RockRodHooligan

Curious why you guys decided to run the front brake lines like that?

In other news, I've been emailing M.O.R.E. and Brown Dog about block brackets. Both of them say that they have what I need. For the complete bracket and motor mount, BD is about $75 cheeper, has free shipping, and a 10% discount through JF, but MOREs brackets hit more bolt bosses(7/8 vs BDs 6/7), and don't come in that ugly yellow. Here is what I've been able to work out, MORE is willing to sell me their block bracket just tacked together for a discounted price, making them a good bit cheeper than the BD ones. This also allows me to cut tacks and easily modify the bracket if need be. Although getting the motor mounts from MORE would wash any savings made by welding the brackets myself, so I will be going to BD for the motor mounts, I'll just have to sand blast the yellow off and repaint them before they go on the Jeep. In all, it will save me about $40 from buying everything from BD, and $115 from MORE.

Spent a little time working on the head tonight. I've been putzing around with this head on and off for maybe a year and a half, I have about 60% of the intake and exhaust ports gasket matched and roughed in, as well as several of the combustion chambers roughed in. I finally got the #1-2 cylinder intake ports about 90% finished tonight, down to the final polishing. Stock intake port Ported and polished Image Not Found I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the roof of the bowl, there is a pretty hard turn at the back of the port at the turn down into the combustion chamber. With all of the material I removed from the valve guide, it makes the turn a lot more noticeable. Air doesn't like to make hard turns like that, really slows down air flow. A common way to take care of something like this is to use an epoxy putty to build the area up, and then grind into a more flow friendly shape. Not sure if I really want to bother with it though. Slow air means Peak torque will come on sooner, Why? Peak torque happens when an engine reaches it's peak volumetric efficiency. The most effective description I have been given was like this: You have two horse troughs, one filled with water and one empty, take a bucket and start taking water from one trough and putting it into the other, each trip you make go a little faster. Your peak volumetric efficiency is when you are going so fast you start spilling water when going from one trough to the other. On an engine it's when, during the intake stroke, the cylinder is no longer getting completely filled when the intake valve closes. There is a fine line on making power, Volume makes Torque, Velocity makes Horse Power. Large ports will deliver a lot of air at low RPM, but as RPMs increase, the air is moving too slow to keep up with the speed that the piston is moving. A smaller port won't deliver as much air at low RPM, but as RPMs increase, a smaller port can pull air through faster(think drinking through a 1/4" dia. straw, VS a 1/8" dia. straw), fast moving air carries more velocity. So when the piston reaches Bottom Dead Center, a large volume port will not have anything pulling more air through, but a high velocity port will have enough speed to keep moving air into the cylinder after BDC, all the way up until the intake valve closes. Make sense?

Yeah, I've helped a buddy of mine put the Brown Dog engine brackets on his '05 TJ, and then put Super Brackets on when a couple of the passenger side bolts broke, leaving one bolt holding everything in. I strongly recommended upgrading them since he didn't know how long he had been driving on it like that, and that bolt boss was surely fatigued. Stock 4.2 stroke. Right now I have about $900 into it for the crank, cam, timing set, and pistons, and it was $140 to thermo blast the block and head. The block was free, he just wanted it out of his way. The head and connecting rods came from an engine I bought for $150, then I turned around and sold the crank, oil pump, and A/C compressor for about $400, I'm not counting the head and rods as a cost or money made. I have not bought the rest of the valvetrain yet, I'm going to buy all that and my ARP hardware once we figure out what will work best. As far as the oil pump and all of my gaskets, I work at O'Reilly and get all of that stuff for a great discount, but I will try and keep somewhat of a running total as things progress. Been there already, like I said above, when I had started gathering parts I had planed on this being a fuel injected motor and was going to run E85. The Keith Black UEM-IC944-060 piston has a 21cc dish, I was looking at around 9.6:1 compression with those. I went with the UEM-IC945-060 pistons with about a 10cc dish, I'm looking at about 11:1 compression. Based on rule-of-thumb mathematics, educated guesstimate on power is about 335 hp and 400 lbs/ft. When I say "rule-of-thumb", I mean the rule of thumb calculations for compression (on a naturally aspirated V8) is: For every one point of compression you go up, thats good for about 60 hp, for a 6 cylinder that'd be about 45 hp. With the 21cc dish K-B pistons I was looking at about 270 hp/335 lbs/ft so with almost a 1.5 bump in compression, my numbers sound about right.

