Rebuild update

I got a call from Greg at Hall's Engines today. Everything is going to plan except for one glitch: unfortunately, I bought the wrong shorty headers from Summit Racing (no AIR tubes, which means the engine would never pass smog with them installed). Instead, Greg will put the OEM exhaust manifolds back on, and then when I return in 500 miles or so for the engine checkup and oil change, he'll slap on the right headers (which I'll try to order today from BJ's Off-Road), take it to a local guy he knows to get it smog certified (tuned as needed to pass), and then get it back to me.

At any rate, it's a minor setback because the engine should be back in the Jeep tomorrow and ready for testing. I'm not sure if I'll be able to pick it up Friday before the family heads to Carlsbad or if it'll have to wait until Monday.

I've had nothing but positive interaction with Greg so far, and I'm still quite confident that I found the right guy to get the job done right the first time.

The engine rebuild begins ... but not by me

I dropped the Jeep off at Hall's Engine Rebuilding and Radiator Service in Moreno Valley this morning. It performed nicely on the freeway, but I'm sure I left a Hansel and Gretel trail of oil between our house and the engine shop since the rear main seal is leaking like a sieve. As I get updates from the shop, I'll post them here.

The plan right now is to tear the entire engine apart; get the block decked, honed, and bored; check the valves for undue wear and replace the springs; replace the cam, the pistons, and the rings will stock spec parts; machine the piston arms back to true and install new bearings; replace the oil pump, the water pump, the timing chain, and so on; and install all new gaskets, belts and hoses, of course.

I took in a few parts that I'd bought in advance:

· Edelbrock Short Headers for the AMC 360 V8 to replace the stock exhaust manifolds (I'm hoping to squeeze out a few more horsepower from this upgrade)

· Edelbrock Timing Chain set for AMC 360 V8 (it's a higher quality chain with roller bearings)

· Flow Kooler hi-flow aluminum water pump for AMC 360 V8 (30% higher flow over stock)

· New polyurethane motor mounts (1 pair)

They'll pull the engine and reinstall it, which they prefer to do to make sure the setup is right and to assume all control (and liability) for proper installation. Also, though I'd bought most of the necessary gaskets in advance, the owner of the shop advised me to let him purchase and install the gaskets (nearly all will be Fel-Pro) as an insurance policy for both of us. See, the engine, upon completion, will have a three year, unlimited mile warranty. But should one of the gaskets I provided prove to be faulty, there would be the potential for debate over who should pay (was it a gasket problem or an install problem, my fault or his?). If it's one of his gaskets, he's responsible for all parts and labor.

Also, another nice service Hall's provides is a free checkup after 500 miles. They'll do an oil change and check the engine over, including all connections, to make sure all is well. If something is wrong (problematic metal shavings in the oil, for example), they can address it before anything catastrophic happens.

All of the above is what sold me on using Hall's. In addition to that, however, is the fact that they specialize in off-road vehicles and enjoy working on older Jeeps (he was working on a V6 CJ5 when I pulled in this morning, and their site has some shots of a pair of desert flatties). While these Jeeps are not going to feature the AMC 360, they're mostly AMC vehicles, so he knows what peculiarities these rigs can have.

The complete rebuild, including all parts and labor (and removal and install of the engine) will be about $3600. He says they rarely go over an estimate and are quite off under. I left a 50% deposit to get the job rolling.

Another taillight fix

I had to return to the left taillight again. I grabbed the housing off of that same 88 GW at the PAP in San Bernardino. I think I paid two bucks for it.

Remember what I started with (before the sidemarker fix), including the body damage. It's actually somewhat surprising that the taillight housing wasn't more damaged that this. Just that little one inch chunk missing. But my other concern, now that I had replaced the sidemarker light, I wanted to get the entire driver's side rear more waterproof than it was.

I had to pull the interior left panel in the cargo compartment to get at the two nuts holding the housing in place. Since the donor rig was already gutted back there, it was easy to see how it was attached, which made this job much easier on my rig.

The red taillight lens was slightly damaged, as well, so I took some time to get it glued up with some silicon adhesive, guaranteed to remain intact even when exposed to moisture and heat.

The taillight lens and housing back together, wired up, and ready to go. Before I put the lens in, however, I put some clear silicon in the housing grooves where the lens mates up. Again, water tight is the phrase of the day.

