neohic

I'm all in favor of making a vehicle your own. That said... it is a '92. If it were mine, I'd look at making one truck that does everything I need it to. Swap in the 4x4 parts from your wheeler project along with the Dana 44s, keep it a short arm suspension in front but add drop brackets, 33s, pull the ACOS from the '88 (and replace them with a spacer, I guess) to bring up the front, spring over in the rear, and then clean up the body but keep the original paint. Yes... they're only original once, but these trucks are also like big Lego sets that there's so much one can do that's still easily reversible. I'd even consider holding on to the parts that come off should you sell it in the future to a Comanche connoisseur. Once the '92 is complete, I'd sell off the rest of the wheeler project, and probably the '88 Pioneer also. One can only drive one vehicle at a time anyhow, right? I struggle with this.

Don’t think so. I didn’t use a gasket… just a bead of RTV. Everything got tightened with a small impact driver and then checked by hand. I’ll pull it apart and reseal it. Need to do the fuel filter yet too.

Went out to check under it again. Looking… looking… looking… crap. Rear diff cover it leaking.

Some engine rebuild parts have been trickling in but I’m still waiting on the full gasket set. Haven’t done much more than more cleaning on small parts and the intake manifold. Waiting to paint anything also until the gaskets show up so I can fog the whole engine at once. Soon… I hope.

Had a mostly good first day back out into the world today. Got going fairly early to get to where I needed to be. Backed it out of the shop to find a clean(ish) piece of cardboard under it. No new spots since yesterday anyhow. That cardboard has some real history with this truck. It has been under it since the truck came home to my first shop back in 2009. Prior to that it was part of one of the boxes that one of the garage doors came in for said first shop. Anyhow… up the hill and on the road. Everything went fine heading down and then the truck sat for the day at my buddy’s shop. I came back in the afternoon and it had a bit of stumble off idle. Granted, this was also the first full tank of gas in this truck in over six years. I’m hoping that something got knocked loose so I picked up a fuel filter on my way home. Felt good driving this old truck. I think I got way more thumbs up and waves from other Jeep owners than I do in my CJ.

Rear axle seals replaced, new lug studs, ran the truck around to check transmission fluid, fresh gas, and then degreased and washed the underside. … which is good because it’s getting put to work tomorrow. I’ve had a pile of tools and a couple big air tanks to get to a buddy of mine. My argon tank that started this whole project is tucked way under all that stuff. That’ll get exchanged tomorrow too.

This you?

Geology rocks.

Got a link for that boat radio?

Mmm… can’t wait to tackle the engine in the CJ.

Transmission is done. Haven’t run it yet though. Everything got put back together today along with a good amount of cleaning parts. The exhaust was reworked a little to get rid of u-bolt clamps and I added a flange for easier serviceability. The header is a ceramic coated Pace Setter. Not sure if these are even available anymore. I like this manifold but the $#!&ty clamps they provide have always leaked and the six-in-two section has fallen off a couple times. Shouldn’t be a problem anymore. Then things moved to the rear. Besides a coating of gear oil over everything, it’s nice to open things up and see it all as I left it year ago. I didn’t get too far into things… still pretty beat from yesterday. What I found when I pulled off the wheels was a real “Hu… oh, yeah…” type moment. When I did the disk brake swap I never changed out the lug studs for longer ones. I went and got ten of these and then decided that I was done for the day.

Would a longer shackle get you where you’d like it to be?

Ugh. That’s a lot of work for a $7 seal. The rear main is in good shape… that’s all tranny fluid. I only had a mild blood bath on my floor today. Not quite done with the job but I’m definitely done with it. There’s just the little fiddly bits left to do but the trans is bolted to the engine, the crossmember is back in, and the cooler lines are hooked up so it’s not dripping all night. Unfortunately this was an eye opener for me today. I know that I’m not an “old man” old man, but some internal issues have crept up on me over the past five or so years. One of my fondest memories from my old wheeling XJ was when the transmission took a crap on my way to the trails so I made the decision to swap it while passing through my old home town. The time from pulling it into my parent’s garage to leaving again was 5.5 hours! That felt like a precision military exercise while this was more like a physical fight over six hours. I’ll probably have a few more hours to go and then I’d like to rework some of my exhaust. Wrenching on this stuff is for sure a young man’s game.

