I am pretty psyched right now. I am attempting to breath some new life into a new to me 1993 Cherokee with 307K miles.

I was able to find this motor less than 20 minutes from my house. I will be putting it on a stand and going thru it before installing it. Besides the usual basic stuff, is there anything special I should definitely do to a 4.0 before installing it?

The engine has been sitting tucked away for a few years but its story checks out...

 

That thing has been sitting quite a bit. It's not just the mileage that counts. Seals tend to dry up when an engine sits. While you have it on a stand you might as well make sure the pan & valve cover gaskets are good. I might be tempted to do the water pump while I was at it. Maybe even RMS and the intake/exhaust.

Those freeze plugs look a bit far gone, too.

 

Mark, thank you for the feedback. I will be replacing all the items you mentioned. I will take a close look at those freeze plugs as well...

 

Timing cover gasket
Oil pan gasket, maybe Rear Main Seal as well
Oil filter adapter gaskets
Water pump, gasket, thermostat and gasket
Spark Plugs/ignition components
Valve cover gasket

Freeze plugs might be a good idea (just don't botch the install on the new ones)

Pull the starter apart and clean out the rust, maybe pull the intake manifold off and clean it out as well (and check what the head/valves look like).

Definitely use some fogging oil and turn the crank by hand to try and fight any rust from it sitting

 

Oh, yeah. Good thinking.

Might want to drop some PB Blaster down each spark plug hole for that reason. Loosen things up a bit.


Sitting is hard on machinery.

 

Okay, here's something ELSE to check. Make sure the valves are free in their guides. My friend found a 1936 Plymouth sitting in a barn. It turned over but didn't seem like it had any compression. He pulled the head (flathead) and every valve was hung open! He squirted PB blaster on the valve stems and turned it over until they all were loose (he had to help them with a rubber hammer), put the head back on with the original gasket. It fired up and ran like a fine watch! Just sat there ticking away. Then the clutch disc was frozen to the flywheel!

 

Great input guys. First I need to finish dealing with those rusty floorboards. And maybe put my transmission back together...

This Centerforce clutch set up was attached to the back of the motor. The PO says he installed it a few months before he totalled his Jeep. I will be running an automatic trans on my Cherokee so this stuff will be posted soon in the "buy, sell, trade" section...

 

I finally broke down and ordered my own engine stand and thought I would do a short write up here as part of my engine rehab thread. For $55 delivered to my house I went with a Torin 750lb stand. IMO for a Jeep 4.0L it is all you need. I bought some grade 8 bolts from the local hardware store (3/8-16 X 3 inch for the top two and 7/16-14 X 3.5 or 4 inch for the bottom).

For $50-ish the Torin seems like a decent stand, and with the 4.0 on it there is very little wobble.

Ordered it thru Amazon Prime, and although this was the only packaging, it showed up in two days as promised and in good shape:


Pretty simple stand; one bolt holds the three main section together. if you've got a big burly V10, 454, etc., this is probably not the stand for you.


I put some lithium grease on the "rear axles", front castor bearings, and in the part the engine spins on.


Here it is with the engine on it. It actually feels pretty secure.




FWIW, here are a few close ups of the engine after I gave it good scrub down. I did squirt some penetrating oil into the cylinders thru the spark plug holes as well as squirting down the valvetrain. I gave the crankshaft a bunch of spins and everything seemed to be moving freely and as it should...






BTW, I can't believe no one wants that Centerforce clutch?

 

Replace the engine mount bolts before they shear off in the block.

 

check the exhaust manifold to see if it's cracked. probably not a bad idea to change it even if it's not because it eventually will.

 

Very nice, and thank you for posting that. Torin makes some decent stuff. It's certainly not professional grade, but it will do for homeowner stuff. It's pretty hard to argue with that stand for that price. I think there's probably one in my future in the next year.

Maybe I'll give you $25 for yours when you are done with it.

Castors are beans. Casters are wheels.

That said, do you mean white lithium grease from a spray can? Or the kind you put in a grease gun? If the spray can, rethink that. You need the heavier grease for those places.

 

I actually meant the beans, and you haven't lived until you've tried them fried up in lithium grease; yum...

 

How much do you want for the clutch?

 

By the way, if you don't clean up that valve cover and give it a nice new coat of paint, I'm going to track you down and put some lithium grease in your ears!




Consider a nice hammertone red.....

 

The clue you seek is within this thread,
ready?
GO!