The real challenge was plugging the gap between the housing and the body panel since they were not and never would be, um, shall we say symmetrical. First, I cut up the rubber sole on an old running shoe. I shaped it like an L, as if it would fit between the top edge and outside edge of the taillight housing and the body panel. No go. Then I found some spare insulator tubing that I had leftover from when I installed my house's water heater a few years back (I get rid of very little until it truly resembles garbage). I flattened it against the outside and top edges, pushed the housing into the body panel, and tightened down the nuts. It's a great fit.

New plug wires, cap, and rotor

About a year ago, I bought a set of 8mm plug wires from Accel to upgrade my wiring, trying to avoid as much parasitic loss and heat as I could. The problem, unfortunately, was that the plugs I bought required male rather than female connectors on the distributor cap, so I couldn't use them. Rather than return them, I kept the wires to force me to find a solution at some point. So I've been running this style cap for the life of the Jeep.

Then, through another member of IFJSA (GetLost4x4), I learned about a rather simple upgrade/fix for the male/female connectors on the cap. See, the Duraspark distributor is a Ford product, and GetLost used a larger cap and rotor that would normally go on a '79 Ford F-350 which ran essentially the same distributor. The setup begins with a mounting adapter that allows a 5" diameter cap on a ~3 1/2" diameter distributor.

Then the new cap and plugs can be mounted on there, getting me the male connectors on the cap. Basically, the cap is ultimately the same height as the original, just wider, which helps cut down on potential crossfire situations.

Done. Getting the plugs on the end of the wires (the kit was a do-it-yourself setup to customize the wire length) was easily the hardest task in this project. I strongly recommend a good pair of crimping pliers ($20 for a nice Vice Grip tool with three or so crimping options). This is just one more way of improving the wiring efficiency and reliability in the engine bay. Never a mistake to do that.

Wiring harness--finished and running!

Double checked all connectors today, particularly around the alternator, the starter relay, and the firewall/bulkhead connection. Tightened everything down that I could. At first, it wouldn't start because it had been so long since I'd run the rig, but after a few minutes, it started up, to my great relief. But...

Then she wouldn't shut off, even with the key out of the ignition! Oops. I thought I'd created some kind of perpetual energy machine. Or, as my dad put, I'd learned how to hotwire a car (the slowest way possible).

Turns out, the old harness didn't have a clearly defined (+) line to the coil (it was lost in that awful bird's nest of wiring by the AC condensor). So when I installed the new harness, I had two hots going to the (+) side, including initially straight to the battery and not to a switched source. I've since rectified that, losing the old hot wire and keeping the new.

Installing the engine wiring harness

The first task was taking pictures of the old one, including all connectors. I wanted to mark on the new one exactly what went where before I disconnected anything. A number of photographs, blue tape, and a Sharpie made it an easy, if long.

Here's a nasty reminder of what I was trying to improve. The stuff on the fair left is the new electric fan relay. The junk in the middle is standard fair--cracked, unprotected, poorly organized/routed, and potentially dangerous.

This is what I did to the new harness as I disconnected the hold. I marked each extension and measured to see roughly where the "branches" should shoot off from the "main trunk" of the harness, if that makes sense. A significant amount of my zip-ties from the initial clean up job had to go away to allow for more efficient routing of the offshoots, but that wasn't a big deal.

I started with the bulkhead connection and the wound it back behind the engine along the firewall (there are a pair of mounting points made for zipties back there).

I wanted to keep it off of the valve covers and the intake manifold, basically the main heat sources on top of the engine. I then routed it around towards the passenger fender where the starter relay is. The main harness branches off there to go to the coil, carb, AC, and distributor. I took the time, as well, to clean up the wiring for the electric cooling fan. It's not great, but the wires will be kept together and are less like to fray this way.

I kept as much of the wiring bundled there as I could to keep the area clean. All done...

"New-to-me" headliner in today, plus sunvisors

While the headliner was out for the roof rack, I decided that I might as well upgrade the headliner itself if I could (one of the previous owners was a smoker because I can't figure out how a liner could get so faded unless he was a smoker or was driving everywhere upside down.) So a trip back to that same PAP got me the donor rig's two piece liner, some trim pieces, and a pair of much nicer sunvisors.

Old vs. New-ish

Quite a difference, obviously. Installation was pretty simple. Lily and Nath helped hold it in place while I got it up and in the rail slots down the side. Then it was just a matter of reinstalling the trim pieces and the visors. To finish it up, I drilled some holes through the liner above the wheel wells to reinstall the three-point seat-belts for kiddies.

All done.