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Neohic's Next!... '91 Pioneer


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The thrill of purchasing another truck is bliss, isn't it?... That first drive around a strange neighborhood while trying to think of as many questions as you can. Or driving it home all excited to introduce your new to you vehicle to your current vehicles with hopes that they'll be able to get along. Let's not forget that strange squeaking sound coming from somewhere in the upper left side of the dash... WHAT THE HELL IS THAT ANYWAY?! I PUSH HERE AND THERE AND EVERYWHERE IT SOUNDS LIKE IT COULD BE COMING FROM!... Sometimes it goes away for a while and sometimes it doesn't matter where you push. Regardless, you put your hand up and over the headrest on the passenger side, set the cruise, and just let it roll.
 

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This little guy came from the stables of xjrev10. Went for a nice drive this morning to take a look at the truck and he was awesome enough to meet me almost half way with only a small hiccup along the way:

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Yup… hit a deer. The wife limped the car back home with a ratchet strap keeping the front end together and keeping all its innards as innards while I drove the truck.

Plans for the truck is to just leave it alone for now. It's an awesome runner but it needs a master cylinder and a radiator right away. It’ll make for a nice winter driver and year round garden and crap hauler. Once I rebuild a shop for myself, I’ll try and take the time to put floors and rockers in it. I’ve got a lead on a nicer bed for it that probably won’t go anywhere… if it sells it sells but I would assume it’ll be sitting where it is for a while yet. On to the next!

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Got all of the brakes working today. Started with changing the master cylinder but also ended up having to get rid of the proportioning valve. Both rear bleeders had to be replaced and one had to be drilled and tapped. Everything works great! Tomorrow will be the radiator, belt, and thermostat. I stopped at the local salvage yard also and I've got a good set of mirrors also. Got some good stuff happenin' here!... some good stuff. comanche.gif

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Again, a good day of progress. The radiator went well as did the thermostat. With getting everything out of the way, I found that the harmonic balancer has about half of its rubber packing falling out! :eek: Got one on order that I should be getting on Tuesday. I figure it's a good excuse to pull the bumper and change out the pushed in bumper cap too. While I was under the hood and cleaning things up, and since the a.c. doesn't work, I put a gauge on the compressor and found that it had zero pressure so I took out all of the lines. I'll be on the lookout for an a.c. delete pulley. I don't think I'll go as far as removing any of the internal a.c. components unless I have a reason to pull the dash in the future. Tomorrow I'll take a closer look at the fuel sending unit. When I bough the truck from xjrev10, he said that it drips just a little bit over time... he was right and the leak bugs me. We'll see what up with that. I should really get some decent pictures of this thing too... really, who reads all this stuff and who just skims over it and looks at the pictures? :D

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Final step to getting this rig to daily driver status was to get the fuel sending unit to quit leaking. So, after taking the unit out and taking a good look at it, I still couldn't determine where it was leaking from... maybe the rust?... wiring grommet? Who knows. Well, I took the whole thing apart and I found that the grommet had a huge crack in it and that one of the metal lines was cracked… or so I thought.

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I looked around through my parts because I knew that I had another sending unit. It was out of a Renix, but I figured I could make one good H.O. unit out of the two.

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However, this had a similar rusty look.
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Anyhow, I took them both apart so I could decide which to save and which to use for parts.
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Anyone know the difference between an H.O. and a Renix unit? It’s all in the gauge sender mount. Renix:
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H.O.:
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To see what I really had to work with, I glass blasted the outside of each one to get a better idea of what to do. I capped everything first.
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After the blasting, neither one really looked that bad. So, after a good inspection, I decided to save both. A quick run around with a torch and some silver solder, and these things were looking good. First was to remove the old and busted solder, then was to replace with fresh and new.
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After that, a quick coat of paint and they were ready to go back together.
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Add a new o-ring to the cracked wire grommet and it’s ready to go back under the truck.
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First crank of the key? Vroom! No leaks at all.

I also took some pictures of what I did under the hood also to get rid of the air conditioning parts. To plug the a.c. lines at the compressor… yes that is a boat plug… temporary.
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At the other end, I just used some silicon to close up the lines. Again, if I ever have a reason to dig into the dash, I’ll get rid of the rest of the a.c. parts.
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New radiator up front and I put some better corner lenses on. Better side mirrors went on as well. I’ve got plenty of stickers to get rid of off of the windows, but this thing is good to go… at least good to go enough for now.
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Why in gods name would you get rid of the A/C :huh???:

 

First off, it's a MN truck. Second, it's a winter driver of a MN truck. Third, I hate keeping around stuff that doesn't work. So, since the A.C. will probably never be used, the system leaks, and there wasn't any pressure anyhow I just got rid of everything. Makes getting to the oil filter that much easier too. :wrench:

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Why in gods name would you get rid of the A/C :huh???:

 

First off, it's a MN truck. Second, it's a winter driver of a MN truck. Third, I hate keeping around stuff that doesn't work. So, since the A.C. will probably never be used, the system leaks, and there wasn't any pressure anyhow I just got rid of everything. Makes getting to the oil filter that much easier too. :wrench:

 

I'm in the process of deleting the AC on our 1990 Winter XJ. '88 MJ came without it and I've fully deleted it on the '90 MJ.

 

No need for it up here, just more junk under the hood! I've been to Florida a few times though. I can understand why you think us northern guys are nuts for doing this.

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Ben - You need an AC delete pulley! I'm keeping an eye out for you...

 

Thanks dude!

 

I changed out the harmonic balancer this morning. Anytime the truck was running, there was a constant "ting, ting, ting, ting...". The old balancer was bad enough that the rubber was hitting the fan.

 

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YOWZA! :eek:

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  • 7 months later...

It's back for an update! A whole lot of nothing has changed on this thing other than it getting a little worse. For a couple months now when I jump in to start it up, it needs a little gas to help it out. Fuel regulator took a dump but it still runs really nice with lots of power and good mileage. I'll get to it... probably. Otherwise it's turned into a real death trap on the road! The shocks were bad when I got it and since they've only got worse. I ended up taking a good used set of Ranchos off my shelf. Rides like a Caddy now!... a very, very rusty Caddy!

 

Anyway... I like this truck. comanche.gif

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I was having the conversation with someone about the power difference with leaving 3.55 gears in a Jeep but running 33s... got me thinking, "why not try and see?".

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biggrin.png Honestly, there is a difference and I'm not sure if the HO has anything to do about it but I didn't really think it was all that bad. I know that the speedo was way off but the power seemed doable.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

I've got some major work to do on the house over the next coming weeks so I decided to start cleaning the garage in preparation. In doing so, it finally came time to throw some parts at this truck that have been sitting around for a little while. On the list? Fuel regulator and A/C bypass pulley and bracket.

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I also went around and tightened the valve cover hardware. Took some engine degreaser to the as much of the engine that I could and gave it a good spray with the hose. In doing such, my under hood light decided to start working!

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It's the little things count.

As far as the house, one of the big steps will be knocking down half of my garage to go bigger. That means that everything from two stalls need to be moved into one. Needless to say... I've got a lot of stuff. Some parts went down to the basement while most got stacked up in the other stall. And then some parts didn't fit in either place.

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Not sure it the roll bar will stay in this truck but I think that it really jazzes it up some!

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  • 8 months later...

Where one build ends, another gets new life...

 

So, there was this: http://comancheclub.com/topic/29983-the-five-year-project/

 

Then almost one year to the date, this happened: http://comancheclub.com/topic/32916-1989-pioneer-lwb-ho-swap-project-northern-mn/

 

And then there's today:

 

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After a trade for some custom bumpers, the deal was done. The truck started life as a '89, 2.5, 2wd long box. Austin (xjrev10) started swapping everything over from a '93 XJ to bring it up to a 4.0 with 4wd. Everything is there... pretty much. The wiring was swapped over... I think... but the project has been left for over a year now.

 

So... what's cool about it? At some point, the truck was treated to a cool rust inhibiting process that I've only heard about. The first thing I notice when I opened the door were these crazy little plugs:

 

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I'm really anxious to see what the inside of the panels look like when I remove the interior. Speaking of which:

 

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... it's bad. I'm not keeping any of it as everything will get swapped over from the '91. Not sure what I'll do with it yet as the colors won't match, but the headliner is all kinds of groovy!

 

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It's like a shag carpet up there! As far as the rest of the truck, everything is pretty solid. There is a need to repair the floors, but I haven't taken a close look at it just yet. The rockers and cab corners however look clean. Not totally straight, but clean. Same goes for most of the box. A small spot of the nasty orange stuff above the left wheel well and alone the bottom edges, but nothing too terrible. I've got some work to do under the left taillight though. I would imagine that it was backed up into something?... I don't know. There's a dent, a hole, and some rust.

 

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Anyway, the engine looks like it's all there, but there's wires and hoses that go everywhere!

 

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After some snow removal, some additional parts where found in the box. Like a treasure hunt!

 

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Looks like there's some 2.5 stuff, some YJ stuff, and an assortment of other randomness. Beer cans too... lots of beer cans.  :shake:

 

So here's the plan. While I love the '91, I hate that it's only a matter of time before nothing can be saved from rust. I wanted to do a 4wd swap on it, but with the amount of rust in it, it just doesn't make any sense. With everything that has been done on the '89, and everything that hasn't, I'm obviously going to use it as a body donor. Austin has the most of the mechanical components changed over from the '93, so I'll just leave them alone for now and just finish the conversion. Remove the wiring, throw some paint at it, move over the entire harness from the '91, fuel tank, interior, odds and ends, and call it good enough.

 

All in all, what I want is a good driver that I don't feel bad about driving year round. Yes, it will rust eventually but I'm not going for the same amount of body work that I put into my '88 Eliminator. What I want is something nice... but not that nice. I won't be getting to this until later this spring. I've got a lot of prep work to do on the new truck before then, but I think it'll be nice to have the peace of mine that my truck won't fold in half when I open both doors at the same time.  :D

 

I'm pretty sure the '91 is looking forward to its new clothes too!

 

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