I should and I probably will in the future. My rule is that I don’t go down when the weather doesn’t allow it. This is maybe only the second time I’ve broken my rule and the CJ showed me who’s boss.

The snowball got rolling today. It started off with needing to swap out my argon bottle from my TIG welder. That bottle is from out of state from another supplier so I go to my local AirGas drop off location and start asking questions. They can't change out any bottle that isn't stamped with the AirGas logo. Fine... I start calling around and finish up with the big retail location down in Colorado Springs. Apparently they can swap it out so in the future I can just go to my local spot. So now I need to get that bottle down the hill and I don't trust my CJ until the new engine goes in. I don't want to do that and have two vehicles down so that puts this truck back into being first in line. So now I needed a transmission jack. Nobody in town has one to buy or rent. Fine... I go down to the Springs to borrow one from my buddy. It's heavy and long so when I get back home with it the jack gets transferred into the CJ to get it down the hill to my shop. It just snowed but it's warm today so the hill is a soupy mess. The CJ goes down fine but gets sideways coming back up. I get it righted only to end up back at the bottom of the hill in fresh ruts that are very deep and the CJ doesn't want to climb out of them so I rev it up as best as it can, dump the clutch, launch mud everywhere, slowly creep up the hill with more mud getting flung all over what seems like the whole neighborhood, and then finally get back to the top of the hill to dry pavement where the front tires finally have something to grab on to so the whole Jeep makes a quick left turn to the point that it feels like it's about to tip over into the neighbor's yard. Anyhow... looks like I'll be pulling the trans tomorrow to change out the input seal... finally.

Well put.

Always a giant sigh of relief when a fresh engine burbles for the first time. Congrats!

Happy new year, all.

Another good day in the shop. We’re leaving for Minnesota soon and I wanted to get the intake mated to the exhaust manifold before we left. Mission accomplished. From looking around in internet land, there’s some information out there but pictures or a “how to” doesn’t really exist. To recap, I want to use my 4.2 intake on a 4.0 head with a RENIX exhaust manifold. The 4.2 and 4.0 heads are very similar and everything is within the ballpark of fitting. Both the 4.2 and 4.0 intake manifolds use dowel pins to locate them and that’s where this all starts. Due to the shape of the intake ports, the 4.2 intake needs to sit higher than it would’ve originally for complete coverage. This means that the power steering pump bracket will need to be modified too… probably just elongating a couple holes though. I’ll deal with that later. Once I get gaskets I’ll match it up to where it’ll now live and do some port matching too. Anyhow, the holes for the dowel need to get turned into a slot. I rounded the bottom corners for a little extra wiggle room. Then I started sneaking up on it. … of course it hits. The two exhaust runners need a little massaging. Yup… this manifold is in rough shape but I didn’t really want to cut up a good one. More on than in a bit. The two middle runners got a little heat and then were dimpled in with a pipe and hammer. I went only as far as I needed to give myself an 1/8” space between the exhaust and intake. As for the intake, the two outside bottom corners needed to get rounded to fit. Now we’re getting somewhere. You can see under the intake that it moved up about a 1/4”. Now… that ugly exhaust manifold… these like to crack but the aftermarket has good options to replace them. I’ll deal with that in the future should it crack again. For now I went through and rewelded all of the joints and deleted the EGR fitting while I was in there. My current set up in the Jeep has the EGR and tube still in there but nothing is hooked up. It leaks too. I’ll be making a block off plate. I used stainless filler for the new welds and gave the whole works a good cleaning. The backsides got welded and then it got bolted back on the head to finish. The two outside runners did pull in a little but it still slides on and off easily. Let’s get back to moving the intake up that 1/4” and how everything gets held in place. Some later manifolds use step washers and the older use conical washers. Regardless, the intake and exhaust share hardware. My flange thickness worked out that most of the conical washers will still work. Where I thought it was a bit of a stretch, I made up some fancy washers to cover more ground. Two on the bottom and two on the top needed new washers. With everything snugged up, the intake just finds it home now. Ready for assembly. I talked to Novak this afternoon too and got a part number for a pilot bushing that’ll work for me. Outside dimension is 1.05” and internal is .754”. Once I get back home I’ll get gaskets and seals coming.

