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Some of y'all may remember The Hooptie, my '92 XJ with the 97 front clip and other various upgrades. If you don't, and you wanna see more, go read up and come back.
TL/DR:
Well, it's nearly 3 years later, I live in Kentucky now, and 4wd is much less optional now. I currently drive an '01 Ram 1500 Quad Cab , but it's RWD with a 2" rear drop (reverse level) on 20s. I've got a set of Duratracs on it for the winter, but the open diff and lack of 4wd has proven challenging. Slid off the driveway one afternoon coming home because it was icy and couldn't back up without digging out the front wheels and spreading sand for the rears.
Then, just yesterday, there was ice on the edges of the driveway where we plowed it, basically right where the track of my tires are, and well... couldn't make it UP the friggin driveway.
Love my truck, but I gotta get back and forth to work without borrowing my dad's truck all the time.
So yesterday, I went and put a deposit on a '99 and I'm going to pick it up today. Check it out...
Kinda crappy pics from the for sale posting, I'll post some more up this weekend when I get the chance.
Here's the specs from what I know so far though:
1999 XJ
4.0
AW4
NP242
D30
C8.25
Smittybilt front and rear bumpers
Reinforced frame rails
Needs:
Rust repair
Tie rod ends
Possibly a wheel bearing
Steering box is loose
Brand new trac bar, but I don't think he tightened it down all the way
Needs an alignment
U joints all the way around.
Tune up
Pulleys
Bulbs for the interior lights
Clear coat on the driver's side fender, header panel, and there's a spot on the passenger front door that's missing clear coat too.
Interior is in really good shape.
Plans:
Stay tuned and find out.
I will say that this one is going to be primarily "Back the Blue" themed, for officers killed/hurt in the line of duty or those that have succumb to mental/emotional wounds from PTSD. But also veteran themed in general. There's several reasons why, but I think one of the biggest is my buddy Adam Rendall who I served with at Marion County Sheriff's office. Adam took his life in July of 2017. I'm hoping to team up with causes such as: Fallen Officers Memorial Fund, Krawlin 4 the Fallen, Till Valhalla Project, and Mission 22.
Didn't mean to take 6 months to update this thing, but I've been stupid busy. Wish I could say it was working on the Jeep... Unfortunately, not much progress has been made on that front. Or at least not as much as I'd have liked within 6 months of owning it.
Here 'goes...
After towing it home, I couldn't wait to play with it.... of course, playing in the snow, on a slope, with street tires on street pressure with open diffs was......
...if you said "Stupid"....
....you would be correct.
What I didn't get pictures of was the tractor getting stuck. In the above picture, I had broken one of my straps so I had to back the tractor closer.... unfortunately it was too far down the slope so I couldn't get any traction to get back up the hill. I tried riding parallel to the slope to get to where the slope wasn't as steep, but I just ended up sliding into the wood line and getting hung up. Kinda wish I'd have made a video of how I got out... it was pretty cool. Cut up a "t-post" into 15" sections and ratchet strapped 4 of them to the rear tires of the tractor and walked it right out. Definitely a trick I'm going to have to remember for the Jeep.
Anyway.... I gave up on trying to get the Jeep out, so I left it there until the snow melted, dropped the pressure in the tires to about 10lbs each and walked it up the hill. Yup.... these tires suck.... and the steering sucks.... and a lot of things suck.... man I miss my old Jeep.
You'll notice the mis-matched wheel on the rear. Yeah.... figured out why the P.O. thought it still had DW after replacing the trac bar (speaking of trac bar, that's a hilarious story too).... one of the front tires had a broken belt in it. I moved the left rear to the front because it had more tread depth than the spare... and all the tires had so much dry rot on them I didn't want to chance trying to mount ANY of them on different wheels. So changing the spare tire over to a matching wheel was not in the cards. Time for new tires...
Found a set of Cooper Evolution M/T's (33x1250r15) for 169 a piece and a set of black 15x8 soft 8's for a little less than 50 a piece on Amazon. Ended up being about 1100 bucks for 5 wheels and tires. Not too shabby. Mounted and balanced them myself at the shop I work at.
We'll come back to that.
First actual thing I did to the Jeep was get rid of that snorkel. Thought they were kinda cool until I actually bought one with it. Realized that I actually hate the way it looks. To make things worse, it wasn't even hooked up. Dude went to the trouble of removing the washer fluid reservoir and drilling holes into the fender just for looks. Didn't even drill the hole in the inner fenderwall to route the duct to the airbox. Thank God.... one less hole for me to worry about.
The thing was running like crap, figured I may as well check out the plugs.... already knew it needed new wires based on the fact that one of the wires was "repaired" with electrical tape.
Not really good news on that front. The plugs weren't worn, but they were soaked with oil and moisture. Looks like I'm looking down the barrel of a blown head gasket..... or so I thought.
Screw it... can't do anything about it right now anyway and I'm tired of looking at the greasy engine bay. So I threw the plugs back in it, degreased and pressure washed the engine bay, snapped a few pics, slammed the hood and walked away.
Alright, so back to that trac bar and crappy steering. So the Jeep has an RC lift on it, Trac Bar drop bracket and RC adjustable trac bar. But he thought he was getting DW so he fired the parts cannon at it. My guess is, since he didn't know anything about what he had or how to diagnose anything, he went to the parts store and told them he needed a trac bar for a '99 cherokee. When they gave him the OE trac bar for the '99 cherokee he realized it wasn't going to fit because of the ball joint on the frame side and took it back and said it was the wrong part.... the reason I'm speculating is because the trac bar that was on it was for a WJ. So the only thing I can think of is that the dude behind the counter at Autozone (it's a Duralast part... he gave me the box it came in) figured he must have meant "Grand Cherokee" when he said it wouldn't fit. Either way, completely wrong part, completely wrong condition, completely wrong solution.
There was nothing wrong with the RC trac bar to begin with and there was no DW. It was just the stupid tire. BUT.... They replaced the steering column (more on that later) and separated the intermediate shaft for some reason and then put it back together wrong... so the steering wheel is 180 degrees off . The steering also has a really bad hard spot in it. Figured out he had brake fluid in the reservoir, not steering fluid. For anyone who doesn't know... don't use brake fluid in place of power steering fluid. If you don't have PS fluid, use ATF... brake fluid has no lubricity to it and it attracts moisture. So yeah.... the gearbox is toast. Found another gearbox in the junkyard and bought a seal kit for it. Haven't put it in yet.
Put the RC tracbar back in and bought parts for the v8 ZJ tie rod. The rest of the steering parts were pretty much junk too, so I just went ahead and bought those while I was at it. So completely new steering linkage.
Did the front brakes, wheel bearings, ball joints, and u joints while I was at it. Everything was pretty much toast. Still have a lot to go on it though.
Oh yeah, also trimmed the fenders and put the wheels and tires on.
Stay tuned.... more updates and sadness to come.
Last edited by Basslicks; Jan 14, 2022 at 11:29 AM.
Reason: Discovered new information
Alright, where'd we leave off.... oh yeah.... PO problems.
So as it turns out, the head gasket was in fact blown... unfortunately, when I pulled the head to replace the gasket, I discovered the head was cracked. Nope... it's not an 0331 head either... it's an 0630. But it cracked nice and big right between cylinders 3 & 4 from water jacket to water jacket and then some.
The crackhead:
Oh what's that? You can't see it? Hang on, I'll zoom in for you....
No? Hang on, I'll wire brush it for you....
THERE IT IS!!!! Yup.... crackhead. My guess is, they were chasing an overheating issue, switched to a lower temp thermostat and called it good... when that didn't work, they said "screw it" and wheeled it anyway until it started overheating so bad it cracked the head.... all just conjecture, but follow along and you'll begin to see the plausibility here.
Alright, so after a drama-filled fit of rage that included throwing four-letter words, tools, and even playing hammer toss with the cylinder head, I started looking around for a cylinder head. Right before my trip to the junk yard, I was talking to a buddy about my crackhead conundrum, and he told me about a friend of his that had a complete XJ motor and that he'd probably get rid of it for 150. So I hit him up and, to my surprise, it was actually 100 bucks! So I drove across the river into Amelia and picked it up.
Kind of a mashup of parts. The block is definitely from a '00+. Still had the cam sensor installed in place of the distributor. Head is a 0630. I think whoever had this thing just slapped it together then abandoned the project. The guy I got it from pulled it out of the Jeep it was in and threw his newly rebuilt engine in it.
First step was to build a stand for it. I had what started off as a frame for a welding cart sitting around. So I modified my plans for it and made it into a stand.
Not bad... all in all, it's great as a top-end stand, but I needed to be able to work on the bottom end too... so I went ahead and bought a stand.
This thing was waaaaayyyy cheap. Had my doubts on how it would hold up, but I figured if I could at least get it to work long enough to get this engine squared away and in the Jeep, it would be good enough.
1k lb stand.... but definitely doesn't like the added leverage of 2 more cylinders hanging out front. Stay tuned.
So now that I have a "proper" engine stand, it's time to start tearing her down...
The cylinder head looked REALLY good. Valvetrain is really clean. Even has what appear to be new valve seals. Seal kit I bought came with new stem seals though so I'll replace them anyway.
Seriously.... looks REALLY good.
Underside looked pretty clean too. I think I lucked out!
...and the teardown.
Rockers were practically new. Pushrods and lifters were close to new if not new themselves. I found an old pretzel container, filled it up with 5w30 and threw the lifters and rods in it to soak until reassembly.
**Reminder - the events described here with these pictures took place MONTHS ago. I'm way behind on posting, so I'm playing catch up.***
On to the block. I forgot to take a picture of the cylinders before I started cleaning, priming and painting, but I did eventually take a picture. The short block definitely had more miles than the head, but nothing seemed to be worn out. Tops of the cylinders looked ok, just dirty. Rocked the balancer back and forth and didn't hear or feel any slop, so I think I'm good (spoiler alert - not so much. More on that later)
Cleaned her up and threw a few coats of primer on. As you can see I didn't get real thorough with brushing the scale off.
Sidfenote - you can see the failure of the engine stand in this picture. This happened when I was pulling it backwards. I bought this off amazon. I can post up the listing for it if you want to be sure to AVOID it. (Big red 1250lb stand is at my place waiting to be put together now.... screw that cheapy engine stand)
This is after 2 coats of Duplicolor's Ford Blue Engine Enamel with Ceramic. I used their engine enamel primer as well.
There they are.... dirty pistons. Cylinder walls look pretty good though.
Couldn't figure out what that mark on this piston was. I'm guessing someone dropped something down into the cylinder and didn't know it but caught it somehow. Looks like whatever it was only hit once.
View from underneath... yes I know, I got paint everywhere.
Decided to accent the engine with black. So the accessories, intake and valve cover got the gloss black treatment.
Well.... originally was going to go flat black, but after these were finished painted and I mocked them up, I decided I didn't like the look.... so I switched to gloss.
Much better...
To anyone wondering, all mating surfaces were machined, and I chased the threads on all the bolt holes and bolts (painted or not) prior to reassembly.
I had that same stand, and before I got to the failure post, I was gonna say you might want to shore up the front wheel plate, as mine folded over. HAHA
I had AMC V8s on mine, so the two extra front cyl don't matter.
Looks good, but might wanna look closer at the cylinder with that piston damage....................
Hooptie 2.0 a.k.a. "Project Blueblood"
. The steering also has a really bad hard spot in it. Figured out he had brake fluid in the reservoir, not steering fluid. For anyone who doesn't know... don't use brake fluid in place of power steering fluid. If you don't have PS fluid, use ATF... brake fluid has no lubricity to it and it attracts moisture. So yeah.... the gearbox is toast. Found another gearbox in the junkyard and bought a seal kit for it. Haven't put it in yet.