That is awesome news, I've been trying to figure out how I was going to pull that off, no way this motor is going in with the stock engine brackets after seeing two blocks go to scrap because of broken bolt bosses. The first being the engine that donated my 0331 head. Was figuring I would have to either make my own, or call up M.O.R.E., Brown Dog, or Liquid Metal Industries and see if I could get them to send me somewhat of a DIY kit.

Block and head just got back from being thermo blasted today, stripped the entire thing down to the bare cast iron. This should make working on it a lot more enjoyable, especially with how sludged up the block was. Spent part of class going through and tapping all of the bolt holes out, this will make it a lot easier to assemble, and ensure I don't get any false torque readings from boogered up threads.

I guess I could have chosen a few different parts to make this a little easier on myself when it comes time to installing the engine in my Jeep, and being able to figure out how I'm going to run all of my accessories once it's all in, but I guess that's what makes it custom. Here is the run down: 99 or 00 WJ 4.0 block 04 TJ TUPY revised 0331 head 4.0 connecting rods AMC 258/CJ7 4.2L crank Keith Black forged pistions- IC945-060- .060 over with 10.80cc dish COMP Cams 68-232-4 Cam COMP Cams High Energy Timing Chain Set - 3219 Mopar Performance 0.043" Head Gasket - P4529242 Clifford carburated 4.0L intake manifold GotPropane.com conversion kit I decided to go with the 99+ Wj/00+ TJ block originally because I had intended on building this for a 00+ TJ, but plans changed. I decided to stick with it for several reasons, ease of installation was not one of them. For starters, it was free. It had been swapped because the previous owner had failed to change the oil for quite some time, causing sludge build up, so bad that eventually it spun the #1 rod bearing due to lack of oil. It had enough miles on it that the block is close to whats called a seasoned block. After several years/miles of being heated up and cooled off, an engine will shift and distort as molecules realign themselves through a slow heat treat process, causing parts to not quite line up as perfectly as the day everything was machined. Lots of engine builders prefer old, high mileage engine blocks over a brand new one, for this very reason, believing after you go through and bore it out, deck it, and line hone it, you are not going to have any more movement since they are starting with a block that has already been heat treated, and everything has settled. The 99+ WJ and 00+TJ blocks are a little different than the earlier style, and has a lot thicker castings around the cam shaft to fix a problem with the cams shaking themselves apart at high RPMs(higher than most factory 4.0s will ever see, but none the less), and have thicker cylinder walls, able to support up to .080 over, safely. Both may not be needed, but better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. I wanted the head because, despite how everyone says the older heads flow better, I like the late model exhaust headers better, and since I'm doing all the port work myself, I'm confident I can open the exhaust ports up enough to make them flow similar numbers to the older heads. That and the head only has 13,000 miles on it. Yes I know that goes against the logic of using a seasoned block, but this way I don't have to have a bunch of machine work done, and if it gives me any problems, I'll just upgrade to a Hesco aluminum head. Why Propane? Originally I wanted to build this motor to put in a 00+ TJ with the coil ignition, and run it on E85, but I decided to build a Comanche instead. Well the Comanche has the old RENIX FI system, and I'm not a fan of it, too many quirks, and I still don't like that it has an EGR valve. I could do a HO swap and update everything to OBD 1 or 2, but then I would have to cut and splice wiring(I hate wiring!), and I would still have to fight a computer tuning the engine. With Propane, I pull out all of the computer controlled stuff and bring it all back to a carbureted style setup, using a propane injector in place of a carb. Clean, plain, simple, easy to work on, easy to tune, and for as little as this will be driven over long distances, it will work for me. Now for the pics: The donor block #1 rod journal Sluge build up in the timing cover The oil filter 4.2L Crank I was really trying to get a crank from a carburated YJ, since they have the short snout, but due to a mix up at the shop I bought it from, didn't have one to sell me, so they threw in the spacer for free. Keith Black forged goodness

