Some days are just an exercise in futility. After noticing the A/C – alternator belt wasn’t lined up properly last night, I decided to try and adjust the aftermarket A/C compressor mount… only, there’s no adjusting it. Crap. So, I put it all back together with a couple of shims on the lower alternator brackets and got it as close as I could. Also, cleaned up, painted, and reinstalled the coil bracket I made to hang off the spare holes in the A/C compressor. I am now right about where I was 3 days ago, except for a few more wires trimmed up and the coil bracket finished up. And some people think I should work on cars for a living – LOL!

Today, I picked up on realigning the alternator bracketry after sweeping the ground under the grille with a monster magnet and stuffing the ‘magnet on a stick’ down into the grille area (with no love). Shortly after giving up on that while working on the fan and water pump pulley, I happened to look down through the engine bay and happened to see the missing fender/grille bolt – under the Jeep, almost smack in the middle. HTF did it make it all the way over there, having to fall down from the top of the grille and taking a trip almost 5 feet from the front of the Jeep?! I should go on The Price is Right and play Plinko! After getting the bracketry and fan belts back on, I finished up the start solenoid by tipping and installing the neutral safety switch and “12C” wire from the engine harness. Got dark, so I’ll hit it again tomorrow.

Got some bad news today that he’s going to be leaving after tomorrow (his last show). This sucks – now who’s going to jam with me while I work on this thing?! Based on some things I heard, I already don’t like the new guy and station management even less. Looks like tomorrow is my last day with 101.9 The Fire as well.

Looks like my plan to take leave tomorrow because of the nice weather was a good idea, since I won’t miss Dennis’s last show.

No good deed goes unpunished. My pal Dave is swapping my old 258 for a 360, which needs bracketry. Rather than pay top dollar for ratty old brackets off FleaBay, and since he’s become quite adept at fabrication, we talked and I offered to pull my alternator bracketry and make tracings/measurements to give him something to go on. Well, I pulled my alternator brackets and drew up the plans, and along the way of reinstalling, I now can’t get two bolts back in (one interferes with the water pump pulley), and I lost one of the bolts that holds my passenger side fender onto the grille… inside the grille itself. Also stabbed myself with the caliper (not bad, just pissed me off). So tomorrow, gotta re-reinstall the alternator bracketry and find that missing bolt just to get back to where I was when I started today.

OK, 2023 New Years Resolution: I’m going to be more organized. I just spent 4 hours ‘working on the Jeep,’ which equates to 2.5 hours of chasing tools and the things needed to actually work on the things I need to work on. And apparently, I’ve managed to lose track of the fuel injection ECU… again… which is what I was hoping to nail down to the firewall and finish wiring up today.

Nice day today, got a chance to work on the Jeep a bit. Cleaned up a few things, completed a handful of wiring extensions, trimming, tipping, and sheathing. Hopefully, get some more done tomorrow.

Still loving the fenders swinging open – sure makes things a lot easier to sit down for stripping, soldering, shrinking, and sheathing the wires.

Getting closer. The big hose slung over the top is for the A/C – which will not be done for the first fire-up, just tied-up out of the way, more than anything. The bundle of wiring toward the bottom right is for the headlights and signals.

Almost got this side done. Just gotta trace out the red wire on the diagram, then clip, strip, tip and hook-up both it and the gray wire to the starter solenoid. Once I get the battery cables in there, I’ll decide if I need a heat shield/bracket to keep things tidy and off the headers. Looks like I’ll need to paint that coil bracket, after all – oh well, need to make some adjustments to it, anyway.

Gonna clean this all up when I swap out the heater for the aftermarket HVAC system. I wish I would’ve paid closer attention when I bought the Nostalgic Air HVAC system – this Jeep originally came with factory A/C, but I removed it back in the ’90s. It’s going to look totally different with the new carpet kit, stereo head unit, and cleaned up… especially, with an automatic steering column and no clutch pedal.

I love the bigger glass on this early YJ top. Wish it didn’t have the wiper, though. Oh well. I’d be more enthusiastic about removing the leaves, but the massive red oak in the front yard is even halfway done dropping its leaves yet.