More cleaning today. I wasn’t going to touch the block again until assembly but I wanted to give it one more go. The oil pan got cleaned up too along with rockers and pushrods. Tomorrow I’d like to fit the 4.2 intake to the 4.0 head with the 4.0 exhaust manifold. Looks fairly self explanatory for what needs to happen.

Started on the engine cleaning today. I got the 4.0 out of the CJ and on a stand. This thing is filthy! Layer and layers of caked on oil and the only obvious prior leak was the oil pan. Someone stuck it on with silicon and it was a real bear to get off. Otherwise, everything came apart easily. No obvious wear after taking a closer look at everything. Prior to cleaning I set it at top dead center just to have a known starting point. Then lots of degreaser and scrubbing. It’s not completely perfect but I’ll give it one more once over when the engine gets reassembled so I can paint. Had another look at the head I chose and I’m still pleased. No broken bolts… no carbon build up… no fuss to clean. One thing I wanted to do was call Kevin up at Performance Fuel Injection in Michigan. What the current engine has going for it is the injection kit and I wanted to see what Kevin’s thoughts were on running a 4.0 with his computer. He couldn’t think of any reason not to other than a factory multi port setup would probably be more efficient. This isn’t new territory in terms of putting a 4.0 in a CJ though. People have done it and then just plopped a carb back on. I’ll report back to Kevin once it’s all back together and in the Jeep. Probably more tomorrow. I need to get parts coming soon.

8.2L CJ! Twice the engines yet currently twice as slow as it should be.

Big step forward today! I made the drive a half hour up the road to my buddy’s place. I know that doesn’t sound terrible, but it was a big eye opener for just how bad this engine has gotten. Uphill, into the wind, while trying maintain 50 mph feels like the end of the world! My buddy married into a very interesting family that runs deep with AMC goodness. His late father in law had his garage set up pretty well and it’s like a time capsule from when he was building engines and tinkering. He loved that AMX. It’s originally a 290 car but it’s sitting on a cart. The current engine is a 304. Not sure why the original was pulled. There was two 4.0s and most of a 4.2 in the garage too. I think the plan was to build one stroker out of the three for my buddy’s wife’s high school truck. These are good people. Anyhow… my engine. We did some horse trading and settled up today. Two of the engines I’ve already been through. I should’ve taken notes so I ended up going through one prior engine again. The 4.2 was mostly there but it clearly has a ton of miles on it. The first 4.0 was pretty clean, also had a ton of miles on it, but was just a long block. Lastly was the other 4.0 that I hadn’t been in yet. Both of the 4.0s had an AMC stamp on them so they must’ve been from an ‘87 to early ‘89. This one being fully dressed looked pretty good but was also very caked with oil. After digging into it I found a dirty engine that showed signs of lower miles but a lack of proper maintenance. The oil pan had a little more crud in the bottom than what I was hoping to find but the deciding factor was after pulling the bearing caps. There was some wear, but this was clearly the best condition of the three. In the end I made the decision to make a “best of album” out of the three. I’ll be cleaning up and using the dirty but lower mile short block, the head from the clean but higher mile engine, and I grabbed the intake from the 4.2 to port match and clearance to fit a 4.0 head with the 4.0 exhaust manifold. And I know… I know… “4.2 intake on a 4.0 head? Why not run the 4.0 electronics?” I’ll be using the throttle body injection I put on the current engine a while back. I’ll hold on to the 4.0 intake should I want to swap all that on in the future. Technically, the CJ already has its new engine in it!

Picked up an AW4 input seal and outer seals for the 8.25. Not sure when I’ll get to it but they’re on my table to judge me for not taking care of them sooner.