Thanks. Haven't had a lot of time lately to work on it.

 

Finally finished my cb install up. Bearcat 880 with a firefly firestik antenna. Mount is from the vendor who makes em on here. Found out the PO messed up the mounting bolts on the driver tail light. Set a self tapper in it for now.

 

Not too much has been going on as of late. Just some general maintenance stuff. Got a few little projects lined up lately. Painting a VC gasket, installing a new gasket, and replacing my vacuum harness and CCV tube.

Here is the stripper I use for just about any oil soaked metal I need stripped down. It's designed for wood but it's amazing on oil and grease soaked metals.



Got the VC from a friend. Scuffed and faded a little but no dents. First thing I do is generously apply a thick coating of the stripper. It'll remove a good bit of the paint and oil/grease fairly easy. After it sits for about 20mins I spray it down with a water hose. Next (make sure you wear golves) I scrub the surface with some rough steel wool. You will notice it removing alot of gunk and paint. Next I spray the VC down with degreaser (I use purple power) and spray it off again. Spray it down with degreaser again and I'll scrub it some with a stiff bristle brush. One more rinse and let it dry. Coat your VC with stripper once more and kick back and have a sammich. Need to let it sit for about an hour before your remove the second coat, same steps as above.



Still waiting for an hour to be up. I'm also gonna do the inside of the VC with at least a coat just to remove all the old gunk. Gonna pull the flutes out and cut the as per Cruiser54s tip. More pics to come

 

Cool build so far man. Looks great!


Its neat to see other "budget" and "mild" builds out there.

Sub'd!

 

Nice XJ

 

Alot of work to do today. Vacuum harness, VC gasket, throttle body cleaning, and check the flex plate. Here is how it looks now:



Nasty, and falling apart. I've tried to bandaid everything until I could get it replaced. Now onto the fun. I removed the air box top and vac harness first. Then removed the throttle body.




Time for a good cleaning. I had cleaned it a little a few months ago but did it in
place. Still was quite gunked up



Here it is after a thorough cleaning. Also clean the sensors attached.

 

Onto the valve cover gasket. I had another VC laying around so I painted it and modified the flutes per Cruiser54s tips. Removal of the VC







No major gunk built up on top of the head thankfully. I did use a cork gasket and a little rtv, mainly to hold the gasket to the vc.



Now here I've installed the vac harness, reinstalled the throttle body and air cleaner and top. I still have to torque the vc bolts to spec and a few other tid bits but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Also gonna RE adjust the tps now that everything is cleaned up.

 

Flex plate inspected, no cracks but a bit og wear on the teeth. I'll replace it when I swap motors. I followed a write up on how to tighten your bolts and wanted to add that you can use a ratchet/ tq wrench if you **** the flex plate up towards the driver side. See picture below



Also for the super dummy out there like me, an easy way to make sure you tq your VC bolts in the proper order is to run some masking / painters tape down the top of your VC and label in the correct order



Well I got everything done for the most. I'll adjust my tps tomorrow and fire it up to make sure everything is good

 

Great stuff. Reminds me I need to clean my VC too.

 

Thanks...all need to be done to most older renix. Changed my fuel filter and pulled the rear sway bar. Took longer on the filter.....

 

sub'd

 

Well I parked the jeep yesterday. Officially retired from DD duties. Time to begin pulling the axles and motor. I've got a few options on the drive train from building another stroker to swapping in a 5.3. If I do the 5.3 I'm looking into adding a whipple charger. Axles will all depend on the motor I choose.

 

haha... wow! Looks like I subscribed just in time

 

Lol it reminded me to update. Still a few weeks out from any major work. Just gotta mount some doors on my shop before I begin to tear into it

 

Yeah, I understand that. My garage is a disaster so that's keeping me from working on my jeep in my free time right now. I need to take a couple of days off and get it squared away.