Got the Accel ‘cut-to-fit’ wires actually cut-to-fit today. With all of the black, gray, aluminum, and chrome bits under there, I decided I needed splash of yellow. My old technique on how to make the wires got updated today, as just the second wire into it after ‘just’ 45 minutes – I was having to redo the wires because in our hurry a few weeks back, we opted to just tip ’em and get it running… so, first had to take ’em apart, remove the wires from the boots and tips, straighten out the tips, then cut to length, crimp the tip back down, and reinsert into the boot… for each wire. I decided to see if pulling the contact out of the boot through the wire-end would work any better… and it did… and because of where I was holding it, I managed to slice open my thumb – is WD40 anti-bacterial, by any chance (LOL!!). After taking care of that, the ‘new’ technique went pretty quickly – got the rest of them done in about 40 minutes. Routed, silicon greased, and stuck ’em on… loving it!

Got a few things done today while sorting out the electrical system. Spent most of the afternoon chasing down the things I needed to do that, however. It’s taking so long because I can’t see putting all this nice stuff in there and hiding it with a rat’s nest of wiring (yes, I have new valve covers, but I’m not ready for them yet). I had to give up as the sun was getting ready to drop and the skeeters were starting to figure out where I hadn’t applied the bug juice.

Here’s how it was when we left it a few weekends ago. Gotta pull the spark plug wires and re-tip them, since we tossed on the tips just to hear it run without cutting them to fit (which takes a lot longer than you’d think). Still looks like quite the mess with all the hoses and wiring not yet sorted out.

Had to pull the alternator to see if the factory harness would plug-in (the terminal wound up hidden away in the depths under the A/C compressor – which can’t be seen from anywhere)… and it does, so at least I don’t have to re-wire it. The rest of it is the factory harness after my progress so far on rehabbing the circuits I still need. So far, I’ve completed the transmission pigtail (4 wires), the temp sensor lead, oil pressure sensor lead, and the extensions of the coil wires on the Edelbrock harness. Still have the starter solenoid, neutral safety switch, and alternator circuits to go, then figure out what to do with the Duraspark plug I no longer need.

The extra challenge I have putting this all back together is finding places to relocate the things normally found on the inner fenders because of my swing-out fender mod – I can’t be unhooking those things every time I need to open up the fenders, after all… and having an extra 3 feet of cables on things like the starter solenoid isn’t an option. The starter solenoid was mounted to the diagonal brace of the battery tray before (the holes in the first pic), but now the heater hoses and V8 valve cover are a bit too close for that. Probably wind up under the battery tray on the firewall… might have to make a new bracket for that, or maybe put it toward the top of the firewall next to the Edelbrock ECU (that might wind up going there). We’ll see what works best.

Well, it’s been trying to rain all day, and finally started back in on it. Figured it would be a good day to chase down what’s what on the decrepit engine harness I got stuck with from Klooge. The previous owners ‘Redneck Engineered’ what they wanted/needed to make it run while they had it (“Hacked and Slashed,” more like), as well as changed color of Klooge (from Saxon Yellow to Black – can’t say I blame ’em there) and didn’t bother removing or taping off the harness when they did. Used a voltmeter and a ’79 Tech Service Manual wiring diagram to ‘Ohm Out’ all the wires back to the bulkhead connector and label everything, and here’s what I came up with. Now, I just need to get a few connectors for the specific things these wires work with, then I can properly repair it all so it doesn’t go up in flames when I try to start it.

Well, bummer. Didn’t get Dookie fired up yesterday like we hoped, but instead had to load up Klooge so Dave could head back home to Phoenix today. We got pretty close, though.

No pics, as we were super-busy all day. Had to knock out one of the freeze plugs after all, and it looks like it might not be a bad idea to get the rest of them at some point soon as it was paper thin and started dripping as Dave was adding coolant. Fortunately, it was the rear-most on the passenger side, so the engine mount wasn’t in the way – pop the starter off, knock it out, tap a new one in, and we’re all done about 20 minutes later. Easy-peasy. The rest seem to be hanging in there and there were no other [coolant] leaks we could see, so that’s a plus.

I had to chase some 90-degree male AN fittings, since the straight one from the sump kit won’t work with the aftermarket Sanden compressor (as I mentioned in the thread above). The fittings needed to be heated and pressed onto the hoses, which I’d never done before, but it was easy enough… although, I did get a ‘practice run’ in since I cut the sump’s ‘In’ hose (from the lift pump) too short. Fortunately, Edelbrock provided enough hose for me to recover from my mistake.

Dave picked up another set of spark plug wires, but those turned out to be ‘cut-to-fit’ as well, and he already had them made up by the time I’d gotten up around 0900. I’d been up until 0130 the night before trying to get the A/C to blow cold air again. He’d gotten a lot of the final things ready to go while I was chasing the AN fittings and grabbing some breakfast.