Sounds like you got the same idea I did, interested in seeing how you like it.

I carefully pried them apart, tried using a heat gun at first and that didn't go quite so well, cold seemed to work better. I haven't glued them back together yet, still working on them. There was buffed by had mostly before I finally sucked it up and bought the Maguires kit. I ran into a small problem trying to finish one of the lenses, after buffing them most of the way, I decided it would be a good idea to clear coat them for a nice protective coat. something interacted wrong and the clear coat cracked like crazy that first coat. So I'm going to have to sand that one back down and try again, the other one has been wet sanded with 2000 grit only. I'm just going to spray it like that, no buffing, tried it on a test part first this time, worked a lot better. I'll post up some pics of them when I finish this time. Now for the lighting: Halogen reverse lights I played around with one of the lights I screwed up trying to pull them apart, and tweaked the socket hole to fit a 3157 light socket(like used on the 97+ XJs) since I was planning on rewiring the whole truck anyway, and we had 3157 LED bulbs in stock, but after a little digging I found that there are also 1156 LED replacement bulbs by Jam Strait, we just don't stock them, so rather than having to completely change the wiring and socket, I'll be ordering the 1156 LED bulbs. Now if anyone does want to go though the trouble of using the 3157 bulb, this is all you have to do to make them work in the tail light housing Just elongate the notch just counter clockwise to the locking clip

Thursday I start working full time at 4Wheel Parts full time as a salesman, and continue working part time at O'Reilly Auto Parts on my days off. I will be buying a lot of parts over the next few months, then quit O'Reilly some time early spring and start assembling the Jeep this summer hopefully.

I have a couple pairs of tail lights, from my MJ and the new donor bed, that I was going to sell off, and decided to try and clean them up a bit first to get a little extra money out of them. My OCD got the best of me and I took it a lot farther than I had planed. Was just going to wash them off and buff up the lenses, but there was a lot of junk and dirt inside the lenses, and they seemed to be just a little dull to me. So I got to looking at them and figured it wouldn't be too hard to split the lense from the housing, scrub it all down real well and hit the inside of the housing with some good 'ol Kentucky Chrome spray paint, and then glue it all back together nice and tight, and make it a lot more water resistant than it was from the factory. I started to use the Turtle Wax headlight restoration kit on them, after a few hours sanding on one light I figured that it was taking WAY too long, and broke down and goit the Meguires kit. Once I got that far I decided to open it up and clean everything inside. After getting the first one open, I decided to give a second one a shot, that one didn't come apart nearly as easily, and I trashed the housing. So I grabbed another one that the lense was in pretty bad shape and split it open to make one good one. Both opened up with a fresh coat of some Kentucky Chrome. Here is a compairison of old/new I still need to finnish buffing them, and I'll clear coat the lenses for protection before I glue them back together. I really like how they have turned out, so much I think I'm going to hold on to them and use them on the truck for a little while and show it off without bed armor while the truck is all new and shiny and I'm making my shake down runs, then pull the lights and put corner armor on before take it out and really beat on the truck. Just to do something a little extra, and make use of the new clean lenses, I'll be working on fitting it for LED turn signals and halogen reverse lights at work tomorrow, stay tuned.

Not going to use the WJ fan, just the pump in combination with the Durango stearing box. I'll be running a Taurus fan.

