: It is an attachment on the wife's Kirby. I had a piece of rubber hose that I put o there and ran down into the cylinder. I also bumped the cylinder to the top to vacuum that. When I thought I was good, I left the plug out and ran it a couple of times for 10-15 secind each to clear anything else out. This was killing me as I spent nearly a week working on this (I did keep busy with other projects when I couldn't make forward progress on this issue). I really hope this helps someone who may end up in a situation like this.

nevermind- didn't look at it close enough to realize what it is. Gonna need a whole seat.

Hey Threesons thanks. I'll give it a shot. Stay tuned.........

Seems the more I pull this thing apart, the more issues come up......lol. My driver's side seat bracket popped the rivet at the front left and the rear left hole is FUBAR, so I'm looking for the whole driver's side bracket. Also looking for the slide adjustment return spring. Passenger side is gone which means it rocks back and forth under acceleration and braking- FUN! Anyone got anything??

Hey Big Alpha- good to see you over here. We've talked on NAXJA. What ratio would you reccommend for that formula?? I'm gonna have to give that a shot if this overnight soak doesn't help. I've made progess in busting the rust crud out from around the remainder of the plug, we'll see how this overnight soak in PB does.

This is the portion that is stuck in: So if you notice the portion UNDER the threads is what I am tyrying to break loose at this point. It looks to be pretty well rusted in there and that is the stuff I am soaking/cleaning around/prying on/torching. I am gonna try torching then the PB to shrink it. It seems soaking it has made it easier to bust some of the crud loose. This will be a trial in patience for sure.

Oh also got the arched MJ leaves in from Tom at Hell Creek. I've been hitting all the hardware on the rear suspension with PB blaster the past two days in prep for the installation. They have great customer service and he's quick. If you don't hear from me by phone Tom, thanks again! :clapping:

Wouldn't be the firt time an LT stepped in it, huh?? That's one of those good ole stories from way back when....... Well today I made minor progress. First I met a major setback. Snapped an EZ-out off in there, but we bumped it out with the engine pretty easily. Got the torch to it then, and between PB blaster and then torching I may have backed it out a hair. Either that or I cleaned the rusted crud around it. Been placing screwdrivers in there and tapping and prying...... I'm letting it soak in PB again overnight to let it seep into more of the rust crud since I am not close to the threads yet.

Alright- EZ out and pb hasn't worked so far. Gonna get a small torch and try to heat it up......... :brows:

The wheel was $32 and the adater kit was $25 at O'Reilly's. Not sure what kind f auto parts stores you guys got up north. Crappy thing is I don't have tilt and the smaller diameter wheel blocks my view of the speedo now........ Not that big a deal, I guess.

Haha- thanks Jacked. I just bought this truck about a week or so ago. You should see te exhaust manifolds......... Shouldn't be too much fun to swap out when my edelbrock headers get here :mad:

Well I was changing the plugs and wires today, and I got to the #3 plug and it was in there tight. I eventually broke it loose,but it also broke the sparkplug. Here's the post in the tech section: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=23283 Before all this I got a pair of these from O'Reilly's: I also dug up my old 13 ball I've been lugging around my military career fo the last 9 or so years: Should make a cool shift knob. I did get a tach installed last night as well: And my buddy came over yesterday with his buffer and some rubbing compound. I also used a flap disc on the angle grinder to clean up some of the flaking paint and rust. Then I used rust converting primer on it: Thanks for looking.

Here's what I'm working with: Obviously the one on the right.........

Hey guys looks like the threads on the spark plug for #3 cylinder was seized in the head. When I tried to take it out, it snapped and I got the plug out except for the thraded portion. Any ideas on how to get this out without removing the head???

LOL- yeah my buddy tells me to go for a 4.3L GM in both of my Jeeps. Not sure what I will swap in when the time comes........ May save enough cash to go crazy with one of them....... :banana: Thanks for the heads up Rob.

Alright so we made some progress. Installed a Gant steering wheel: Got the 3 inch RE coils up front and tires on: We made these batt cables the other day. I forgot to take pics of the old terminals and cables. The cabl;es were bare wire about 1/3 of the way up from the starter...... Ugh. Here they are installed: Also sprayed a bunch of the PO's back 40 from underneath the 'Pig. That should make it easier to get at stuff. I got a hold of Tom at Hell Creek today and ordered an MJ add a leaf that he is gonna arch an extra 2 inches and ship out tomorrow. Great guy and great prices. I'll be back for sure for this truck and for my XJ in the future. Thanks Tom! Also waiting on a set of ceramic coated Edelbrock headers from their online store (part number 68802) found here: http://store.edelbrock.com/jeep-3.aspx These are for the 2.8L V6 and are marked down from $767.95 to $174.87. I'm guessing because no one messes with these wimpy V6 motors too much. My maniolds are shot and I was having a hard time finding replacements I would trust, so I said what the hell. We shall see.......... Going to O'Reilly's tomorrow for a bunch of tune-up stuff. Shouldn't be anything too fancy to report there. Thanks for looking and wish me luck!!

Thought you guys might like that pic Dakal. Think I had bad venting at the valve cover. PO had the PCV ports routed wierd.... Thanks for the support 87!