The frame wasn’t touched thankfully. The bumper took the brunt of the impact and the only thing that got bent was the mounting point for the bracket for the left side of the bumper and the fender got caved in a little.

I took it to my friend and he said the frame wasn’t bent or mangled or anything, and said a slide hammer for the mounting point for the bumper will straighten it out.

I was sure they were going to total it, but by the grace of God, it wasn’t. She’ll live to run another day!

 

I wasn't so lucky mine is totalled

 

As I said, insurance companies like to total old rigs. But I think I could fix that. If you were closer, I have what you need for it

 

Oh man. I got a lot of work today.

I got the rear bumper and the end caps installed, the hitch installed, trailer harness plugged up, and new tires installed.

The bumper install went a lot easier than I was expecting. I knew it would be hard since I had some damage to the bumper, but all it took was a slide hammer to even out the bracket mounting bolts. The bumper went on without issue once the brackets were installed.

The hitch took almost no work to do. I found 8 bolts to fit the bracket that goes into the frame, and it just slid right into place.

My tires didn’t give me any trouble either. Only took me 45 minutes to do all 4. And let me tell you, with the new springs installed and the bigger tires installed, she looks phenomenal.


New bumper, hitch, and tail lights intalled

The front squat is still there, but it’s a lot less. That’ll even out if I put a load on the hitch



New chrome bezels for the headlights and new side markers

 

Forgot to add this, but next up is removing the interior. My heater core is now pissing coolant into the cabin. But I’ve got new carpet for the front, new door panels, new door handles, and I have a new headliner with an overhead console and both of the harnesses. This part of the build is gonna take a while. I’m gonna start chipping away at after work, and I’ll most likely do this job outside so I’m not taking up space at work.

I plan to have that done by winter time, and after that, the trans has to get pulled again so I can re-do my rear main seal, and she needs a new timing cover because the bolt threads are stripped to where the oil pan bolts to it.

 

Well, it’s official. Ol Blue can tow! And she’s pretty damn good at it.

Yeah, I used her to pull a junk Scion xB to the junkyard, using a tow dolly. I can comfortably say that I would do it again, because it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. You could most certainly feel the difference, but she chugged her way up every hill and never really struggled. I had to push it down to 3rd on one hill, but she maintained 45 though and though.

As far as the brakes go, I thought I was gonna have some trouble stopping, but there wasn’t one point where I thought I wouldn’t shop. Using the engine as a brake and my actual brakes, she didn’t even hiccup when it came to stopping. I’m not even sure if I’ll upgrade my drums in the rear because of how well it stopped.

Aside from that, the scale said 6650 coming in, and 3400 going out, and I weigh 200lbs and my friend weighs 230 lbs, putting the Jeep with just a dolly right at 2900lbs roughly. That dolly probably weighs 200lbs, so if I had to guess, Ol Blue weighs about 2700 lbs, which is mind boggling honestly.

Anyway, In the coming weeks, I’m heading up to Virginia to pick up a headliner, an overhead console with the harness, and some seats that are in immaculate condition. Then, I’ll get cracking on the interior, cause I’m going to strip everything down and repair a while bunch of rusty floor pans, insulate everything, and fix a bunch of wires and fix that heater core. I actually blocked off the heater core for now because it was 85 degrees yesterday, and so I could take it to the junkyard without overheating.

 

Yup, it can be done. Maybe just a little slower. I pulled a totaled XJ with my wimpy V6 600 miles. Had to slow down for the hills

 

Well, disaster struck. Thankfully not to Ol Blue, but to my girlfriends Miata.

Yeah. Put timing chains on her 07 Miata, and for those who don’t know about the seriously ****ed up design of her engine, they don’t have keyways for the timing chain. The balancer is the only thing that keeps the chains rotating, so if the bolt happens to loosen itself because you didn’t tighten it to the torque spec of almost broken, that bolt will back out. And when that happens, the timing chain stops rotating and the crank freewheels, hitting the valves and bending them.

So, needless to say, that bolt backed out and made a bunch of horrible noises, and now I need to remove the head and put some valves in it, assuming the valves didn’t hit the ring lands or break off.

In the meantime, she’s driving my 97 Avalon, and I’m stuck with Ol Blue. I had to reconnect my heater core because it’s getting cold out again, but I’m really not that inclined to drive it, as that heater core is puking and the timing cover and rear mean are leaking. But, desperate times call for driving the ****box because you messed up.

And because of this, I’ve got to focus on getting her car back to her before I can do any more work with Ol Blue, and with my 21st birthday being tomorrow and my “celebration” coming this weekend, it’s gonna be a bit before I can start tearing it down.

So, with that being said, I just gotta keep checking the oil and coolant every day, and hope and pray that the heater core doesn’t finally give up the battle and split in two. It’s already making puddles in the cabin, but I’ve found that if I keep it below 2.5k RPM, then it’s manageable.

 

Happy 21st Birthday !!

 

It went exactly as you would expect. My friend kept feeding me Tequila shots and I ended up in the hospital. All good now and I don’t think I’ll ever have Tokillya anytime soon.

 

Well, aside from the ****show that was my 21st birthday, my girlfriend got me a CB radio for my birthday!

I told her once or twice that I was wanting to have a CB setup in Ole Blue, and she bought be an actual CB with a 36 inch antenna. This CB is what truckers usually use, so some modification was required to make it fit. After struggling to find a good place for the antenna and trying to tune it, I actually got to talk to someone!

I’ll upload some pictures of what I did, but since I’m really horrible about taking pictures, that might be a bit.

Anyway, I still have to fix my girlfriend’s Miata before I can start working on my Jeep. Hopefully I can start on that this weekend.

Oh, and let me tell you, it’s really annoying driving around with a leaking heater core. The steam fogs up my interior, and since my condenser is cracked open, I can’t defrost anything. And I’m really tired of smelling antifreeze. And for some unknown reason, my blower stopped working, like at all.

I really need to stop driving Ole Blue before something else breaks

 

Congrats on the birthday and the radio

 

Thanks man.

But I love them both. I can now drink and have conversations with other people on the road!

although it is kinda hard to find people on a certain channel when I don’t have that much range

 

I just wanted to update on what’s changed since I’ve installed the rebuilt motor.

So, first and foremost, after driving it around for a week straight, the camshaft I installed really does do quite a bit. The power band shifted to deliver (at least from a butt dyno) max torque at around 2.2k. After that, the torque stays consistent until around 3.4k, but I don’t really go that far because shifting around 2k gets me up to 50 a lot faster than before.

The second thing I’ve noticed is that I seem to be running pretty rich. I removed the converter because it was making everything smell like rotten eggs, but I can smell the excess fuel when driving down the road, and I’m not talking about the “smell” of a converter-less car, but I can actually smell raw fuel at times. I’m not sure just yet, but I think the computer is having trouble in closed loop fueling. I’m not sure if it’s the oxygen sensor itself or not, but my Jeep will get noticeably slower when it enters closed loop fueling. It doesn’t want to go anywhere until I get it past 3k, and it feels closest like how VVT would feel. Unplugging the o2 makes everything perform better. I ordered an OBD2 conversion harness with a pcm from Cummins93, so I can tune my Jeep with HPtuner. I suspect that the camshaft is somewhat out of the range of the learning ability of the computer, but again, I’m not sure just yet. I want to datalog a few trips and dig through the data and see what happens when it enters closed loop and what the factory table is for open loop fueling.

The third thing I’ve noticed is that I’ve lost a lot of my engine braking abilities. Before, if I was on the interstate at 70 in 5th, I could let off the gas and I would quickly slow down. Now, at the same speed and in 5th gear with the new AX15, it doesn’t really want to slow down that fast. I know the gear ratios between the AX15 and the AX5 are minimal, but I wonder what happened to lessen the engine braking.

The forth thing I’ve noticed is that with the rebuild, she likes mid-grade and premium fuel better than regular. It feels more responsive with mid-grade, and I can’t really tell a difference if I run premium vs mid-grade. I’ll have to run premium when I up the advance, but for now, midgrade does the job. I also have to run it to eliminate spark knock at lower RPM and high load, like if I shift too early up a hill. Don’t need a piston to get shattered.

The fifth thing I’ve noticed is the vibrations. It idles much more rough, and I’m not talking about the slightly lopey idle, I’m talking about the physical vibrations at idle and when revving it out. I ordered some brown dog motor mounts to hopefully help out with that.

I know, it’s a lot, but a lot has changed, and so much more is going to change, all of it for the better.

As a side note, I know there’s people out there that shake their head when they read about a guy who cammed a 4 cylinder Jeep and continues to spend money on it, but truth be told, I love it and that’s what matters. I don’t think many, if any, have done what I’ve done, and I like that. This whole build thread is to show that no matter what, you can still be happy with what you’ve got. Lord knows I am

 

I wonder if you would benefit by having your tail pipe sniffed. I have done that after conversions to help get it dialed in