Wow, very similar to what I'm doing right now. LWB shortening to SWB, with a short bed that I'm going to bob about a foot out of. 44/9" with a 4.7L stroker, 97+ front end swap, and Grabber Blue paint. Digging the rig, keep it up!

As for the power steering pump, it's technically for a 02(?)-04 V8 WJ, but the pump is also listed for the SRT-10 Viper and Ram, and the WJ pump is available with the reservoir, the Viper is not. Just call it a Viper pump to peak peoples attention. But yes, it does put out more volume. The later generation of the WJs used a hydraulic fan, ran off of the power steering pump. It's a direct bolt in save for a few changes to the lines, there is an extra return line from the fan.

My Earls clutch line pictured above is for sale, has been installed, but the truck has never been driven since it was installed. Pressurized maybe a hand full of times, but the clutch m/c was bad, so never fully pressurized I guess. $30 +shipping

Haven't started work on the housing yet, waiting to get started till I have the truss, then I will have the housing sand blasted so I can have a nice clean surface to weld to. This is how it welds up

After getting some bad news about my Dad last week, it's pushed me to find the time/money to go up to my Dads more often, using the Jeep as a chance to work with my Dad, this may be my last chance to build one of my projects with him. So I was up at his house the last two days working on the Jeep getting what I could done. I took a tip from you TJ guys and your fading flares to restore the cab vents 'Cept I used a heat gun Now for what I really got done the last couple days: Got the drivers side carpet pulled up to get a good look at just how bad the rust was. I was a bit surprised at the difference in the MJs "frame" compered to the XJs. It looks like the MJs "rails" are fully boxed, unlike the XJs that use the floor pan to box the frame in. Brake booster, master cylinder, and all the brake lines up to the axles pulled, got the clutch master cylinder and clutch line out, fuel lines and gas tank pulled, and the bed has been completely unbolted, I just need more hands to move it. The left overs:

89 LWB, 4.0, BA10/5, 2WD, D35= 60"

I grabbed the taillights with the bed, and I don't think I'm going to use them. I was going to grab the rear bumper and cargo light but I was running low on cash, bill added up quick with the bed, gate, and lights. I'll try and go back when I get some more cash.

I had one made by Earls Performance Plumbing here locally, charged me a few bucks more than AZ wants for theirs. I'll be using Earls for all my lines on my build, all custom made locally.

Don't feel too bad you are looking at probably the busiest yard in central Indiana, they rotate stock a lot so a lot of it was for their benefit. The rear bumper is in almost as good of shape as the bed, well except the dent I put in top of the passenger side when I stood the bed on end trying to get it onto the cart. I was going to grad it to resale until I saw that I had done that, but I think you may have talked me into grabbing it today when I go pick up the bed. I doubt the light(or switch) is going to be useable, with the light being as high as it is, I bet it saw a damned good amount of heat, but I'll have to take a look a that too.

Grabbed a short bed today. Came from this poor guy Very much rust free, definitely NOT from Indiana. This truck was in really great shape before it burned, I'm considering building it as a trailer. I grabbed the tailgate too, since it was in great shape also. Got a few pics of the bottom of the new bed to show off just how great of a find it was

89 MJ Eliminator 2WD, BA10/5, Dana 35, SWB 12/88 Indianapolis, IN - Pick A Part Smells like the PO was a smoker, IDK? Very much rust free, definitely NOT from Indiana. This truck was in really great shape before it burned, so much so that I nabbed the bed and tailgate for my truck, to be used in my LWB to SWB conversion. Kind of feel bad about cutting it up, but it will save me a load of extra bodywork.

Still trying to decide if I want to go with the 96 and older front end with the Hannemann fenders/blisters, or use the front clip from my old 01 XJ and late model doors/interior, the Hannemann late model pre-runner fenders, and Iceland Offroad rear flares. If I think I won't be able to bob the bed as much as I would like with the rear blisters, I'l go ahead with the late model conversion.

Thanks that would be very appreciated! :cheers: