Back At It

Light day today. Cleaned up the brake pedal assembly and starting in on the steering column.

Got busy on the brake pedal assembly, and remembered I needed a ‘before’ pic. This is bringing me back to the days when the Mach 1 was like this.

Caved in a took it apart (just one bolt and slip the pivot shaft out). Made it a lot easier to get through the inside surfaces of the main bracket without the pedal in the way.

It’s really not as bad as it looks. I hit it with the wire cup brush, anyway. I’ll take it apart tomorrow and see what I can do with it. At least the tilt seems to work (unlike the Mach 1’s column when I first got it).

Quick and dirty coat of Duplicolor Black Engine Enamel. Give it a little bit of time to dry and put it back together.

… And, we’re done. Just gotta get a new brake light switch (maybe… I can’t remember if I left the original one in the Jeep or not). The pedal rubber is actually not too bad, either. I might just get a new one, though.

IT’S IN!!

Big Shout Out to my pal Harry LaClair for coming over and helping stuff the 304, TF999, and Dana300 into the Jeep! Couldn’t have done it without you! Now the real fun can begin (rebuilding the steering column, installing the fuel injection, headers, exhaust, radiator, power brakes, rebuilding the wiring harness, etc., etc., etc.). Don’t look too closely at the top of the engine… all that old junk is getting replaced with new go-fast goodies.

Just got the engine off the stand, and loaded up the flex plate and cover… torqued to 100 ft lbs.

After about an hour more than I’d anticipated of transmission jack gymnastics, and remembering that the skid plate mounted up further back, the transmission & transfer case are in.

Here’s a nice view of the firewall, with the heat shield that came with 258 I-6 Jeeps. That would prove to be a minor PITA and have us scratching our heads for another 45 minutes before whipping out the body saw and cutting it loose. After than, the engine slipped right into position.

BOOM! It’s in! Just had to crank down a few bolts to keep it in-place. I’ll worry about the rest of them next time.

Looks a little dinky in there compared to the extra long and tall 258 I-6, but this is a hefty hunk o’ junk in its own right. It’s a bit deceiving with the grille missing and the fenders opened up… it’s about to get a lot more crowded.

Thank You SO much, Harry LaClair. Had a blast shootin’ the sh!t just as much as getting it all done. The Beatles were right: we really do get by with a little help from our friends.

All the old stuff will be coming out in favor of a bunch of new go-gast goodies. I’ve got some new chrome Edelbrock Signature Series valve covers to replace these and keep the bling alive along with the ceramic coated stainless headers and Edelbrock Pro-Flow multi-port fuel injection. Also a set of Accel cut-to-fit wires for a little splash of yellow, too. I can’t wait!

With the fenders closed up and the grille up in there, it’s already starting to look a little more normal.

PAINT!!

So, after cleaning all of the bolts I soaked overnight in Simple Green, the engine is painted. Well… Okay… everything except the top end, which all of those components (intake manifold, valve covers, distributor, et al) are getting replaced. My focus was to get this sucker in the Jeep, and work on the rest later. Tomorrow, get the engine mounts cleaned up & painted, then stuff it in.

Duplicolor Cast Iron, sticking with the gray scale theme of my Jeep.

I’m loving this color! Only one tiny little run on the oil pan, but it’ll be on the bottom, and… it’s an engine, after all. Like, who really cares if it’s perfect, right?!

I thought about pulling the timing cover and painting it Cast Aluminum, but then I saw some other AMC engines painted all one color and decided that would be good enough. I’ve got lots of new chrome goodies for it, anyway.

Last push before paint

Pulled the water pump – eewww… nasty. Also popped the oil pump cap off and cleaned out what I could behind it. The aftermarket mechanical oil pressure sending unit is now in the bin as well – gotta find the right fitting to put a proper electric oil pressure sender back on. Also got the rest of the main body of the block cleaned up with a conical wire brush… that little die grinder really blows through the air in the compressor – seems like it ran non-stop once I started using it. Also dropped all of the bolts for the oil pan and water pump in a jar of Simple Green to soak. Hopefully, that’ll clean them up.

Tomorrow, install the new water pump and oil pan, tape off a few things, and paint this sucker.

Yeesh! That’s the crud that was hiding in the water pump, and not very inspiring. It didn’t seem to go any further into the block, so hopefully just running some anti-freeze flush when I get it running will clean out any leftovers.

The die grinder and conical wire wheel made quick work of the icky water pump residue. That shiny spot was about the only bad spot that corroded. Fortunately, it’s in a spot with lots of material behind it, so no blow-thru to be expected.

Almost done with the wire brush. Getting close!

Taped off the oil pump, and hit this side with the wire brush one last time. Ready for paint!

One last shot after finishing up with the wire brush. Ready for paint! Keeping my Jeep in gray scale, I’d actually thought of painting it black, but changed my mind to go with Duplicolor Cast Iron, since I’ll paint the pulleys and accessories gloss black, and have a bunch of chrome goodies to go with it all.

Almost ready for the engine to go in

Got most of the gunk off the engine today. Just need to figure out how to pull the timing cover tomorrow to finish up and paint the block. After that, it’s ready to go in.

Driver side after scraping and starting to hit it with the die-grinder loaded up with buffing cookies.

