pizzaman09

From an engineering standpoint, those pins should only be utilized for alignment of the pressure plate to the flywheel. The torque should be transmitted through the friction between the pressure plate flange and flywheel when the bolts are tight. Assuming the bolts locate the pressure well, then there shouldn't be any issue. I'd be a bit worried about it being perfectly centered from a balance standpoint.

Did you actually put a wrench on the manifold bolts? It also might not hurt to check the head bolts. If there is any leak in the exhaust system before the O2 sensor it can do stuff like you are describing.

Awesome truck and awesome story! I've had a car from my grandparents on both sides of the family. My Oldsmobile was my first car, given to me by my grandparents, it served me well for 17 years and I always kept it waxed and polished as my Grandpa did. Sadly the underside succumbed to rust beyond repair. The other is my Austin Healey Sprite, been in the family since 73 and I hope to keep it forever, lots to fix up just like your truck.

Trying to make my new to me 97 BMW M3 sedan drivable. It is an amazing car with a 6 speed manual transmission swap (has an overdrive gear unlike the factory 5 speeds). Unfortunately the whole drive line needs help. Driveshaft U joints and flex disc were shot. Also has an awful lightweight flywheel and heavy dual plate clutch. The clutch hydraulics don't have enough oomph to disengage the clutch fully all the time. It was owned by a young guy that bought it as his first car, he had it on historic plates and didn't maintain it. It was far from road legal.

I managed to fix my oil fill cap leak on my 1990 by applying more vacuum to the rear port. This was accomplished by up sizing the vacuum line to 1/4" and drilling out the orifice that plugs into the rear head port. I no longer have oil on my filter and no oil leaks out of the vale cover, everything internal to the valve cover is stock 1990. The reason you have oil leaking is that there is more pressure in the crankcase than outside. Adding vacuum fixes this.

It's been well done. I wonder if it has any other XJ elements to it.

Agreed, I replaced my stock linkage with one like above, it allows for much better shifts of the transfer case.

Making some more progress on the power side of the snow blower. We have put together 32kWh of grid storage LiFe cells. There are four identical packs running 16 series and 2 parallel on the cells. We procured an EG4 12000XP off grid inverter to charge the batteries and act as a home backup power supply running off of these batteries. There will be two identical 20hp brushed DC 48 volt motors driving the blower via V-belts.

There is no tow rating that I'm aware of. It would not be legal for me to tow anything with it on the road in PA on the antique plate anyway. I've towed several things with it on private property and it works great at low speeds. First gear is a granny gear so it's super easy to maneuver around.

An outside temperature readout would have been nice.

I went around the block a couple times with the coolant pressure bottle on my Renix 4.0L. The original bottle had a leak at the side hose barb. First bottle from Rock Auto had a pinhole leak at the center tank seam. Second bottle from Rock Auto also had a leak from the center tank seam. Third bottle, a Dorman 603-300 ordered off Amazon didn't leak but the cap didn't hold enough pressure. So I swapped the factory original cap onto it and it now holds pressure perfectly and doesn't overheat.

This is looking amazing. Where did you get a new shifter rubber a dust cap from? That's on my list of need to do.

Check to see if the manifold header bolts are tight where the exhaust and intake bolt to the head. That can cause all sorts of weird idle issues.

I believe you'll need to source one, I saw on a recent post that there are three different versions depending on year.

Based on the license plate number that was registered in PA somewhere around 2017-2018 as it's one series after the PA plate I have on my MJ. That one appears to be crusty but has some nice options. The price seems good considering the options, you are definitely correct it's 2026 and prices are up.