AnotherOldJeepGuy

I don't know that I hit WOT, but for sure went that direction. And you are correct this is extremely rare. I just tightened the top manifold bolts, they were just a bit loose. I was surprised they had worked loose so quickly. Just put up on stands to try and snug the lowers just in case. Tightening the tops ones didn't fix anything, but who knows. I did clean the IAC back in Feb, 2025 but I'd much rather check into cleaning that again before taking on major gaskets. For what it's worth, when I cleaned it back in 2025 it did improve my stalling at that time.

I have not witnessed the tiny bit of smoke again since I originally saw it in the parking lot.

Yes it will start and still cycles from very rough to less rough but for the moment it can manage to stay running. I watched what I think is the EGR valve and I see the little shaft moving with the RPMs and the hose looks the same as they normally do as best I can tell (I have not removed them). I tried spraying [edit: with water]where the manifold connects, months back I did have to tighten them, but since the engine is already cycling I can't tell if the water is doing anything, but I don't think it is. I'm going to try checking them for tightness again after the engine cools off. The elephant in the room, or the elephants, are the head and manifold gaskets. So I am hoping it's not an elephant.

Literally....

The MAF line got me when I did my new VC gasket a few months back, I have loosened it from one end to get it out of the way and forgot to put it back, and the engine was way rough, but that lesson learned was applied today as the first thing I checked and it is connected

I have looked, and I will look again, but how would an acceleration break a hose???

I don't have a youtube account or any cloud storage, I believe this is the file. Whether or not anyone can play it is another hurdle.. IMG_2771.HEIC

On my way back to the house today I made a quick/hard acceleration followed by a quick decel into a parking lot. This immediately messed up something, rough running through parking lot. At parked it idled very rough then after trying to maintain for a minute or so it just stalled. Restart and rpms slowly cycle from a bit higher than normal to very low/rough. It managed to not stall but the cycling continued. I managed to make it home by keeping the RPMs up manually at a stop. While driving at city street speeds of 30-40 it seems to be running without issue although I didn't try any accel, just took it easy to get home. Looking around I don't see any hose that came loose. There's nothing dripping anywhere. While I as in the parking lot I thought I could see a very tiny amount of smoke in the vicinity of the yellow area in the pic below, very faint. And now at home I don't see this at all. I took a short video so the sound could be heard, I'll add it if I can figure out how to do that, so far I have not had any luck getting a video file off my phone so odds are I won't get that today either. What could have happened directly related to a quick accel/decel to result in killing my idle???

I thought I might try to tap in down if/when I pull the oil pan, I'd have better access at that point.

Did you put any details of this mod here somewhere? The plastic hoses below going to the left were new 6 months ago when I replaced valve cover gasket and also the hard plastic line at the back of the VC, and I have no idea where this crud is coming from. Maybe I need your mod!

I am currently battling oil leaks, but I snapped this pic today what I was under there. I can't remember having the transmission worked on, and I don't have any transmission issue that I know of. Also this has been here a while. Nothing is gushing out! I hunted it down in the parts list files, #24 "Spacer" Since I can't tell this is causing any trouble, is there any reason to try and fix this other than "just because it's bent"? I assume a spacer pretty much has to be between two things, and that seems to suggest you have to take those two things apart to get the spacer out to try and flatten it, and I don't know that those two thing would be things I want to pull apart for a cosmetic repair!

Oh BTW @pizzaman09 I didn't intend to hijack your post! But the topic seems to still apply, or at least it is closely related

It also looks like my drain plug might be leaking. Perhaps a new washer is needed.

I got under there today to look around. It definitely looks like I have a leak at the front of the oil pan. I don't know if one can tell at this point, I certainly can't, if the leak is pan gasket, RMS or both. I also looked around at what else might be in the way, and I see hard lines actually anchored to some bolts that otherwise appear to hold the pan in place. Didn't trace them good enough to be sure what they are yet, but they will for sure be in the way.

Please post how the job goes, difficulties, lessons learned, etc and even pics, cause I need to install one too....

Makes sense!

It's not obvious [to me] that there is anything special about the old nut, but it was very hard to remove and seemed to remain tight all the way until it was within a turn or two of coming off. Any nutty experts here that can say for certain just by looking if this is or is not a lock nut? And the plot thickens, I do know for a fact that the new top nuts that came with the new Mevotech links were lock nuts, the nylon insert type.

Well the more I look the farther down the rabbit hole I go! I would have never dreamed how much of a research project this would turn into for a stinkin bolt! Rabbit Hole #1 I put my digital caliper to work trying to measure how much thread I need to make sure the threaded part goes at least partially into the hole so that the nut can be tightened / torqued. It looks like any bolt with an un-threaded part (shoulder) longer than about 37mm would expose some of the shoulder, meaning you could not tighten it. The original bolt measures 70mm, but it was fully threaded so this rabbit hole doesn't come in to play for the original or any other fully threaded bolt. The full thread class 8.8 bolt I put in before knowing about this rabbit hole is 65mm long and that total length looks good, but 5mm less than that starts to look too short. Meaning I need something 65mm or longer. A bit further down the rabbit hole on bolt specs and it seems that any length from 65mm up has a MIN thread LENGTH spec of 30mm (based on Bolt Depot and Bolt Barn info), so that means the MAX length of the shoulder is [spec-ed length] - 30mm (MIN length). There is also a transition area identified between the non-threaded area and the threaded area but I don't see numbers spec-ed for that so I have to allow for that in the answer. So rabbit hole 1 of 2 concludes that the only size of a shouldered bolt that works is a 65mm. Rabbit Hole #2 The M12-1.75 bolts I see online seem to be paired with lock nuts, although the don't look like lock nuts to me because I am used to seeing a filler of some type in the nut, nylon I think, to turn the nut into a lock nut. The nut I took off had no such filling, so are there lock nuts that don't have this filling, and, do I need a lock nut?

Mine were also fully threaded originals but too damaged to reuse. I like your opinion that a non-threaded part inside the sleeve is less destructive. I looked at boxy jeep link but I didn't find a listing just for these bolts, but I'll try a direct contact and see what happens.

Anyone used this online bolt seller? Looks legit. I am assuming that a certain amount of unthreaded length is OK as long as it is fully inside the link body?

Thanks for the update. Sounds like the PITA description may be pretty accurate . Makes a successful repair all that more rewarding though!

Good luck!

Definitely the first test! I didn't realize the relays were socketed.

If you have a volt meter you can check the voltage at the bulb connector with the bulb removed. On my harness there are blue, white and black wires at the bulb connector. The black is ground. I don't remember if white is high and blue is low, or the other way around. But with high beam selected (the setting that is working) one of these will be 12V and the other be less than 1 volt. Switch to low beam and which every was 12V at high will drop, and the other should read 12V. If you don't find 12V at the other wire when low is selected you know that the problem is in the wiring or the switch or the relay that has that same color wire. If on the other hand you do get 12V on the other color when you switch into low beam position, that would suggest the bulb itself has failed and you need a new bulb. If you are lucky that is the problem and the fix, it will take more debug to figure out if the problem is the relay or the switch or the wiring itself if it is not the bulb.

Sounds like quite a challenge, good luck! Will be interesting to see how it turns out. I may have to try my hand at tindercad...