Here’s the passenger side before getting started. I have new headers, so these exhaust manifolds are going to the metal recycler (along with the ones from the Mustang). Someone decided a mechanical oil pressure gauge would be a good idea… and they’re not bad… right up to the point they start leaking and the nylon hose goes brittle and cracks. That explains all the gunk on the transmission and transfer case.

Here we are [almost] all cleaned up. Just gotta get that timing cover (along with the oil pump, distributor, harmonic balancer, and water pump) off tomorrow to finish up and paint.

Transmission & T-Case down…

OK – this sucker’s ready to go in. Got some more of the gunk scraped off, then slathered it with some engine degreaser gel, power rinsed it, and gave it a blow-dry. Gonna hit the engine hard tomorrow, then shove ’em into the Jeep before the weekend. I forgot how much I like jammin’ with Dennis Allen during the day on 101.9 The Fire while workin’ on my cars. Check ya again tomorrow, D!

Got some more gunk scraped off – probably another dozen or so ‘spoonfuls.’ Time to hit it with some degreaser gel.

Looks like I got a little more scrubbing to do on this side before the degreaser gel.

That’s about the best I can do with the wire brush and picking tools.

After degreasing gel, power rinsing, and a blow-dry. Good enough!

Good to go. I’ll pull the skid plate after it’s all in (and supported with the transmission jack) so I can hit the bottom again with the wire brush and service the transmission. It at least looks WAY better than it did.

It was even all gunked up in here. This’ll work. Ready to go in.

Look what I found

When Dave and I pulled the transmission & TCase out of Klooge, we saw this big ol’ chunk of grease, gunk, and farmland. In trying to get Klooge to a point Dave could take him home, I put this aside (under Dookie) and just got back to it today. Using a flat metal scraper, flat blade screw drivers, some awls & picking tools, a wire brush, and a serving spoon I found that had been re-purposed as a tool (somehow), I managed to get most of the crud removed. Still need to do more, but I’m getting close to almost being able to stuff it up under Dookie.

Here we are after getting a bunch of the farmland removed from the skid plate.

You know it’s pretty bad when you need to almost chisel the gunk off before you can take the wire brush to it. That stuff must’ve been around 1/4″ thick in places.

Here we are after about an hour of scraping and scrubbing the other side with the metal scraper and wire brush. Notice the clod of farmland stuffed in under the transfer case.

Here we are just before it started getting too dark to see. Still got more to go, but almost there. I must’ve removed around 30 or so ‘spoonfuls’ of greasy, sandy gunk by this point.

Engine Work

I got started this weekend tearing things down, starting with the peripheral things (wires, alternator, power steering pump, pulleys, etc.).

Looks like someone forgot to use dielectric grease on the boots. LOL!

When you lose the spacer for the alternator bracket, you improvise. LOL!

When the belt’s been on so long it remembers where it wants to be indexed.

This water pump’s toast… all gritty inside when it spins.

Nice to see the oil pan’s not smashed in… unlike the one that came with my Mustang.

Got the pan off, cleaned up the old gasket on both the pan and the engine mounting surface. I put a wrench on the crank and turned it over, which was smooth as butter and each of the cylinders ‘hissed’ like they’re supposed to – so, BONUS! Then popped the cap on the rear main to replace the seal, but time got away from me searching for my torque wrench and it started getting dark (earlier than normal… Gee – wonder why). So, no more pics for today.

Back On!

So, since last February life’s kind of gotten in the way, along with the weather being too hot for my liking to work on my Jeep. Fast-Forward to last weekend when i finally made some time to get busy getting this project done.

I started with cleaning up the firewall in my Jeep. Pulled the battery tray, cleaned everything up, and painted the firewall with the same rocker texture and black engine enamel I used on the inner fenders. I hadn’t realized how bad things were behind the battery tray, so this cleaned things up nicely.

That’s all she wrote

This morning Dave took off at Oh-Dark-Thirty for Phoenix, and had a helluva trip ahead of him. He experienced just about every kind of weather imaginable (ridiculous wind, rain, sleet, snow, you name it) but made it there with no casualties.

Here’s Klooge in his new home, about to be completely torn apart and restored by Dave.

And that’s pretty much that, I guess. As much fun as I had with “Jeep Week 2021,” I really hope to not have to crank so hard on a big project like that ever again… I’m getting too old for this.

Now I just gotta get my “Jeep 3.0 Project” off the ground, which involves getting that 304 torn down and to the machine shop (not even going to play around with this one), then clean up the 999 & D300 and service both, drill-out the D300 yokes to receive U-bolts (to get rid of those problematic U-joint straps I’ve always hated), clean up and repaint the drive shafts & brake pedal assembly, rebuild the steering column & automatic transmission linkage, install my Conn-Ferr 1″ shackles (up front), clean up the firewall, refurbish the engine-side wiring harness, obtain all of the needed engine & drivetrain parts, and put that sucker back together. Then I can swap the stereo head unit and tune-up the amps & speakers, adapt the TJ seat brackets to the CJ floor (to get those TJ seats lowered back down to ‘normal’ height), re-install the factory HVAC, install a BedRug carpet kit, paint the YJ top and doors, then take it to the exhaust shop for a new proper dual exhaust with a set of Magnaflows before ordering the Eagle 589s and 35×12.50 Swamper SSRs.

Sounds quick and easy if you read it fast.

The blog of Mister 4×4

Here we go again with yet another blog.

Category: Jeep Stuff