The house A/C had also been having issues the past few days, which started out as being a clogged air filter that I’d changed out the night before last. We normally got about 9 months out of our 4″ thick HEPA filters, but since we got the dogs last summer, that’s no longer the case. I’d changed it out a few months ago, but it needed it again and I wasn’t paying attention (a little pre-occupied). The evaporator iced up solid, blocking the airflow to the vents, and I noticed the compressor had iced up as well, so I called a HVAC tech to come service the unit. After explaining what happened, what I’d done, and that my efforts to thaw out the compressor weren’t working, he discovered the compressor’s contactor switch burned up while it was running, which caused the evaporator to ice-up solid, along with the compressor in the outside unit because it just never quit running. That explains why the evaporator wouldn’t thaw out while I was just running the fan, despite ‘faking out’ the NEST “Smart” thermostat (which ain’t so ‘smart,’ after all… it won’t even let you turn on JUST the fan without being in Heat or Cool mode – I put it on Heat and cranked the temp way down, so the furnace wouldn’t kick on). The HVAC tach said I’d done everything perfectly, but the contactor switch failing was the unknown variable I was up again. FORTUNATELY, he replaced the contactor switch (told us to let it all thaw out and call him if there were any issues) and everything eventually thawed out last evening, the house cooled back down to normal, and no other issues cropped up with the A/C, so I got away with ‘just’ a $230 bill for my bonehead mistake.

Later in the afternoon, a friend Harry showed up with Dave’s trailer – he’d been kind enough to let us store it in his [huge] back yard while Dave’s been here. Harry was bummed because he thought he’d lost one of the ramps – there are 2 storage compartments for the ramps with doors on the back end underneath, but one of the doors had lost a locking pin and was hanging wide open. So, we threw in the towel on getting the Jeep fired up and did a quick retrace of the path between Harry’s and my house with no joy. I asked to stop by the trailer one last time to check things out, and I slid my hand into the compartment to find that the ramp had gone in a lot farther than expected. WHEW!! No lost ramp! Dave and I made a run over to Tractor Supply and picked up some new locking pins, so hopefully there won’t be any more issues with those ramp storage doors popping open.

Even later, I made a run to Jason’s Deli for dinner, and they hosed me out of my sandwich on the order – my wife was pissed, but I’m like, “We just avoided a major catastrophe with the HVAC and avoided having to replace a lost trailer ramp… if Karma wants to keep a sandwich for itself, Karma can have my sandwich.” Besides, I still have a ton of sandwich-makin’ stuff in the fridge to finish off – had to keep Dave properly fed and watered while he slogged away on my Jeep, after all.

OK, so now I just need to finish wiring up a few things, install the brake pedal assembly so I can hang the steering column, grab some gas, and give it all another once over before turning the key. But that’ll have to wait until tomorrow, since I feel like a twisted mess right now after crankin’ on the Jeep for the past two weeks straight. I need a break, so I’m just going to chill for today.

I already miss having Dave here (we go back a long way – almost 30 years) and just like with most military folks, it’s always hard to say goodbye and even harder to keep in touch. We’ve done well at that this whole time and get together when we can. I’m just happy Dave was able (and willing) to make the trip to help get Dookie back to good. Hopefully [sooner than later] I can get the chance to visit Dave in AZ, with Dookie on a trailer, and go cruizing on some of those cool trails out that way. Couldn’t have done it without ya, Brother! Thanks again!!

Got the driver side header on, followed by the transmission mount, exhaust, and skid plate, in that order. Then, added some hoses, plumbing for the fuel injection pump, and mounted the Holley Mighty Mite electric fuel ‘lift’ pump that supplies the fuel injection system’s high pressure pump. Went to put on the upper radiator hose and noticed the cool bracket I’d made for the coil was right in the way. After a bit of head scratching, came up with a new solution that I’ll work on later, but it’s just hanging there for now so we can get it running tomorrow. I also nailed down the old valve covers (for now) since the new ones didn’t come with gaskets (thanks, Edelbrock) and started down the rabbit hole of the Accel Cut-To-Fit wires, but discovered that’s going to be an all-day sucker project, so we’ll toss on some pre-made wires just to hear it run tomorrow. I’m SO glad Dave’s here – I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere close to this point on my own.