My 89 cherokee has spent the past 3 months sitting in my garage, without an engine, collecting dust... and its killing me. However i have spent the little extra time i have rebuilding the engine, cleaning 20 years of crap off all the parts, and painting everything. So just for fun, here is my progress! This is what i started with. And keep in mind that picture was taken after spending an hour with a heated pressure washer trying to get it somewhat clean. The engine pictures don't even do it justice to how dirty it was.... The harmonic balancer slid into the timing cover when the previous owner had it, so for a couple of years the fan constantly blew oil all over the engine compartment

 

Well it all started with the injectors.... One day i was bored, so i decided i would clean my injectors. Well, by the end of the day i ended up having a cherokee without a motor haha, it needed a rebuild really bad anyway, and i had a good time, and i didn't think it would take 3 months! the previous owner didn't change the oil very often so it got 10 psi of oil pressure at idle if i was lucky so yeah, it was time for a rebuild. Anyways i decided that i might as well do a good job, and make it look better then before, which wasn't hard because i am not so sure it could have looked much worse... so i went at it with a pressure washer, degreaser, and some serious scrubbing. Eventually i got it clean enough to paint... well after i got that all done i had this great idea to paint the air box, long story short i ended up cleaning and painting everything....

 

So when i took apart my engine i found that my rod bearings were shot, and my main bearings and crank looked terrible. (stupid previous owner... he was one of the few who could wipe out a 4.0 haha) So i took it to the machine shop and they had to go .040 over on the pistons, and .010 on the crank. It was pretty worn out, but i got all new internals, and here are some pics of the current rebuild process.

 

nice. keep it up and im gonna stick around for this one

 

definately paying attention to detail!!!!!!!! nice man!

 

that engine bay is gunna be sick. u def. have more patience with it then i did lol

 

That's some nice work your doing. Are you gonna use a aftermarket cam ?

Any other performance enhancements on the engine ?

 

From now on use a better camera..... all these were taken by phone! JK josh!

And yeah, those rod bearings are terrible.

 

Thanks everyone, tomorrow ill have the engine painted, and ill be putting the oil pump and pan on, and ill have some more pictures up of some of the other parts i did a "custom" paint job haha. But as far as performance parts goes, i just stuck with a stock cam. I couldn't really get a straight answer on what cam i should get the couple times i tried, so i just gave up and got a stocker cam. But i am going to find some ford injectors, and a buddy is going to give me his throttle body spacer and a 3.5 inch lift here in two weeks, so ill keep this thread posted.

 

Well, the engine has some new paint, and new parts..... its almost ready to be put back in to its home where i hope ill never have to take it back out again.

 

nice rebuild!!!

 

Well i finally got the engine painted, put back together, dropped in, and running..... she runs amazing, and starts up within 2-3 seconds every time (which is pretty good for a renix haha) Finally after almost 4 months, i have my xj back, its about freaking time.

 

This is so sick, I want to do this so badly.

 

Holy smokes thats one cleanest xj engine bay I've seen, nice job! Looks brand new. Makes me want to tear mine apart haha

 

Awesome job! I currently have an engine i'm working on to replace the one that was hydro locked (PO blew a piston out ) and this give me some great ideas on cleaning it up a bit. I was just going to power wash it and drop it in, but if I can get my engine bay/engine looking half that good i'll be thrilled. The details make all the difference.